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AI crap - Why ML will make the world worse, not better (drewdevault.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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There is a machine learning bubble, but the technology is here to stay. Once the bubble pops, the world will be changed by machine learning. But it will probably be crappier, not better.

What will happen to AI is boring old capitalism. Its staying power will come in the form of replacing competent, expensive humans with crappy, cheap robots.

AI is defined by aggressive capitalism. The hype bubble has been engineered by investors and capitalists dumping money into it, and the returns they expect on that investment are going to come out of your pocket. The singularity is not coming, but the most realistic promises of AI are going to make the world worse. The AI revolution is here, and I don’t really like it.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Like the article itself mentions, it has immense potential for advertising, scams and political propaganda. I haven’t seen AI proponents offering meaningful rebuttals to that.

You won't get a direct rebuttal because, obviously, an AI can be used to write ads, scams and political propaganda.

But every day millions of people are cut by knives. It hurts. A lot. Sometimes the injuries are fatal. Does that mean knives are evil and ruining the world? I'd argue not. I love my kitchen knives and couldn't imagine doing without them.

I'd also argue LLMs can be used fact check and uncover scams/political propaganda/etc and can lower the cost of content production to the point where you don't need awful advertisements to cover the production costs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

This knife argument is overused as an excuse to take no precautions about anything whatsoever. The tech industry could stand to be more responsible about what it makes rather than shrugging it off until aging politicians realize this needs to be adressed.

Using LLMs to fact check is a flawed proposition, because ultimately what it provides are language patterns, not verified information. Nevermind its many examples of mistakes, it's very easy for them to provide incorrect answers that are widely repeated misconceptions. You may not blame the LLM for that, you can scratch that to generalized ignorance, but it still ends up falling short for this use case.

But as much as I dislike ads, that last one is part of the problem. Humans losing their livelihood. So, going back to a previous point, how does the lowered ad budget help anyone but executives and investors? The former ad workers get freed to do what? Because the ones focused on art or writing would only have a harder time making a career out of that now.