Post #1337385

2026-04-18 00:34 UTC

RE: https://social.coop/@cwebber/116421159289416290 Y&#39;know... I&#39;ve been ruminating for a while that &quot;AI&quot; was always a scam. Previous scams were aimed at bilking the middle class. But the middle class has been almost completely hollowed out. So now they&#39;re defrauding the investor class. The first attempt was with cryptocurrency and NFTs, but it was too quickly obvious they were bore no tangible connection to reality. &quot;AI&quot; has fooled far more people -- certainly well enough that it appears nearly $1.0E+12 has been siphoned from the market.

Replies (4)

@talin@mastodon.social 2026-04-18 00:52

@ewhac LLMs have a lot in common with Lysenkoism: * Lots of true believers * Promises of vast economic benefits, so long as everyone gets on the bandwagon * Powerful institutions shoving the concept down the throats of the common people * Skeptics are demonized

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@superflippy@mastodon.xyz 2026-04-18 12:41

@ewhac I’ve thought for some time that a person can make themselves rich by figuring out a good way to effectively scam the very wealthy. Mostly I’ve thought about wellness influencers, but poorly understood tech works too.

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@yon@sakurajima.moe 2026-04-18 14:59

@ewhac Started with the for com bubble. Which I say hasn’t burst, it just keeps morphing.

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@castarco@hachyderm.io 2026-04-18 21:08

@ewhac The problem is that it's not just a scam. There is some real ground truth behind this grift... and it's not about profitability, but about power. For the ultra-rich, it doesn't matter how much money they burn, they have too much of it... and even if that wasn't the case, they are already planning for a future in which that money has lost big part of its associated value, so they better get rid of it now in exchange for something that can be held against virtually all of humanity, to attain, maintain, and exert power.

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