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Why is AI so slow to spread?

economist.com

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Re: Why is AI so slow to spread?

#101

Post by poisonborz »

paulluuk wrote: post #48
poisonborz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what you listed I would seriously consider the broader societal value of your work.

I know this is just a casual comment, but this is a genuine concern I have every day. However, I've been working for 10 years now and working in music/video streaming has been the most "societal value" I've had thus far. I've worked at Apple, in finance, in consumer goods.. everywhere is just terrible. Music/Video streaming has been the closest thing I could find to actually being valuable, or at least not making the…

It's not a casual comment in the sense that I have genuine concern every day that the current world we are living in is enabled by common employees. I'm not saying everyone should solve world hunger, "NGO or bust" - and yes, the job market is tough - but especially for software engineers, there are literally hundreds of thousands of companies requiring software work and who do net good or at least "plausible" harm, and pay an above average salary.

Also I only read the comment above, it's you who can judge what you contribute to and what you find fair. I just wish there were a mandatory "code of conduct" for engineers. The way AI is reshaping the field, I could imagine this becoming more like a medical/law field where this would be possible.

I work in IoT telemetrics. The company is rumored to partake in military contracts at a future point, that would be my exit then.

Re: Why is AI so slow to spread?

#102

Post by vouaobrasil »

It's slow because most people realize the truth about AI, which is:

(1) Reduces the value that people place on others, thereby creating a more narcisstic society

(2) Takes people's livelihoods away

(3) Is another method by which big tech concentrates the most wealth in their hands and the west becomes even more of a big tech oligarchy.

Programmers tend to stay in bubbles as they always have and happily promote it, not really noticing how dangerous and destructive it is.

Re: Why is AI so slow to spread?

#103

Post by fauigerzigerk »

ramon156 wrote: post #77
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to donate to Wikipedia, but it has been completely overrun by activists pushing their preferred narrative. I don't trust it any more. I guess it had to happen at some point. If a site is used as ground truth by everyone while being open to contributions, it has to become a magnet and a battleground for groups trying to influence other people. LLMs don't fix that of course. But at least they are not as much a s…

Can I ask for some examples? I'm not this active on Wikipedia, so I'm curious where a narrative is being spread

I thought about giving examples because I understand why people would ask for them, but I decided very deliberately not to give any. It would inevitably turn into a flame war about the politics/ethics of the specific examples and distract from the reasons why I no longer trust Wikipedia.

I understand that this is unsatisfactory, but the only way to "prove" that the motivations of the people contributing to Wikipedia have shifted would be to run a systematic study for which I have neither the time nor the skills nor indeed the motivation.

Perhaps I should say that am a politically centrist person whose main interests are outside of politics.

Re: Why is AI so slow to spread?

#104

Post by fauigerzigerk »

Panzer04 wrote: post #92
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to donate to Wikipedia, but it has been completely overrun by activists pushing their preferred narrative. I don't trust it any more. I guess it had to happen at some point. If a site is used as ground truth by everyone while being open to contributions, it has to become a magnet and a battleground for groups trying to influence other people. LLMs don't fix that of course. But at least they are not as much a s…

Single point of failure? Yeah u can download the entirety of Wikipedia if you want to. What's the single point of failure?

Not in a technical sense. What I mean is that Wikipedia is very widely used as an authoritative source of objective truth. Manipulating this single source regarding some subject would have an outsize influence on what is considered to be true.

Re: Why is AI so slow to spread?

#105

Post by JimDabell »

benterix wrote: post #79
rckt wrote: post #9

Slow?? AI is literally being shoved into everything. It took only several years to see AI being advertised as a magic pill everywhere. It’s not meeting the expectations, probably because of this aggressive advertising. But I would in no way say that it’s spreading slow. It is fast.

Right but are people are actually using it? Do they even want to use it? In my circles, AI is a synonym of slop, low value, something annoying that you need to deal around like ads.

Yes, people are using it. ChatGPT alone had 800M WAU back in April, that’s basically 10% of the human race they acquired as users in a few short years. This has taken off like a rocket so it’s utterly bizarre to see people asking why it’s slow to spread.

Re: Why is AI so slow to spread?

#106

Post by mathw »

kaoD wrote: post #53
rckt wrote: post #9

Slow?? AI is literally being shoved into everything. It took only several years to see AI being advertised as a magic pill everywhere. It’s not meeting the expectations, probably because of this aggressive advertising. But I would in no way say that it’s spreading slow. It is fast.

They mean slow to actually be used by people. Doesn't matter that it's shoved everywhere if in the end there are 0 users clicking the magic wand icon.

That one is fairly easy isn't it - it's because it's not very good. Or at least, it doesn't live up to its own hype.

The thrashing wails of people who've spent billions on something that they should have done more due diligence on and don't want to write off their investment.

Re: Why is AI so slow to spread?

#107

Post by Marazan »

grey-area wrote: post #30
Marazan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Economist is filled with writers easily gulled by tech flim-flam. They went big on Cryptocurrency back in the day as well.

Exactly right.

I forgot they even went big on NFTs, auctioned off an NFT of a front cover one time.

Re: Why is AI so slow to spread?

#108

Post by fauigerzigerk »

notarobot123 wrote: post #83
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to donate to Wikipedia, but it has been completely overrun by activists pushing their preferred narrative. I don't trust it any more. I guess it had to happen at some point. If a site is used as ground truth by everyone while being open to contributions, it has to become a magnet and a battleground for groups trying to influence other people. LLMs don't fix that of course. But at least they are not as much a s…

> at least they are not as much a single point of failure Yes, network effects and hyper scale produce perverse incentives. It sucks that Wikipedia can be gamed. Saying that, you'd need to be actively colluding with other contributors to maintain control. Imagining that AI is somehow more neutral or resistant to influence is incredibly naive. Isn't it obvious that they can be "aligned" to favor the interests of whoev…

>Imagining that AI is somehow more neutral or resistant to influence is incredibly naive

The point is well taken. I just feel that at this point in time the reliance on Wikipedia as a source of objective truth is disproportionate and increasingly undeserved.

As I said, I don't think AI is a panacea at all. But the way in which LLMs can be influenced is different. It's more like bias in Google search. But I'm not naive enough to believe that this couldn't turn into a huge problem eventually.

Re: Why is AI so slow to spread?

#109

Post by wordofx »

wordofx wrote: post #14
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #8

I don't often use AI in my work because it is not sufficiently useful not sufficiently trustworthy. It is my ongoing experience that AI + My Oversight requires more time than not using AI. Sometimes AI can answer slightly complex things in a helpful way. But for most of the integration troubleshooting I do, AI guidance varies between no help at all and fully wasting my time. Conversely, I support folks who have the c…

I still haven’t found anyone who AI wouldn’t be helpful or that isn’t trustworthy enough. People make the /claim/ it’s not useful or they are better without it. When you sit down with them it often turns out they just don’t know how to use AI effectively.

Once again. Replies only proving me right. Desperately trying to justify “ai bad I’m superior” mentality.

Re: Why is AI so slow to spread?

#110

Post by tornikeo »

It seems that the average employee doesn't currently benefit from completing their job more efficiently; i.e., they have no interest in AI.

To accelerate mass AI adoption in workplaces, it may be necessary to expose the average worker to the risks and rewards of business ownership. However, it might be the case that the average worker simply doesn't want that risk.

If there's no risk, there can't be a reward. So I can't see a way AI adoption could be sped up.

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