#AI#GenerativeAI#VCs#CashingOut#AIHype#SPVs: "VCs are clamoring to invest in hot AI companies, willing to pay exorbitant share prices for coveted spots on their cap tables. Even so, most aren’t able to get into such deals at all. Yet, small, unknown investors, including family offices and high-net-worth individuals, have found their own way to get shares of the hottest private startups like Anthropic, Groq, OpenAI, Perplexity, and Elon Musk’s X.ai (the makers of Grok).
They are using special purpose vehicles, or SPVs, where multiple parties pool their money to share an allocation of a single company. SPVs are generally formed by investors who have direct access to the shares of these startups and then turn around and sell a part of their allocation to external backers, often charging significant fees while retaining some profit share (known as carry).
While SPVs aren’t new – smaller investors have relied on them for years – there’s a growing trend of SPVs successfully getting shares from the biggest names in AI.
These investors are finding that the most popular AI companies, except OpenAI, are not all that hard for them to buy at their smaller levels of investing."
#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#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?"
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 」
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.
"An AI algorithm that reads MRIs more accurately would not have helped neurologist Ilene Ruhoy, MD, PhD, when she developed a 7 cm brain tumor. The key obstacle to her treatment was getting fellow neurologists to believe her symptoms and even order an MRI in the first place."
@pluralistic brilliantly clarifying our modern world for us, as usual:
We’re nowhere near the point where an AI can do your job, but we’re well past the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job.