Hoo-ray, Chomsky and company at last called AI for the fraud it is. What took them so long?

But dammit, does AI really plagiarize? It certainly grinds what it finds.

The issue I see is that AI's plagiarism will lead to mediocrity. It's like benchmarking in business: you are targeting mediocrity, not excellence, and when you are as mediocre as all of the others (you've reached the benchmark) you think you've made it.

Frederik Pohl sort of called it in the early 1950s with his 'Midas World' stories. [en.m.wikipedia.org]

He sidestepped the climate question by ignoring it -- 'The Fire-Bringer' (not sure exactly when it was published) solved the energy crisis with cheap easy fusion then 'The Midas Plague' continued the series with massive robot overproduction and solved the problem by letting robots consume things themselves.

Are people becoming unnecessary/obsolete? We may be stumbling into a Borg(Star Trek) situation by default. Machines may take over the world as much through our laziness as by anything else.

The Midas World stories
"The Fire-Bringer",
"The Midas Plague", 1954
"Servant of the People", 1983
"The Man Who Ate the World", 1956
"Farmer on the Dole", 1982
"The Lord of the Skies", 1983
"The New Neighbors", 1983

Plagarism Software is perfect! We need to stop calling it AI.