The devil went down to Silicon Valley; he was looking for a soul to steal. But he ended up taking a consulting gig with Palantir instead.
In the meantime, the algorithms in charge of punishing the wicked now. And these days the sign above hells gates reads Abandon Open Source, with an Amazon smile beneath the print.
Those condemned to an eternity of pain and suffering in the modern era are now forced to read the same five AI articles over and over.
Which kind of sounds like what its like to read tech news back here on Earth anyway. Dont believe me? Lets dive in.
No it wasnt. These articles usually involve a text generator such as OpenAIs GPT-3. The big idea is that the journalist will either pay for access or collaborate with OpenAI to get GPT-3 to generate text from various prompts.
The journalist will ask something silly like can AI ever truly think like a human? and then GPT-3 will use that prompt to generate a specific number of outputs.
Then, the journalists and editors go to work. Theyll pick the best responses, mix and match sentences that make the most sense, and then discard the rest.
This is the editorial equivalent of taking the collected works of Stephen King, copy/pasting a single sentence from each book into a word doc, and then claiming youve published an entirely new book from the master of horror.
In hell, you stand in a long line to read hyperbolic, made-up stories about AIs capabilities. And, as your ultimate punishment, you have to rewrite them for the next person in line.
I remember reading about an early funding round for an AI company called PredPol. It had raised several million dollars to develop an AI system capable of predicting crime before it happens.
Im sorry. Perhaps you didnt read that right. It says: predicting crime before it happens.
This is something thats impossible. And I dont mean technologically impossible, I mean not possible within the realms of classical or quantum physics.
You see crime isnt generated from hotspots like mobs spawning in an MMO every 5 minutes. A first year statistics or physics student understands that no amount of historical data can predict where new crimes will occur. Mostly because the past isnt literally prescient. But, also, its impossible to know how many crimes have actually been committed.Most crimes go unreported.
PredPol cant predict crime. It predicts arrests based on historical data. In other words: PredPol tells you where youve already arrested people and then says try there again. Simply put: it doesnt work because it cant work.
But it raised money and raised money until one day it grew into a full-grown company worth billions all for doing nothing.
In hell, you have to read funding stories about billion-dollar AI startups that dont actually do anything or solve any problems. And youre not allowed to skim.
Theres variations on this one Googles AI demonstrates a 72% reduction in racial bias, Amazons new algorithm is 87% better at spotting and removing Naziproducts from its store front and theyre all bunk.
Big techs favorite PR company is the mainstream media.
Facebook will, as a hypothetical example, say something like our new algorithms are 80% more efficient at finding and removing toxic content in real time, and thats when the telephone game starts.
Youll see half a dozen reputable news outlets printing headlines that basically say Facebooks new algorithms make it 80% less toxic. And thats simply not true.
If a chef were to tell you theyve adopted a new cooking technique that results in 80% less fecal matter being detected in the soup theyre about to serve, you probably wouldnt think that was a good thing.
Increasing the efficiency of an algorithm doesnt result in a unilateral increase in overall system efficiency. And, because statistical correlations are incredibly difficult to make when you dont have access to the actual data being discussed, the people writing up these stories are simply taking the big tech marketing teams word for it.
In hell, you have to read articles about big tech companies that only have quotes from people who work at those companies and statistics that cant possibly be verified.
Weve all read these stories. They cover the biggest issues in the world of AI as if theyre writing about the weather.
The story will be something like Clearview AI gets new government contracts, and the coverage will quote a politician, the CEO of Clearview, and someone representing law enforcement.
The gist of the piece will be Ethics aside, law enforcement agencies say these products are invaluable.
And then, way down towards the end of the article, youll see the obligatory studies have shown that facial recognition struggles to identify some faces. Experts warn against the use of such technologies until this bias can be solved.
In hell, every AI article you read starts with the sentence this doesnt work as well for Black people or women, but were just going to move past that like it isnt important.
My least favorite AI article is the ones that profess to tell me what non-experts think.
These are the articles with headlines like Study: 80% of people believe AI will be sentient within a decade and 75% of moms think Alexa is a danger to children.
These studies are typically conducted by consultancy companies that specialize in this sort of thing. And usually theyre not out conducting studies on the speculation that some journalist will find their workappealing. They get paid to do their research.
And by research, I mean: sourcing answers on Amazons Mechanical Turk or giving campus students a gift card to fill out a survey.
These studies are often bought and paid for ahead of time by an AI company as a marketing tool.
These pitches, in my inbox, usually look something like Hey Tristan, did you hear that 92% of CEOs dont know what Kubernetes is? Are you interested in this exclusive study and a conversation with Dr Knows Itall, founder of the Online School For Learning AI Good? They can speak to the challenges of hiring quality IT talent.
Can you spot the rubbish?
In hell, the algorithm tells you that you can read articles covering actual computer science research as soon as you finish reading all the vapid survey pieces on AI published in mainstream outlets.
But youre never done are you? Theres always another. What do soccer dads think about gendered voice assistants? What percentage of people think data is a character on Star Trek? Will driverless cars be a reality in 2022? Heres what Tesla owners think.
Yes, AI hell is a place filled with horrors beyond comprehension. And, just in case you havent figured it out yet, were already here. This article has been your orientation.
Now if youll just sign in to Google News, well get started (Apple News is currently not available in hell due to legal issues concerning the App Store).
See the original post here:
The 5 articles you read in AI hell - The Next Web
- Classic reasoning systems like Loom and PowerLoom vs. more modern systems based on probalistic networks - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Using Amazon's cloud service for computationally expensive calculations - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Software environments for working on AI projects - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New version of my NLP toolkit - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Semantic Web: through the back door with HTML and CSS - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Java FastTag part of speech tagger is now released under the LGPL - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Defining AI and Knowledge Engineering - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Great Overview of Knowledge Representation - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Something like Google page rank for semantic web URIs - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My experiences writing AI software for vehicle control in games and virtual reality systems - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The URL for this blog has changed - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- I have a new page on Knowledge Management - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- N-GRAM analysis using Ruby - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Good video: Knowledge Representation and the Semantic Web - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Using the PowerLoom reasoning system with JRuby - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Machines Like Us - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- RapidMiner machine learning, data mining, and visualization tool - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- texai.org - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- NLTK: The Natural Language Toolkit - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My OpenCalais Ruby client library - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Ruby API for accessing Freebase/Metaweb structured data - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Protégé OWL Ontology Editor - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New version of Numenta software is available - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Very nice: Elsevier IJCAI AI Journal articles now available for free as PDFs - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Verison 2.0 of OpenCyc is available - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What’s Your Biggest Question about Artificial Intelligence? [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Minimax Search [Knowledge] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Decision Tree [Knowledge] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- More AI Content & Format Preference Poll [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New Planners Solve Rescue Missions [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Neural Network Learns to Bluff at Poker [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Pushing the Limits of Game AI Technology [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Mining Data for the Netflix Prize [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Interview with Peter Denning on the Principles of Computing [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Decision Making for Medical Support [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Neural Network Creates Music CD [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- jKilavuz - a guide in the polygon soup [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial General Intelligence: Now Is the Time [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Apply AI 2007 Roundtable Report [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What Would You do With 80 Cores? [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Software Finds Learning Language Child's Play [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial Intelligence in Games [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial Intelligence Resources - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Alan Turing: Mathematical Biologist? - April 25th, 2012 [April 25th, 2012]
- BBC Horizon: The Hunt for AI ( Artificial Intelligence ) - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Can computers have true artificial intelligence" Masonic handshake" 3rd-April-2012 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Kevin B. Korb - Interview - Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity p3 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence - 6 Month Anniversary - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Science Breakthroughs - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Hitman: Blood Money - Part 49 - Stupid Artificial Intelligence! - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Research Members Turned Off By HAARP Artificial Intelligence - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence Lecture No. 5 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 2012 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Charlie Rose - Artificial Intelligence - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Expert on artificial intelligence to speak at EPIIC Nights dinner - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Filipino software engineers complete and best thousands on Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Course - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Vodafone xone™ Hackathon Challenges Developers and Entrepreneurs to Build a New Generation of Artificial Intelligence ... - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Rocket Fuel Packages Up CPG Booster - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- 2 Filipinos finishes among top in Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence course - May 5th, 2012 [May 5th, 2012]
- Why Your Brain Isn't A Computer - May 5th, 2012 [May 5th, 2012]
- 2 Pinoy software engineers complete Stanford's AI course - May 7th, 2012 [May 7th, 2012]
- Percipio Media, LLC Proudly Accepts Partnership With MIT's Prestigious Computer Science And Artificial Intelligence ... - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Google Driverless Car Ok'd by Nevada - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Moving Beyond the Marketing Funnel: Rocket Fuel and Forrester Research Announce Free Webinar - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Rocket Fuel Wins 2012 San Francisco Business Times Tech & Innovation Award - May 13th, 2012 [May 13th, 2012]
- Internet Week 2012: Rocket Fuel to Speak at OMMA RTB - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- How to Get the Most Out of Your Facebook Ads -- Rocket Fuel's VP of Products, Eshwar Belani, to Lead MarketingProfs ... - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- The Digital Disruptor To Banking Has Just Gone International - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- Moving Beyond the Marketing Funnel: Rocket Fuel Announce Free Webinar Featuring an Independent Research Firm - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- MASA Showcases Latest Version of MASA SWORD for Homeland Security Markets - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- Bluesky Launches Drones for Aerial Surveying - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence: What happened to the hunt for thinking machines? - May 25th, 2012 [May 25th, 2012]
- Bubble Robots Move Using Lasers [VIDEO] - May 25th, 2012 [May 25th, 2012]
- UHV assistant professors receive $10,000 summer research grants - May 27th, 2012 [May 27th, 2012]
- Artificial intelligence: science fiction or simply science? - May 28th, 2012 [May 28th, 2012]
- Exetel taps artificial intelligence - May 29th, 2012 [May 29th, 2012]
- Software offers brain on the rain - May 29th, 2012 [May 29th, 2012]
- New Dean of Science has high hopes for his faculty - May 30th, 2012 [May 30th, 2012]
- Cognitive Code Announces "Silvia For Android" App - May 31st, 2012 [May 31st, 2012]
- A Rat is Smarter Than Google - June 5th, 2012 [June 5th, 2012]