As plenty of people have pointed out, AI wasn’t cooked up to solve an established problem. Silicon Valley developed the chatbots and large language model and now they’re insisting we use it for …. something. Never mind that it sucks. For example, claiming the backflip was invented by a medieval acrobat named … Backflip.
Google, for example, makes AI results the default in its search engines. When asked about IQ and nationality it regurgitated bullshit pseudoscience, probably because there’s no good research on the topic. Other AI aren’t any better.
They’re also massive electricity hogs, putting pressure on the power grid. Microsoft wants to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power its data centers, with a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee in support. But the power company has assured us the risk to taxpayers is minimal.
They also use around a bottle of water per chatbot email.
Not that AI is unique. The robovan is a bus that carries fewer people, but will probably be “more expensive to purchase, and being unserviceable by the maintenance department of any municipality who buys them.”
Ai apparently works okay in fast-food windows, taking orders — but it’s not like this was a massive problem in need of high-tech solutions. And apparently it relies heavily on human assistance. And I don’t see any need to build AI into Dungeons and Dragons.
Oh, but don’t worry, techbro and munitions magnate Palmer Lucky says we shouldn’t have any restrictions on AI — warnings about the risks are a plot by America’s enemies.
I guess we shouldn’t worry about X’s Grok AI sucking up personal information either.
Although there’s a lot of material in the public domain, one company insists it can’t make AI work without free access to copyright material.
Apparently “if AI can’t learn from books, humans won’t be able to learn” is an argument out there. Attorney and novelist Courtney Milan explains why that’s nonsense. Here’s a related debate thread. Another thread explains that no, AI is not leveling the playing field: “That’s not who uses “AI.” It’s people who WILL NOT do things.”
AI sucks at writing too. Unsurprisingly some people have monetized it by creating AI audiobooks based on AI-written novels.
“a speaker said, ‘He, the boy, was going to, I’m not sure exactly, take the umbrella.’ But the transcription software added: ‘He took a big piece of a cross, a teeny, small piece … I’m sure he didn’t have a terror knife so he killed a number of people.'” Yeah, using AI for transcription seems like a great idea.
