The Fraud of Artificial Intelligence

By William SnowPublished On: November 9, 2023

Look, I get it. I’m fighting a losing battle. Artificial Intelligence is here to stay, nothing I can do about it. But…it’s a dreadful development.

I pride myself on my writing, I often labor over it, trying to get it just right. Even the inconsequential fluff I post on FB and LinkedIn and my websites. I do this writing first and foremost for an audience of one. Me. If others like it, great, but I write for a simple reason: I am a writing preferenced learner. I experience, I observe, I think…then I write, and when I write, I uncover more ideas and I make more connections. AI, for all it’s incredible power, will always lack the two fundamental inputs — primary experience and unhinged creativity — that I utilize on a daily basis to not only have some fun, but to learn, to grow, and to further develop and hone my skills, my awareness, and my person. Cogito, ergo sum.

When we no longer think, we no longer are. I am sad when I think about kids today and their “modern” ability to press a button and have an AI bot puke out a term paper. It sickens me. They might have the end result of learning, but they won’t have the process of learning, and therefore, they won’t learn how to think and build and create and put together connections from disparate sources. They will be guided by the machine messiah, captive to their inert laziness, and subjugated by their limited attention spans.

Just look at how confused some people get when driving by way of GPS. They no longer look at street names or numbers, they blindly follow what the computer tells them. We ordered food last night, the Doordash driver didn’t bother to look at streets or numbers, and instead blindly followed her phone to an unhoused part of the street…one block over from our house. The address the human inputted was correct, the destination the GPS provided was inaccurate, and the result? Human lost! Human confused! People seem incapable of ringing a simple doorbell. They’ll sit in the cars, stare and their phones, and can’t figure out what to do if the person in the house doesn’t immediately answer a call.

AI is bound to make this confused phenomenon more pronounced.

When I decided to jot down some thoughts a few minutes ago, I had none of what you just read in my mind. But as I wrote, I thought, I wondered, and I created, and for those who become captive to AI, those very human traits I love so much, will wither and die.

I am not opposed to technological innovations. My ability to write, and therefore think, has been greatly aided by the computer and word processing programs. But those technologies freed my mind, and have been invaluable in my ability to explain, communicate, and create.

The challenges we face with AI are very human in nature. First, AI will be will be misused by belligerents, and second, whatever AI spits out will be blindly believed by idiots. That old saw, “it’s on the Internet, it must be true,” will no longer be facetious humor, but instead will become dogma.

What started this little Gildas-esque screed was a brief diversion into the perils of social media. As I took a moment to scroll through my FB feed, I found an AI “generated” picture someone posted, then immediately below it, an entirely unrelated page posted a picture of Yes guitarist Steve Howe. The two pictures a displayed side by side for your viewing pleasure. Coincidence? Or taproot of fraud? You decide.

AI is not intelligence. It is a very complicated program that uses stunning amounts of engineering to…plagiarize the shit out of what already exists. AI simply “scrapes” the info humans create, then upon human command, regurgitates it, and perhaps, on human command, adulterates it.

AI isn’t intelligence. AI is fancy plagiarism.

William R. (“Bill”) Snow, a FOCUS Managing Director, is an experienced M&A professional with over 30 years of professional experience, including almost two decades as an investment banker. His work includes business sales and capital raises for middle-market companies as well as buy-side services for acquirers seeking middle-market companies. Mr. Snow’s clients have included water works manufacturers and value-added distributors as well as firms focusing on packaging, medical supplies and equipment, automotive parts, drink dispensing equipment, security, apparel, refined fuels, and more. Prior to joining FOCUS, Mr. Snow worked as a Managing Director for Jordan Knauff & Company, where he specialized in helping owners and executives raise capital for acquiring companies, divisions, business units, or product lines with revenues between $10 million and $300 million. Mr. Snow has written articles for magazines and online periodicals as well as books about mergers and acquisitions (Mergers & Acquisitions For Dummies), early stage capital (Venture Capital 101) and personal marketing (Networking Is A Curable Condition). He has presented at universities including Northwestern University, DePaul University, the Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Harvard Business School. He has also spoken before the Thomson Reuters Midwestern M&A/Private Equity Forum, J.P. Morgan Chase, Huntington Bank, Ice Miller, the Illinois CPA Society, and the University Club of Chicago. A Vistage speaker, Mr. Snow has presented to groups in Chicago, New Orleans, Louisville, and Cincinnati. He has lectured internationally in Malaysia, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates. He has an MBA and a B.S. in finance, both from DePaul University, and he’s a FINRA-registered Investment Banking Representative (series 62, 63, and 79).