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Logbook entry #9 - The AI hype

 Logbook entry #9 - The AI hype

Even remotely reading tech and finance news these days, one inevitably stumbles upon some news piece about Artificial Intelligence. The piece itself often deals with topics of immediate impact like ChatGPT board politics, NVIDIA stock prices and Apple AI strategy. Occasionally, the news are about a specific new AI application that promises to solve important world problems. However, more often than not the news focus on the potential destructive effect of AI ranging from deep fakes and labour displacement up to MATRIX and Terminator style world domination.

I of course understand that these are really catchy topics that people want to read about. What annoys me is the clear lack of technological understanding, even to a basic extent. There are no definitions about what AI is or actual explanations of how it works. In fact, most of what we usually call AI these days are elaborate Machine learning models. This means pattern recognition machines, that after been fed with lots of human input (e.g. texts) they learn to isolate and repeat specific parts.

Thus the current AI paradigm is inherently unable to "think" or have "consciousness". It is a glorified regurgitation machine that feeds us back the by-products of our culture. It is intrinsically incapable of solving the problems of most companies, replacing any job that needs some level of creativity and couldn't even think of replacing humanity. All those scenarios about whole departments being wiped are gross exaggerations: even repetitive and defined tasks as accounting will at least need some human guidance.

What isn't being reported as often however is the massive costs of those AI tools to our societies. The enormous amounts of energy they require to be operated or their impact to human creation and copyrights. These are serious topics that need to be discussed more.

This catchy misunderstanding unfortunately plagues all science journalism topics including space exploration, physics and medicine. Such journalistic practices unfortunately feed in to the paranoia and only create less informed readers. I think it is high time to redefine what journalism means and to require broader levels of education, so even complex topics can be put into perspective. For this to work however, also the incentives to news companies and the regulation framework needs to change. Let's also read more about that for a change!



Comments

  1. HipthiJuly 26, 2024 at 5:06 AM

    After reading your publication of the 21/7, I couldn't agree more,as far as the role of journalisme..
    It seems to be a part of many misunderstandings or manipulations of
    humans in modern society..

    ReplyDelete

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