From Ezra Klein in the New York Times:
I seem to be having a very different experience with GPT-5, the newest iteration of OpenAI’s flagship model… GPT-5 is the first A.I. system that feels like an actual assistant… This is the first A.I. model where I felt I could touch a world in which we have the always-on, always-helpful A.I. companion from the movie “Her.”
Western governments have tried for years to introduce digital information-control concepts, from our own Department of Homeland Security’s “Resilience Framework” to Europe’s dizzying cloud of bureaucracies that now target “information pollution” where they once worried over threats to freedom of expression. These programs have often been met with resistance from poorer demographics, likely because they’re administered almost exclusively by upscale technocrats. In a next move so predictable that one cringes to think of it, a new sales pitch has been cooked up for your mechanized gatekeeping tool: It’s your friend!
Klein, who co-wrote a smash-hit bestseller about repackaging neoliberal politics in Abundance, goes further. He recognizes that A.I. is replacing search engines, which is “good for A.I. companies, but not a significant change to how civilization functions.” But search, he goes on, is just A.I.’s “gateway drug,” which can then lead you to “more complex queries and advice.” The wondrous possibilities:
A.I. is flexible in the roles it can play for you: It can be an adviser, a therapist, a friend, a coach, a doctor, a personal trainer, a lover, a tutor.
Unless you’re desperate, insane, or a New York Times columnist, an A.I. absolutely cannot be any of those things. (Particularly not a lover. Eew, that last word shrieks off the page like a sick bat!) Unfortunately, we’re not far off from A.I. coming with skin, hair, and orifices, and Ezra writing, “My Surprising Bedroom Experience With ChatGPT.” This is the new con: “True, you’ve begun to reject tools like Google because their biases have become painfully visible, but what if you could fuck your search engine? Would that change your mind?”
All those Philip K. Dick novels and Pink Floyd albums that warned me as a kid against human-machine incest are paying off, as urban Northeastern intellectuals (my people, the disillusioned writer sighs) have hopped on another crazy hobby horse. After creepy authoritarian crusades against free speech, informed consent, even meat via the search for “sustainable protein,” the new come on in, the water’s warm clarion call tells people to stop worrying and love their machines, in some cases literally:
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Author: Matt Taibbi
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