Put Up Or Shut Up

Source: Where’s Your Ed At Date: 2024-07-16 URL: https://www.wheresyoured.at/put-up-or-shut-up/

Summary

Ed argues OpenAI and the AI industry at large are systematically deceiving the public: Altman’s “five-level AGI roadmap” is marketing theater; Lattice’s “AI employee” and Thrive Global’s “AI health coaching” are minor features dressed as revolutions; generative AI has produced no meaningful innovations, only recycled LLM capabilities. Ed’s demand to media: stop humoring these claims and ask “what does this actually do?” The industry is stealing training data, harming the environment, spreading misinformation, and delivering nothing consumers actually want.

Implications

This is Ed’s challenge-to-media piece on AI accountability — the same methodology as Helium (verify the partnerships, model the economics, name the journalist) applied to the entire AI product category. The “what does this actually do?” question is the minimal journalistic standard that most AI coverage fails. The Lattice “AI employee” case is particularly useful: it documents the pattern of HR/enterprise AI products that promise transformation but deliver workflow automation with AI branding attached.