a.) There's little interest in interrogating the downsides of generative AI, such as the environmental impact, the data theft impact, the treatment and exploitation of data workers.
That's all the press ever fucking talks about, to the point where you've got people who use the cloud for everything bitching about AI like the rest of their cloud use isn't impacting the environment. Also, analyzing data isn't theft.
b.) There's little interest in considering the extent to which, by incorporating generative AI into our teaching, we end up supporting a handful of companies that are burning billions in a vain attempt to each achieve performance that is a scintilla better than everyone else's.
People need to learn about and use open source AI. There are plenty of very good options.
c.) There's little interest in thinking about what's going to happen when the LLM companies decide that they have plateaued, that there's no more money to burn/spend, and a bunch of them fold—but we've perturbed education to such an extent that our students can no longer function without their AI helpers. ...so AI is going to magically disappear if/when it plateaus and there are still gazillions of customers who want to use it? Some companies will probably go under when the investment cash dries up, but not all of them. AI isn't going to vanish.
Oh, and if all those companies crap out, open source AI is still going to exist. Those models won't magically vanish either.
