I’m old enough to remember when AI was a sci-fi trope of the ’80s, and not to brag, but it has given us little mental hideaways where we can retreat to escape the overwhelming onslaught of real-life AI we face every day.
From word processors to web browsers to digital assistants on your favorite devices, AI is becoming mainstream. There are no AI orphanages, as almost every company is racing to incorporate some kind of generative tool or chatbot into their products and services at an astonishing rate.
I’ve been immersed in most of it for the past year and a half, so I know all too well. Artificial Girlfriend Voice the clone Master of Laws in imitation of a deceased loved oneNeedless to say, I’m all about this super software, and I’m not some tinfoil-hatted tech naysayer who claims that everything is going to end badly, except that a lot of it… well, most of it is, anyway.
When you get a whiff of new car smell from certain services, it’s hard not to feel like this technology full of potential is being wasted on the wrong end, and in fact, most of what’s offered to us as consumers is counterintuitive at best and pointless at worst.
It’s not all bad
We live in the age of AI and we need to take advantage of this new technology at every opportunity. AI is here to simplify our lives, make our jobs easier and revolutionize the human-computer interface forever.
To be fair, none of this is impossible. I use generative AI every day. Through my interactions with Meta AI, Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses Or you can link up to ChatGPT and get recipe ideas, watchlist suggestions, and random answers to those “should-I-Google-it” questions you’ve had throughout the day.
Generative AI has given virtual assistants their most valuable update yet, delivering Hollywood-level performance in just a few years, and while it’s still a long way from being fully realized, it’s poised to change the way we all interact with our devices.
We tend to think of computers as boxes with screens. Some are small enough to fit in your pocket or on your wrist, but they all share roughly the same visual format. But the rise of AI-powered virtual assistants could usher in a sea change in the way we see and use our devices on a scale not seen since the invention of the mouse.
That’s very exciting to me, and I hope it’s the same for others, but after spending a fair bit of time with different AI models, tools, and services, I’m starting to get sick of AI, because a lot of the other stuff that comes with it is just complete nonsense.
But there are many negative aspects
Upgrades to virtual assistants are just one small part of the broader generative AI pool, and one of the most divisive elements of it. As the AI toolset expands, it will cover all sorts of creative tasks with highly divisive results.
Thanks to generative AI, we can make almost anything. And this is kind of a problem: making things is a very human trait, and not one we should easily abandon. Especially as concerns grow over disinformation, defamation, and the use of deepfake technology to embarrass others.
Can you believe that an article wasn’t written by ChatGPT? Are the incriminating images you saw online real? Or can you believe that a well-known recording of a famous voice wasn’t generated by AI? As models become more and more sophisticated, it will be difficult to know for sure. Even the best of us have a hard time spotting a fake. Just ask the judges of the Sony World Photography Awards. I didn’t realize that the winning photo was generated by AI..
When AI isn’t busy confounding and bewildering our confidence in reality, it is alienating us from any kind of human interaction. I’m not sure who comes up with the ideas behind what corporate AI offers, but who thought it was a good idea to “let an AI have conversations with other humans for us”?
Whether it’s summarizing emails or articles so you don’t have to directly engage with human thought, or replying to texts from loved ones on your behalf, there’s nothing more bleak and depressing than realizing that so much of generative AI exists as an obstacle preventing you from actually engaging with the world around you.
For a glimpse into the dystopia of generative AI, check out Google’s recent “Dear Sydney” AdvertisementIn the film, the father speaks passionately about his daughter’s love of running and her idol, American track and field star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
She wants to write Sydney a letter and tell her how much of an inspiration she is, but perhaps because she isn’t actually that inspired, she outsources the task to her father, who can’t spare even ten minutes to sit down with his daughter and think the task through, outsourcing it instead to Google Gemini, who only knows inspiration through dictionary definitions.
It was meant to be an uplifting commercial, an aspirational one even, and if that doesn’t highlight the glaring disconnect between the people making these things and the audience they’re trying to market to, I don’t know what does.
Sydney never got to see the AI-generated email, but in an ideal world, it would end up in a spam folder along with the dozens of other AI-generated spam emails that land in inboxes like mine every day.
Recently, I Posted by Joanna Maciejewska on X This is spot on: “I don’t want an AI to do the laundry or the dishes for the sake of doing the laundry or the dishes, I want an AI to do art or writing for the sake of doing art or writing.”
What do you think is the biggest problem with putting AI into everything? It’s the wrong direction. I don’t want an AI to do the laundry or the dishes so that I can do the laundry or the dishes, I want an AI to do the laundry or the dishes so that I can do art or writing.March 29, 2024
What’s even more confusing is the fact that the people who develop these tools don’t seem to be serious about their use either. At the same time, they tempt users to use them to create text, images, videos, music, etc. Develop other tools that can detect usage Then he scolds her for accepting the first offer.
In a recent analysis The Washington Post In a dataset of 200,000 English conversations collected from two ChatGPT-like AI chatbots, homework help and creative writing topped the list of use cases. OpenAI is hesitant to release its unique AI identifier for textThis could cause quite a few problems for ChatGPT subscribers.
These companies are well aware that producing text and media that could be deemed fraudulent or plagiarized is one of the key selling points of their large-scale language models: there’s a reason you can’t ask ChatGPT to write sexy prose, but it would have no problem writing an entire paper on the mating habits of wood frogs.
Outlook
With a few exceptions, I don’t see the pure benefits of generative AI as much as I once did (at least not in the way it’s currently being marketed to us as consumers). While generative AI can make virtual personal assistants more personal, it’s equally great at making the communications and contributions of real people more impersonal.
As things stand, we would be in trouble if we reduced the generative power of AI in our devices, systems and platforms by a small amount. If I don’t mind absorbing a bit of hypocrisy, keep the digital assistants but take back the rest.
On the one hand, we are supposed to fully embrace everything that comes with this new wave of generative AI tools. On the other hand, we are all but banned from using them. AI purveyors speak to us with double standards, talking about the benefits of this technology while scolding its applications. Get ChatGPT to help you with your homework? That’s plagiarism. Create AI-generated images? Welcome to the wonderful world of fabricating and promoting disinformation.
The only thing I really know for sure at this point is that with each passing month, I look at my ChatGPT subscriptions and wonder if this is truly the foundation of the next big thing in technology, or if it’s just a house of cards.
