Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
Not sure I like the idea of the AI market consolidating into Google and OpenAI, I trust Google about as far as I could throw one of their datacenters, but at least I give them that much trust… I’m not sure what AI service I would use regularly, so far none of them have rocked my boat, none have provided consistently accurate answers, and at the end of the day, if the results aren’t accurate, they aren’t worth having, I might as well do my own research, it will be quicker than getting an AI to lie to me, then doing my own research to find out whether it lied or not, I can just skip that first step.
I do use AI for some simple questions, such as opening times for stores etc., although they don’t even get that right often enough that I use one of the links they provide to double check…
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Could that be a regional/geographic thing? It seems like the AI companies are US-centric, at least for now - which would impact how they function overseas (from my perspective).
No, a lot of the questions I ask are IT related and in English…
For example, I was going through the list of PCs we need to replace and was checking what processor generation they have, so I can plan the replacement over the next 4 years. The first half a dozen queries got “reasonable” results (i.e. they were the generation I thought or 1 removed), but then I entered the model number for our current generation Dell Optiplex (I wasn’t sure if they were 13th or 14th generation Intel Core processors), the AI said they were Core 1st generation! That had me scambling to the manufacturers’ websites to double check all the other devices for which I had received an answer.
Luckily that was so wrong, that I spotted it immediately, but if it had been for a subject where I didn’t have a foundation in it and it started giving spurious answers, even just “a little off”, it could have dire consequences. For example, my tax software included an AI chatbot last year! I really am not sure, whether I want to trust an AI to say whether I could claim more tax back in a certain area or not… I would rather read the tax laws myself and face fines of my own doing, not that an AI misplaced the decimal point, when it said I could claim 6000€ for office material, instead of 60€!
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I have to be honest here and say that 1 hour in, I am not really enjoying this episode. It seems like I’m listening to This Week in Tech Business (or Business Tech) with a lot of business angles. I don’t mind one person with that angle - but all of the panelists seemed to be of this persuasion.
I was especially disappointed that the comment about AI replacing people who make $250,000 was just glazed over as a consequence of progress. Like the comment about moving from the craftsman to the assembly line. Moving to the assembly line created a lot of misery in families as workers became part of the machine instead of valued intrinsically. I would have loved some discussion on how this affects the tech sector, but so much of the conversation seemed to be about ROI and KPI and similar things. If you’re going to talk business - how about some discussion about how removing a major middle-class source of income impacts the economy. How is the value of companies affected if fewer people have income to purchase things or become homeless?
Should subsequent conversation change my perspective - I will update my post.
EDIT: I came close to finishing the episode, but I gave up. It got marginally better, but the style just didn’t work for me.
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Yes, it was a really wild ride this week and very one sided, I thought the guests were each good, in and of themselves, but @Leo usually manages to find someone to provide the counterpoint or he provides it himself, even if he doesn’t necessarily believe it, to help steer the conversation.
There were so many things that were really wild. The “Good” CEOs aren’t replacing people with AI and firing them, they are putting them onto their pet projects that are now doable, because AI is doing the old work… Where are these good CEOs? So far we have only seen examples of bad CEOs, according to the panel, just look at Meta, Microsoft, Amazon & Co. they have been putting in AI and firing people by the thousands.
Wearing Meta Glasses to work would be a no-no here, wearing them on the street would be difficult enough - you would need to get the permission of everyone in your field of vision, before you take a shot (well, a little exaggerated, but anyone in the foreground needs to give their permission, before you can take a photo or film them, people “accidentally” in the background are allowed), at work you simply aren’t allowed to film or record audio in general, I’ve certainly never worked anywhere that didn’t have a ban on audio and video recordings in the workplace.
Our phone system has the ability to record audio, as does Teams, but it is disabled, because we need to get the permission of each attendee, before it can be turned on, then again, once it is turned on so that you have it on record. A lot of people don’t want it and if you don’t formulate the request properly or if you start recording accidentally or without asking, the employer would be facing a lawsuit. It is just too much of a minefield to even bother, although I have seen a couple of (mainly bigger) suppliers trying to use AI recording, but they probably have the resources to properly train their reps in the legal requirements. Most employers simply don’t have a legal team on hand to provide training on a regular basis.
And I thought it was hilarious that the Anti-Christ, Peter Thiel, is calling Greta Thunberg the Anti-Christ, you couldn’t come up something more ironic if you tried.
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I gave up after the first ad break when it seemed like we were getting an episode on AI.
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