>The end goal of AI is to create quasi-gods. I think this is what is driving the hype, the mania, and what increasingly appears to be insanely high investment.

>The end goal of AI is to create quasi-gods. I think this is what is driving the hype, the mania, and what increasingly appears to be insanely high investment. It's not about the underlying technology, which is objectively impressive, even if we're not certain of the true cost or utility of it. It's about selling the dream of Olympian omnipotence to investors, implicitly promising that IPO stands for Install Planetary Overlord.[1] And who doesn't want to be on the right side of that? (That there is no 'right side' in such circumstances does not seen to occur to anyone involved in the decisionmaking.) 1. Not my coinage, but that of SF author Charlie Stross in The Jennifer Morgue