To A.I. Executives, We're All Just 'Meat Computers' (NYT op-ed, 5/24/26)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/24/business/meat-computer-brain-artificial-intelligence.html

The relationship between mind and machine has long fascinated philosophers and scientists, who have likened the human brain to clocks, chronometers and, in more recent decades, computers. In the early days of artificial intelligence, academics referred cheekily to humans as “meat machines.”

Lately this framing has trickled into the vernacular of tech executives. Elon Musk posted on social media last summer, “We are all dumb meat computers compared to digital superintelligence.”

-snip-

Larry Ellison, a co-founder and the executive chairman of Oracle, said in a 2025 event: “The brain is very specialized. So are the A.I. models. But we’re not building a 20-watt meat computer. We’re building a 1.2 billion-watt A.I. brain.”

This comparison of human and machine — and the suggestion that non-meat computers are superior — has not landed well with a public anxious about the A.I. future. It fits into a broader trend in which executives pit humans against robots and conclude that humans don’t quite measure up. When Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, said in February that, while it takes electricity to train chatbots, “it also takes a lot of energy to train a human,” media outlets and social media users jumped on the comments as misanthropic and even dystopian.

-snip-

Altman's comments were jumped on because they and similar comments ARE misanthropic and dystopian.

For too many of these AI fanatics, humans are vastly inferior to the AI of their dreams, the imaginary machine god they hope will reward its loyal acolyte developers with immeasurable wealth, godlike powers and immortality.

And in their insane alternate reality, humans' only options are either to accept inferiority and replacement/destruction after bootstrapping their machine successor in evolution, or to "merge" with AI - the creepy salvation so many of them talk about, as I pointed out in another OP this morning:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221257955

The AI bros - founders, scientists, venture capitalists and propagandists - are happy to denigrate humans as "meat computers" because in their deluded minds, they're already allied with the machine god and will soon be merged with it.

[GreatGazoo]

1. I'm starting to embrace the theory that AI profiteers are pushing fear and loathing of their own products

as a way to get the public and investors to believe it is far more capable than it is. They profit from the idea that AI is "so powerful it is dangerous" and "so profitably job-destroying that employers have to adopted it quickly or risk being left behind."

Behind this cloud of diversion and hysteria, AI roll outs have failed at Amazon and many other companies that believed the lies. AI is not "sentient", is not "intelligent". Humans think in narratives. AI imitates narratives (not all that well) but it isn't thinking. It is predicting mathematically what humans will find acceptable, affirming or "true". Employers are finding that AI can assist with 40 to 60% of tasks -- leaving 40 to 60% undone and undoable with AI.

Forbes analyzed the pattern of AI failures and the growth in CW about its limitations:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/terdawn-deboe/2026/05/21/companies-fired-workers-for-ai-now-they-want-them-back/