David Gerard and Amy Castor have been critiquing Silicon Valley bullshit for a while. They launched the Pivot to AI blog and YouTube channel in June 2024, and David has been running it ever since. He shares new stories almost every day! My educated guess is that the name of the project was inspired by Facebook’s awful “pivot to video” scam where they tricked media companies into making more videos for Facebook and fewer linked webpage news stories. And then those smaller companies suffered for Facebook’s benefit. (The “pivot to video” Wikipedia page is here.)
There’s absolutely nothing about Gen AI that is positive or has good future potential, it’s all a massive scam to make a few billionaires richer while destroying the global power grid, our planet, and the livelihoods of at least hundreds of millions of people, if not billions.
It’s tough to cry all the time, so we might as well laugh, eh?
I asked David a few questions over email.
Kim Crawley: Tell me about some of the books you’ve written before founding Pivot to AI.
David Gerard: I wrote what was going to be a quick and silly book about why bitcoin was stupid. That turned into Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, which came out just in time for the 2017 Bitcoin bubble, and took off like a rocket! In 2020 I wrote Libra Shrugged, the story of Facebook’s failed cryptocurrency Libra. That didn’t take off like a rocket, but it sold okay!
Crawley: How did your Pivot to AI blog and YouTube channel get its start?
Gerard: Amy Castor and I were covering the crypto collapse after the 2022 crash – we discovered we co-wrote very well. We did a few posts about the AI bubble when we noticed it wasn’t just the same buzzwords as the crypto guys, it was literally a lot of the same actual guys.
Eventually it was mid-2024 and we were bored with crypto and thought “this might be more fun.” So we launched the site in June 2024
The elevator pitch is “Web3 Is Going Great but it’s AI.” 250-word shitposts about stupid things in the AI bubble. Of course, we soon
started writing 1000-word posts analysing the world…
Amy realised in early 2025 she was actually in a position to retire! So she did. I’ve done Pivot on my own since.
I started the YouTube in March after I’d been thinking about it for a while. Also I was made redundant from my job in Nov 2024 and didn’t
have a new one (because tech is absolutely screwed right now), so I might as well do this.
It takes up like 10 hours a day and will suffer terribly if I actually get a real job. But for now, it’s tremendously enjoyable. And makes a
bit of cash, which is useful.
Crawley: Clippy is kind of a mascot for Pivot to AI. Do you, like Louis Rossmann forgive Clippy because at least he wasn’t Gen AI?
Gerard: Nah. I think I put Clippy on our Pivot things in 2023 when Sam Altman was fired by OpenAI, and Microsoft offered to take him on. (Amy Castor’s relevant story is here.)
I remember Office 97. He was an annoying little arsehole and lookedthe part, shifty little bugger. Perfect as an expression of why AI
assistants are a pain. I forgive Clippy NOTHING!
He’s also a visual pun on the AI doomsday crew idea of the “paperclip maximiser”.
Rossmann’s campaign has definitely sold me a lot of Clippy T-shirts though!
Crawley: What are the most horrific things about Gen AI to you?
Gerard: The ghastly waste. It’s so blitheringly stupid and destructive.
Crawley: Which of your videos are you proudest of?
Gerard: I don’t think any of them have turned the world upside down? I like that I survived the 19 minute video on what Eliezer Yudkowsky actually believes. The Google Veo 3 failures series is excellent too.
Crawley: Do you have anything else to add?
Gerard: That’s about it. Tell everyone about Pivot to AI, word of mouth remains the most effective algorithm!
David’s personal website, with links to his books and social media
If you are an activist, academic, technologist, writer, or artist who is bringing attention to how fucked up Gen AI is and you’d like to be interviewed for this series, email Kim Crawley at kim.crawley (at) stopgenai.com. I will definitely link to and plug your work if you’re cool!