i despise #AI
but i heard an #NPR segment about a woman with throat cancer
before her voicebox was removed, she recorded hours of her voice
instead of a stephen hawking robot voice, with AI working on her recordings, she can talk like she always did, preserving her sarcasm, her inflections, etc
but like crypto, most of AI is taken over by #techBros who use it for vile purposes
but there is little good niches
As a fellow-AI-despiser, I'd note that the term "AI" has gotten so squishy it can slither out of any criticism.
What this woman is using probably isn't generative AI - it certainly doesn't need to be. Rather this could be achieved with a task-specific machine-learning algorithm.
An efficient algorithm for this would not be anything like generative AI. So I'd hold that there remain no legitimate uses for "AI" as that term is typically used.
Yup
"Wait so if you walk up to the glass door it senses you and automatically slides the door open? That's some cool #AI"
That's just about where we're at with the term nowadays
Say "AI" and there's a big jump in financial and popular interest, the technical details apparently don't matter
It's the plot of the first episode of the last Black mirror season (and probably a lot of good books): a "life-saving" tech could be equal to a slow and painful death by capitalism...
@benroyce We should always differ about what we speak. The word "AI" is much too often used for the silliest LLM or GPT while scientific AI (often machine learning) is e. g. used in science for enormous amounts of data like in climate science. AI can be so many different instruments! @maxleibman
@NatureMC @benroyce @maxleibman Yeah, the discussion doesn't really amount to much when it's just about "AI". There is no such tech, it's a marketing term.
It provides the planet-boiling LLM companies etc cover for their nefarious activities while damaging the reputations of genuinely useful tech.
Lots of stuff is being branded AI that already existed. Machine translations have existed for ages, human-like machine voices have been around for ages too. (Apparently Hawking deliberately continued with his primitive robot voice as a personal trademark rather than technical limitation.)
yeah unfortunately popular imagination has swallowed all use cases and technologies as "AI" and it just becomes a trigger
like many things, the problem is not the tech, it is us, what we do with it
with AI the real problem is that it is all centrally controlled by plutocrats to warp our minds and our politics, eventually, like with corporate social media
same as it's always been
There are literally zero artificial intelligences. First, there is no working definition of what intelligence even is. And for certain, there is not now nor has there ever been evidence that intelligence exists outside of a living organic meat body. None, ever. Zero.
There are LLMs, which are fascinating technologies, mostly wielded in public by criminal assholes.
There's a crazy number of "machine learning" technologies doing amazing things in aerial mapping, chemistry, metallurgy, image editing etc.
But there's no AIs.
And each use case or application needs to be assessed within its context(s).
All that said generalized A. I. does not exist, the criminals pushing chat programs on us and industry are scumbags and not one can be trusted, they have agendas unspoken.
Other than the criminal LLM purveyors each of the machine learning technologies needs separate assessment. Or doesn't, really, not by me.
There is a big difference between Chatbots and actual intelligence.
An example.
If you asked a Historian a question about Physics, while they may give you an opinion they would know when their knowledge is insufficient to give a reliable answer, and would tell you so.
If you asked them a question about History not only would they give you a reliable answer, they would assess your understanding of the question to provide an answer you can understand.
They would also know what they don't know and tell you so, and then tell you where to go for a good answer.
Asking a Chatbot is like asking the loudmouth stranger in the pub, regurgitating something they overheard once from someone's mate.
They speak with confidence on subjects they have no expertise in, and they don't know what they don't know.
Consolidating all ML/DL to AI is definitely gimmick to pass off LLMs as huge slabs of raw intelligence that can serve as everything machines. But I’ve been disappointed with some of the critical discourse around AI, which feels like schismogenesis.
Yes tech is not neutral. And the abuse used to create and promote “AI” sucks. But shaming people who find use for any ML tech (even LLMs) isn’t useful. Pushing for regulation, education, nudging people to alternatives matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schismogenesis
"Schismogenesis is a term in anthropology that describes the formation of social divisions and differentiation"
thank you, you taught me a new word
It's an extremely relevant term to describe some of the driver of not just our politics but cultural evolution. https://doctorow.medium.com/schizmogenesis-755bbb6a8515
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