WIRED article forecasting the generative AI bubble will burst in 2025. This is more optimistic than my own expectations, but if WIRED are printing it, it's the direction sentiment in Silicon Valley is running in.
(Hint: there's gold in AI, but it's in *analytical* AI, aka big data, not stochastic parrot bullshit.)
wired.com/story/generative-ai-โฆ
Generative AI Still Needs to Prove Its Usefulness
The hype is fading, and people are asking what generative artificial intelligence is really good for. So far, no one has a decent answer.Gary Marcus (WIRED)
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Profane tmesis
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Gary Marcus has been banging this drum since 2016 (when it we were still calling it deep learning).
This is his grift, he just predicts the end times for whatever flavour of AI is most popular, with zero insight in the technology or the industry.
For some reason people keep falling for it. Even Wired, apparently.
Charlie Stross
in reply to Profane tmesis • • •@ptmesis It's so very obviously a market bubble. Generative AI makes for amusing toys but it's fundamentally not conscious or aware in any wayโso its answers veer towards "plausible bullshit" rather than "meaningtful".
Which is why spicy autocomplete gets you results like this screencap ...
Meanwhile using non-generative tools for spotting cancer in breast scans seems great, but you can't milk gullible non-techie investors of billions that way.
Sarah Brown
in reply to Charlie Stross • •@Charlie Stross @Profane tmesis a year ago everyone on Internet forums was all, โletโs ask ChatGPT!โ
And now when someone posts a GPT response, the answers are always, โwhy did you post this? That thing liesโ
Gives me hope.
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in reply to Sarah Brown • • •now publishers - SpiNNaker: A Spiking Neural Network Architecture
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caranea
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •@goatsarah @ptmesis
The trend that many unusual, fascinating, and beautiful things, in particular images, are more and more assumed to be AI generated by default is disconcerting. The dilution of the human sense of wonder is not only sad, but risks undermining our ability to be inquisitive, to seek out new knowledge and ideas.
Couple that with these systems being very good and creating an illusion of understanding and being able to reason, and I can't help but worry for the future.
Profane tmesis
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •That wasn't my point. My point is that Marcus specifically has been consistently wrong, and I recommend ignoring his predictions.
There are plenty of things wrong with AI, but there are grifters on both sides.
Nazo
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Charlie Stross
in reply to Nazo • • •@nazokiyoubinbou I can see one viable use for generative-AI: procedurally generated content in games. (Eg. to allow dialog with NPCs.) In that context, "hallucinations" may be a feature, not a bug.
That is NOT sufficient to justify OpenAI's $80Bn valuation, though.
Nazo
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •There is actually a mod for Skyrim that uses a LLM for generating speech for people if you talk to them (intended primarily for use in VR so you can just walk around talking, but it can be used outside of it too.) It's actually really cool even though it gets a bit weird at times (it needs more context generated telling it what to actually do properly. For example, you can talk to the dog or the chicken and a male nord voice talks back, lol.)
It absolutely can work if done right!
xs4me2
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •bbbhltz
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Maria Langer | ๐ ๐ฌ โ๏ธ๐ฅ๏ธ
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •DrWhosit
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Nemo
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •I don't think there's gold on big data either. There's marginal gold, small optimisation of complex processes, marginally improved margins...
All worth trillions, but hard to extract trillions.
catdad76
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •GhostOnTheHalfShell
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •those data centers do have real application however, for pervasive surveillance and drone swarm kill-nets. Itโs automated surveillance and military power.
Itโs perfect for a band man-gods living in their right wing libertarian utopia of a patchwork of city states, built on the ashes of nations. They would maintain absolute control with their automated monopoly on violence.
Ichinin โ ๐ฏ๐
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •I haven't seen any big benefits for "AI" in analysis at all, only heard lots of promises that turn out to be complete shit.
The only thing i've seen that is useful is generation of data, like videos, images etc. Will do wonders for computer games and films, but nothing for the field i'm in (Cyber Security).
People say that it is good at summarising stuff, but it still introduce stuff that isn't in it, and that turn analytics into untrustworthy shit.
edition.cnn.com/2024/12/19/medโฆ
Carnildo
in reply to Ichinin โ ๐ฏ๐ • • •@Ichinin The broken promises I've been hearing are about using *generative* AI to perform analysis -- which, no surprise, it's spectacularly bad at.
Meanwhile, I can go on Github and freely download a ML-based porn filter, or a program that can sort my photos by subject matter, or any number of other purpose-built tools. It turns out that once you stop trying to make dovetail joints with a hammer, ML can work pretty well. It just doesn't make headlines.
Charlie Stross
in reply to Carnildo • • •noplasticshower
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Alex Russell
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Oskar
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Lyle Solla-Yates
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •JW Prince of CPH, Radicalized
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Emma Stamm
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Galad
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Mitch Wagner
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •GenAI is a bubble like the World Wide Web in the 90s mobile in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Extremely useful technology that has been overhyped.
It's not a bubble in the way that blockchain and crypto are bubbles โ technology that is *at best* of extremely limited use, that is ridiculously overhyped.
Will AI achieve true personhood or superinteligence? My answer today is the same as it would have been in 1994: I guess so? Probably? Maybe tomorrow, or in a thousand years, or never.
Kierkrampusgaanks regretfully
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Dana Fried
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •LLMs are good for specific tasks, especially if they can be tailored for the application and the model minified enough to run efficiently (ideally locally).
But yeah, analysis of big data has always been where the power is at. Classifiers FTW.
Simon Lucy
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Peter Kisner โ
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •"there's gold in AI, but it's in *analytical* AI, aka big data, not stochastic parrot bullshit."
This has basically been my outlook for awhile as a layman observer.
A couple Science Magazine articles months back suggested that there *could* be use for AI in finding patterns worthy of further (human) investigation and analysis (e.g. chemical structure combinations more likely to be functional in drug discovery).
Human 3500
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Simon Carswell
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Dan Shuman
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Desdinova
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Desdinova
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •But, I view GenAI as a toy. It's fun to make pictures using it, and that can do cool stuff like making a picture from Second Life (or The Sims) look near photographic (points to the left). And LLMs (which I run locally) can quickly make stuff like handouts for tabletop role playing games.
But people using it for purposes where quality actually matters makes no sense, given their well-know tendency to lie and double-down when called out on it.
ืื ื ืืื โข Hanan Cohen
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •On the cover of their December 1998 issue, the big story of Wired was "83 Reasons Why Bill Gates's Reign Is Over".
web.archive.org/web/2010082215โฆ
Wired 6.12: 83 Reasons Why Bill Gates's Reign Is Over
web.archive.orgCharlie Stross
in reply to ืื ื ืืื โข Hanan Cohen • • •@hananc Do you remember their Long Boom issue?
wired.com/1997/07/longboom/
Completely missed the dot-com crash, the election of George W. Bush, 9/11, the global war on terror, the Iraq war, the global financial crash of 2008, the Russian invasion of Crimea, the election of Donald Trump, and is it unfair to add a global pandemic on top?