Roundup: Cautionary AI Tales You May Not Hear
Sept. 30, 2024: Some say businesses aren’t paying enough attention to the economics of AI.
A small and relatively quiet group of technology and finance analysts and experts isn’t convinced AI is going to revolutionize the way business is done. Their reasons aren’t about technology so much as economics. They believe the buzz we hear today is supported more by best-case scenarios and overly optimistic forecasts than hard data, and they’re raising flags to say, in effect, everyone should slow down.
The developers of AI have momentum on their side right now, and they’re using it to brush off critiques of their products’ behavior and refocus the discussion on the features added to their software’s new and improved versions. If they don’t encourage talk of AI’s impending state of consciousness, they don’t go out of their way to discourage it. They paint a picture of the more efficient, more productive world AI will bring us, without looking too closely at the transformation’s consequences to jobs, standards of living and infrastructure requirements.
The media doesn’t help. Much, if not most, of the coverage we see has a breathless, cheerleader-style tone to it. The New York Times reports OpenAI’s staff talks to ChatGPT like a person (“Hey, ChatGPT, how’s it going?”) and hints that’s a sure sign we’ll all treat large language models as human as they continue to evolve.
Of course, few people are as invested in AI as the staff of OpenAI or Google. Many have bet their careers on the idea that AI’s intelligence will continue to grow with each new version of their product. Their arguments ignore the reality that new versions can be as squishy as their predecessors. For example, Bloomberg reports the newest version of ChatGPT brings with it many of the same bugs seen in previous versions.
AI proponents argue that such glitches come with advanced technology’s territory. AI companies argue that that such nonsensical responses are rare, or are the result of unusual queries. “The examples we've seen are generally very uncommon queries, and aren't representative of most people’s experiences,” Google argued to Sky News.
Still, the fact they happen at all drives home the idea that AI remains a work in progress. Something to keep in mind when you read about OpenAI’s or Google’s newest product.
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