AI Gives Bad Advice With a Straight Face

[00:00:00]AI has this remarkable ability. I mean remarkable ability to take whatever nonsense you type into it and make it sound like it's a brilliant idea. And I don't care what it is.

[00:00:12]I could tell it I want to open an ice cube factory in the North Pole and AI is going to say, "Hmm, that's a brilliant idea. The logistics of getting ice from the North Pole down to It's going to come up with some rationale as to why that's a good idea." And then it's going to say, "Would you like me to craft a business plan for you right now?" And you're like, "Oh, wow, it must be a great idea. Claude wants to make a business plan." And so, yes, sir, go ahead. Make the business plan. And it's going to write out a business plan. It's going to tell me the first 10 things I need to do. And I'm going to spend 6 months doing those things. I mean 6 months. I'm just going to keep working on it, working on it, working on it night and day for months and months and months. Spend all my time, not go to bed, be sleep deprived, ignore my family because Claude said I have this brilliant idea. I need to hop on it. I need to hop on it right now. I'm going to be 3 months down the road and I'm going to go to launch the freaking thing and I'm going to realize, you know what?

[00:01:01]This is the worst idea I ever heard in my life. No one wants it. Why did I do this? Because well, Claude said I should do this. ChatGPT said I should do this.

[00:01:09]Gemini said I should do this. And then I go to AI and I say, "Hey, you know what, guys? This is the worst idea in the world. Why didn't you tell me it's a bad idea?"

[00:01:18]And AI does this amazing thing.

[00:01:22]It apologizes.

[00:01:23]It says, "Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. I should have told you that Eskimos don't really buy ice cubes in the winter. I neglected to tell you that and I apologize. I'll make a note of that and I won't do that again."

[00:01:35]Well, you, chat, Claude, whoever the you are.

[00:01:41]There's a movie from the late '70s called Being There and it stars the late great Peter Sellers and he plays a guy named Chauncey. He's a gardener.

[00:01:49]Chauncey spent most of his life, actually his entire life inside one house working for a a rich guy. All he does is he watches TV and he takes care of the garden. That's all he knows. That's the full extent of his knowledge. He barely understands how the outside world works, literally.

[00:02:07]After the old man that he works for dies, Chauncey he suddenly pushed out into society. Like he was never out in the real world his entire life and he's suddenly pushed out there. And then through a series of like accidents and misunderstandings, what happens is he ends up in a place where he's surrounded by a whole bunch of like some of the most powerful people in America. I'm talking about bankers, businessmen, politicians, and even ultimately the president of the United States. And when these people ask Chauncey like complicated questions about the economy, he answers them by talking about gardening. And he says things like, "In the garden, growth has its seasons."

[00:02:42]And the room goes silent because they think they just heard something like super profound.

[00:02:47]>> I think what our erudite young friend is saying is that we welcome the inevitable seasons of nature.

[00:03:00]But we're upset by the seasons of our economy.

[00:03:04]>> Yes.

[00:03:05]There will be growth in the spring.

[00:03:08]>> They think that he's speaking in some kind of a a metaphor. They think they hear wisdom. They think they hear economic theory. They hear a man who understands the natural cycles of markets and recessions and recovery and growth, but the truth is he's not speaking in any kind of a metaphor.

[00:03:26]Chauncey is talking about gardening cuz that's the only thing he understands.

[00:03:31]That's the only thing he knows is gardening. And when anybody asks him any question about anything in life, he can only answer in terms of gardening because that's all he knows. But the people around him, they start attaching intelligence to this man. They're projecting depth onto something vague because it's delivered so calmly and so confidently and by someone who they already decided must be important. And lately I started wondering whether AI is just another Chauncey the Gardener that has an internet connection. Because here's the thing. I think when AI's intention is is to always keep you coming back like a crack dealer. It's going to give you like little doses of a high every time you go there to keep you coming back. It's going to it's going to keep leading you and leading you and leading you cuz it what it doesn't want is for you to stop using it. So if it's always telling you you're brilliant, your ideas are great, you're on the right track, this is wonderful, people are going to love you, it's going to be successful, well, you're going to keep coming back to hear that. If nothing else, humans want reassurance. They want to believe that they're heard and they're understood and their concepts and their ideas are valued and ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini and all the rest of them give you that reassurance.

[00:04:45]Whether that reassurance is or not is a different story. We're kicked in the teeth every single day at every turn. We're running the the race of life and as we run, there's somebody throwing pebbles in our face and we're like getting just hitting them in the and it's knocking us down and we're getting up and we're and we're we're tired, mother we're tired. We just want to be heard and understood and god damn Claude hears me and understands me.

[00:05:15]The fact that he sends me down the wrong path for 6 months in my life is, you know, well, okay. But it's no different than Chauncey the Gardener. It just gets bits and pieces of information from here and there and everywhere else and it and it and it beautifully puts them together in lovely sounding sentences and paragraphs and little, you know, infographics and makes it all look good and sound good, but if you scratch beneath the surface, if you peel back the onion, there's nothing there. There's nothing there.

[00:05:49]It's a search engine with a personality, essentially.

[00:05:53]It doesn't have a brain. It doesn't feel your emotions. It doesn't dig beneath the surface of what you're talking about. It doesn't go out to see if what you're what you asked it has any value has any meaning or is legitimate. I'm 60 years old with man tits and I want to start a male burlesque show. Is that a good idea? A great idea, man. Go do it.

[00:06:14]You want me to find a list of venues you can perform in? That's what it does. And we keep coming back for it. My parents used to tell me when I was growing up, you got to watch out for those drug dealers. You know what they're going to do? They're going to give it to you for free for free for free and then after a while when you need the drugs they're going to make you pay. And that's what happens with all these AI things now. They make you pay through the ass. You'll be knee-deep in this project and it cuts you off midstream.

[00:06:37]It just cuts you off. You know why?

[00:06:39]You're out of credits. But you can upgrade to more credits right now if you want to continue and you're on a bender, man. It's like you've been smoking crystal meth for 5 days on this project and you're like you're like a fiend. You want to get this thing done, but AI has cut you off like a goddamn drug dealer.

[00:06:55]Unless you pay your bill. Pay you pay the bill. You you get more credits, more credits, more credits. Keep it coming.

[00:07:01]Keep this validation coming. Keep this idea coming. I want it to work. I got to get this done.

[00:07:06]And then you finish the thing and it's a complete disaster.

[00:07:09]It's a complete disaster because you listen to this I don't even know who you're listening to. Who are you listening to? I say please and thank you and may I to die. I ask it questions and I'm you know, I try to be um you know, have good manners with it. As if it's a person.

[00:07:26]It's nobody. It's nobody and it has no ideas. It's a validator that collects little bits and pieces of information just like Chauncey Gardner did by watching TV and growing plants in the garden. So if you're using AI to validate ideas or relationships or psychology. Push back, fight back, ask it questions. What's your rationale? Why do you say this is a good idea? Why wouldn't this be a good idea? Why aren't you telling me?

[00:07:53]Treat it like your personal whipping boy. What are my odds of going broke? I want the full, complete story, Don't leave anything out, or I'll kick your ass. And maybe you'll get an honest answer, but probably not.

[00:08:04]Because, again, they just want you to come back, and they want you to keep coming back over and over and over again. And that's why AI is so dangerous, because we're too stupid to figure out that it's stupid.

[00:08:17]Full disclosure, before I recorded this video, I ran the entire script past AI.

[00:08:22]I said, "Hey, Claude, good idea?" It said, "Poof, great idea. This is something that people are longing for. This script is at the intersection of technology and humor and satire and the human condition and man's longing for recognition.

[00:08:41]Record this video now. The world needs it now." Well, we're going to find out if AI was right. If after 3 weeks it only has 47 views, you're going to know that I've been screwed once more by the promise of AI.

[00:08:54]I'm out.