From a Brave New World to Artificial Intelligence: Are We Living in the Future We Feared?

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“This topic is … likely to become more of a pressing question as technology advances further. It is of interest not only to people who are directly involved in AI research but also to mathematicians and scientists in other disciplines whose work and outlook are increasingly influenced by it.” - Challies

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dgszweda
Thu, 11/21/24 5:44 pm

As someone who is deep in this space, we are living in a world of AI over-hype. AI peaked on Gartner’s AI hype cycle around September of 2023. It is now entering into what is termed the Trough of Disillusionment. AI has promised but not really delivered. It hallucinates, it is not precise, it has significant challenges in completing many tasks. We are entering what is now termed an AI Winter. There is no new AI frameworks, most everyone is developing off of the OpenAI model. Not much innovation. OpenAI has ran out of data to consume as it has consumed the entire internet, and now it is turning to synthetic data using large swaths of people in places like Kenya. Reports are growing that question the value in the near term around AI. Microsoft is starting to receive pressure around their CoPilot AI technology. Varying degrees of value are being seen, with most saying it is not meeting expectations and that the cost doesn’t justify the value. Now you could argue that given enough time, it will be overcome. And that may be true. But we have a precursor to look at already to see what that looks like and it is Self-Driving Cars. It rolled out with great fanfare almost 10 years ago. Over the time it has gotten better, but it has not quite reached the state of general use. It is still plagued with its lack of accuracy and understanding of situations. There is no doubt it has gotten better, but the last 10% is a very large hill to climb.

We will see what the future holds, but today, AI delivers little promise and but shouts a lot of hype. That may be due to the fact that 100’s of billions of dollars have been poured into and hype is what is needed to recoup that money.