Whether you’re on Wall Street, having a barbecue in your friend’s backyard, or standing in line at the grocery store, you’ve probably talked about AI at some point in the last few months. I think there is.
The technology exploded in popularity with the launch of OpenAI’s generative AI chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022, and it seems like the only thing anyone can talk about. And companies in every economy are sniffing out opportunities to capitalize on the hype.
But the buzz around AI, and more specifically, generative AI, a technology that allows you to type prompts into chatbots like ChatGPT and receive human-like responses, is ahead. , say the experts. And it gets in the way of important discussions about technology safety.
“There’s a lot of snake oil out there,” University of Maryland computer science professor Hal Dorme told Yahoo Finance. “Companies are selling how technology works rather than what it can actually accomplish.”
problem? With so much talk about generative AI products, any discussion of their potential harm is in danger of being ignored, except for predictions that this technology could lead to human extinction.
“We should talk about foreseeable short-term harms, try to deal with them, and then look at what can help now,” said Siddharth Garg, professor of engineering at New York University’s Tandon School. .
AI is everywhere
I can’t seem to open my emails anymore unless someone suggests a ‘new’ use of AI. As Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sotzi points out, plenty of companies point to AI as a way to get investors’ attention.
“People who don’t have real merchandise will probably feel a little FOMO. [fear of missing out] Erik Brynjolfsson, Senior Fellow of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University’s Human Center and Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, explains.
The education sector is often targeted by products that claim to offer AI-powered functionality.
“These days, companies almost always advertise some kind of AI-based solution,” he said, asking whether those solutions actually use AI and, if so, whether it actually helps. He added that he often had questions.
AI is such an imprecise term that companies may extend their own definitions to cover their products. But the constant mention of new AI products means that the problems with the technology can be masked by hype.
Generative AI is a powerful tool, but far from perfect
Generative AI’s ability to generate human-like responses to prompts makes it a great technology for web searches, travel planning, everyday email writing, and more.
But it also increases the potential for that human element to be abused. In May, an AI-generated image of what appeared to be an explosion near the Pentagon sparked panic on social media and temporarily sent Wall Street stocks down.
There are also concerns that generative AI could perpetuate bias across many industries, such as housing and recruiting. When Bloomberg prompted its AI-generated image platform Stable Diffusion to create photos of individuals in high-paying jobs and low-paying jobs, People with skin were depicted as having much lighter skin tones than those without.
Still, there’s no denying that generative AI is groundbreaking. Brynjolfsson says the technology could double his productivity over the next decade. Generative AI can also speed up the coding process for developers. It can also reshape how the web is searched, just as Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT) want it.
“There will always be a certain amount of snake oil and people sticking to it and making unrealistic or false claims and so on,” Brynjolfsson said. “But I don’t want people to miss the real transformational impact underlying these technologies, their ability to solve many previously unsolvable problems.”
Daniel Howley Technical editor at Yahoo Finance.keep up with him @Daniel Howley
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