Cory Doctorow
The AI bubble is the new crypto bubble: you can tell because the same people are behind it, and they're doing the same thing with AI as they did with crypto - trying desperately to find a use case to cram it into, despite the yawning indifference and outright hostility of the users:
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Cory Doctorow
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/08/sirius-cybernetics-corporation/#chatterbox
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Cory Doctorow
This week on the excellent Trashfuture podcast, the regulars - joined by 404 Media's Jason Koebler - have a hilarious - wheezing with laughter! - riff on this year's CES, where companies are demoing home appliances with LLMs built in:
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-hgi6c-179b908
Why would you need a chatbot in your dishwasher? As it turns out, there's a credulous, Poe's-law-grade *Forbes* article that lays out the (incredibly stupid) case for this (incredibly stupid) idea:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2024/03/29/generative-ai-is-coming-to-your-home-appliances/
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Cory Doctorow
As the Trashfuturians mapped out this new apex of the AI hype cycle, I found myself thinking of a short story I wrote 15 years ago, satirizing the "Internet of Things" hype we were mired in. It's called "The Brave Little Toaster", and it was published in MIT Tech Review's *TRSF* anthology in 2011:
http://bestsf.net/trsf-the-best-new-science-fiction-technology-review-2011/
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Cory Doctorow
The story was meant to poke fun at the preposterous IoT hype of the day, and I recall thinking that creating a world of talking appliance was the height of Philip K Dickist absurdism. Little did I dream that a decade and a half later, the story would be *even more* relevant, thanks to AI pump-and-dumpers who sweatily jammed chatbots into kitchen appliances.
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Cory Doctorow
So I figured I'd republish *The Brave Little Toaster*; it's been reprinted here and there since (there's a high school English textbook that included it, along with a bunch of pretty fun exercises for students), and I podcasted it back in the day:
A word about the title of this story. It should sound familiar - I nicked it from a brilliant story by Tom Disch that was made into a very weird cartoon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8C_JaT8Lvg
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Cory Doctorow
My story is one of several I wrote by stealing the titles of other stories and riffing on them; they were very successful, winning several awards, getting widely translated and reprinted, and so on:
https://locusmag.com/2012/05/cory-doctorow-a-prose-by-any-other-name/
All right, on to the story!
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Cory Doctorow
One day, Mister Toussaint came home to find an extra 300 euros' worth of groceries on his doorstep. So he called up Miz Rousseau, the grocer, and said, "Why have you sent me all this food? My fridge is already full of delicious things. I don't need this stuff and besides, I can't pay for it."
But Miz Rousseau told him that he had ordered the food. His refrigerator had sent in the list, and she had the signed order to prove it.
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Cory Doctorow
Furious, Mister Toussaint confronted his refrigerator. It was mysteriously empty, even though it had been full that morning. Or rather, it was *almost* empty: there was a single pouch of energy drink sitting on a shelf in the back. He'd gotten it from an enthusiastically smiling woman on the metro platform the day before. She'd been giving them to everyone.
"Why did you throw away all my food?" he demanded. The refrigerator hummed smugly at him.
"It was spoiled," it said.
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Cory Doctorow
# # #
But the food hadn't been spoiled. Mister Toussaint pored over his refrigerator's diagnostics and logfiles, and soon enough, he had the answer. It was the energy beverage, of course.
"Row, row, row your boat," it sang. "Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, I'm offgassing ethelyne." Mister Toussaint sniffed the pouch suspiciously.
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Cory Doctorow
"No you're not," he said. The label said that the drink was called LOONY GOONY and it promised ONE TRILLION TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN ESPRESSO!!!!!ONE11! Mister Toussaint began to suspect that the pouch was some kind of stupid Internet of Things prank. He hated those.
He chucked the pouch in the rubbish can and put his new groceries away.
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Cory Doctorow
# # #
The next day, Mister Toussaint came home and discovered that the overflowing rubbish was still sitting in its little bag under the sink. The can had not cycled it through the trapdoor to the chute that ran to the big collection-point at ground level, 104 storeys below.
"Why haven't you emptied yourself?" he demanded. The trashcan told him that toxic substances had to be manually sorted. "What toxic substances?"
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Cory Doctorow
So he took out everything in the bin, one piece at a time. You've probably guessed what the trouble was.
"Excuse me if I'm chattery, I do not mean to nattery, but I'm a mercury battery!" LOONY GOONY's singing voice really got on Mister Toussaint's nerves.
"No you're not," Mister Toussaint said.
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Cory Doctorow
# # #
Mister Toussaint tried the microwave. Even the cleverest squeezy-pouch couldn't survive a good nuking. But the microwave wouldn't switch on. "I'm no drink and I'm no meal," LOONY GOONY sang. "I'm a ferrous lump of steel!"
The dishwasher wouldn't wash it ("I don't mean to annoy or chafe, but I'm simply not dishwasher safe!"). The toilet wouldn't flush it ("I don't belong in the bog, because down there I'm sure to clog!").
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Cory Doctorow
The windows wouldn't retract their safety screen to let it drop, but that wasn't much of a surprise.
"I hate you," Mister Toussaint said to LOONY GOONY, and he stuck it in his coat pocket. He'd throw it out in a trash-can on the way to work.
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Cory Doctorow
# # #
They arrested Mister Toussaint at the 678th Street station. They were waiting for him on the platform, and they cuffed him just as soon as he stepped off the train. The entire station had been evacuated and the police wore full biohazard containment gear. They'd even shrinkwrapped their machine-guns.
"You'd better wear a breather and you'd better wear a hat, I'm a vial of terrible deadly hazmat," LOONY GOONY sang.
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Cory Doctorow
When they released Mister Toussaint the next day, they made him take LOONY GOONY home with him. There were lots more people with LOONY GOONYs to process.
# # #
M Toussaint paid the rush-rush fee that the storage depot charged to send over his container. They forklifted it out of the giant warehouse under the desert and zipped it straight to the cargo-bay in Mister Toussaint's building. He put on old, stupid clothes and clipped some lights to his glasses and started sorting.
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Cory Doctorow
Most of the things in container were stupid. He'd been throwing away stupid stuff all his life, because the smart stuff was just so much easier. But then his grandpa had died and they'd cleaned out his little room at the pensioner's ward and he'd just shoved it all in the container and sent it out the desert.
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Cory Doctorow
From time to time, he'd thought of the eight cubic meters of stupidity he'd inherited and sighed a put-upon sigh. He'd loved Grandpa, but he wished the old man had used some of the ample spare time from the tail end of his life to replace his junk with stuff that could more gracefully reintegrate with the materials stream.
How inconsiderate!
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Cory Doctorow
# # #
The house chattered enthusiastically at the toaster when he plugged it in, but the toaster said nothing back. It couldn't. It was stupid. Its bread-slots were crusted over with carbon residue and it dribbled crumbs from the ill-fitting tray beneath it. It had been designed and built by cavemen who hadn't ever considered the advantages of networked environments.
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Cory Doctorow
It was stupid, but it was brave. It would do anything Mister Toussaint asked it to do.
"It's getting hot and sticky and I'm not playing any games, you'd better get me out before I burst into flames!" LOONY GOONY sang loudly, but the toaster ignored it.
"I don't mean to endanger your abode, but if you don't let me out, I'm going to explode!"
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Cory Doctorow
The smart appliances chattered nervously at one another, but the brave little toaster said nothing as Mister Toussaint depressed its lever again.
"You'd better get out and save your ass, before I start leaking poison gas!" LOONY GOONY's voice was panicky. Mister Toussaint smiled and depressed the lever.
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Cory Doctorow
Just as he did, he thought to check in with the flat's diagnostics. Just in time, too! Its quorum-sensors were redlining as it listened in on the appliances' consternation. Mister Toussaint unplugged the fridge and the microwave and the dishwasher.
The cooker and trash-can were hard-wired, but they didn't represent a quorum.
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Cory Doctorow
# # #
The fire department took away the melted toaster and used their axes to knock huge, vindictive holes in Mister Toussaint's walls. "Just looking for embers," they claimed. But he knew that they were pissed off because there was simply no good excuse for sticking a pouch of independently powered computation and sensors and transmitters into an antique toaster and pushing down the lever until oily, toxic smoke filled the whole 104th floor.
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Cory Doctorow
Mister Toussaint's neighbors weren't happy about it either.
But Mister Toussaint didn't mind. It had all been worth it, just to hear LOONY GOONY beg and weep for its life as its edges curled up and blackened.
He argued mightily, but the firefighters refused to let him keep the toaster.
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Cory Doctorow
# # #
If you enjoyed that and would like to read more of my fiction, may I suggest that you pre-order my next novel as a print book, ebook or audiobook, via the Kickstarter I launched yesterday?
--
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Cryteria (modified)
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Stoneface Vimes
@pluralistic and no lessons have been learned since the South Sea Bubble.
jasonvp
@pluralistic but the real synergy is when they get AIs promoting their own crypto coins so they can be self-funding.
saxnot ➡️ HOA, GPN
@pluralistic i love this sentence:
[Quote]
The AI bubble, by contrast, is being inflated by massive incumbents, whose excitement boils down to "This will let the biggest companies get much, much bigger and the rest of you can go fuck yourselves." Some revolution.
[End Quote]
It perfectly encapsulates the vibe of the current trend and everyone is just waiting (and hoping) for it to die eventually
iAmAnEngarneer
@capnthommo @pluralistic but my tulip bulbs will be worth so much more
Stoner ☑️
@pluralistic it’s so funny. I just re-shared this with some people because I literally use this analogy a couple of times - I’ve said the AI bubble reminds me of the crypto bubble!!!
Nicole Parsons
The AI toaster in the UK show "Red Dwarf" is an annoying nuisance that tells you every problem is solved with more toast.
That's what AI-enabled home appliances really are - annoying & intrusive spies & voyeurs with accelerated built-in obsolescence.
Samsung, LE, GE, Miele are data brokers not appliance makers.
Their appliances need replacement every few years as the chips age out & they are deliberately designed to not be repairable.
Pepperbike
@pluralistic well we better at least getting talking toasters that badger us once an hour to eat a piece of toast.
Frigga MotherOf Border Collies
@Pepperbike @pluralistic
Does anyone want any toast?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec
quinta :ubuntu:
@pluralistic Cory I missed this post last year... thanks for the quote.
the original post is this
https://blog.quintarelli.it/2019/11/lets-forget-the-term-ai-lets-call-them-systematic-approaches-to-learning-algorithms-and-machine-inferences-salami/
ciao!
ps. I'm a former mp and mainly a tech scientist/entrepreneur
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