AI Deez Nuts

I may be a little biased as ever since AI started becoming a real thing it seemed like for some reason the first thing people were thrilled about was vanquishing all writers, so it's kind of a little refreshing to read that maybe it's not the be-all end-all (yet, anyway) here:

But now, a year later, the question isn’t really whether A.I. is too smart and will take over the world. It’s whether A.I. is too stupid and unreliable to be useful. Consider this week’s announcement from OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, who promised he would unveil “new stuff” that “feels like magic to me.” But it was just a rather routine update that makes ChatGPT cheaper and faster.

It feels like another sign that A.I. is not even close to living up to its hype. In my eyes, it’s looking less like an all-powerful being and more like a bad intern whose work is so unreliable that it’s often easier to do the task yourself.  A.I. could end up like the Roomba, the mediocre vacuum robot that does a passable job when you are home alone but not if you are expecting guests.

I can 100% vouch for what this person's saying, based on my own experience at work:

I find that when I use A.I., I have to spend almost as much time correcting and revising its output as it would have taken me to do the work myself.

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “weren't you the lone genius who tried to warn us to not panic about China all the way back in 2010?"

Sigh. Yes I was, faithful readers, YES I was:

Yesterday while a guest on The David Magee Show I made an offhand remark re: us being terrified of China somehow taking over America via buying Google that went something like "China just bought it's first KFC three years ago; they're not buying Google tomorrow."

So of course my Chinatown Bus breaks down on the way back to NYC and we sit on the side of the highway for three hours. Why?

Ran out of gas.

Hmm.

On one hand, I feel the Universe spanked me a little. On the other, I feel our incessant demand to panic about what an amazing machine of monstrous efficiency China is needs to end. Turns out they might be as dumb as we are.