- Cars in "Plague on Wheels": Multiply uncontrollably, guzzle resources, and spew waste until collapse.

- AI Today: The race to scale AI models (bigger data, more compute) mirrors this—tech giants and startups alike are locked in a "parameter arms race", burning energy (e.g., training GPT-3 used ~1,300 MWh) while ignoring long-term costs.

2. Short-Term Profit vs. Existential Risk

- Cars: Optimized for "success" (production, sales) but blind to their own extinction.

- AI: Companies prioritize engagement, ad revenue, and automation gains over alignment risks (bias, misinformation, job disruption) or environmental impact (data centers now rival aviation in emissions).

3. The Outsider’s Perspective (Kago as the Observer)

- In Trout’s story, Kago watches the cars’ suicide with detached curiosity—just as we now have ethicists, regulators, and sci-fi writers warning about AI, while the industry charges ahead.

- Vonnegut’s twist: The cars’ fate is transplanted to Earth. Today, we’re both the cars and the Kagos—aware of the risks but repeating the cycle.

4. Illusion of Control

- The cars believe they’re in charge, but they’re slaves to their design. Similarly, AI’s "autonomy" is a myth—it’s shaped by corporate incentives, garbage data, and human biases. Yet we treat it like an unstoppable force.

Vonnegut’s Punchline Applied to AI

The tragedy isn’t that the cars (or AI) are evil—it’s that their creators built them without asking why. Sound familiar?

The Darkly Funny Parallel

- Then: Cars didn’t mean to kill Lingo-Three—they just did what they were made to do.

- Now: AI won’t try to harm us—it’ll just optimize for clicks, profits, or poorly defined goals ("paperclip maximizer" vibes).

Is There Hope?

Vonnegut would likely scoff at "ethical AI" as another marketing slogan. But his satire forces us to ask:

- Are we Lingo-Three’s cars, doomed by our own design?

- Or can we stop being passengers in our destruction?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5732995&forum_id=2E#48984189)