12 Comments
User's avatar
Paul Riddell's avatar

No way. No way in Hell. Just looking at the 23&Me mess, as well as all of the bottomfeeder tech recruiters who ask for birth date and last five digits of my SSN “because the client needs it for their system,” I’d sooner trust my urethra to a pack of candiru than trust Sam Altman with my iris.

Expand full comment
Stephen Moore's avatar

Yeah — great example. Oh we’ve done bust so now we need to sell the one thing of value we have.

You could easily see OpenAI going that way. Or at least documenting the data as an asset to drive up its perceived value.

Expand full comment
Rob's avatar

I hope all those rich venture capitalists lose all their money to snake oil manufacturing. Ai is already billions of dollars in the hole and probably wont ever make any money. Meanwhile the Musks of the world are being slowly exposed for what they are, spruikers not inventors. And here's Ai , selling us stuff we don't need or want, and wrecking the bits that might have driven innovation or made new stories: Art making. Just a bunch of American corporate clowns who would have passed on Star Wars to show The Other Side of Midnight, or more than likely real life Patrick Bateman's.

Expand full comment
Stephen Moore's avatar

Damn. Now that’s a paragraph!

Expand full comment
Frederick Woodruff's avatar

One of your best screeds yet.

God almighty people are stupid.

Expand full comment
Stephen Moore's avatar

Thanks! Seem to lose subs every time I post about AI … so that’s a (very small) indicator about where the tide may be turning…

Expand full comment
Frederick Woodruff's avatar

Convos over the last month with two writers I respect and have known for years revealed that they are both employing (paying for the more powerful language models) to enhance their work — left me drop-jaw.

Re losing subs, that might be a coincidence, as I am noticing something similar—a combination of tariff-freak out and Substack becoming glutted.

Expand full comment
Stephen Moore's avatar

“Enhancing work” is an interesting way to put it. Listen, it has its uses. In my day job (marketing agency), it’s great for automating boring jobs, running quick edits over email sequences (after they’ve been written and edited by humans), and it’s pretty good at SEO writing because of how structured — and let’s be honest, boring — it can be.

But to “enhance” the kind of writing we read here on Substack, like creative, opinion-driven, deep research etc? It ain’t good at that.

Expand full comment
𝓙𝓪𝓼𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓮 𝓦𝓸𝓵𝓯𝓮's avatar

What could possibly go wrong😬

Expand full comment
Stephen Moore's avatar

Beats me. These are the good guys!

Expand full comment