When I read about AI in the news, and this includes social media, I am troubled by the way it is often reported. Many articles are written citing research that, for all intents and purposes, are de minimis examples used in many cases for the purpose of attracting funding or, if you are a content creator, more followers.
These articles often don’t prove or demonstrate that AI is better, and neither is the research upon which the articles are based. The research more often than not serves to provide examples of where AI “might” or “could” be better under very specific use cases and caveats. There is nothing wrong with that.
However, we need to be mindful that there is a significant gap between the research and the conjectures being made by others.
The AI hype machine is definitely operating on all cylinders. Many conjectures are often stated as bold claims such as: “LLMs are sufficiently creative that they can beat humans at coming up with models of the world.”
Is that what we understand generative AI is - creative?
Or this one, “a sufficiently advanced AI system should be able to compose a program that may eventually be able to predict arbitrary human behaviour over arbitrary timescales in relation to arbitrary stimuli.”
What does that even mean?
The claim that AI should be able to generate a program capable of predicting human behaviour based on arbitrary stimuli is a bold claim and one that strongly suggests that humans are mechanistic in nature.
Instead of elevating artificial intelligence, human nature is reduced to the level of the machines on which AI is built. Is that what we believe or want?
As professionals, we need to be critical when it comes to AI, which does not mean negative, of what is published.
We must dig deeper to help separate hype from reality. This will not change the level of hype being created. However, it will help your clients and profession better navigate the AI landscape.
Time for professionals to be AI Mythbusters!
