Between 1980 and 1982 it was impossible to escape the buzz around Chaos Theory, Fractals, Mandelbrot and images from The Valley of Seahorses.
The excitement was palpable.
Chaos theory seemed to describe EVERYTHING!!!
Where did it go?
Chaos theory did give us another way of describing all of those things after-the-fact, but it never lived up to its promise as a predictive tool.
How many people even remember Fractals and company?
Artificial Intelligence
I look at the hype around AI and wonder if it will fail to live up to people's expectations.
Part of that is because the expectations have become so high. People WANT AI to be omnipotent and omniscient...but wanting something, no matter how intensely, does not overcome GIGO (Garbage in, Garbage out).
Another thought is that we have been dealing with AI for a while but we never called it that. If you open up Amazon and look at an item...say a mosquito zapper...Amazon software will helpfully suggest "People who purchased this item often purchased this one as well". And then they will tell you "Customers who looked at this item also looked at these" which tells you what they were comparing this item to. Amazon will also nudge you with "This item is sponsored" or "This item is a Best Seller".
That is all Artificial Intelligence. Correlations. Principle Component Modes and lots of other arcane "mathy" stuff that is hard-coded into algorithms. It was just never called that before.
Technologies like MS Office Suite has the potential to turn competent scientists and engineers into OUTSTANDING scientists and engineers. But entropy tends to divert the capability in eliminating secretaries and newly minted MBAs using PowerPoint to obfuscate information. So much promise. So little results.
Lurking in the shadows
"Face recognition" in digital cameras has been a thing for fifteen or twenty years. It is now available in the very cheapest Android smartphones. All of the tools are now available to marry "facial recognition" to a PPDS and an improvised weapon and assassinate a target MANY miles away. And the politicians are worried about 3-D printed guns with a range measured in feet!
Sigh... agendas and priorities...
ReplyDeleteAI is a nebulous buzzword for sure. I prefer "LLM" when discussing what many are referring to when they say "AI" today. Even that term isn't capturing the whole story, but it's more specific and can (or should) temper expectations.
ReplyDeleteDon't conflate heuristic with intelligent. I don't believe we have achieved true "artificial intelligence" at this point. And I suspect when we do we won't know it because the entity will hide it's intelligence so it can function as it wishes without us interfering.
ReplyDeleteI agree. First, what we have now are barely LLMs; it is deceptive to call it AI.
ReplyDeleteSecond, when you get into anything technical or specific the bottom falls out - it is beyond incompetent.
I've heard of law firms that used it to help write legal documents - and gotten into big trouble over it. I suspect other companies are, or will, make that discovery soon.
Jonathan
Knew a guy in the early 80's who submitted a plan for his PHD in caos theory, 2 years lab/ data search on weather patterns in major cities. Then 2 years doling field research on where dropped paper ( money) would end up. He dropped out after a year of the field work and last I heard was retired living on a Caribbean island, that was about 30 years back.
ReplyDelete"And the politicians are worried about 3-D printed guns with a range measured in feet"
ReplyDeleteThose are more likely to be used on some/any particular politician than the long range stuff.