AI Companies And Advocates Are Becoming More Cult-Like

I was watching a video of a keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show for the Rabbit R1, an AI gadget that promises to act as a sort of personal assistant, when a feeling of doom took hold of me. It wasn’t just that Rabbit’s CEO Jesse Lyu radiates the energy of a Kirkland-brand Steve Jobs. And it wasn’t even Lyu’s awkward demonstration of how the Rabbit’s camera can recognize a photo of Rick Astley and Rickroll the owner — even though that segment was so cringe it caused me chest pains. No, the real foreboding came during a segment when Lyu breathlessly explained how the Rabbit could order pizza for you, telling it “the most-ordered option is fine,” leaving his choice of dinner up to the Pizza Hut website. After that, he proceeded to have the Rabbit plan an entire trip to London for him. The device very clearly just pulled a bunch of sights to see from some top-10 list on the internet, one that was very likely AI-generated itself. Most of the Rabbit’s capabilities were well in li

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• David Hoang