How a Chinese AI Disrupted America’s Tech Titans Overnight| Vantage with Palki Sharma

One version of the story we are all supposed to care about right now.

Another, nominally better:

Chinese DeepSeek AI System Just CRUSHED American AI Market & It’s FREE!

I went out looking, trying to find out what good this or any (worse, american) AI is supposed to do for me.

I found things like: well, it can build you a bunch of meta and hash tags that will ramp up your SEO.

Yeah.

I don’t care.

In the past, I’ve used image AI to build thumbnails for my videos. It was fine. I stopped.

Nowadays, deepl.com works better for quick translations than the traditional google product.

But beyond that, and so far, I don’t get it at all.

And of course, there is a downside.

The Next 3 Years of AI: Why Even Experts Are Terrified

I refuse to be terrified. About that.

Skynet’s gonna Skynet, I guess. The terrors we have now, in Gaza and Flint and the place where I walk past the dead couches, these are plenty of terror to fill my plate bounteously.

I don’t feel a compulsion toward having any form of AI in my life, for the same reasons I don’t want anything to do with social media of any stripe, even the fancy new chinese rednote.

I lived the first 35+ years of my life one hundred percent non-digitally. I read a lot, I wrote a lot. I listened to the NPR and I made my own NPR.

Then for 25+ more years, I played with the new tools and toys, and curated out a few that work, sorta. This self-hosted WordPress platform. Patreon and Shopify and the almost-necessary evil that is googletube. I have two phones, and they are both allegedly smart, and it was stupid of me to go in that direction for the sake of text messaging.

I dream of having only a landline. But my dream doesn’t end there.

There is a cabin on the edge of the world. It is disconnected.

Not just from the Digital either.

There is no thermostat, and if I am cold I burn wood, and make a pot of something on the same stove.

If I need to shit I squat over a pit.

If I am thirsty … well, fuck. You and I ruined all the creeks, with our civilized modern Lifestyles.

Maybe a well, or a spring, or a trailer with a Navajo tank on it for hauling in the stuff of life.

Details, to hell with them right now. I’m trying to tell-a-Vision.

On some level it’s scary to think about being that unhooked.

But mostly, that’s a junkie’s fear.