I witnessed this in the 90s and 2000s. AFAIK, it started in rave culture. People would lace their fingers around glow sticks and wave them in front of a friend’s face. I was told that the effect is really cool if your rolling on MDMA. However, I also saw Mormon kids doing it stone sober, because they’re always imitating things they see without understanding the drug component (e.g. a Mormon kid at a local high school who wore a pacifier on a necklace – an MDMA raver accessory to give something to chew on – despite zero awareness of drugs).

Personally, I think these photos are a combination of raver culture seeping into the mainstream, along with a trend of “reversing subject and photographer”.

The problem is that you’re not arguing anything.

No, the problem is that you presented no argument. You just presented a false equivalence.

Your first comment is an ad hominem at best

I quite literally addressed what you wrote, and the complete lack of substance. It wasn’t any kind of personal attack. You’re abusing logical fallacies in order to sidestep the fact that you never presented any kind of argument.

Your actual argument boils down to, “AI isn’t complex enough yet, therefore it will never be or is some long time away”. Okay, that’s really not much of an argument. Progress marches on.

That’s better, but you’re still just defining things such that you have to be correct.

Humans spend 90% of their time just predicting the next token. All we need is to mix in a little bit more reasoning and bam, AGI!

See how annoying and hollow that rhetorical technique is?

The fact is that we have no idea whatsoever. We might reach AGI next week. We might never reach AGI. The Chinese government might be sitting on AGI right now. We have no idea, and this is completely new territory that has caused us to question our very understanding of intelligence.

Wow, what a solid argument you’ve made. It definitely doesn’t reek of someone trying to hype themselves up in the face of an unknown threat.