Geek Stuff category archive

Via The Charlotte Observer, Northwestern University professors William J. Brady and Eli J. Finkel remind us that artificial “intelligence” is not intelligent. It’s engineered, and it’s engineered by humans to benefit the companies that they work for.

After looking at the damage that “social” media algorithms have done to dis coarse discourse (and that section alone makes their article worth reading), they explain why they fear that AI will have similar effects, especially now that AI designers are turning to advertising as a source of revenue. Here’s a tiny bit:

Some will argue that our analogy between chatbots and social media platforms is overdrawn – that chatbots are conversational tools, not social networks. But the issue is not the technology. It is the business model. When the product is free and the revenue comes from advertisers, the money comes from capturing users’ attention. This was true of broadcast television. It was true of social media. And it will be true of AI.

We are not opposed to AI – far from it. The evidence we’ve cited suggests it can be a powerful tool for improving reasoning and reducing prejudice. But those benefits depend on what the chatbots are optimized for.

The argument that AI is fundamentally different from social media, that it will elevate expertise rather than amplify outrage and moderate views rather than entrench them, is seductive precisely because we want it to be true. But that argument deserves scrutiny, not credulity. If anything, the case for skepticism is stronger here than it was for social media.

Sucking you down the rabbit hole? Per El Reg, to Google’s Hotel California of AI.

Afterthought:

For you whippersnappers who don’t ken the reference to “Hotel California,” well, just Yahoo! it.

A shill for merch? El Reg explores how Google plans to infuse its AI with ads.

(Another reason to loathe AI.)

Aside:

My new Anddroid cell phone keeps nagging me to use Google’s Gemini AI.

I keep telling Gemini to go away. (I don’t need nor want what amounts to a talking search engine that chooses search results for me, which is basically all that AI is.)

A couple of times, before I’ve gotten a chance to tell it to go away, it’s eavesdropped on my conversation and started talking on its own, saying stuff that is irrelevant to whatever the conversation was about.

As far as I’m concerned, AI does not stand for “artificial intelligence.” It stands for “annoying interrupter.”