Baldur Bjarnason

Baldur Bjarnason is an Icelandic writer and independent researcher who has worked on the web for more than twenty-five years. He writes prolifically about software, publishing, and the risks of the technologies the industry is most eager to sell, and is the author of The Intelligence Illusion: A Practical Guide to the Business Risks of Generative AI.

The Intelligence Illusion

Bjarnason’s core argument is not about a distant superintelligence but about the here-and-now product being marketed to businesses. He contends that language and diffusion models are being sold for tasks they are structurally unsuited to — likening it to selling a Mini as a machine for digging drainage ditches — and that much of the reported productivity gain is a psychological or statistical illusion. He has gone further, describing the AI bubble as a political and even quasi-religious movement whose effect is to disempower labor.

Because his critique is framed around concrete business risk — accuracy, liability, security, reputational damage — it has found an audience among the very managers being pitched these tools. Skeptics of his skepticism note that plenty of firms report durable gains in narrow domains like coding assistance and transcription, the same uses Bjarnason concedes can work.