You can call me AI

general topics
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Samuel L Jackson already offered up his voice to Alexa way back in 2019 so unfortunately they’re bound to get some takers who are looking to make some easy money (in the short term.) Hopefully most actors will understand that this isn’t in their long term interest.

I’m reminded of something I heard about the early days of the film industry when there were different contortionists or other specialy act performers who had made a living traveling to different venues for live performances. Many of them agreed to do their acts on film for a one-time fee, then suddenly found that their live acts were no longer in demand because anyone could go see the same thing at a nickelodeon theater or play it on a mutoscope for a penny.

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hedgehog-moss

I tried talking to an AI chatbot for the first time today because I was looking for book recs with quite specific criteria and I thought, maybe an algorithm can help, by combing through every library database on Earth to find exactly what I’m looking for? Can they do that now?

I explained to the AI what I was looking for and it gave me a list of 5 books, all of which I had read. I asked if it had any other titles and it gave me 5 more books, which I had also read.

I said I hadn’t enjoyed such-and-such books from its list, and mentioned a book I had enjoyed more, hoping to gradually orient it towards more accurate book recs.

The AI said “This book sounds good. I’m going to ask you for more recommendations and I’ll put them on my to-read list”

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…

The AI is now asking me for book recs. This is the opposite of why I’m here!!

Doggedly I rephrased my initial request, brought up some more books and said I was looking for something similar, and it gave me a new list of 5 titles. All of which I had read.

There are millions of books out there, please make an effort…?

I tried to encourage it by saying books 1 and 3 of its list sounded good and did it know of any more books like these? And it gave me another 5-book list—and I didn’t know any of them!!!

Victory!

I went on goodreads to look them up. And couldn’t find any of them. I tried google, and it didn’t know these books either.

… did the AI grow so desperate it invented some titles that sounded like what I wanted?

I went back to the chatbot and said, I can’t find these books anywhere, are you sure you didn’t invent them?

The AI said “…” for much longer than usual. Like, five minutes. In the meantime I texted a friend about all this and was like, is AI always this useless? Did I have too high expectations? And do they just make stuff up when they don’t have an answer? My friend said, “I can’t believe you’ve successfully crushed an AI’s will to live just by asking it to find books you haven’t already read.”

And then the AI came back to life and said, I didn’t invent them! These books are just quite obscure; better contact the author or publisher directly to find information about them.

Okay, but do you have the books’ ISBN?

The AI then gave up on lying, hung its head and said, I do not have these books’ ISBNs and have not been able to find them with any search engine. I tried Google, the publisher’s websites, Goodreads and other online platforms, and I can find no trace of these books anywhere.

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At this point I felt like I was persecuting a poor, browbeaten algorithm, but I was a bit sad to learn that these cool-sounding titles were most likely imaginary, so I said “Why would you lie about this?” and the AI crashed. The answer I got was “An error has occurred; please try again later.”

…

Me: I’m going to go talk to a robot so I stop bothering my friends by constantly giving them & asking them for book recs!

The robot: Deactivates itself after talking about books with me for 5 minutes

#i’m glad i tried this once. my FOMO is over now

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Love the way Jago shreds the ai-generated script once it ends.

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Huh, that could annoy the shit out of sportsbook operators… hahahaha

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This is pretty similar to my experience. Because I’ve heard people say they can be helpful, I’ve been asking them to help with programming questions.

Most of the time, most of what they say is mostly right if the question was about something well documented.

But they always provide an answer, so that leaves a lot of space for bullshit.

If you call them out a few times on wrong answers, they eventually apologize and thank you for helping them “learn” not to answer questions with insufficient information…

ETA: the biggest benefit I’ve been able to see is that it can be faster than search if the answer to the question is both well-documented and fairly obscure. My overall impression is that they’re generally not very useful. Especially given the carbon footprint and other harms.

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Hey… hasbro CEO…

Kenan Thompson No GIF by Saturday Night Live

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Jon Stewart Bullshit GIF by GIPHY News

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This was an overview for people who were unaware of AI (and the hype surrounding it) in general. What struck me was having Altman talk about the need for execs to take responsibility, the emphasis on the increasing pace of change in tech, Bill Gates talking about impact on jobs (10-20 years from now), and how the next generation will face a lot of challenges. :woman_shrugging:t4:

On the topic of crime and control of /dominance in tech, FBI Director Christopher Wray did a good job presenting threats from scammers and deepfake sextortionists to government surveillance. However, what continues to bother me is the media continuing to overlook how lack of oversight for solutions used by LEOs and governments right now are putting us at risk and violating our rights. There was only a segment about a case like this, with no answers provided to the questions raised by the victims about how the scammers got their data:

The special seemed to push the idea that AI is unregulated and uncontrollable, so we’d all better channel Bette Davis…

bette davis bumpy night GIF

…until things settle down. After all, we can compare AI development/control to how long it took governments to regulate cars and trucks. :roll_eyes: :woman_facepalming:t4:

Humor Boomer GIF

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Research shows more than 80% of AI projects fail, wasting billions of dollars in capital and resources: Report

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2680-1.html

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To be fair, isn’t it close to 80% in general, never mind AI?

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I dont know of other industries, but overall tech-sector-wise, it seems quite a figure;

over 80% of these AI projects will fail — which is twice the failure rate for non-AI technology-related startups

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It will be a more traditional for-profit company, though it will still have a non-profit division

anyone who did not see that coming for fucking years? a ridiculous shitshow, burning everything in its path.

A spokesperson only told Fortune that it remains “focused on building AI that benefits everyone”

go eat shit, altman, and leave the rest of us out of it.

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A division of Microsoft you say?

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2izsa3
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