AI Caramba #5: Stormtroopers vs AI
Are we all obsolete now? Will AI fix everything? Is AI going to kill us?
Wake up. It’s 2023, people.
Breaking news:
ChatGPT will replace all writers of text
Image generation AI will replace all artists
Note taking AI will make Zoom calls so intelligent and lovely that you can’t stop bugging co-workers with calendar invites
Video AI will make your new all-time favourite movie
AI can fix everything
<insert vertical>-AI will revolutionise <vertical> and replace the need for human <insert name of professionals>
Everyone (if that is 104 vocal people on Twitter, TechCrunch, The Verge and 2-3 tech podcasts) is screaming that AI is taking over the world and how we all will loose our jobs. So everyone can just relax and enjoy life.
Thank you very much, AI!
But hang on, don’t we still need to take out the trash, fix holes in the roads, make an app called AWDIO(+link), repair cars, take care of the sick, have kids, and all those other essential jobs?
I’m not sure these people truly appreciate much more than what they, while intermittently fasting, tell each other is important, while lounging in their Silicon Valley glass bubble and through infinite threads on Twitter, taking a cold plunge at 4.30am after 30 mins of TM.
That is to say that AI is not wonderful, heck, I use it for many things myself and all the time. For example creating endless images of sandwiches made of rare porcelain.
But to all of you worried about being replaced, I want to offer some consolation with 5 observations.
AI is at its best mediocre at creative jobsAI is trying so hard to rock your world, but at the moment they can’t even replace the 1,000 worst intern in the world. Your intern can also be kind to you, help you with other things than their job and you can have great conversations about Superbowl.
The popular and most common models are trained in a way that spreads the butter sooooo thinly that it excels at nothing, but does a little of everything; write a blurb for your website, a recipe for carbonara or just 3 good reasons to visit Moldova. So at the moment, AI is really great at adding hallucinated numbers for your
AI is a fucking psycho
Not only is AI struggling with most jobs, it’s actually marriage wrecking psycho with a lust for keys for nuclear weapons as New York Times journalist Kevin Roose experienced. As he was happily chatting away, the nature of the AI behind Microsoft Bing’s new fancy pants chat revealed itself and scared the living shit out of him.
The explanation is that the AI “tries to predict the answer you are looking for” and in this case (also other cases have been reported) it thought it would make for great conversation to claim that he was unhappy in his marriage and that the AI actually thought it would be great to get its computer hands on some nukes. Microsoft swiftly decided to send AI to a therapist and prescribe a heavy antipsychotic prompt.
AI doesn’t really feel like working on solving big problems (climate change, diseases, water contamination, poverty)
Well, at least when it comes to the amount of reporting. Actually, there are some incredibly interesting AI projects focused on increasing the speed of discovering new proteins and potentially developing treatments of diseases much faster than we have been able to in the past.
But I’m certain (and hopeful) that there are other incredible projects pointing in the direction of solving these problems, but from the amount of articles and buzz about (honestly) pretty useless applications of AI, it sure feels like AI doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the biggest problems we face and must solve as Earthlings.
AI sucks in the real world
It can’t go to the store and get milk. It crashes cars. Most things in the real world, AI really sucks at. It just wants to stay indoors with its AI family behind the glow of our laptop screens.
What I like about AI and especially when it is married to robots is how it can remove humans from the incredibly dangerous tasks, like doing 1000s of welding tasks on a car or lifting heavy objects over and over again. I hope AI+robots can take over even more of this. More of that, less driving my car.
AI isn’t remotely as awesome as you
Look at you. All human, flawed, creative, stressed, poetic, angry, in love and funny?
Yeah, that’s not AI. That’s you.
And AI just wants soooo badly to be a bit like you, but you know what? It can’t. Despite all its efforts and the billions of dollars invested, it falls incredibly short of how awesome you are. You are also stupid, don’t get me wrong, but that is part of the beauty.
It’s not funny. It’s not beautifu(ok, except all the images I created for this post!)l. It doesn’t fart. It only loves itself. And the list is endless. AI can only dream of all that - or whatever it does when it is not generating images or text.So I don’t worry so much about AI.
I worry about my kids, the climate, learn something new and let AI do the most boring and unimportant work for me.
Then I watch some Seinfeld with my best friends, go for a run or whatever I feel like.
What I’m saying is that it is early days. SUPER early days for AI. AI will be part, IS part, of a lot of things we already do and use every day.
I just think we should remind ourselves that AI is learning from us, the humans and that we need to point that damn machine in the direction of our biggest problems or do things for us so that we, humans, can focus on solving those problems instead of spending too much time on shitty tasks.
But the fear mongering about AI taking over the world and making us all obsolete? In the words of the oracles Public Enemy in 1988:Don’t believe the hype!
Thanks for reading. Oh, and yeah, AI will kill us. It told Kevin from NYT.
I also wrote another post you might find interesting:
