Just to provide a personal anecdote, I use GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT every day as a software engineer. It's been worth it to pay to get the superior GPT4 model, rather than the publicly available GPT3.5. I'm a happy paying customer, and I would pay even more to get improved versions.
It's really good for some forms of programming, but not others. This is "generative AI", but it isn't really "creative AI" - it's more like translation. I have a long list of requirements written in English, and I need to translate it into javascript. It isn't doing the "creative" part of my job... but it's often great at filling out the long and boring parts that I'm not an expert in.
This is a premature take. AI's capabilities are in their infancy. The capabilities for systems to integrate with them are even younger. Some existing integrations, like code-completion via Github Copilot (owned by Microsoft) are already quite impressive and becoming widely-used by professional developers.
The rush to get a demo out the door to chase a stock price bump isn't doing anyone any favors. The current iterations of large language models will be seen as cripplingly primitive in a couple of years, with plenty of "no wonder AI sputtered out of the gate" retrospectives.
I have little doubt that AI will find a range of sweet spots in plenty of areas for both companies and consumers. Maybe not so much in making music, but quite possibly in helping us discover artists and explore their deep cuts and influences. Maybe not in mimicking TV actors or writers, but in helping us find great TV shows from the massive catalogs that very streamer has acquired.
What the author is talking about in essence is AI in popular culture. That's a fairly small corner of the playing field. AI is a HUGE field that has serious applications in anything from health to transport, agriculture and education (and I don't mean writing student essays). An analogy: When the Internet as a public platform was about six months old back in the eighties, I thought it had no future. It was slow, clunky and plain dumb. (I chose to stick to bulletin boards and Compuserve). That's more or less the stage of development AI is at now. Imagine it in thirty years' time, and whether you like it or not, it WILL be around. It's silly to write it off now, with a dismissive wave of the hand. Of course it'll be used for bad things. Everything does. But can you imagine your life without computers and the Internet, warts and all? I was expecting a more thoughtful analysis of a very complex topic.
My search engine is DuckDuckGo. I've never had a problem with it. I'm not on social media, so I won't be scammed there. I have a dumb phone. I never click on anything that I suspect and I suspect a lot of things. I don't open email from senders I don't know. I really don't care what AI does. My one concern is using it for medical diagnoses. That could be a real mess.
What you've observed here Ted is literally the Gartner Hype curve in action. BING AI and CHATGPT have hit the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" and are currently heading for the "Trough of Disillusionment".
I spent 30-years in IT including spells in corporate strategy at two of the biggest IT companies, I certainly am not willing to write it off at all. I for one use BING Chat everyday for factual research, it's so much better than a search engine. What most people don't realize is it's great at recursive questioning and provides clickable references for it's claims. Eventually Microsoft will screw the pooch trying to make money from it with sponsored links, ads etc. but right now it's without a doubt the fastest way to factually find details on something even when you get the question wrong, or it doesn't provide an answer with a response "I’m sorry but I couldn’t find any information on" - is way better than a search engine that returns 50-pages of nonsense.
Hmm...there is a simple reason why visits to ChatGPT have declined: it's called summer. If there is no pickup once school starts, I would be shocked. The fact that AI has been successful in improving the effectiveness of scams, malware and cheating reveals that the problem is not the technology but the adopters. If AI were all hype, then it couldn't scam, cheat or steal either. Fraudsters have a shorter feedback loop and and faster way to capitalise on the tech, so no surprise they're seeing success first. Maybe AI never fulfills its promise but I don't find the arguments in this article convincing.
I get the feeling that this tech is similar to the automobile, which was also a slow starter out of the gate. The blockbuster potential for AI is just too great to ignore. No one has found it yet. But the person or company that does is in for not just a huge payday, but at least a mention in history books. If, by then, history is permitted. I don’t, by the way, see AI as a good development for humanity...
Agree to all of this but the corporations are going to exploit AI. If you thought the surveillance was intrusive today just wait a bit. You haven’t seen anything yet.
ChatGPT and the likes are not truly AI. They’re just scraping the garbage on the internet and serving it back. What can we expect to see, looking in a dirty mirror?
Saw many examples of AI high school football recaps over the past few days. Looks like Gannett has contracted with a company. Large market newspapers printing this garbage (or at least posting on their websites) The recaps were hideous.
AI is a perpetual 20-year problem: the solution is forever just twenty years away.
On the other hand, someone defined AI as "anything a computer can't already do" where anything that was previously defined as "AI" becomes just "expected computer behavior" as soon as it's possible.
If you're looking to be the first to publish a "hot take" about the overblown AI hype, then maybe you did it. But otherwise, um, no. *Of course* there's going to be a backlash to the massive hype that cannot possibly sustain itself. But then there's going to be slow growth, of the type that doesn't make the sensationalist headlines every day. Way too much money and talent is being invested for it to be otherwise. Forget your S curves. Instead, try Googling "hype cycle" to see what actually happens with technology products and services. And then try coming back to this in a year or two when it didn't collapse after all.
Just to provide a personal anecdote, I use GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT every day as a software engineer. It's been worth it to pay to get the superior GPT4 model, rather than the publicly available GPT3.5. I'm a happy paying customer, and I would pay even more to get improved versions.
It's really good for some forms of programming, but not others. This is "generative AI", but it isn't really "creative AI" - it's more like translation. I have a long list of requirements written in English, and I need to translate it into javascript. It isn't doing the "creative" part of my job... but it's often great at filling out the long and boring parts that I'm not an expert in.
This is a premature take. AI's capabilities are in their infancy. The capabilities for systems to integrate with them are even younger. Some existing integrations, like code-completion via Github Copilot (owned by Microsoft) are already quite impressive and becoming widely-used by professional developers.
The rush to get a demo out the door to chase a stock price bump isn't doing anyone any favors. The current iterations of large language models will be seen as cripplingly primitive in a couple of years, with plenty of "no wonder AI sputtered out of the gate" retrospectives.
I have little doubt that AI will find a range of sweet spots in plenty of areas for both companies and consumers. Maybe not so much in making music, but quite possibly in helping us discover artists and explore their deep cuts and influences. Maybe not in mimicking TV actors or writers, but in helping us find great TV shows from the massive catalogs that very streamer has acquired.
What the author is talking about in essence is AI in popular culture. That's a fairly small corner of the playing field. AI is a HUGE field that has serious applications in anything from health to transport, agriculture and education (and I don't mean writing student essays). An analogy: When the Internet as a public platform was about six months old back in the eighties, I thought it had no future. It was slow, clunky and plain dumb. (I chose to stick to bulletin boards and Compuserve). That's more or less the stage of development AI is at now. Imagine it in thirty years' time, and whether you like it or not, it WILL be around. It's silly to write it off now, with a dismissive wave of the hand. Of course it'll be used for bad things. Everything does. But can you imagine your life without computers and the Internet, warts and all? I was expecting a more thoughtful analysis of a very complex topic.
My search engine is DuckDuckGo. I've never had a problem with it. I'm not on social media, so I won't be scammed there. I have a dumb phone. I never click on anything that I suspect and I suspect a lot of things. I don't open email from senders I don't know. I really don't care what AI does. My one concern is using it for medical diagnoses. That could be a real mess.
What you've observed here Ted is literally the Gartner Hype curve in action. BING AI and CHATGPT have hit the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" and are currently heading for the "Trough of Disillusionment".
I spent 30-years in IT including spells in corporate strategy at two of the biggest IT companies, I certainly am not willing to write it off at all. I for one use BING Chat everyday for factual research, it's so much better than a search engine. What most people don't realize is it's great at recursive questioning and provides clickable references for it's claims. Eventually Microsoft will screw the pooch trying to make money from it with sponsored links, ads etc. but right now it's without a doubt the fastest way to factually find details on something even when you get the question wrong, or it doesn't provide an answer with a response "I’m sorry but I couldn’t find any information on" - is way better than a search engine that returns 50-pages of nonsense.
I did this little demo for you :-)
https://markcathcart.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Ted-Ginola.jpg
Hmm...there is a simple reason why visits to ChatGPT have declined: it's called summer. If there is no pickup once school starts, I would be shocked. The fact that AI has been successful in improving the effectiveness of scams, malware and cheating reveals that the problem is not the technology but the adopters. If AI were all hype, then it couldn't scam, cheat or steal either. Fraudsters have a shorter feedback loop and and faster way to capitalise on the tech, so no surprise they're seeing success first. Maybe AI never fulfills its promise but I don't find the arguments in this article convincing.
I get the feeling that this tech is similar to the automobile, which was also a slow starter out of the gate. The blockbuster potential for AI is just too great to ignore. No one has found it yet. But the person or company that does is in for not just a huge payday, but at least a mention in history books. If, by then, history is permitted. I don’t, by the way, see AI as a good development for humanity...
My impression is that most of the hi-tech companies suffer from the psychiatric disorder of "over-valued idea"--much like our politicians!
Agree to all of this but the corporations are going to exploit AI. If you thought the surveillance was intrusive today just wait a bit. You haven’t seen anything yet.
ChatGPT and the likes are not truly AI. They’re just scraping the garbage on the internet and serving it back. What can we expect to see, looking in a dirty mirror?
AI is the new FTX. How much pension fund money will VCs light on fire chasing this hype cycle? https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/sequoia-ftx-214million-disaster
Saw many examples of AI high school football recaps over the past few days. Looks like Gannett has contracted with a company. Large market newspapers printing this garbage (or at least posting on their websites) The recaps were hideous.
Ah! The sweet smell of being right from the beginning.
AI is a perpetual 20-year problem: the solution is forever just twenty years away.
On the other hand, someone defined AI as "anything a computer can't already do" where anything that was previously defined as "AI" becomes just "expected computer behavior" as soon as it's possible.
S Curves are everywhere! Long live the king!
If you're looking to be the first to publish a "hot take" about the overblown AI hype, then maybe you did it. But otherwise, um, no. *Of course* there's going to be a backlash to the massive hype that cannot possibly sustain itself. But then there's going to be slow growth, of the type that doesn't make the sensationalist headlines every day. Way too much money and talent is being invested for it to be otherwise. Forget your S curves. Instead, try Googling "hype cycle" to see what actually happens with technology products and services. And then try coming back to this in a year or two when it didn't collapse after all.