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   Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Saturday, 21-Dec-2024 19:30:05 JST Charlie Stross

   WIRED article forecasting the generative AI bubble will burst in 2025. This is more optimistic than my own expectations, but if WIRED are printing it, it's the direction sentiment in Silicon Valley is running in.

   (Hint: there's gold in AI, but it's in *analytical* AI, aka big data, not stochastic parrot bullshit.)

   https://www.wired.com/story/generative-ai-will-need-to-prove-its-usefulness/

   • goatsarah likes this.
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     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Saturday, 21-Dec-2024 20:00:22 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • Profane tmesis

     @ptmesis It's so very obviously a market bubble. Generative AI makes for amusing toys but it's fundamentally not conscious or aware in any way—so its answers veer towards "plausible bullshit" rather than "meaningtful".

     Which is why spicy autocomplete gets you results like this screencap ...

     Meanwhile using non-generative tools for spotting cancer in breast scans seems great, but you can't milk gullible non-techie investors of billions that way.

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     Profane tmesis (ptmesis@writing.exchange)'s status on Saturday, 21-Dec-2024 20:00:23 JST Profane tmesis

     in reply to

     @cstross Gary Marcus has been banging this drum since 2016 (when it we were still calling it deep learning).

     This is his grift, he just predicts the end times for whatever flavour of AI is most popular, with zero insight in the technology or the industry.

     For some reason people keep falling for it. Even Wired, apparently.

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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Saturday, 21-Dec-2024 20:35:01 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Profane tmesis

     @cstross @ptmesis a year ago everyone on Internet forums was all, “let’s ask ChatGPT!”

     And now when someone posts a GPT response, the answers are always, “why did you post this? That thing lies”

     Gives me hope.

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     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Saturday, 21-Dec-2024 20:42:50 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • Nazo

     @nazokiyoubinbou I can see one viable use for generative-AI: procedurally generated content in games. (Eg. to allow dialog with NPCs.) In that context, "hallucinations" may be a feature, not a bug.

     That is NOT sufficient to justify OpenAI's $80Bn valuation, though.

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     Nazo (nazokiyoubinbou@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 21-Dec-2024 20:42:51 JST Nazo

     in reply to

     @cstross "Generative" "AI" is fun to mess with and can do some fun things, but it never really had any *true* usage. The inevitability of its failure as more and more began to realize its inability to meet its claims only surprised me in how long it has taken for investors to finally get tired of it. And it's really weird because it seems quite a lot of this has consisted of speculative VC trading and stuff. (I don't fully understand how that makes money, but it sure is screwing the world.)