[Dall-E2 prompt: oil painting of a cyberpunk dystopia] This semester, I’ll again be teaching my “History of the Digital Future” class. It’s kind of a guided tour through the WIRED archive. Working on syllabus modifications has left me thinking about how much has changed in the past year, and the risks we face in the years to come.
I do think, though, that too much is expected in this post from 'generative AI'. Generative AI has serious trouble with producing *meaningful* results. The results are well-structured and they fit the subject, but the results are not trustworthy, nor is there any sign that they will be. Reading OpenAI's article on GPT Few-shot learning (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.14165.pdf) for instance, it is clear that — other than producing language that is well-structured and 'fitting' — the results on being *trustworthy* in terms of content/meaning remain very poor. Generative AI seems magical, not because the systems are intelligent, but because we humans not that much. We are easily fooled/misled.
As someone who regularly relies on data, this rings so true to me: "...it’s more like only Google is positioned to know. Only Google has the capacity to know. But given the magnitude of their traffic, the company only notices those things that staff have been assigned staff to look for. "
Thank you for making that observation. It's not enough to have the data - someone has to actually be looking at and analyzing it. It always comes back to people's time and what they are focused on.
I definitely agree with the concern, but it's also exactly this space where there's room for legislative and regulatory intervention, to forestall the creation and perpetuation of (more) invincible black boxes. E.g., requiring companies to disclose, at least, the source of training data and incorporated data for any generative AI or algorithm - it would at least allow a way to think about backwards-engineering them, as well as a potential avenue for redress of IP or copyright claims from artists (a royalty structure like with radio play or songwriting credits seems at least plausible in this context).
Just wondering, is this sentence missing a word and meant to say “less transparent”?
“ AI could be the engine driving us towards a future where the main hubs of information and communication become transparent, less responsive, less manageable, and more socially harmful.”
Good stuff, as usual.
I do think, though, that too much is expected in this post from 'generative AI'. Generative AI has serious trouble with producing *meaningful* results. The results are well-structured and they fit the subject, but the results are not trustworthy, nor is there any sign that they will be. Reading OpenAI's article on GPT Few-shot learning (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.14165.pdf) for instance, it is clear that — other than producing language that is well-structured and 'fitting' — the results on being *trustworthy* in terms of content/meaning remain very poor. Generative AI seems magical, not because the systems are intelligent, but because we humans not that much. We are easily fooled/misled.
See https://ea.rna.nl/2022/12/12/cicero-and-chatgpt-signs-of-ai-progress/
As someone who regularly relies on data, this rings so true to me: "...it’s more like only Google is positioned to know. Only Google has the capacity to know. But given the magnitude of their traffic, the company only notices those things that staff have been assigned staff to look for. "
Thank you for making that observation. It's not enough to have the data - someone has to actually be looking at and analyzing it. It always comes back to people's time and what they are focused on.
I definitely agree with the concern, but it's also exactly this space where there's room for legislative and regulatory intervention, to forestall the creation and perpetuation of (more) invincible black boxes. E.g., requiring companies to disclose, at least, the source of training data and incorporated data for any generative AI or algorithm - it would at least allow a way to think about backwards-engineering them, as well as a potential avenue for redress of IP or copyright claims from artists (a royalty structure like with radio play or songwriting credits seems at least plausible in this context).
Just wondering, is this sentence missing a word and meant to say “less transparent”?
“ AI could be the engine driving us towards a future where the main hubs of information and communication become transparent, less responsive, less manageable, and more socially harmful.”
?