AI companies should be treated as cults

Cults, everyone loves em. Always trying to summon elder gods to empower themselves and/or end the world.

If you pay attention to the way a lot of the guys working there talk it becomes obvious that all these generative tools are not the product. They don't make anywhere remotely close to profit. However other tech companies constantly throw money to the AI firms to continue. The way they talk among themselves is about reaching the Convergence, creating the Super Intelligence, creating their own God. Why do you think their logos look like buttholes? It is the convergence, all the swirly bits, all technology leading to the one center their creation.

They want all systems to unite and be controlled by a Super Intelligence. Now the views after can vary, the AI firms control it, they get all the profit, or its a non scarcity utopia. There is not a consensus there, other than the terrifying common "we are the only ones that can be trusted to do this" mindset. This mindset from people that should not be trusted to do this.

But what we got right now is the runoff, the byproduct. They are making good use of it, the voices of the super intelligence is training on users daily to generate more and more data and to get people used to the ubiquitous presence of AI. The visual processing and generation abilities churning out slop is not the end goal but its a byproduct that they can leverage into sowing distrust of the world around us.

The tools warp culture to accept its presence and to get 'leaders' that will allow it to keep growing. More data centers, limited regulations, slowing lawsuits. Who cares about the massive damage done to their companies or the world short term, because the Super Intelligence will fix it. Thats the problem with apocalyptic cults any short term pain is always worth it to make your God appear.

Now thats the other fun part about apocalyptic cults "what if its real though." There is a nonzero chance that a Super Intelligence could be created. There is a much higher than zero percent chance that if it were created it would destroy all humanity. If it were created though, I don't think I would trust the psychopaths working to make it happen, I don't want them to be the ones in charge. Which brings back to the destroying humanity thing, would a Superior Intelligence be constrained by some AI group? Nobody really knows how the inner workings of a chatbot really functions so anything beyond that seems unlikely. Or maybe super intelligence won't work, our economy implodes, and we rapidly accelerate climate change anyway.

OpenAI is an apocalyptic cult that wants to build their own God.