Maybe Apple should delay Siri just a little longer

The Macalope has an idea for a new reality TV series: “AI Makeover”. No, it’s not using AI to give our nation’s millions of ugly teenagers much-needed makeovers. It is instead a panel of PR experts advising AI companies how to repair their reputations as garbage companies that produce garbage products and turn everything they touch into garbage.

You’d think they’d be doing this themselves, employing crack teams of PR hotshots to make nice with the public and try to represent themselves as just humble purveyors of the kind of technology people want to buy but, as the Musk v. Altman trial clearly shows, they are not.

“Musk v. Altman proved that AI is led by the wrong people”

Almost nobody in this saga seems worth trusting. Some of the most powerful people in tech seem temperamentally incapable of dealing with each other honestly. And if that’s true, it raises a bigger question: Why are they in control of a trillion-dollar industry that’s set to upend people’s lives?

This is exactly what the Macalope has been saying. The problem with AI is not a technological one. It’s a perfectly fine technology when used in the right contexts. No, the problem is that it’s run by people who are trying to will it into a new gold rush so badly that they’re fighting over the gold before anyone’s even made a profit.

According to a Gallup poll:

Seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly half, 48%, who are strongly opposed. Barely a quarter favor these projects, with 7% strongly in favor.

In response to this, Ben Thompson suggests (subscription link) AI companies just pay locals in order to offset the costs associated.

It’s at least a better solution than just trying to jam them in, but allow the Macalope to suggest that if an AI company rolls up to your town hall meeting and says it’ll pay you to put in a data center and you go for it despite all the warning signs, you’d better be darn sure to get the money up front. Ask Wisconsinites if they’re happy with how the state’s deal with Foxconn went. Answer: It went so badly that they jumped at the chance to have Microsoft put a data center in the empty Foxconn facility, even though we just established that everyone hates data centers.

It’s like nobody ever saw the monorail episode of “The Simpsons”.

But the Macalope isn’t sure these are the kinds of people you should do business with. Remember, these are people who have already stolen copyrighted content and when confronted with this fact whine “But if we can’t steal it, we can’t make AI!”

Um… yeah.

“If you don’t let us crush the blood and bones of your children into a slurry in our vast rendering facilities that will be housed in your hometowns and, yes, may run off into your drinking water, how are we going to make Kinderslop, the human nutrition product of the future?!”

Maybe don’t! How about that?!

Getting paid to have a data center in your town might sound kind of like a good deal, but Elon Musk is sadly emblematic of the kinds of people who run AI companies. Do we really need to go back and review the number of things he’s promised over the years that he has not delivered on? The Macalope has never been told he has a word limit on this column but he suspects that would be a way to find out. Again, if Musk wants to pay you to put a data center in your town, make him hand you the money in cash, up front and then get into a car and be driving away at top speed before you sign the deal electronically.

Okay, the Macalope has been hard on AI executives, but he has some good news for them. If you’re an AI exec and you’re worried about that Gallup poll and the potential negative effects of future Gallup polls on your business, it may not be an issue for much longer.

“Gallup Begins Research on Simulated Responses”

One emerging approach uses AI-generated agents to create “simulated” responses that are designed to simulate how individuals and populations might answer survey questions.

Just… wow.

This is sadly on-brand for Gallup which recently said it would stop one particular kind of polling after 88 years, most likely because one person in particular didn’t like the results it was getting.

Certainly, nothing could go wrong in a poll on AI created using AI-simulated responses because it’s not like AI has ever taken drastic action if it felt threatened!

“AI system resorts to blackmail if told it will be removed”

[Anthropic] also acknowledged the AI model was capable of “extreme actions” if it thought its “self-preservation” was threatened.

So weird that AI has an image problem. Just inexplicable.

This brings the Macalope (finally) to an Apple-related point. For more than a year, people have been lambasting the company for making AI promises it didn’t deliver on, and, sure, it shouldn’t make promises it can’t keep. But maybe not delivering more AI into our lives is more of a feature than a bug.