There’s a popular adage in policy circles: “The party can never fail, it can only be failed.” It is meant as a critique of the ideological gatekeepers who may, for example, blame voters for their party’s failings rather than the party itself.
That same fallacy is taking root among AI’s biggest backers. AI can never fail, it can only be failed. Failed by you and me, the smooth-brained Luddites who just don’t get it. (To be sure, even AI proponents will acknowledge available models’ shortcomings — no one would argue that the AI slop clogging Facebook is anything but, well, slop — but there is a dominant narrative within tech that AI is both inevitable and revolutionary.)
Tech columnists such as the New York Times’ Kevin Roose have suggested recently that Apple has failed AI, rather than the other way around.
it goes deeper than just “investors are greedy” though. Most people making these investment decisions are doing it at the behest of other people who have handed them their saving in exchange for returns. Those people aren’t privy to the nature of how money is getting invested and why, they hire someone else for that, the investors.
The investors may be making short sighted, stupid decisions, but they’re doing it because they’re pursuing their own personal incentives, get a raise, a promotion, or just not get fired. The managers are doing the same. If they don’t do it, someone else will.
It’s not the fault or moral failing of any one individual, but a fault in the system of incentives. A failure in the fundamental structure of how we decide how investments are made, in how we accumulate capital for investment.