Let’s roast 2024, shall we? AI and Big Tech promised us the stars, but instead, it handed us a half-eaten sandwich, said, “Enjoy”, and asked as to pay for it as well. So, if you want to enjoy reading this episode, I’d advise you to get a stiff drink, or shoot yourself up with something strong, I don’t judge. You might want a Valium, and a Prozac by the end of it.
Oh yeah! Bring snacks.
Better for your stomach.
Internet has become the fast food of content
Remember when the internet was already a cesspool?
Well, 2024 gave us AI slop.
It’s the junk food of digital content. It is cheap, fast, and devoid of nutrition. You need a thousand words about “why Dachshunds are like CEOs”? Bam! AI’s got your back. You want an image of a crying child to juice engagement on your virtue-signaling post? No problemo. It will churn out a masterpiece of vomit in seconds.
But this sludge is everywhere now. It’s in your inbox, on your feed, and it’s clogging up your Amazon recommendations. And every time one of these garbage pieces gets shared, we all inch closer to the singularity of stupidity. And it’s because with these AI-tools, every mediocre office drone can now pretend to be an artist.
Worse still, this AI-generated detritus is poisoning the well. These models are trained on internet data, and are now regurgitating their own slop. It’s like feeding a cow with beef. It doesn’t end well. Amma gonna call it Mad AI Disease as of now (MAID). Quality spirals into the void, and we are left drowning in a sea of half-finished, soulless nonsense. But hey, at least it is engaging, cause you clicked on it! Crying babies and fake wars rake in ad revenue like a dream.
Read:
- 57% of the internet is AI generated and causes model collapse
- It’s the end of ’24 and we are suffocating under a mountain of AI slush
Digital deception painted by machines
In 2024, AI art crossed a line. It stopped being awkward and it started to actively screw with reality. Remember Willy’s Chocolate Experience, the rip-off-of-a-rip-off?
Oh, what a masterpiece of collective disappointment this was. It was Advertised as a magical exploration of a chocolate-drenched wonderland, but it turned out to be nothing more than a cash grab dressed in AI-generated finery. Their marketing promised us rivers of chocolate, lots of Oompa Loompas, golden tickets to enchantment, and a touch of nostalgia and it was all dressed up in candy-coated fantasy.
But, visitors were treated to a fluorescent-lit, and sad warehouse that had all the charm of a forgotten storage unit. It felt like the IKEA of chocolate adventures. It was flat, and depressing.
Their AI-generated promotional materials were just deception. It had fantastical images of candy-coated landscapes that were so vibrant they practically oozed serotonin.
But in reality….
Reality was a stale, and barren warehouse, filled with props that were so cheap they made second hand store decorations look extravagant.
Customers demanded refunds.
No, they howled for refunds!
It was a mass exercise in shattered dreams, powered by AI.
Bravo, Willy, you broke the internet’s heart.
And it is not stopping there. AI-generated images are becoming so convincing, that they are able to exploit public trust.
You have probably seem them already: Wounded children, tear-streaked soldiers, fake disasters. The more emotionally manipulative they are, the better for its makers. These images are a nuisance AND a ticking time bomb for public perception of AI.
Congratulations, AI. You have managed to ruin seeing.
Read:
- Facebook is paying people to make AI crap
- The coca-cola AI add is brilliant
- 23 inventions that flopped harder than a one-legged duck in a marathon
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Grok is a chaos generator
Let’s talk Grok.
If you haven’t heard of it before, good for you!
It’s basically a half-baked, sorry excuse for a knockoff of every serious AI bot on the market.
It is Elon Musk’s middle finger to “woke AI”.
Most AI tools try (and fail) to set guardrails. Grok doesn’t even pretend to care. If you want Donald Trump launching a missile? Mickey Mouse planting a bomb? Grok will do it for you. Porn is the only border it doesn’t dare to cross, but if Trumpian voters would stop caring, it would do so without giving it a second thought. Grok is the AI equivalent of a drunk frat boy. It is reckless, destructive, and somehow still the popular figure within a certain crowd. Sure, it refuses to make nudes, but everything else is fair game.
What’s the cost of this rebellious freedom, you ask?
It is simple: it undermines the efforts of other AI companies to create tools that aren’t literal chaos engines. Grok is spitting on the unwritten rules – the etiquette. It is vomiting on them, lighting them on fire, and they are calling it innovation.
But hey, if you are into carnage, it is a dream come true.
Read:
- Elon Musk gets roasted by his own weak-ass X (and more stuff)
- We should all start spelling AI as Ai because LLM’s are full of shit (according to Tim)
Taylor Swift and deepfake hell
In January 2024 the tone was set for AI’s moral failing when nonconsensual deepfake nudes of Taylor Swift flooded social media. The AI tool of Microsoft (Designer) got lured into creating the images through prompt injection and a bit of obfuscation. It proved that even systems with guardrails can be gamed. Microsoft tried patching the loophole, but not before the damage went viral. And platforms like X and Facebook (of course) shrugged their hanging shoulders, and let the images linger on.
The real horror of this all is that we are still utterly powerless against deepfake porn.
Sure, you know, there are watermarking tools and fancy-sounding data-poisoning solutions, but the adoption is so slow, that it feels like trying to stop a tidal wave with a bag of sand. And Taylor Swift’s incident grabbed the headlines, but countless other victims, like students and children, remain invisible, their lives quietly wrecked by the same tech.
Read:
Chatbots. Masters of disaster
Businesses could not adopt chatbots fast enough in 2024. Big mistake. Air Canada’s bot invented a refund policy that did not exist. It “landed” the airline in legal hot water. And the bot that DPD had built, was cussing at customers, which is almost funny, if it weren’t so pathetic. And then there’s New York City’s chatbot, which was designed to help citizens. And that it did ! It dispensed tips on how to break the law.
You had one job, chatbot.
One.
Job.
These tools are supposed to make life easier, not create chaos. But hey, as long as businesses can slap “AI-powered” on their service, or marketing, who cares if it actually works.
Well, I care.
And you care as well, my intelligent friend.
And we’re tired as f*.
Read:
- A guide to tricking and defending chatbots ⚠️ contains code ⚠️
- We don’t want to talk to your chatbot
- Uncensored chatbots 🤬
- It has been 2 years since ChatGPT launched. What has it done to us?
- A tragic bond with a chatbot: The story of Sewell Setzer III
AI Hardware. Useless toys for rich boys
2024 also gave us three monumental hardware flops:
The Rabbit R1.
Humane Ai Pin.
And Apple Vision Pro.
And all of them promised groundbreaking innovation.
But each delivered abject disappointment.
Let’s start with the AI Pin. This was a wearable assistant, but it overheated when used often, and it barely worked, and even felt like a Tamagotchi who was designed by someone who just hates fun.
Then there is the Rabbit R1. It looked cool but was essentially a glorified brick. Fun thing though is that this one has learnt a lesson. And they are back with a real product this time, still called the Rabbit R1. And it even made me buy one.
And last, and certainly least, there is Apple’s Vision Pro. The only one that I have niet tried. And the reason is simple. It’s a$3,499 headset that solved the “problem” of wanting to avoid human interaction in isolation. Sounds perfect for me, being an introvert, but for just a tenth of the price, I have bought the Quest 3, and it has a brilliant ecosystem. Meanwhile rumors are going round that Apple might stop the production of the Apple Vision Pro alltogetger:
All these gadgets had a spectacular launch, but all of them failed to deliver anything which was even remotely meaningful. The AI Pin and the Rabbit R1 were riddled with bugs and security flaws, and the Vision Pro was just too expensive for anyone who isn’t a tech bro or a billionaire. Updates keep rolling out, but face it, they are putting Band-Aids on bullet wounds.
Read:
- AI enters the world of wearable tech
- #AIFail – another device bites the dust
- Rabbit R1: a lesson in MVP marketing (and why I ended up buying one today)
- I worked in VR for a week using the Meta Quest 3 and Immersed: Here’s what happened
- Hackers took over robovacs to chase pets and yell slurs
- I’ve worn the Compass AI Necklace for a month: My experience in forgetting to charge It
Misinformation goes mainstream
Have you ever tried gluing a pizza together?
Or eaten a small rock?
Well now, Google’s AI Overviews thought you might like to try.
In May, this feature hit the scene, and it was blending Reddit jokes with serious queries with which it created a carnival of misinformation. And it was a lot of fun reading it, until you realize this is the same tech feeding your news apps and Alexa devices.
Trust?
Goner.
And when the stakes are higher, the errors get even darker. AI-generated headlines falsely claimed that Benjamin Netanyahu was arrested and that a murder suspect shot himself. The consequences of this level of incompetence is that we live in a world where news is indistinguishable from bad fanfiction.
Read:
- Objection! Your honor, ChatGPT made me do it | LinkedIn
- AI is a compulsive liar | LinkedIn
- Take back control from the algorithm! | LinkedIn
- I’ve seen the dark side of AI, and you need to know about it
Self-driving chaos
Tesla’s Autopilot system is hailed as the supposed future of driving. Elon Musque (fancier) said it was safer than a human driver. In 2024 it was involved in at least 13 accidents. Autonomous vehicles are supposed to reduce accidents, not rack them up like they’re going for a high score. I know Elon likes to be known as a gamer, but he is taking this a little too far.
Yet here we are.
Elon’s car army isn’t driving us into the future. It’s just driving us into walls. Literally.
On new year’s day 2025, the year kicked off with an enormous bang!
Yeah, literally.
A Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, and the blast killed the 37-year-old driver Matthew Livelsberger, and seven others were injured. It turned out that the man was hauling hazardous materials in the vehicle. Though, they aren’t directly responsible for the explosion, Tesla mentioned when it was released that is was designed to survive everything but a meteor strike. The irony.
The first day of 2025 made one thing crystal clear to me. Humanity has developed a fine taste for weaponizing technology. Cheers to the future, right?
And you all have probably seen videos of people snoring behind the wheel, or even as drunk as a pirate on shore leave. These people blindly trust these systems. Well, technically they aren’t “autopilots”. They are simply somewhat more advanced cruise controls. Take your hands off the wheel at your own risk.
Or don’t. Your choice.
But don’t come crying at Elon’s door.
Read:
- Robotaxis in SF are feeling kinda ‘h*rny’
- Musk wants to make games great again
- Flamethrower dogs, kamikaze cars, and bomb-planting humanoids.
AI journalism
2024 was the year when AI infiltrated journalism, and it was a disaster. Even renowned media outlets were churning out AI-written articles that were riddled with errors and lies, and it undermined my trust in the news. The irony of this all is that these same outlets celebrated AI as the next big thing.
Talk about shooting yourself in the bot.
And legal battles erupted over copyright laws. From the big AI players like the big seven, to lesser gods like Figma, they all stole the works of us creative humans, to turn them into tools so that mediocre people can churn out more crap than ever.
AI-generated political ads and deepfakes have polluted the information landscape even more. It is eroding the integrity of our democracy, which is now hanging by a thread. And we still persist in deploying AI for sensitive tasks, like for taxation. People remain seemingly oblivious to the potential consequences, that even lead to deaths in a few major cases of AI f*k ups
Read:
- Copyright infringements by all major AI players
- LinkedIn siphons user information to Train AI, skips disclosure
- Figma says: “hold my beer”, and sneaks off to steal your designs to train its AI
- A European train wreck with AI in the driver’s seat
Tech layoffs signal the AI apocalypse
Just a few years ago, everyone and their mothers were pushed into choosing computer science as their major. Working in tech was once the pinnacle of innovation and job security. But it has turned its brightest minds into collateral damage in the AI-driven gold rush.
Amazon cut tens of thousands of jobs because its AI-powered systems did not need anymore human workers, particularly in customer service and logistics, but also in engineering. The company’s message is clear as day: efficiency over humanity.
And take Klarna, the greedy scrooge of fintech, it sliced its workforce by 50%. The rationale was to streamline operations by applying machine learning and automation. And it left half its employees out in the cold, when AI algorithms handled transactions.
Well, not for me no more, my greedy corporate friends.
Revolution is nigh!
This is not a hiccup in the economy. It has become as parasitic invasion. It infiltrates its host and starts to live off it, until it can take over and kills its host.
And you thought “The last of us” was scary.
This is truly a techtonic shift that doomsayers have been warning us about. Tech giants like Meta are trimming their payrolls, even without them requiring it for financial reasons. It’s just to put more money in the pockets of investors and tech bros. But also smaller firms are now using AI stacks to “restructure”.
To me, the trend is clear.
Human workers are being replaced by lines of code. The promise of AI “enhancing productivity”, and “augmenting humans, so they can focus on adding strategic value” are being turned into the scary reality of mass unemployment. Entire teams, like Google’s entire Python team, are now obsolete. They are sacrificed to the altar of profit margins.
The industry’s message is loud and unrelenting. They say “adapt to the machine, or get left behind”.
Read:
- The great tech wake-up call: Developers, meet the dystopia you helped build
- Humanoid robots are a $24 trillion opportunity …. or a dystopian future
The environmental cost of progress
AI is guzzling resources like a fat boy at an open buffet. It is leaving behind a trail of environmental destruction that would make fossil fuels blush. Training large AI models like GPT-4 requires an obscene amount of energy.
It is equivalent to the annual electricity usage of small countries!
Data centers are the industrial innards of AI, but they are just power plants who are disguised as technological progress. It is sucking up electricity and it is farting out heat. And what about the the cooling systems. They are vast, water-hungry beasts that drain millions of liters per annum, just to keep the servers from melting like the wicked witch of the west (or was it the east?). The irony of this all is that these systems are called the “future of efficiency” , and under water they quietly accelerate our planet’s decline. And to counter the threat to our planet, Big Tech is reactivating….nuclear powerplants.
Fukushima II, powered by Oracle, and Microsoft, Amazon.
Back to the water…Oh, AI loves its water.
It’s required to keep them data centers functional, but at what cost?
It is said that one email requires the equivalent of one bottle of water to keep it cool.
Communities near these facilities have already reported drying wells and water supplies that have run out because Big Tech siphon off millions of gallons to feed their silicon beasts.
And all for what?
A chatbot that can write you a haiku?
A model that can paint you a freaking cat?
A deepfake generator to ruin someone’s life?
And as AI guzzles and gulps, like gluttonous Gus, the planet gets hotter, and water becomes scarcer.
AI might be revolutionary, but let’s not forget: revolutions often leave ruins.
Read:
- Big tech is torching our planet for AI-products no one asked for
- The extreme cost of training AI models
- Oracle has commissioned three small nuclear reactors to power its new AI data center
So, what will be next, my dear smart friend?
Will it be more of the same?
More hype?
Certainly more flops
And more chaos.
Welcome to the future!
But it’s not bright.
And it certainly doesn’t have a flux capacitor, else we could have changed the past.
Instead we get a flickering neon sign that says, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”
Enjoy the future, for it is already here.
Signing off from the frontlines of humanity’s slow surrender to the machines. No shots fired.
Marco
Well, that’s a wrap for today. Tomorrow, I’ll have a fresh episode of TechTonic Shifts for you. If you enjoy my writing and want to support my work, feel free to buy me a coffee ♨️
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To keep you doomscrolling 👇
- Brace, brace brace! AI takes the stick at Heathrow’s air traffic control center | LinkedIn
- AI is a compulsive liar | LinkedIn
- In 2025, AI needs to put up or just shut up! | LinkedIn
- A 17 yo brat created a $1M/month app. Here’s how he did it. | LinkedIn
- This is a eulogy for chegg. Gone but not forgotten (unless you’re a student, then definitely otten) | LinkedIn
- Musk wants to make games great again | LinkedIn
- The great tech wake-up call: Developers, meet the dystopia you helped build | LinkedIn
- Flamethrower dogs, kamikaze cars, and bomb-planting humanoids. | LinkedIn
- Objection! Your honor, ChatGPT made me do it | LinkedIn
- A cautionary tale about an AI unicorn that turns into a fraudulent little pwny | LinkedIn
- Meet Daisy, the AI Granny who’s here to waste scammers’ lives | LinkedIn
- AI Search Engine Optimization | LinkedIn
- I’ve seen the dark side of AI, and you need to know about it | LinkedIn
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