https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/
'As someone known for my criticism of the previous deeply flawed technology to
become the subject of the tech world's overinflated aspirations, I have had
people express surprise when I've remarked that generative artificial
intelligence toolsa can be useful. In fact, I was a little surprised myself.
When I refer to "AI" in this piece, I'm mostly referring to the much narrower
field of generative artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs),
which is what people generally mean these days when they say "AI".
But there is a yawning gap between "AI tools can be handy for some things" and
the kinds of stories AI companies are telling (and the media is uncritically
reprinting). And when it comes to the massively harmful ways in which large
language models (LLMs) are being developed and trained, the feeble argument
that "well, they can sometimes be handy..." doesn't offer much of a
justification.
Some are surprised when they discover I don't think blockchains are useless,
either. Like so many technologies, blockchains are designed to prioritize a few
specific characteristics (coordination among parties who don't trust one
another, censorship-resistance, etc.) at the expense of many others (speed,
cost, etc.). And as they became trendy, people often used them for purposes
where their characteristics weren't necessary — or were sometimes even unwanted
— and so they got all of the flaws with none of the benefits. The thing with
blockchains is that the things they are suited for are not things I personally
find to be terribly desirable, such as the massive casinos that have emerged
around gambling on token prices, or financial transactions that cannot be
reversed.
When I boil it down, I find my feelings about AI are actually pretty similar to
my feelings about blockchains:
they do a poor job of much of what people try
to do with them, they can't do the things their creators claim they one day
might, and many of the things they are well suited to do may not be altogether
that beneficial. And while I do think that AI tools are more broadly useful
than blockchains, they also come with similarly monstrous costs.'
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
