aifaq.wtf

I posted this instead of the article itself because maybe a discussion is better than a press release.

Amazon started using AI for support a while back. The only time I've had to interact with it: it asked the right questions, came to the appropriate course of action, told me the correct things, and then did the exact opposite on the backend which then required me to track down an actual human (quickly successfully I might add) to fix it.

And everyone's dream:

I pray for the day I can get an LLM representing a bank with apparent authority to negotiate financial arrangements.

A loooong discussion about whether AI is a wealth concentrator or a distributor. Original link to (only slightly related) blog post here, top comment:

AI will have on artists the same impact that Spotify had on the music industry that is, it will kill any revenue flow for anyone outside of the publishers and big artists/players.

The 900k isn't quite accurate – according to one of the replies Netflix likes to inflate your "income" by including stock and the infinite amounts of projected growth they'll have.

Sigh.

One of the three people familiar with the product said that Google believed it could serve as a kind of personal assistant for journalists, automating some tasks to free up time for others

This is always the line. It generally isn't what we get, though. Instead we get people fired based on the promise of AI-generated content. When someone gives me concrete examples of a journalist saving time I'll be happy, but until then it's just a veneer.

I'd also like to draw attention to the title: "Google Tests A.I. Tool That Is Able to Write News Articles." There's no reason to take this at face value when we've seen time and time again that even in the best case these tools don't have what it takes to execute anything resembling accurate journalism. I'd believe Google says it can write news articles, but there are only one or two bones in my body that have any faith in that statement.

There's plenty of actual human-powered evil in the world at the moment. We can be worried about the AI stuff, but it's the human behind the curtain that we should keep our eyes on. Even when it's noble noble governments just looking for efficiency increases.

The part everyone is especially loving is this:

"Surveying the AI’s responses for misleading content should be “based on your current knowledge or quick web search,” the guidelines say. “You do not need to perform a rigorous fact check” when assessing the answers for helpfulness."

Which, against the grain, I think might be perfectly fine. Your model is based on random information gleaned from the internet that may or may not be true, this is the exact same thing. Doing any sort of rigorous fact-checking muddies the waters of how much you should be trusting Bard's output.

Read the thread, there are a lot lot lot of useful links in there. I won't even put them here because there are so many (...and Twitter has better previews).

I love fast.ai but this is an incredibly silly argument against regulation.

But if AI turns out to be powerful, the proposal [for regulation] may actually make things worse, by creating a power imbalance so severe that it leads to the destruction of society.

My ears cannot possibly perk up any higher. So severe it leads to the destruction of society? Thanks for the warning, bub. It then goes on to talk about all of the underhanded elements of society that develop their own evil AI models while we sit around lamely hamstrung by things like "laws" and "ethics."

But those with full access to AI models have enormous advantages over those limited to “safe” interfaces.

And those needing full access can simply train their own models from scratch, or exfiltrate existing ones through blackmail, bribery, or theft.

"If we regulate AI only the bad guys will have AI," never heard anything like that before.

Rest of World has been doing some great work on AI lately. This is an especially excellent piece because it isn't about the traditional "here are the people doing the behind the scenes work" that's been so common when talking about not-America – instead, it's about the people who have been displaced by or are using AI in places like Mexico and Lagos.

Really really good read. Shows the difference between human- and AI-generated work, how the tools are used, all the details you could want. I don't know if it really deserves the #dystopia tag, but business is business.