of the sound-and-fury,-means-nothing dept
So on Monday you probably saw Apple announce that it would more closely integrate “AI” into its mobile operating system, both through a suite of AI-powered tools called Apple Intelligence, and tighter AI integration with its Siri voice assistant. It’s not that big of a deal and (hopefully) reflects Apple’s more cautious approach to AI after Google told millions of customers to eat rocks and glue.
Apple was quick to point out that the processing for these features would happen on the device to (hopefully) protect privacy. If Apple’s own systems can’t handle user queries, some of them could be transferred to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, in an attempt to put some distance between Apple and potential error-prone fabulism:
“Apple has signed a deal with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, to support some of its AI capabilities. Requests that the system cannot process are forwarded to ChatGPT. For example, a user might say he has salmon, lemon, and tomatoes and wants help planning dinner with those ingredients. Users should choose to send these requests to ChatGPT so they know the chatbot – not Apple – is responsible if the responses are unsatisfactory.”
Enter Elon Musk, who threw an irritable hissy fit after realizing Apple had decided to partner with OpenAI instead of its half-hearted and more racist Grok pseudo-intelligence system. He turned to ExTwitter to (falsely) claim that Apple OS with ChatGPT integration was such a big threat to privacy, that iPhones would soon be banned from his businesses and that visitors would leave their iPhones in a copper-lined cage of Faraday should leave:
Of course, this is a bunch of pointless gibberish that isn’t actually based on anything technical. Musk just made up some safety issues to smear a competitor. The ban on iPhones will probably never happen. And for Luddites, his reference to a Faraday cage is certain sounds smart.
The point is: almost every app on your phone and every device in your home tracks your every move, choice, and behavior in minute detail, then sells that information to an international cabal of largely unregulated and deeply unreliable data brokers. Brokers who then turn around and sell that information to any loser with two nickels to rub together, including foreign intelligence services.
It’s a bit like the TikTok hysteria: the idea that Apple’s new partnership with OpenAI poses a unique security and privacy threat that goes beyond our existing total lack of any meaningful privacy then in a country too corrupt to pass an internet privacy law is pure performance.
Keep in mind that Musk’s companies have a pretty good track record when it comes to being extremely fast and loose with consumer privacy. Automakers are generally among the worst companies in technology when it comes to privacy and security, and according to Mozilla, Tesla is the worst of the worst. So the idea that Musk was concerned with privacy in good faith is simply incorrect.
Yet it didn’t take long for the click-chasing press to turn Musk’s meaningless comments into an entire news cycle. Resources that could have been spent on some meaningful stories were instead focused on platforming a throwaway comment from a fabulist that meant literally nothing:
I’m particularly impressed by Forbes’ headline, which puts forward two untruths in one headline: that the non-existent ban hurt Apple stock (it didn’t), while implying that the ban had already happened.
Unfortunately, I’m adding to the noise of the news cycle to make another point: This now happens with every Musk brain fart, regardless of whether the comment has any meaning or importance. And it must stop if we want to preserve what is left of our collective sanity.
Journalists are quick to emphasize that it is their noble responsibility to cover the comments of important people. But journalism is about informing and educating the public, which is not achieved by refocusing limited journalistic resources on platform nonsense that means nothing and will achieve nothing meaningful. All you’ve done is make a little money by wasting people’s time.
American newsrooms have been so widely conditioned to chase superficial SEO clickbait ad engagement waves that they’ve fooled themselves into thinking these kinds of hollow news cycles serve any actual function. But it might be useful for the industry to do some deep introspection into the damaging symbiosis it has forged with terrible people and nonsense (see: one of a million recent profiles of white supremacists).
There are a million amazing scientific developments or acts of fatal corporate malfeasance that are exposed or underexposed every day in this country because we have hollowed out journalism and replaced it with lazy engagement infotainment.
And despite Musk’s alleged disdain for the press, his circus sideshow has always relied heavily on this media dysfunction. As his overstuffed house of cards begins to unravel, he must increasingly rely on gibberish and controversy to distract, and American journalism remains willing to lend a hand.
First, it spent fifteen years stoking Musk’s super-genius tech mythology, despite mounting evidence that Musk was more of a shrewd, credit-dodging opportunist than any revolutionary thinker. After 20 years of these, the press still regards every regurgitation of the man as worthy of in-depth analysis, under the pretext that they are engaged in some kind of impetuous public service.
It often serves the public interest not covering the fever dreams of obnoxious opportunists, yet every part of the media ecosystem is financially incentivized to do the exact opposite. And instead of any introspection into the symbiosis the media has formed with absolute nonsense, we are using poorly designed automation to supercharge all of the industry’s worst impulses on an unprecedented new scale.
Filed Under: ai, artificial intelligence, chatgpt, clickbait, elon musk, hype, language-oriented models, seo, siri
Companies: apple, openai, tesla, twitter, x