Slop rules everything around me: A taxonomy of the slopageddon
Let’s all agree: generative AI is an interesting technology. It may have some important practical applications. It might, under some specific conditions, be good. Let’s also consider the reverse: generative AI and LLMs are Silicon Valley capitalism’s latest attempt to blanket the world in another layer of suffocating digital domination. You thought enshittification was bad? Sick of seeing subscription fees for everything, being ratcheted up inexorably, whilst everything gets precipitously worse? Don’t worry, they’ve found a way to “accelerate” this: AI.
In light of this cheerful development, it’s worth considering how we can fight back. Partly, we already have some powerful analytical tools at our disposal. Yanis Varoufakis has a convincing thesis on the cloud monopolists, and what it says about late capitalism, or its emergent neo-feudal characteristics. Cory Doctorow’s work also helps us understand the strategy of technology firms, trapping us in the “walled garden” of digital plenty, only to pull up the dragnet and start bombarding us with shit.
To succeed in its aims, one of the things that AI capital requires for its strategy is (unpaid) boosters. We’re all familiar with them: the glassy eyed “AI adoption agents” of our workplaces. The media grifters, or outright zealots who believe it will be the second coming of Christ and Ragnarok, rolled into one. Or just those that have fallen victim to the overwhelming and ubiquitous AI marketing and propaganda engine, which considers any critical thinking to be heretical and foolhardy. So far, we’ve had no way of categorising the boosters. Until now. In the below, I’m going to propose a set of archetypes for AI proselytisers. A taxonomy of AI zealotry. If we can define and understand these characters here, perhaps we’ll have some tools to console ourselves at the very least, and at best stand a better chance of confronting them. But first, what led me to this?
Over the last year or so, as I’m sure we all have, I’ve enountered some “views” on AI which depart significantly from my own, and have really got me thinking. They are worth investigating here, because although I know I’m not alone, I’ve noticed that dissenting and heretical opinions on AI are often treated with suspicion, hostility, and censure. So, allow me to say, you are not crazy, don’t be gaslit, and get a load of this.
The vast majority of my friends and family possess a similar scepticism to my own. But because of a recent academic pursuit, I’ve had the chance to speak to many people from outside my usual circle. I’ve noticed the usual talking points, straight from the OpenAI PR department: this is a groundbreaking technology with world historical implications for productivity and work. It’s akin to the industrial revolution. It’s going to replace humanity in entirety, but that will be good. What’s perhaps even more concerning is the responses I’ve heard when these spurious claims are put under any kind of pressure.
There was the claim that there would be a “trickle down effect” from the adoption of AI. That, whilst there were indeed negative associations with AI, they were only “short term”. Or that these negatives could themselves be solved with…AI. “It’s profitable if you don’t count any of the costs”. That it will lead to breakthroughs with positive externalities. And at times, simply a scolding petulant response: that if I am in any way critical of AI, I have no right to ever use AI myself.
Even worse, one of the later responses I got was (I quote verbatim) “don’t think about the bad stuff”. Which clarifies things for me: what ties all this together is the unimpeachable certainty that IT WILL BE WORTH IT. We are taking a huge bet on a speculative technology, but because its benefits are guaranteed to emerge in the future, it’s all justified. Anything can be sacrificed on the altar of AI, because in the end it will be worth it for the greater good. This is, needless to say, concerning. Do they believe they can read the future? These claims do not come from uneducated people. And yet, it is clearly illogical, dismissive of the evidence we have so far that AI has not had an appreciably positive impact on work and productivity. And intolerant of any appeals to its obvious un-viable economics. All kinds of horror and degradation seem to be permitted on this logic, provided it is done on the basis of pushing AI adoption. I genuinely cannot understand the mindset. It’s as if they are hypnotised, or infected with a mind virus.
I see these kinds of responses so often now, that they’ve started conforming to type, and I think a grouping of AI boosters is distinguishable. I hope they are familiar, and we can find solace in recognising them.
Passengers
This is probably the most common archetype of the AI dancing fever. The passenger has a subservient and defeatist attitude on AI: although it may come with some serious negative consequences and social dislocation, it’s inevitable, so the rational thing to do is get on board. You can’t beat them, so you must join them. This is also perhaps the most disturbing archetype, because it’s an admission of the totalitarian component of this technology. None of us voted for it. Most of us did not consent to it. And yet it’s being forced on us from all directions. A grotesque bukkake of AI slop and propaganda.
A consequence of this belief is that AI must be promoted and evangelised in order to preserve societal and professional positioning, no matter how meagre, and secure a future in a world whose prospects for professional advancement are increasingly foreclosed. In this context, attacks on AI (from the likes of me) are seen as a personal attack on them, and their ability to secure those future gains. The passenger may not even believe the most outlandish claims, but it’s better to comply, or you will be crushed by the tech giants, like any other victim of the Silicon Valley Cloud Barons. This explains many of the disrurbingly disciplinary arguments that often accompany the “passenger” flavour of AI boosters, e.g “if you don’t adopt AI you will be left behind”, which sounds like a straight forward threat. They end us being the shock troops of slop, conquistadores willing to burn down entire communities if it means they can themselves escape the worst of the digital bondage.
Genuine evangelical nutcases
These ones are worrying terrifying. They may have some understanding of the underlying technology. But this doesn’t stop them from steadfastly believing that AGI is achievable, and that far from it threatening them, they will be one of the lucky few to harness it and emerge as a kind of AI ubermensch. They are nevertheless the most vulnerable to AI psychosis and are likely to work in venture capital, so their professional position relies on the success of AI. They approach the AI power relation from the opposite side to passengers, because they believe they will emerge from the AGI singularity in an enhanced position. I’d include people in this category who believe that AI will go on to make “discoveries” in theoretical physics and maths, despite AI being a probabilitic word guessing machine, and therefore guaranteed to only ever be able to derive a kind of mathematical average of what is already known, and ingested into its training set.
There’s also an interesting cognitive tick in this group that I’ve noticed which is worth mentioning: when explaining that none of the numbers behind AI financing make any sense, and that collapse is inevitable, there is a reflex response, which is to say “of course, there are going to be losers”. They think this is a really smart point, and probably have some kind of Darwinian/Schumpeterian “creative destruction” in mind when saying it, to smooth over the idiocy of misunderstanding the main point that was being made. These people’s minds are a marvel and should be studied by medical science, becuase they are impervious to any objective observations of the massive financial loss making potential of AI.
The business idiot
Credit goes to Ed Zitron for this one, but it needs to be mentioned. The business idiot has near to no technical understanding of anything, let alone the underlying technology for generative AI. This lends them a significant advantage in the business space, because AI is then indistinguishable from magic. There is therefore no limit to what AI can promise them, and therefore no limit to what they promise their superiors or investors, who are also likely to be business idiots. This trait is common in middle management and higher for large stagnating corporations whose market position is often considered to be under threat by AI “disruption”. They love “agents” and will do aynthing to try and make “agentic AI” a reality, even though it doesn’t really exist, and agents are just chatbots connected to APIs.
"Have you tried using AI?" The 'shove it into everything' brigade
These are the helpful idiots of the AI dancing fever. Do you have an “AI adoption specialist” at work? Or someone who is “spearheading our copilot rollout”? That’s them. Walking to work? Have you tried asking AI to find you a smarter route? Drafting an email? AI can do that for you, and render all your communications non functional. Eating a sandwich? My AI gave me a delicious recipe for a baguette containing only nuts and bolts. My teeth are broken, but the AI told me I can fix that with some apple cider vinegar and breathing exercises.
These guys are the least likely to understand that AI is a systemically flawed technology, and reliant on exactly the kind of resource intensity we need to be moving away from in the context of ecological breakdown and global supply crunches. They are also genuinely too dense to understand they are working towards their own obsolescence, and likely the first ones on the scrap heap once their “copilot rollout” is complete.
Compulsive conversationalists
We probably all know someone like this. For them, AI offers a friend who will always be ready to talk. Concerningly, they will sometimes describe AI as their “therapist”. They are probably the most brutalised of the digital serfs and share a rare commonality with the aspiring AI ubermensch, which is an increased propensity for AI psychosis. I greatly sympathise with this group, and they are not a booster so much as a symptom of the loneliness that has been engendered in developed societies thanks to Silicon Valley psychopathy, with AI presenting an opportunity to widen and deepen that loneliness and atomisation.
The power user
The power users are, without equivocation, the best of the bunch. This is because they are likely to be able to demolish AI single handedly by making it so economically un-viable that we might actually wake up from this dream and realise how stupid we’ve all been. You’ve probably heard of looksmaxxing. But have you heard of “tokenmaxxing”? Kudos also to this group for coming up with innovative engineering methods for bankrupting the entire AI value chain by coming up with tools like “Gastown” and talking about “agent orchestration” like a coke addled Hoxton twat discussing his small plates restaurant idea after a big huff of the stuff. Excellent work.
So there we are, a first attempt at identifying some of the most obvious handmaidens of the slopocalypse, and hopefully bring some comfort to those who feel like they haven’t been effected by what looks like a society wide collective psychosis.