Let the AI Sludge Flow

We are told that Artificial Intelligence is either going to save the day by making everything more efficient, or it is the biggest threat to our existence. The truth is there is currently a lot of hype in the world of AI.

From Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - 2 stories on AI, and some info on CES, which starts Tuesday in Las Vegas.

First we have Daily News Stuff 3 Mercedonius 2023: But Four Times Edition

LLM stands for Large Language Model, and is the current "state of the art" for AI programs like ChatGPT, Google's Bard, and the rest.

The I in LLM stands for Intelligence. (Haxx)

In which the author makes the very good point that the output of LLMs like ChatGPT can be worse than useless, because the entire model is designed to produce output that is plausible rather true.

Which means that significant effort is required to show that the plausible output is nonsense and should not be adopted, just as is the case with university presidents.

In that article, people are using AI to submit "problem reports" to places like Hacker One - the software security clearing house. They are all bogus, but it takes valuable time to determine the level of bogosity.

Next up we have Daily News Stuff 2 Undecimber 2023: Let It Go Edition

AI is bad. Fortunately, it doesn't need to be good to replace journalists. (The New Republic)

That's not the point the author intended to make.  It is, however, the point he did make in this barely coherent blancmange of an article.

The New Republic author did have a point - AI generated sludge is beginning to bring certain systems to a halt...

Earlier this year, several science fiction magazines shut down their submissions after being overwhelmed with A.I.-written stories. The trend was possibly caused by TikTok hustle influencers claiming easy money in selling short stories. (Cue every short story writer laughing, crying, throwing up.) The editors said these stories were poor and unoriginal. Many had the same dull title: “The Last Hope.” But it didn’t matter that the stories were bad. Even if it takes only a few minutes to read and reject, a few minutes adds up when multiplied by a thousand or more.

So we will have 1000s of AI generated books, edited by AI... Is AI going to read them? People are not reading most of what was published in 2020.

But before we get there, your inbox will be filled with tens of thousands of AI generated emails. Never fear - AI will screen out the ones that are important, and maybe even answer some. So. Emails written by no one, read by no one, clogging up the system. Has no one heard of Denial of Service attacks? This is not progress.

And finally some info on what to expect from CES. Daily News Stuff 6 Gemini 2023: Eel Pastrami Edition

What to expect at CES 2024. (The Verge)

1. Overpriced crap.
2. Overpriced AI-infested crap.

That seems to cover it.