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Keep your AI claims in check

ftc.gov

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Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#211

Post by esalman »

flatline wrote: post #36

“It’s an ambiguous term with many possible definitions.” “Does the product actually use AI at all? If you think you can get away with baseless claims…” Last I checked basic optimization techniques like simulated annealing and gradient descent - as well as a host of basic statistical tools - are standard parts of an introductory AI textbook. I’ve been on the receiving end of government agency enforcement (SEC) and it…

You can't use simulated annealing or gradient descent in your product and claim that you have built something intelligent. That would be laughable and validate these kind of messaging from the government.

AI is indeed a very ambiguous and subjectively defined term. In my own personal subjective opinion anything that does not have survival instinct is not remotely intelligent. By that definition unicellular organisms are more intelligent than a Tesla self driving vehicle.

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#212

Post by makeitdouble »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #97
threeseed wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not only appropriate but normal for regulators to try to affect behaviour without having to resort to enforcement activities. And an informal blog post in a less-legalese tone is a welcome way to do this.

There is no place to make informal threats in blog posts. It's not welcome at all. Nobody said anything about enforcement activities. The FTC have all kinds of mechanisms to make it known what the rules are. Like, the rules themselves, notices, policy statements, what amounts to position papers, etc. This isn't kindergarten and the citizens of the united states aren't children. Blog posts with friendly tone and threa…

> citizens of the united states aren't children

You can't put it in these terms and not have a moment to reflect on what's happening in our technology sphere. In particular in regard to CEOs of companies directly involved in these dubious AI claims where customer's life is on the line

I am deeply symapthic of the FTC's position in respect to trying to pass a message where common sense and formal communication have no effect.

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#213

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

andrewmutz wrote: post #199
SoftAnnaLee wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't disagree with the basic premise ("AI" as a specific falsifiable term is hard to pin down due to the ubiquity associated with the term); I do think there are specific cut-and-dry circumstances where the FTC could falsifiably prove your product does not include AI. For example, using an alternative of Amazon's Mechanical Turk to process data is clearly a case where your product does not use AI. Which I be…

It makes sense to protect investors from falsely investing in new "AI" tech that isn't really new AI tech, but why do consumers need to be protected? If a software product solves their problem equally well with deep learning or with a more basic form of computation, why is the consumer harmed from false claims of AI? To put it another way, if you found out that Chat GPT was implemented without any machine learning, a…

If you buy a painting advertised as a Monet, you are similarly not harmed if it wasn’t actually painted by Monet. But people like to know what they’re buying.

Less sarcastically, info about how a thing is made helps consumers reason about what it’s capable of. The whole reason marketers misuse the term is to mislead as to what it’s capable of.

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#214

Post by justinclift »

dizzydes wrote: post #100
gandalfgeek wrote: post #95

Just me, or does this read like a Godfather-style warning? "Nice AI product you got over there. Would be a shame if something happened to it." But what's different about this AI product/hype cycle compared to every other cycle that tech has had? Why does the FTC feel the need to make proactive enforcement warnings about this one? What about crypto? Or going back further, the dotcom era?

Very good question. On one hand, the US is surely happy that they’re the epicentre, on the other hand the potential impact on unemployment (fiscal and social unrest) is massive….

Ironically, here in Australia we've just been having a "Royal Commission" (high end public legal investigation) into how the government used an algorithm to pretty much screw over a bunch of people on welfare (several years ago).

https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au

So, an "AI" (or ML, etc) version of said scheme could also impact "unemployment" in some further crappy ways too.

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#215

Post by jaredsohn »

andrewmutz wrote: post #199
SoftAnnaLee wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't disagree with the basic premise ("AI" as a specific falsifiable term is hard to pin down due to the ubiquity associated with the term); I do think there are specific cut-and-dry circumstances where the FTC could falsifiably prove your product does not include AI. For example, using an alternative of Amazon's Mechanical Turk to process data is clearly a case where your product does not use AI. Which I be…

It makes sense to protect investors from falsely investing in new "AI" tech that isn't really new AI tech, but why do consumers need to be protected? If a software product solves their problem equally well with deep learning or with a more basic form of computation, why is the consumer harmed from false claims of AI? To put it another way, if you found out that Chat GPT was implemented without any machine learning, a…

Yeah - it needs to be clear to investors if the tech will scale as the business grows and if the tech has a good chance of improving if trained on a larger dataset or ML techniques improve generally.

Consumers should care about if a product is able to solve an AI-like problem that normally requires domain knowledge. Shouldn't care if done by ML, rules-based systems, or people. (Except perhaps may want assurance the product will continue to be able to support them as the customer scales.) Also should care about how the decision-making works.

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#216

Post by hinkley »

jsemrau wrote: post #68

We are working on an AI product in a highly regulated industry (Investing). Recently we have been experimenting using the GPT3 API as a Junior Equity Analyst. On an eyeball check the results of the technology are impressive. The problem is that there is no way to validate the feedback on scale. I.e., we can't receive statistics about the feedback from the API. In contrast, for our own Entity Recognition models we can…

And what happens when you run out of analysts with 3 years of experience in three years?

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#217

Post by fsckboy »

flatline wrote: post #36

“It’s an ambiguous term with many possible definitions.” “Does the product actually use AI at all? If you think you can get away with baseless claims…” Last I checked basic optimization techniques like simulated annealing and gradient descent - as well as a host of basic statistical tools - are standard parts of an introductory AI textbook. I’ve been on the receiving end of government agency enforcement (SEC) and it…

>Last I checked basic optimization techniques like simulated annealing and gradient descent - as well as a host of basic statistical tools - are standard parts of an introductory AI textbook.

maybe the textbook needs to be investigated

that's meant to sound ironic no matter which side of the issue you're on

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#219

Post by rcme »

dizzydes wrote: post #35

I hope people develop a better understanding of this than the bloody coin fiasco. Society can’t effectively deal with something it considers magic - even a low resolution understanding + accessible expertise will help massively (think law or medicine). Take Chat GPT. In the case of humans, language is just a way to express knowledge. In ChatGPT its the other way around - the focus is the correctness of the word chain…

> Society can’t effectively deal with something it considers magic

Up until very recently, society considered everything magic. Many still do.

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#220

Post by [deleted] »

lolinder wrote: post #28
adav wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a little too elegant, precise, and clear... wouldn't it be deliciously ironic if this blog was written by chatgpt?

ChatGPT is sometimes precise and clear, but I've yet to see any writing come out of it that I would describe as elegant. It tends toward the mediocre-college-essay end of the writing quality spectrum.

[deleted]
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