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Much of the current “AI generation” is driven by ideas explored and popularized in science-fiction novels, movies, TV shows, and comic books. The hype is overflowing, and so is some fear. On the one hand, AI fanatics want us to believe AI will solve all the world’s problems. (The naivete of this thinking is truly mind boggling, especially coming from billionaires who can influence much of society.) On the other hand, people (sometimes those same people, ironically) are concerned about AI going rogue and taking over the planet, turning against the human species that created AI.
Frankly, if you haven’t gathered by now, I’m not in either camp. However, there are some pros and some risks, particularly with the currently predominant approach AI developers are taking. Put simply, the current AI hype phase is based around throwing a ton of stuff together — as much as possible — and asking AI to spit out answers to questions. The AI sifts through all the slop rapidly, burning kWh after kWh of energy in the process, and figures things out via hyperspeed-paced pattern matching.
As one should not be surprised to find out, diving into a bunch of slop can lead to bringing a bunch of slop back out into the real world. Rather than giving us the perfect answer, sometimes the AI throws slop in our face. It may even make that slop look super authoritative and precise, despite providing an answer a crazy person could have tossed our way.
