THOUGHTS OVER MY AFTERNOON COFFEE: AI is not the only system that hallucinates

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One story, curated by Gregory Bufithis. More about me here.

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THOUGHTS OVER MY AFTERNOON COFFE:

AI is not the only system that hallucinates

🎶 "Let the sun shine in!" 🎶 Ah, no. Not the way it works.

10 APRIL 2023 (Crete, Greece) -- I personally love it when software goes off the deep end. From all those early days of “Fatal Error” and the blue screen of death, to the more interesting outputs of a black box AI system, the digital comedy road show delights me.

So was mildly amused when I read the Wired magazine article “The Call to Halt ‘Dangerous’ AI Research Ignores a Simple Truth” about the now infamous letter calling for a halt to ChatGPT development because it reminds me that it is not just software which is subject to synapse wonkiness. Consider this statement from that story:

"there is no magic button that anyone can press that would halt “dangerous” AI research while allowing only the “safe” kind".

Yep, no magic button. No kidding. We have decades of experience with U.S. big technology companies’ behavior to make clear exactly the trajectory of new methods. I love this statement no less:

"Instead of halting research, we need to improve transparency and accountability while developing guidelines around the deployment of AI systems. Policy, research, and user-led initiatives along these lines have existed for decades in different sectors, and we already have concrete proposals to work with to address the present risks of AI".

Wired has always been one of the cheerleaders always fired up about "transparency and accountability", the cheerleading always loud and repetitive.

I would suggest that “simple truth” is in short supply. In my long experience in the technology ecosystem, big technology savvy companies will do whatever they can do to corner a market and generate as much money as possible. Lock in, monopolistic behavior, collusion, and other useful tools are available.

Nice try, Wired. Transparency is good to consider, but big outfits are not in the "let the sun shine in!" game. There just ain't no money in that game.

It's similar to the hilariously predictable way that any meaningful "Big Tech" antitrust moves will arrive several years after LLMs have reset the landscape that they presume is eternal. It won't be, of course. If only people in tech had explained that tech monopolies never seem to last more than 10-15 years, that it works in almost predictable cycles.

I am cognizant of the concern. Smart software is now the domain of commercial enterprises, as AI has entered an era of corporate control. Rather amusing the ChatGPT protest letter did not mention that 😎

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A NOTE TO MY NEW READERS

(and updated for my long-time readers)

My media team and I receive and/or monitor about 1,500 primary resource points every month. But I use an AI program built by my CTO (using the Factiva research database + four other media databases) plus APIs like Cronycle that curate the media firehose so I only receive selected, summarized material that pertains to my current research needs, or reading interest.

Each morning I will choose a story to share with you - some out-of-the-ordinary, and some just my reflections on a current topic.

I take the old Spanish proverb to heart:

Or even better:

“A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world”

-John le Carré, in The Honourable Schoolboy

Carre was correct. I am seeped in technology. Much of the technology I read about or see at conferences I also force myself “to do”. Because writing about technology is not “technical writing.” It is about framing a concept, about creating a narrative. Technology affects people both positively and negatively. You need to provide perspective. You need to actually “do” the technology.

But it applies to all things. In many cases I venture onto ground where I’ve no guarantee of safety or of academic legitimacy, so it’s not my intention to pass myself off as a scholar, nor as someone of dazzling erudition. It has been enough for me to act as a complier and sifter of a huge base of knowledge, and then offer my own interpretations and reflections on that knowledge.

No doubt the old dream that once motivated Condorcet, Diderot, or D’Alembert has become unrealizable – the dream of holding the basic intelligibility of the world in one’s hand, of putting together the fragments of the shattered mirror in which we never tire of seeking the image of our humanity.

But even so, I don’t think it’s completely hopeless to attempt to create a dialogue, however imperfect or incomplete, between the various branches of knowledge effecting and affecting our current state.

And it’s difficult. As I have noted before, we have entered an age of atomised and labyrinthine knowledge. Many of us are forced to lay claim only to competence in partial, local, limited domains. We get stuck in set affiliations, set identities, modest reason, fractal logic, and cogs in complex networks. And too many use this new complexity of knowledge as an excuse for dominant stupidity. We must fight that.

It’s the only way I understand writing. It’s certainly the way I’ve been all my life and it’s how every other writer I admire is – a kind of monomaniac. I’m not sure how you can make any art if you don’t treat it very seriously, if you’re not obsessed with doing it better each time.

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Palaiochora, Crete, Greece

To contact me:

Luminative.Media@gmail.com