“We were sold this vision of capital-as-labor. We'll be able to sub one human for one machine, and it will be transformative. It's not true.”

Mike and Nick move from the mythology of AI to the mechanics of the current bubble. Instead of building smarter machines, tech is “sanding off the edges” for polished demos.

• Scaling Plateau: “Scale is All You Need” is a pitch for data centers, not a roadmap to autonomous AI.
• Industrial Reorganization: 1 unit of capital = 1 human is a lie used for leverage. High-skill work is being degraded into “scaffolding” to shape LLM outputs, turning humans into “reverse centaurs.”
• Interface Enclosure: While the Transformer architecture is open source, big tech is attempting modern enclosure by making chatbots the only viable interface for machine learning.
• Weaponized Utopianism: The promise of full automation used as a tool to intimidate workers into acting against their interests.
• Double Movement: Every technological move by capital eventually triggers a necessary counter-movement to preserve social relations.

Timestamps

0:00 Intro

1:42 Scaling Myth

3:05 Experts “sick of” transformers

7:20 Capital as Labor

8:51 Industrial reorganization

12:34 Techno-utopianism

18:18 Double Movement

34:10 Scoped LLMs

43:44 Dark patterns

51:07 Outro

Deeper learning

Mike on the Grandpa Shelby theory of LLMs: https://misaligned.markets/understanding-large-language-models

Mike on capital-as-labor/the AI bubble: https://misaligned.markets/what-to-expect-ai-bubble/

Gary Marcus on scale is all you need is dead: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/breaking-news-scale-is-all-you-need

Llion Jones “absolutely sick” of Transformers: https://venturebeat.com/ai/sakana-ais-cto-says-hes-absolutely-sick-of-transformers-the-tech-that-powers

Computer scientist Cal Newport on current AI (LLMs) capabilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GezB1XyiQo

Meta employees turned into scaffolding: https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-meta-employee-meeting-interrupt-ai

Nikolai Fyodorov, Russian Cosmism, and Silicon Valley Transhumanism: https://newlinesmag.com/essays/the-russian-ascetic-who-reached-for-immortality

AI as normal technology: https://www.normaltech.ai/p/ai-as-normal-technology

Reach out

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Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lastenclosure.bsky.social