What I realized today is that a large part of the present AI hype cycle is just about the 'narrative of AI'. The LLM technology itself is just a digital tool like many others that came before it but all this chatter about 'AI is the future', 'learn it or perish', 'machines will replace humans soon', etc. keeps it in the news and creates a burger out of nothing. But folks lose their energy and sleep over this which becomes a problem. And many a benign enterprises are falsely led to believe that this technology can do wonders, it's a great disservice being done by those selling these bridges.

For folks like us who are fed up of this slop narrative - instead of fighting it, it's better to try and shift the narrative towards determinism. For centuries and millennia, we have been trained to avoid and even fear fatalism (a negative form or aspect of determinism), and look towards future with hopes for betterment and prosperity. There is nothing wrong with having hope but for the first time in known history, the 'future will be glorious' theme isn't looking so bright, at least to a large number of folks connected to grassroots.

In order to push back against this narrative, we need to turn determinism into a force of good, or at least a force preferable to the alternative. Even in the LLM space, most of the utilitarian things are happening in the low-end, open source and local LLMs niche which are more deterministic in approach. What can we do to bring back people's interest in regular deterministic programming with C, Java and Python?

Asimovian AI is the ideal AI that should have emerged in an ideal universe — the AI intended to replace the grueling pains and labors of the masses, not the one striving to become a businessman's utopia of intellectual worker replacement. Intention is the most important aspect of any implementation, and we are seeing the results of current AI implementation right in front of us: workers getting sacked with each passing day, humanity competing with itself day in and day out over who impresses their superiors more on these token metrics, emerging glorious narratives of how AI will be 'The Future', the recurring advice of 'Use AI or perish in the tech market'. Now who really gains from these events and who loses? I wonder if anyone ever gives serious thought to this broader question or just keeps being a cog in the corporate wheel like everyone else.

It's high time we pushed the "Pause AI" button right now and take a breather and reflect a bit on what exactly is going on here. And no, no big catastrophe is going to happen if we do that. China isn't going to get ahead in the race - and even if it did, how does that justify everything else that's happening here?

I really hope there is someone out there with enough clout and influence who can push this pause button - or at least persuade others to do so. That would be the best thing to happen to humanity at this point. By doing so, we might prevent a massive societal collapse and there is really no downside to this.