The Magnificent Seven, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Tesla are adding trillions of dollars to their market caps by stoking the hype machine for Artificial Intelligence.

But if we put all the hype aside, we learn that Artificial Intelligence is too stupid to enslave us or take our jobs.

Google has sunk tens of billions of dollars into developing its Gemini AI. Just days after its release, when it was asked to create pictures of World War II German soldiers, it showed a Black man and an Asian woman in Nazi uniforms. Google pulled Gemini from the market, because Gemini is dumb as a stump.

Microsoft poured $13 billion into OpenAI’s chatbot, Chat-GPT4o. I asked it to list US states that ended with the letter Y and three of the five answers it gave me were wrong! Chat-GPT is amazingly stupid.

After spending billions of dollars over 8 years of development, Tesla’s self-driving Artificial Intelligence keeps trying to kill me by jerking the steering wheel to the left into oncoming traffic without any warning. It will also blow past a stopped school bus with its red lights flashing and stop sign extended and mow down a child in a school crosswalk.

I can go on like this indefinitely. Don’t let the uber-hype fool you. Saying AI is dumb as a stump is a grievous insult to the proud community of stumps.

Each time a $10 billion Artificial Intelligence face plants, its shameless promoters and desperate apologists are brimming with excuses: “nothing is perfect, it’s young, it needs time to learn, these are early innings, it needs more data.” Like the degenerate gambler, who confidently insists his “system” is sound, AI proponents are once again begging for even more money to build even bigger AI systems. They always double down after every failure.  AI development has burned through at least $100 billion so far and all we have is abject failure to make anything important. Now, Sam Altman of OpenAI wants the government to spend $7 trillion to build a super AI. He’s the guy whose AI doesn’t know how many US states end with the letter Y..

I’m sorry, it has to be said, $10 billion dollars is a billion times too much for an Artificial Stupidity that makes egregious blunders obvious to a 5th grader.

AI nerds claim to be the smartest people in the world, the masters of the technology that will transport humanity into a paradise where everyone gets everything they want (or maybe they are exterminated). These people are not smart enough to invent any real technology.  They are only smart enough to bamboozle suckers out of their money by endlessly repeating tall tales about a fantasy world where everyone gets everything they want and no one has to work. They are the modern-day descendants of carnival barkers, patent medicine salesmen, and itinerant preachers.  They want your money now in return for pie in the sky, by-and-by.

Every business has been caught up in this AI frenzy.  Every CEO is being asked by every director, analyst, reporter, and investor about their company’s AI strategy. If they can’t answer convincingly that they have already embraced AI throughout their company, they will be immediately dismissed as a dinosaur that is about to become extinct. Then their stock will plummet and they will be crucified.

Every board member is demanding that the CEO immediately embraces AI to prevent the company from being overtaken by the competition that has embraced AI. Every CEO and manager below them, almost all of whom have no idea what AI is, pushes down on their direct reports to prioritize adopting AI all the way down the line.

When the AI hype bubble bursts everyone will discover that their competitors who focused on actual technological development in their field instead of AI will have built up years of technological lead on them.

The cautionary tale in all this is the runt of the Magnificent 7, Tesla. Tesla has made the greatest commitment to AI.  Elon Musk said on Autonomy Day, April 22, 2019 that all of Tesla’s resources are dedicated to its Full Self-Driving Artificial Intelligence program. He said on April 16, 2024, 2024 that the only reasonable plan for Tesla was “balls to the wall” to full autonomy. Musk said on January 2, 2024 that no one should think of Tesla as a car company it is an AI and (AI) robotics company.  He said on June 14, 2022 that without Full Self-Driving, Tesla was worth basically zero. On April 20, 2023 Elon Musk said that it would be OK to sell Tesla cars for no profit, because when his Full Self-Driving AI finally works he can sell it to every Tesla owner for a far larger profit than they can make selling cars alone.

This maniacal focus on AI has taken Tesla’s attention away from advancing Electric Vehicle technology. How has this worked out for Tesla?

  • Tesla used to be worth more than all the other car companies combined. Now their stock is down 51% from its all-time high, and down 20% this year. It is one of the worst performing stocks in the S & P 500 year to date.
  • Tesla used to have explosive 40% per year growth from nothing to almost $100 billion per year. Now Tesla sales are declining at 10% a year, even as the EV market continues to grow.
  • This has caused Tesla’s market share to plummet in all major markets.
  • Tesla used to be far and away the largest manufacturer of battery electric vehicles, but this year BYD is expected to outsell Tesla.
  • Tesla has not released a new mass market car model in 5 years and doesn’t plan to do so anytime soon. The bulk of Tesla’s sales come from sales of just one model: the Model Y. BYD has a full range of electric vehicles from $11,000 hybrids, fully electric sedans and SUVs, Humvee-like vehicles, sports supercars, and busses.
  • Tesla used to supply their own battery needs, but now Tesla is buying Chinese batteries that are better than any batteries Tesla can make.
  • Tesla’s profit margin used to be the highest in the industry. Now a world-wide decline in Tesla sales and a brutal price war with more efficient and more vertically integrated Chinese car makers has compressed Tesla’s profit margin to almost nothing and it may go negative soon.
  • Tesla used to be a top destination for talent. The best people competed for a chance to work on leading edge electric vehicle technology. Tesla employees accepted below industry wages, because employees got stock options that could be worth millions of dollars within a few years.  Everyone who got Tesla stock options in the last 3 years has gotten little to no value and they are still making less than they would at other companies. Now Tesla isn’t hiring any more talent, employees are enduring recurring brutal no notice layoffs, below industry wages, worthless stock options, obsolete technology, and a constant barrage of unhinged demands from Elon Musk.
  • Tesla’s used car prices used to be higher than the list price. Now Tesla is the fastest depreciating brand of cars.

What did Tesla get for pursuing AI over continuing to advance EV technology? A brain damaged AI in control of millions of 2 ton killer robots that don’t seem to know that it is wrong to try to kill people.

Artificial Intelligence uber-nerds have produced nothing important with the hundred billion dollars we gave them. They certainly don’t deserve trillions more of our dollars for another chance.

It’s time to zero out their budgets and get back to advancing technology.