You’re Doing it Wrong Part 6: Hype, AI or Otherwise

Hype is what crashes the economy every decade or so, why do people keep buying in?

Introduction

We are taking a step back from healthcare and health insurance to bring you a new series: You’re Doing it Wrong.  In this 15-part series we will discuss all the things that the bizdiots do that are counterproductive and raise the cost of their own products and services and consequently the cost to you, dear reader, the consumer.  This sixth installment is an indictment of the entire bizdiot mentality: buying into things they don’t understand in order to “get rich quick.” We all know that there is no quick way to get rich, excepting getting someone with money to give you some based on a wild, unproven tale, hype, that you have told them.

We are taking a break from healthcare because there is no new real news.  The AI hype is just getting worse and will never pan out; the EMR vendors haven't realized that you can't document encounters with text or language; insurance companies rip off everyone, so we are stepping back and looking at the bigger picture.  If you need your weekly dose of healthcare, read our article Direct Universal Care (DUC) is the Answer to the Healthcare Finance Crisis

The Situation

After World War II it seemed that the future was now and that anything was possible.  We built the first computers and the internet and put men on the moon.  In 2026 we see that same exuberance, the same feeling that anything is possible and that we are on the cusp of amazing technological breakthroughs.  The difference is that in the 1950s and 1960s we had lots of new technology to play with and to put together in new and interesting ways.  Today, we have that same feeling with, finally, an electric car, Blockchain, AI and any number of new gadgets to make us more productive and wealthier.  

Except we don’t.  Everyone that wanted an electric car has bought one and traded it back for a hybrid, so they don’t have to wait while it charges.  Self-driving cars never materialized because nobody knows how the human brain works well enough to emulate it and make a self-driving car.  Blockchain is a solution looking for a problem and has been around since the early eighties in the form of Domain Name Servers (DNS) and eventually consistent and that, the only real problem for Blockchain to solve was already solved.  …By a very blockchain looking thing.  To get out of chronological order, the Dot Com bust was about bizdiots hyping things they didn't understand and causing the economy to crash in the late 90s and early 2000s.  Heck, Tulip Mania, in 1637 was caused by speculation in the Dutch tulip market driving prices up and crashing that economy: FOMO and Hype

Flash forward 400 years and you have the AI bubble.  The bizdiots are loaning each other money to hype a new product they don’t understand and that will never pan out or be good for much of anything, outside of making YouTube videos.  

The Logical Conclusion
Once again, we are in a hype cycle and without simply asking the bizdiots to leave the planet, there is no way out that doesn’t crush the world economy and kill millions.  Here is the typical modern cycle known as Pump and Dump:

1. Find a technology that is promising enough to cause a stir or buzz
2. Acquire large swaths of new companies that provide these new technologies
3. Create a false narrative about how this new technology will revolutionize the way business is done, or make life better/easier
4. Hype - The Pump: Advertise and issue press releases about how this new product will be the be all end all
5. IPO - The Dump: Ride the crest of the hype wave into the stock market where the large swathes of acquired companies can be sold off at a huge profit.
6. Leave downstream investors with a worthless company that produced and produces nothing outside of the hype and watch it collapse, taking the world economy with it.

Notice that nowhere in the six previous steps was a product mentioned or produced.  The Private Equity and Venture Capitalists all got their money back and then some in The Dump, leaving you, dear reader, holding the (empty) bag.

This isn’t just AI, this is any new technology in the modern era.  This is how the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and people with real solutions to real problems get buried not only in the noise of the marketing but in the rubble of the following collapse.

The Short Answer

There are two parts to this solution, and I fear that for the vast majority of us, neither are a real solution:

• Refuse to Participate
• Tax the Finance Bros. at 100% over $100,000

Let’s explore those.

The Slightly Longer Answer

Refuse to Participate

During the Great Recession of 2008, I simply refused to participate.  The Finance Bros. were dabbling in derivatives, something they wholly didn’t understand, and quite literally crashed the economy.  I personally just hunkered down and paid my bills and went on with life as usual until things got back on more of an even keel.  

Many, even most, don't have that luxury.

What happens when, as the economy slows down and you lose your job?  You can’t really make the mortgage and refuse to participate then, can you?  

Also, under “Refuse to Participate" we can lump in the other tech bubbles.   Dot Com, Blockchain, Big Data, No SQL, AI.  If you don’t know how it works or what the use is, then just ignore it. I predict that AI will go the way of Big Data and NoSQL.  They have their limited uses, but they could never live up to the promises they made.  Likewise, AI will probably have a limited use in writing boilerplate, or generating creepy images, but it can’t and never will be able to code, make informed decisions or automate processes.  In order to do those things, you have to have the judgement to say “this way” is better than “that way.” AI doesn’t have judgement, it simply picks the next most statistically likely ‘token’ or word part.  The most statistically significant word part is not good enough for technology or programming, or medicine or law or engineering or anything save maybe TikTok videos.  

Maybe that is good enough for the Zoomers.  

Tax the Finance Bros, at 100% over $100,000

If you don’t have a product or service that you provide and can point to and say “this is where my money came from” outside of playing the stock market or speculating on technology you may or may not understand, you don’t get more than $100,000.  Bankers, $100k, VCs and PEs, $100k.  All Finance Bros. 100K.  

This does a few things.  First, it stops the brain drain.  All the smart college graduates will stop going into finance and start actually using their natural or hard-won talents to build and provide products and services that we all want and need.  This will advance the technology we all depend on to be safe, happy and comfortable.  Conversely, the Finance Bro just takes what he wants and stuffs it in his pocket, with no compensating value delivered to anyone.  It is a one-way transaction that does not provide a value for the price that is paid.

Mea culpa, but I have no idea if this is rational, fair or even viable at all.  I am absolutely positive that the Finance Bros and their lobbyists will fight that with tooth and nail.  I am almost equally as sure that any governmental plan like that would only fly with the social democrats of the country.

I simply haven’t thought through the implications of no Finance Bros.  Maybe financing would become incredibly difficult to find.  Maybe the IPO is a real way to raise cash instead of lining the Finance Bros.’ pockets.  

Conclusions

I don’t feel good about this one. Maybe simply knowing the problem is a solution in itself.  Maybe the people that run these big (and not so big) companies will read this and completely eschew the coming winter and fare just fine in staying away from AI and its successors, altogether.  Maybe just recognizing the bubble is enough.  

I sincerely doubt it.

After all, these are the same bizdiots who purchase SAP/Epicor/NetSuite and Workable/Taleo/Greenhouse and Salesforce and ServiceNow for millions and then have to hire architects and developers to finish them and then have to buy infrastructure hardware and hire people to manage it and then have to hire people to integrate it all and then, and this is personal experience, spend $200,000,000.00 to Price Waterhouse Coopers to write a paper detailing how to secure it all.  Notice: I said write a paper, not actually do the work.

So these people aren’t that bright.

Otherwise, write your liberal congressperson or senator and demand they implement 100% over $100k today.

Yep.  That’s the best I got.

Remember, this is part six of a fifteen-part series about how businesses are being run incorrectly by unthinking, lemming bizdiots.  We are demonstrating not only the problems of modern business, but real, (at least usually) viable solutions.

 I will be putting out one or maybe two articles per week.  If you liked what you read or want to relate your personal experiences, contact us here, on our site, SentiaHealth.com, our parent company SentiaSystems.com, or send us an email to info@sentiasystems.com or info@sentiahealth.com.  By here I mean comment and tell me that I am a cotton headed ninny muggins.