There’s a movie about “AI becoming sentient and wiping out humans” — we all know it and it’s scary as hell. So when OpenAI started talking about how magical their AI was, a small section of the human population cringed a bit. Then we heard that AI was at times indistinguishable from an actual human being, and that AI could write better, manipulate humans in real life ( https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-of-mind/202304/how-ai-can-be-used-to-manipulate-people ), and was doing all kinds of interesting things.
Naturally, the Spidey sense went to 11.
Then this …
https://futurism.com/the-byte/stanford-chatgpt-getting-dumber
And frankly, now I’m torn.
Between the stories of autonomous robots falling into water fountains at the mall, and the above referenced AI report on how it’s getting dumber the longer it exists — something feels off.
The Blind leading the Dumb
So look, I’m not on either end of the spectrum at this point. I neither believe that AI will kill humanity in a matter of minutes, nor do I believe that AI is a temporary technological wünderkind. What I do believe we have is the typical thing that happens… stop reading at the point you disagree.
- Someone invents new technology
- Said technology is massively hyped, to the point where the hype far out-paces any reality
- Overhype leads to mass reactions at the fringes: one side believes this is mankind’s salvation, the other thinks it’s our doom
- Marketing people sieze the opportunity to convince analysts this is better than sliced bread and the invention of vulcanized rubber
- Analysts, because if you’re not first, you’re last, want to be on the leading end of a hype curve — hype up the technology and have magic quadrants and waves and all manner of predictions for market domination
- Companies who have no business using the technology rush to use it somehow, so they can use the buzzword on an earnings call to show how progressive and technologically leading-edge they are
- Technology proves to be problematic, causes some potential negative market or real-life impact when it’s inserted into nonsensical applications “My toaster now has AI to tell me when my bread is perfectly toasted.”
- It’s too late, because the over-hyped limited-use tech is so over-blown and over-hyped that it’s virtually meaningless and (“threat intelligence”, “XDR”, “AI powered”) and we don’t remember why we cared in the first place
So AI is being pushed into literally everything now, because it’s going to change your life in every way, and we’re not even sure it’s not going to a) kill us accidentally, or b) kill us on purpose.
Oh, right, and now there’s a call for a ‘pause on research’ while the collective “they” start to think about societal and ethical implications of artificial intelligence (oxymoron, in my book).
Maybe what I’m saying is “Get off my lawn, you crazy kids” — or maybe I’m just concerned that in the race to hype up the latest technical advancements and shove it into our daily lives we haven’t actually conducted enough testing to figure out if that’s even a good idea.
But…what do I know.
