Shocking tech news this week as… here, let the Macalope settle for AI to sum it up.
“AI is the coolest and everyone loves it.”
What?! No! It’s not… meh.
“OpenAI, Google and Anthropic struggle to create more advanced AI” (Bloomberg)
It seems like the wheels are coming off the AI a bit.
Which, honestly, is probably the problem. The Macalope isn’t a programmer, but even he knows these things shouldn’t run on wheels. They should run on silicon. So if you’re using your AI on wheels, this is the first thing you should try to solve.
You’re welcome, AI companies.
According to Bloomberg OpenAI, Google and Anthropic are all seeing diminishing returns on their efforts to obtain “untapped sources of high-quality, human-created training data” as they face the high costs associated with mining from the word-sausage- make machines that they have already shipped.
You can shout Macalope a river, AI companies. On the first point, these companies routinely appropriate content without consent and, even when they have asked for consent, have done so in the most difficult way possible. On the second point, burn the Earth until your great language model tells people to eat rocks and glue…the Macalope guesses we’ll see which kills humanity first, global warming or death by misinformation.
It’s certainly possible that this is just a speed bump on the road to machines that, if they don’t really think, at least seem to. However, it is more than heartbreaking to see AI starting to disappoint in the same way as previous energy vampire technologies (apologies to Colin Robinson) like cryptography. In June (do you remember June?), the Macalope wrote:
Macalope doesn’t consider himself someone prone to conspiracy theories, but he wouldn’t be surprised to learn years from now that Nvidia is running a powerful psychological operations campaign that is devising technologies that require its operating boards to operate. administration and then convinces venture capital. companies to invest there.
If it turns out that AI is running out of gas and suddenly next year another CPU-intensive technology appears, arrived needing GPUs, well, let’s just say that sounds less like a conspiracy theory and more like an educated guess. Furthermore, Macalope should probably attach an expiration date to this “AI running on gas” metaphor, as the new US presidential administration would likely be all too willing to allow it to literally run on gas.
AI is a party. Apple is probably happy to have arrived too late and perhaps left early, but the company is not immune to the collective yawn that this technology seems to engender. As more people test the iOS 18.2 beta, more people experience the… “joys” is definitely not the right word. “Nightmare fuel” is probably a little strong, but more directionally correct. Oh. More people are experiencing fever dreams produced by Image Playground. The summaries are often no better, apparently going so far as to turn children into husbands, which is very embarrassing.
IDG
AI was supposed to drive a wave of upgrades to new Apple phones, but it’s a technology that few people asked for and often delivers results no one asked for.
Absolutely everyone: [nothing at all]
AI: “EAT ROCKS!” »
Absolutely everyone: “Who said that?!” »
Apple will, of course, continue to do well (thank you, services revenue) and is probably better positioned to move away from it if it continues to hit a brick wall than many of its competitors.
The Macalope started with a joke about summaries, but he has to say that Apple’s summary tool did a very good job on this column:
AI companies face challenges in improving their models due to lack of data and high costs. Despite initial enthusiasm, AI’s performance has not met expectations, raising concerns about its future. Apple, while not immune to the limitations of AI, is better positioned to move away from them because of its strong services revenue.
However, the Macalope would have highlighted the metaphors used: “The AI seems to have the impression that its wheels are coming off, that it is running out of gas and is heading towards a brick wall. »
