#AI#GenerativeAI#AIHype#AGI: "The reality is that no matter how much OpenAI, Google, and the rest of the heavy hitters in Silicon Valley might want to continue the illusion that generative AI represents a transformative moment in the history of digital technology, the truth is that their fantasy is getting increasingly difficult to maintain. The valuations of AI companies are coming down from their highs and major cloud providers are tamping down the expectations of their clients for what AI tools will actually deliver. That’s in part because the chatbots are still making a ton of mistakes in the answers they give to users, including during Google’s I/O keynote. Companies also still haven’t figured out how they’re going to make money off all this expensive tech, even as the resource demands are escalating so much their climate commitments are getting thrown out the window."
"This whole AI cycle was fueled by fantasies, and when people stop falling for them the bubble starts to deflate. In The Guardian, John Naughton recently laid out the five stages of financial bubbles, noting AI is between stages three and four: euphoria and profit-taking."
I'm trying very hard to avoid getting sucked into the AI fad. It reminds me a lot of Crypto and Reactjs irrational exuberance.
Gonna wait til things calm down to resume my research.
It looks like my country will be forced to act as a giant battery for these global gibberish generators. Like it wasn't bad enough with crypto farms left and right.
#AI#GenerativeAI#AIHype: "The reality is that A.I. models can often prepare a decent first draft. But I find that when I use A.I., I have to spend almost as much time correcting and revising its output as it would have taken me to do the work myself.
And consider for a moment the possibility that perhaps A.I. isn’t going to get that much better anytime soon. After all, the A.I. companies are running out of new data on which to train their models, and they are running out of energy to fuel their power-hungry A.I. machines. Meanwhile, authors and news organizations (including The New York Times) are contesting the legality of having their data ingested into the A.I. models without their consent, which could end up forcing quality data to be withdrawn from the models.
Given these constraints, it seems just as likely to me that generative A.I. could end up like the Roomba, the mediocre vacuum robot that does a passable job when you are home alone but not if you are expecting guests."
#AI#GenerativeAI#OpenAI#AIHype#Science: "I don't do predictions, but I do spend a good bit of time these days pondering how things might play out when the current AI hype bubble finally pops, or slowly deflates, or drifts away, or whatever it does. It seems clear by now that the engine keeping this hot air balloon (if I can abruptly switch to a nearby metaphor) inflated and afloat is the frothy interest of venture capitalists and the finance side of Big Tech. But that air has been blowing so hot and so long now that its miasma has long since infected just about every other sector. And I worry that when the VCs start focusing somewhere else, we'll still be stuck digging out from entrenched surveillance as well as business processes that have been contorted to jump on the ChatGPT bandwagon."
“A lot of times, it’s being asked to provide a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist with a tool that you don’t want to use,” independent software engineer Kolman told CNBC.
The Microsoft AI engineer said a lot of tasks are about “trying to create AI hype” with no practical use. He recalled instances when a software engineer on his team would come up with an algorithm to solve a particular problem that didn’t involve generative AI. That solution would be pushed aside in favor of one that used a large language model, even if it were less efficient, more expensive and slower, the person said. He described the irony of using an “inferior solution” just because it involved an AI model.
A software engineer at a major internet company, which the person asked to keep unnamed due to his group’s small size, said the new team he works on dedicated to AI advancement is doing large language model research “because that’s what’s hot right now.”"
#AI#GenerativeAI#AIHype: "Many of the transformative leaps envisioned by AI promoters feel as distant from daily reality today as they were when ChatGPT was first unveiled.
The realms AI is touted as transforming — such as health care, legal practice and education — are precisely the sorts of areas where generative AI's "mostly right but frequently wrong" accuracy rate could cause havoc.
What's next: Wharton professor Ethan Mollick told Klein he urges everyone to take 10 hours using ChatGPT or one of its competitors in their work.
"Use it in an area where you have expertise," he advises, "so you can understand what it's good or bad at, learn the shape of its capabilities."
White, however, argues that the modest capabilities of today's AI tools mean the hype and cash-flooded field is heading for a giant let-down."
#AI#GenerativeAI#AIHype#Gadgets: "Despite my pessimism about the droves of AI marketing hype, if not AI washing, likely to barrage the next couple of years of tech announcements, I have hope that consumer interest and common sense will yield skepticism that stops some of the worst so-called AI gadgets from getting popular or misleading people."
Tech brands like Logitech, Nothing, and Microsoft are adding AI-related features to their gadgets, but are these features truly necessary? The rush to integrate AI raises questions about the actual benefits for users.
Further proof that "AI" is not really a thing (as if such proof is necessary)
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is streaming on YouTube, it's a legit stream from Shout! Factory.
YT drops ads into the stream, essentially at random, in the middle of scenes. Which is stupid and makes the stream fairly unwatchable.
MST3K was originally a cable TV show and has commercial breaks built into it -- the original bumpers are still in the show. The show also features a flashing light signal that the characters in the show recognize as "commercial sign." It literally signals some of the commercial breaks.
A twelve year old could identify the commercial break points in all 10 seasons of the show in an afternoon.
Instead, YT dropped three random commercial breaks in the middle of scenes in a half hour. As much as I love MST3K, I can't watch that. Total #enshittification. Doesn't help YT, the advertisers or Shout!
If Google had an actual AI that worked, you would think they would apply it here. Seems pretty simple, and surely other old TV shows are streaming on YT as well.
Excellent post by @molly0xfff on "AI". One of many gems:
"But I find one common thread among the things AI tools are particularly suited to doing: do we even want to be doing these things? If all you want out of a meeting is the AI-generated summary, maybe that meeting could've been an email. If you're using AI to write your emails, and your recipient is using AI to read them, could you maybe cut out the whole thing entirely?"
Companies are faking #AI in order to hype up their stock price https://youtu.be/xbf4BGIBENk
Sasha Yanshin catches Copilot plagiarising an article he wrote. #AIhype
#AI#GenerativeAI#AIHype#AIEthics: "Our global landscape of emerging technologies is increasingly affected by artificial intelligence (AI) hype, a phenomenon with significant large-scale consequences for the global AI narratives being created today. This paper aims to dissect the phenomenon of AI hype in light of its core mechanisms, drawing comparisons between the current wave and historical episodes of AI hype, concluding that the current hype is historically unmatched in terms of magnitude, scale and planetary and social costs. We identify and discuss socio-technical mechanisms fueling AI hype, including anthropomorphism, the proliferation of self-proclaimed AI “experts”, the geopolitical and private sector “fear of missing out” trends and the overuse and misappropriation of the term “AI” in emerging technologies. The second part of the paper seeks to highlight the often-overlooked costs of the current AI hype. We examine its planetary costs as the AI hype exerts tremendous pressure on finite resources and energy consumption. Additionally, we focus on the connection between AI hype and socio-economic injustices, including perpetuation of social inequalities by the huge associated redistribution of wealth and costs to human intelligence. In the conclusion, we offer insights into the implications for how to mitigate AI hype moving forward. We give recommendations of how developers, regulators, deployers and the public can navigate the relationship between AI hype, innovation, investment and scientific exploration, while addressing critical societal and environmental challenges." https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43681-024-00461-2
LOL! So a few blindness higher ups want me to speak at their library events about the use of #AI and how it could enhance the lives of Disabled people, so I go through the song and dance, arranging payment, not at all hiding the fact I am very critical of AI in the disability space because I assume they read my blog by now, but then they come back and say things like, you didn't tell the internet you are actually against AI, to which I send them 5 blog posts where I critically talk about AI and they are always like but we didn't know this!
Pro tip for others. Read my blog, not just social media. That's what my website is for, after all.
Sadly, after they realized I am critical of AI and especially #AIHype they did not get in touch with me to continue the speaking presentation engagement, so this means that no payment changed hands, and I did not get to talk about the more critical aspects that disabled people really should be paying attention to regarding these large language models, such as, the profit driven nature of all of these models. The capital investments that went into these models that are being used in apps like Be my Eyes. The discriminatory side effects of mass deploying these large language models in the workplace, especially in terms of entry-level positions, the privacy and ethical concerns, not to mention, the environmental concerns as well. In short, i’m available for presentations.
💬 NYC’s government chatbot is lying about city laws and regulations | Ars Technica
「 To cite just one example, the bot said that NYC buildings "are not required to accept Section 8 vouchers," when an NYC government info page says clearly that Section 8 housing subsidies are one of many lawful sources of income that landlords are required to accept without discrimination 」
#AI#GenerativeAI#AIHype#BigTech: "The so-called Magnificent Seven companies have driven AI enthusiasm and stock market gains over the past year. They have pushed the concentration of the S&P 500 to a historic extreme. But as a recent Morgan Stanley Wealth Management report notes, “index concentration has historically proved self-correcting, with some combination of regulatory, market and competitive forces, along with business cycle dynamics, undermining static leadership”. The report says “analysis suggests that equity returns have typically struggled following peaks in concentration”.
That combination of correcting factors might include the growing number of Big Tech antitrust cases and the possibility that carbon pricing and copyright fines will challenge the “free” inputs necessary to make a profit.
Whether you see AI as the next tulip bubble or the next combustion engine, it’s worth questioning how the market is pricing this story."
Anyone know of any data comparing the energy and water usage of a human being performing a cognitive task - like reading and summarising an article - to genAI doing the same thing?
I suspect the latter would be guesses because these companies are deliberately trying to hide the true costs. But my guess is we will find at least an order of magnitude difference.