In this installment of the Mind Matters News podcast, host Robert J. Marks begins a conversation with economics professor and author Gary Smith about the hype of generative AI and its impact on the market. Smith is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics at Ponoma College and a frequent contributor to Mind Matters News. Smith argues that generative AI, embodied Read More ›
The trust we put in Large Language Models (LLMs) ought to depend on their truthfulness. So how truthful are LLMs? For many routine queries, they seem accurate enough. What’s the capital of North Dakota? To this query, ChatGPT4 just now gave me the answer Bismarck. That’s right. But what about less routine queries? Recently I was exploring the use of design inferences to detect plagiarism and data falsification. Some big academic misconduct cases had in the last 12 months gotten widespread public attention, not least the plagiarism scandal of Harvard president Claudine Gay and the data falsification scandal of Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne. These scandals were so damaging to these individuals and their institutions that neither is a university president any longer. When I queried Read More ›
Ask someone how big AI will be, and the answer is likely huge. But how big is huge? Why does this matter? Because big forecasts encourage big investments, trials, and purchases. After big consulting companies predicted eight years ago that AI would have economic gains of about $15 trillion by 2030, many countries and companies felt the need to pay for their own reports from those same consultants. Of course, those consultants said that those countries could experience rapid productivity gains and those companies could experience rising profits if they implemented AI in the right way, which was of course under the guidance of the consulting companies! Eight years later and few of their predictions have come true. But their Read More ›
It hasn’t taken long for criminals to capitalize on the AI boom. Unfortunately, the more potential a certain technology has as a tool, the more it can be leveraged for harm. In the case of generative AI, a mother recently said that criminals used AI to mimic her daughter’s voice, fake a kidnapping, and seek ransom money for it. After answering the phone, she heard her daughter’s sobbing voice, followed by a man demanding funds for a ransom. The hoax didn’t get too far, luckily. The mother was able to soon verify her daughter’s safety, but nonetheless, the scam was convincing and was understandably terrifying while it lasted. Victor Tangermann reported on the incident at Futurism, writing, The fake kidnapping Read More ›