Sat, November 7, 2026 at 10:29 AM UTC
Add my voice to those who say STOP with all this AI stuff!
Nearly 40 years of technical computer experience has led me to have some well-informed opinions regarding AI, or what I will call artificial (human) imitation, and certainly not superintelligence, as is posited by some.
Simply put, the current LLM-based AI agents are just prediction software trained on the best and worst, mostly stolen, textual data that exists. They were trained on everything from the best creative human writing and storytelling and the best scientific information to the worst of the cesspool of misinformation, hatred, cruelty, ignorance, intolerance and fears that exist on the internet.
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Ask yourselves why we are now collectively spending all this time and resources protecting ourselves against this self-created software threat of mass arrests, mass deportations, development of autonomous weapons of war, threats of bioterrorism, threats of massive job loss and rogue unsupervised AI agents attacking our critical computer networks.
Beating of China? Forget China. We have bigger fish to fry here at home.
AI benefits? What benefits?
Affordability, climate change, education and cybersecurity, all made worse. Medical advances and cancer cures, nope. Homelessness, housing and employment improvements, nope.
The half-dozen billionaires who control this technology do not exhibit anything that would be recognizable to most of us as morality and have a business model that smells of a giant grift.
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Frontier AI companies that invest trillions in data centers and have circular accounting trick revenues in the billions do not have an actual recognizable business model. Currently, one-third of the stock market is based on this grift, and when this inevitable bubble bursts, as it has before, it could make the 2008 economic crash look minor in comparison.
These same alien-acting people believe in eugenics, don’t believe in democracy and believe that they, the richest, most powerful and self-proclaimed most intelligent beings should rule this country as a corporate entity.
If you listen to what these people say and write, you wouldn’t leave your children alone with them. They believe that these AIs are now evolving to become a species unto itself. A species to which they can soon digitally upload their brains, shed their meat bodies and live forever, like digital gods.
Does this scare you at all?
As to the latest “tech bros” moral pinky promise, ask yourself how self-regulation worked out with the multiple crashing Boeing airplanes. Loyalty to political power reflects an abdication of judgment.
As a society, we don’t depend on self-regulation; we have written regulations, adjudicated laws and legal consequences. We cannot allow a repeat of the monetization of gullibility and societal and political damage that social media brought us. Software is ultimately controllable; these people are not, right now.
Ask yourselves how the current unchecked and unbalanced political activity is working out for our now wounded democracy so far.
Michael F. Pitsch is a Francis Creek resident.
This article originally appeared on Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter:Guest view calls for AI laws, not tech industry self-regulation
