We have this running theme that AI is going to help us fix the world. That AI is going to solve problems like climate change or bring the cure to cancer and things like that.

And we keep forgetting that ChatGPT or other similar chatbots or LLMs don't actually do anything on their own. They only do what we ask them to do.

So when we say that AI is going to solve climate change, we seem to be falling into a similar trap as before when we left things to God, where we said things like:

God will solve this problem for us. God will take care of it. God will come to our rescue.

Or at the very least, the kind of naive utopianism that was on display when we said social media will unite the world without considering the fact that the profit motive underpinning those platforms was only ever designed to make corporations richer.

In a large part of the pro-AI narrative, people seem to be unthinkingly embracing the view that AI will solve these problems without us asking it to do so. Or the implication is that those in charge of making AI do things will make the right decisions because experience has shown us they are great at making great decisions.

The truth however, is that they don't have a great track record and instead seem to be grifters and swindlers who operate in the airless zone far above the world we all live in.

In case anyone missed the memo, the problem is not that we don't have the solutions to these problems. The problem is will.

We know right now what to do to avert a climate disaster. We're not doing it. We are choosing to prefer the comforts of a consumerist society over what is necessary.

So I have to assume that when people say that AI is going to solve a problem, what they really mean is that AI is going to find a way for us to continue to live as comfortably as we do without losing out on profits and also undo the damage created by global warming.

I think it would be funny if it was not tragic — this complete surrender to an outside agent which is not even an outside agent by the way.

It is just a mysterious thing we have created and are now projecting our wish-fulfilment fantasies on to.