There’s a lot of BS & hype out there right now about AI.
In this video I attempt to cut through the BS and identify the reality.
Approximate Transcript:
Hi, this video is about AI BS versus AI reality. There’s actually this really, I thought really well done video by this comedian, I can’t remember his name. But this is what he looks like that I thought was actually really thoughtful and really well done a lot of ways. And he had a lot of points about things that I think were were practical and realistic. But that also sometimes, I think, missed the point and missed the conclusion. And so I thought it would be useful to shoot a separate video talking about some of the stuff that is BS, because he brings up a lot of valid points. And I do recommend you watch it, especially if you’re feeling too high on AI, and you think it’s like the best thing ever, when a kid is going to be able to do everything. And you also, you know, find yourself wondering, like, is this really AI? And this is a valid point that he brings up, you know, he says it’s a real field of computer science. But a lot of what we’re seeing right now is AI marketing, where people just slap ai ai on things. And I think I remember I saw a picture a political cartoon where basically somebody had named a book AI about AI, and then the company paid for it because it had AI in there. It’s a really funny joke about like, AI, pizza, AI, volume Nam, stuff like that. That is just sort of like hey, just trying to market things and say it because it’s hot right now. This is any kind of compares it to like crypto in the metaverse. So I’d say the metaverse is dead. Crypto, and they made over promises. I don’t know if it really if there’s really a potential there for it to do is nearly as much value as some of the people that talked about it. Additionally, you know, there’s a lot of jokes going around. There’s a lot of people who were super into crypto that are now super into their crypto experts, and now they’re AI experts. And that’s not me, I never really was that interested in crypto. I did have some Bitcoins that I sold at about between 42 and $45,000 when it was at that point, and I was never really a super big believer in crypto, just because I didn’t really it just wasn’t obvious to me. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t there. It wasn’t obvious to me like the kind of the broad applications for it. It did seem like it seemed like there was some potential with the blockchain. But there’s still some major issues with the blockchain. So I think crypto being people being disappointed in it is accurate. And the metaverse I don’t even like immediately dismissed. I don’t even really know what really what the objective was there. I thought that was even dumber. And I remember hearing something like Disney had like a team of 20 or 50 people who were just for the metaverse, which is kind of crazy to me that they laid off as the metaverse basically is dead. And that he talks about like an AI D DJ. I like his term AI tech bros, which I’m not sure if I count is that probably not the game a little bit more reasonable. I’m not trying to say AI does everything it may be I do sometimes say that just to be joking. With the 42 robots thing, it’s a reference to, to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, among other things, and we’re, you know, AI is the answer to life and everything. And to some degree, it has the potential to do that. But, you know, I think he also acknowledges that there, there are some genuine benefits for it. So I’m going to go into some a lot of his criticisms of AI in specifics and point out where I think he’s wrong and where I think he’s right or, or maybe something a lot of cases just kind of half, right. I still don’t like this, he’s really funny. So at a minimum, you’ll, you should be entertained. He talks about full self driving, this is something he jumps into pretty heavy. And I think he’s right and wrong about this. You know, Elon Musk has been saying full self driving cars coming in a year since 2014. True, he did finally deliver on it. Air quotes, I have it in my car, I shot a separate video on it, as well. So you can check that out on the channel. But he did kind of deliver on it in 2022. Towards the end of the year, it whether or not it’s full self driving, and I would say no, I do know some people, I have a model three, and someone has a Model S who says it’s way, way better than what I’m experiencing. So maybe the Model S is better. It’s also a newer car. So maybe there’s slightly better hardware or something in it that makes his better. But I want to point out something here, which is that just because it’s can’t be solved now, doesn’t mean it can’t be solved. And this is really important to understand, because it seems to be an assumption that I hear over and over again, not just for self driving, but for all sorts of things. And there’s a little bit of a theme and a few other places like this was envisioned like the Wright brothers. Where we started off at was so far from you had these old timey pictures of these guys like flapping their wings, and thinking that that’s gonna help them fly and I bet the people at the time thought What idiots Of course, we can’t fly. Humans can’t fly. That’s dumb. We can’t fly now therefore can’t find in the future. It was one of those things that wasn’t solved until it was and I do feel like Tesla’s pretty close. I think they have a lot of things. Right? But there’s a lot of edge cases and there’s there’s definitely a lot of things wrong need to be fixed. I’ve always thought for 20 plus years that this is actually a solvable a very complex problem, but very solvable. Just because of the the nature of, of the way driving works, I feel like it is something that can be figured out. He says it was a lie. And it was always a lie. And it’s something like that a robo taxi is sci fi. I definitely disagree with that. I don’t think Elon was lying either. I don’t think he was doing it. You know, I don’t know Elon, personally, but I don’t think he was doing it with the intent to be like, Hey, let’s let’s sell a bunch of Tesla’s and I really don’t think it can happen. I think he believed it. I think he believed we’re going to solve this. And we’re very close for a very long time. He’s felt that way. And so I do, you know, it’s, you know, that I think that’s not fair to say that he just has been lying this whole time. It is, you know, kind of frustrating, you know, as a Tesla owner, who bought full self driving four years ago, to just get it now and have it have issues. Yeah, it’s not, especially if you have motion sickness as I do, don’t recommend it. And maybe with the Model S, or maybe with a newer version, that is better, because my friend did also say they, his wife has a model three. And he she he she he said that that one is actually still pretty good, too. But I believe it’s also newer than mine. So, you know, just saying it doesn’t work now, therefore it will work in the future is, is a very bad argument. You know, he also brings up something like, oh, 10 people were killed in four months without using full self driving, therefore, should all be shut down. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a huge mistake, that is that politicians do all the time, and all sorts of other people do all the time, which they give naked numbers. Okay, well, 10 people were killed. Well, we need to see how many cars with that how many how many miles with extra drive, and per mile is that less or more than humans driving? My guess is that it’s actually quite a bit less, and not just a little bit less, like a lot less. So this is a very disingenuous argument that, oh, 10 people were killed, of course, 10 people were killed. But you know, how many people are killed with human drivers every year, we’re not saying we should take all the cars off the road. That’s a really, really bad argument. So this, you know, I still believe that full self driving will come I don’t know when. And I think Tesla’s probably going to be the first to do it. But it’s hard to say, especially with Elon being kind of pulled down by by Twitter. You know, this, you know, I think this is one of his worst arguments here, which is that full self driving doesn’t work now, therefore, it sucks. Spam. This is a fair criticism. I actually know, you know, I’ve been in the SEO world for a long time, and I know, varying levels of spammers. And this is definitely already happening. And it’s actually been happening for years now. Ai content in the SEO world has been around 234 years at least, and actually been pretty good. Even before chat GPT. So I do have some experience with this, you know, it wasn’t great. And it’s definitely going to get better in terms of better for the spammers. And this is probably one of the hardest things to solve. I don’t really know if this is solvable. Especially, you know, some people talk about oh, you know, opening AI is going to put a watermark on the text. Now, they’re not they can’t do that. That’s not really feasible. Like, there’s just not really a way around that. That’s just not I don’t think that’s really possible. I think Sam Altman even said that it’s not really feasible. Like, don’t don’t quote me on that, but there’s somebody, some computer scientists, and I think somebody at open AI said that, yeah, you can’t really do that. Maybe with the images, it’s possible to put like a watermark on it. But with a text, I don’t think it’s there. So, you know, the fully expect that this is going to happen. And actually, I don’t really have a solution for it, it’s, it’s kind of unfortunate. Actually, a little bit of a solution, potentially, which is maybe that there’s actually AI out there that helps find AI, and sniff it out. And so maybe there is something that can actually do that. But I don’t really see a full solution, I just kind of have some ideas, hallucinations, this is a very real criticism as well, where he talks about, like, oh, it gave bad information, this is something that they’re very aware of. And I think it got better, not, not all the way better, but improved from GPT, three to GPT. Four. And I think this is something that should be solvable. And that, you know, maybe by GPT, five, it’s like mostly, if not completely stamped out. But you know, it also kind of reflects some how the how the software actually works and what you can actually use it for. You know, I think just being aware of hallucinations, and not looking to at least not right now and not looking to check GPT for like facts or data to actually give you the proper data from like it’s training corpus of data is just this is this is the way it’s soluble, at least right now.
You just don’t use it for that situation. Don’t trust facts that it gives you because it will give you wrong facts right now. It will Will hallucinate there are there is a little bit of prompt engineering you can do you can say, if you you’re not sure, I’m not, you know, 99, you’re not very sure. And your answer, say, I don’t. Or something like that something to this effect. Now, there’s kind of a downside of this, which is that maybe it has the right answer, but it’s not completely sure. So it still says, I don’t know. So this reduces the functionality, but it also could it reduce the chances of hallucinations? You know, he talks about search engines, and how like, chat is not a search engine, like a classic search engine. Now I do this is much more closely closely related to what I’ve been doing directly in my business for a very long time, which is SEO. So I’m very familiar with this. And I do and I’ve thought about this a lot for for years, actually. And much more. So obviously, recently, you know, he brings up you know, with a search engine, you can actually look at a result and go, Oh, this shit is done. You know, I think he had like a, you know, is it on turd gobbler, turn, turn cobbler 60 nine.com. It was a really funny joke, that you would obviously not click on that, and you wouldn’t trust it? Well, a chat might not be able to chat bot might not be able to tell that a little bit of a fair criticism, I do think that there are some things that chat will take over from search really quickly. And some things that will take longer, specifically, like how to find a best plumber or, you know, directions to to, to a restaurant. I know that chat GPD plugins are enhancing this. But I still think that there’s going to be a huge gap, at least initially. It’s unclear to me, I think that there’s what most likely scenario is that, which was not completely clear, because it’s all sorts of different things that can happen is that the chat bots will take a bite out of the search engine market, and that some things that you would use for search engines before, you will not you will use chat for now. But then there’s more commercial things like buying shoes, finding a plumber, finding a lawyer where a chat engine is not really very practical, at least not right now. I think it is possible that chat takes over a large amount of that if not all of it at some point, I think it’s unlikely that it takes over all of it. I think that the there’s just kind of a different use case. And there’s a different experience, that gives you a little bit wider range a little bit more control over the information you receive when you do a search versus just relying on a chat to give you the right answers. Now maybe that solution is like being tries to give it sources maybe that you combine the two. I’m really not sure exactly what’s what’s going to happen here. But you know, he does bring up a good point that like he’s just just immediately moving to just do all your searching with chat is pretty dumb. Here is one of the more philosophical questions that I had a deep discussion with somebody else who has a PhD in computer science and is kind of in this world to some degree. He, you know, we talked about how like, and this is this is a this is a correct point where I think he makes the wrong conclusion. He says basically, that these chats that, you know, the large language models are just imitative, they’re basically just regurgitating back to us what we gave them. And to some degree, that’s true, it doesn’t really understand as far as we know, it doesn’t really understand what’s going on doesn’t really process the words, it’s just trying to do the autocomplete essentially, is just a really fancy autocomplete, and to some degree, that’s true. But at the same time, at some point, it doesn’t matter. For example, GPT, four does pass Turing tests. And at some point, we also have to consider like, is this kind of what humans do already? You think about how a baby starts out and how they start imitating and things than that, you know, are they are they really human? Are they really sentient? When they’re just kind of regurgitating back what they hear, and they don’t even really know what the what the words mean. And so, you know, to dismiss it completely, just because it’s imitative. Or at least at its core, it’s just kind of regurgitating your word combinations of words that expects to be next is I think, incorrect. Again, it’s correct that it is imitating and that it’s not really it’s not really like thinking in the traditional sense, at least not on the surface. There are some things in behind in the background that they’re not really sure what’s happening. And, you know, it would also want to point out that like, he makes a point where like, oh, you can’t really make unique things. That’s just not true. You know, we already know that this is not true because there’s AI working on You know, potential protein folding to solve, you know, all sorts of diseases that that humans just couldn’t do, just because the sheer scale of possibilities there. And so coming up with new ideas, AI can actually do that. So the, you know, to say that AI can’t come up with new ideas is incorrect already. Here’s an important point that I think that is valid. And something that is we’re going to need to deal with probably assuming that AI is as powerful and an all encompassing as I suspect. He talks about, hey, it’s using public data for like art brings up artists We’re suing are suing AI companies. And because they’re using their data, my thought I have kind of two, two, there’s kind of two conflicting thoughts here, which is that I do think that like, if you go to an art museum, and you look at a bunch of Monet’s, and then you go home, and you paint something that is in the style of Monet, but it’s not a Monet, exactly, is that something you should be suited for, and my origami we definitely not. Now, at the other on the other hand hand, the AI dataset that, let’s say open is using is based upon all the humans that have ever existed. So they’re taking the work of all the humans. And most importantly, I do think that there’s, like 10 years from now there’ll be massive, massive job losses. Because of this, I don’t know exactly how much but even just 10% would be huge. In some cases, it won’t, they won’t like I think in the medical field, a lot of times it won’t be job losses, at least not for a while, because it’ll just be we just don’t have enough. There’s already a supply problem. But so I think that AI companies that are making a bunch of money from aI have an obligation to make good. And I don’t know exactly what that looks like, my first thought is, especially if we look really far in the future, let’s say 90% of the jobs are eliminated. I think there probably should be a pretty big tax on AI companies, and probably some sort of universal basic income. Okay, I think that’s correct first, now, right now, and that doesn’t really make as much sense. Now, I think right now, there also needs to be a lot of work not just on AI safety, well, maybe, but like kind of fighting the negative AI out there, the fighting the spam, fighting the scammers fighting, you know, fake pictures of politicians, or deep fakes, the AI companies should be investing in these things. And I plan on doing that as well, I already have some plans, I’m trying to find, trying to build stuff like that, or, you know, make sure that if somebody else has built it, maybe promote that kind of stuff as well. So that people can, so that we can try to reduce the negative, because there’s a lot of benefits to AI, but there’s also going to be a lot of negative that we’re gonna have to deal with or work through. And, you know, social media is still already having negative and it’s still having negative impacts. So, you know, I don’t know what that looks like. And maybe we just can’t trust the big companies to do it. Because Facebook doesn’t seem to, or doesn’t seem to have taken any accountability for how Instagram is, is trashing on the psyches of young women. With its with the way it works. And this is this has been proven like this has been demonstrated heavily. And so, you know, hope, hopefully, we have more responsible companies, I’m not really trusting, you know, even open AI as trustworthy as I think they seem right now. Who knows, you know, maybe they change ownership, or whatever. And something could go very, very wrong or, you know, Microsoft with with Bill Gates, he does seem to have altruistic intentions. So that’s good. But who knows, maybe Facebook actually ends up winning the war of Google and somebody else takes over and they just like, like, Yeah, screw everybody. We’re just going to make gazillions of dollars and you guys can live in your you guys can have no jobs and we don’t care. So, quick summary of everything, kind of the AI vs vs. Ai reality.
There’s definitely a marketing BS. I can’t even you know, I’ve already seen a lot of it, where companies are just kind of slapping AI or like a lot of times, it’s sort of like, let’s just put chat GBT in our software and a place right here. And therefore we have AI, we’re an AI and I don’t think that’s really, very fair. But also, there’s, there’s a lot of real benefits that are going to come free from Ai. So to say that it’s just a mimicking thing, and that self driving cars will never come or artificial super intelligence is not possible. I don’t really think that that’s that’s very rational. Right now, I think there’s a lot of possibilities right now. And I don’t think anybody really knows exactly what’s going to happen here, which is kind of scary, but also exciting at the same time. And I want to distinguish between AI now what’s capable now what is capable in the future and also what it’s never capable of. I think it’s very hard to say AI is never going to be capable of anything. That’s just something that, hopefully, you know, if you’re feeling that, oh, it’s never gonna be able to do self driving cars. I think that’s not true. And there’s just really nothing. I’m trying to think of something that you could say it’s never going to be capable up. The only thing is maybe sentience. And even then I think it’s just arguable you’re just taking a guess as to whether or not and I think that’s probably not true. But there’s also some unique stuff that if you’re not into software development that you might not know, which is that like AI has enabled back end capabilities that we didn’t have before. For example, you know, this might seem kind of trivial, but it’s actually really impactful in a lot of ways, just summarizing text that we couldn’t really do before. That now you can do with AI. There’s a whole bunch of other things that I won’t go into. So there are a lot of benefits from Ai there is some AI reality but hopefully this video helps you cut through some of the AI marketing BS. Let me know what you think. Give a like to like this video. Subscribe for more awesome AI videos. Thanks and have a great day. Bye