Did The Tech Bros Trick Us?
They are now trying to push through trillion-dollar IPOsThey are paying an army of influencers to push this year’s IPOs for OpenAI and Anthropic just as they did with SpaceX.
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AI Startups are Measuring their Revenues in Likely Fraudulent Ways
These companies are creating higher valuations out of thin air!Companies charge their customers enough money for them to pay their suppliers, and for those suppliers to pay their suppliers but this isn’t happening in AI.
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Is OpenAI Approaching the Valley of Death?
Overpromising is still a big problem; in any event, the fate of Netscape loomsOpenAI needs to show that ChatGPT is more than just the first publicly available LLM. It has not done that and maybe never will.
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Will Reliance on AI Mean a Vast Drop in New Knowledge Production?
Dependence on AI assistants, for example, was found to greatly reduce discussion among peers, where new ideas are offered and evaluatedUltimately, the AI knowledge system will be enriched or impoverished by human decisions, not by discovering a superintelligence.
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Different Bubbles, Different Methods of Detection: What of AI?
Circular financing is one of the signs. Even the media are beginning to catch onCircular financing is the last gasp for OpenAI and the cloud services. They need it to maintain the mirage of an economic boom despite big losses and small revenues for AI software.
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AI Will Keep Hallucinating, says OpenAI
AI will always need human guidance.LLMs, while they seem to offer confident answers, cannot reflect on what they’re generating and so can’t wisely discern truth from falsehood.
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Why OpenAI Will Collapse: LLMs Are Not Economical
If a model is not refreshed every few months, it quickly turns from a helpful assistant into a debt generation machine with outdated knowledgeCompanies can apply OpenAI’s models to a limited set of data and questions, creating a smaller model that is cheaper to train, update, and run.
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The Hype and Limitations of Generative AI
On this episode, host Robert J. Marks concludes his conversation with economics professor and author Gary Smith about the hype and limitations of generative AI. Smith is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics at Ponoma College and a frequent contributor to Mind Matters News. In this portion of the conversation, Smith and Marks explore the hype around artificial general intelligence Read More ›
Do High AI Startup Valuations Mean Great Success, or Desperation?
The answer is important but is not as clear as we might think. First, let's look at the backgroundConsider a recent news report: “Anthropic is in advanced talks to raise $2 billion in a deal that would value it at $60 billion, more than triple its valuation from a year ago” says the Wall Street Journal. Anthropic’s last venture capital (VC) funding round, less than two months ago, raised $2 billion, bringing its total funding to $9.6 billion. OpenAI had raised $6.6 billion, last October just a year after it raised $10 billion from Microsoft the previous year and just months after it also raised funds on the debt and secondary markets. So that $6.6 billion round was the largest VC funding round ever, a little larger than the $6 billion that Elon Musk’s generative AI startup, xAI, raised in 2023. Read More ›
Hinton and Hopfield Win Nobel Prize in Physics
Hinton warns against neglecting AI safetyGeoffrey E. Hinton, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence responsible for helping develop “neural networks,” has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize alongside John J. Hopfield. The two scientists won the award for their groundbreaking work in machine intelligence, paving the way for a revolutionary new way to use computers. Hinton attracted attention just last year when he departed from Google and started warning the public about the potential dangers of new AI systems. He likened the AI revolution to the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, only this time, it won’t be our physical capacities that get trumped by the machine, but our intellects. The New York Times reports, “It will be comparable with the Industrial Revolution,” Read More ›
Sam Altman Was on My Favorite Writing Podcast. His View on Storytelling Surprised Me.
When we read, we want to hear from a human about what it means to be human.Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has garnered a fair share of criticism from the writing crowd for creating ChatGPT, a tool that on the surface seems to banish the need for human writers at all. However, Altman recently appeared on David Perell’s prominent writing podcast “How I Write” to talk about his own writing process, AI, and what he uses ChatGPT for. Altman and Perell talk about the importance of language for human communication, with Altman noting how he can’t imagine human life without language. AI, Altman says, is supposed to make language and the writing process “better.” In his view, that’s what computers have also sought to do: Create opportunities for humans to expand and deepen their capacities. But Read More ›
Are We Close to Peak AI Hype?
Outrageous statements are proliferating.Sanity might be about ready to return to the market. Just maybe, we have reached peak hype.
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Hype Distracts AI Engineers from Real Work
Who is going to solve AI's actual problems?One reason there wasn’t an emphasis on reducing hallucinations is because the problem is hard. Some argue that hallucinations are “baked into” AI chatbots.
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Scarlett Johansson vs. Sam Altman
OpenAI is trying to recreate a cautionary taleAltman said her voice could be “comforting” to people. She declined at the time, and so was naturally surprised to find that the new program, which was just released, sounded eerily similar to her own voice.
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Napster, Spotify, and AI: How Will AI Escape Copyright Woes?
Robert J. Marks on AI and learning from past copyright cases.Copyright lawsuits are abounding against generative AI. Since the advent of ChatGPT in late 2022, various companies, artists, and writers have raised concerns over AI’s plagiaristic tendencies. Robert J. Marks, host of the Mind Matters podcast, has the story over at Newsmax. Marks recalls the debacle of Napster, a music streaming service that provided music for “free” without payment to the artists. Not surprisingly, it was soon shut down. So how will it fare with generative AI? What’s the solution to all the impending legal woes in the realm of AI? Marks writes, Today’s Spotify keeps automatic records of song frequency and, from subscriber’s payments, distributes royalties accordingly. Similar methods could be applied to compensate content creators by generative AI. It’s not Read More ›
Does ChatGPT Depend on Copyright Violation to Function?
Without copyrighted material, ChatGPT has slim pickings to go on.ChatGPT, the large language model developed by OpenAI, might seem like it generates novel content, but of course we know that it partakes in what’s generally called “scraping.” It takes pre-existing material on the Internet in response to the prompt a human user inserts. Not surprisingly, the folks who put things on the Internet for a living, like writers and artists, haven’t taken so kindly to AI’s online sleuthing. In fact, a number of artists, writers (including George R. R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen, and John Grisham) and even news outlets have sued OpenAI over copyright infringement allegations. What’s fascinating, though, is that OpenAI hasn’t tried to dodge the allegation but freely admits that ChatGPT depends on copyrighted material to function. Read More ›
How Do We Define Successful Use Cases for Generative AI?
Current generative AI systems are designed to give us the most common solutions, instead of the new ones we need.Evidence that existing ideas aren’t so good can be seen in the big startup losses, slow diffusion of technology, and slow rate of productivity improvement.
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Sam Altman Out at OpenAI, Microsoft Picks Him Up
Will Microsoft become the prime leader in the AI movement, and what will be the future of OpenAI?According to the Wall Street Journal, Altman was “shocked” that he was ousted at OpenAI. But, he also fostered a close connection with Microsoft.
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Artificial Intelligence: The Final Stage of Disembodiment?
The Internet invites a disembodied existence. Is AI the next step?Kemp’s vivid picture of Internet addiction is sadly accurate for many modern folks, especially those enmeshed in the superficial, image-driven economy of social media.
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Literature and Personal Consciousness: Why AI Can’t Speak to You
AI can never intend meaning like a human author canOne non-computable aspect of great literature is evident: a personal consciousness was responsible for creating it.
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