#aihype
@adfichter Ich habs schon übers Wochenende geschrieben, aber als Forscher an der UZH war ich ziemlich bestürzt. Auf der anderen Seite leider aber auch nicht überrascht.
Wir bewegen uns in einem Umfeld, wo Forschenden (und Studierenden, leider) nun seit geraumer Zeit konstant eingebläut wird, dass es nichts wichtigeres gäbe, als Chatbots und Text-Generation zu erforschen.
Wenn ich Forschungspraktiken im Strudel dieses #aihype sehe (nicht nur an der UZH natürlich), sind diese aus meiner Perspektive negativ von der Ausrichtung der Forschungsgelder nach dem Hype und den apokalyptischen Narrativen der Tech-Unternehmen beeinflusst. Zugespitzt, die Gott-Maschine kommt, also ist fast alles zu ihrer Erforschung gerechtfertigt.
Dass es da Leute dann übertreiben, scheint mir die logische Konsequenz. Und aus meiner Erfahrung mit Einschätzungen zu digitalen Experimenten an unwissenden Teilnehmenden, wo das Forschungsteam argumentiert hatte, dass der potentielle Schaden ja minim sei, ist auch die Praxis im vorliegenden Fall durchaus konsistent dazu, was momentan als nicht bedenklich empfunden wird.
This is part of an actual email!
Your writing is so bad AI can't even use your writing or train on your writing.
My guy, I can assure you, that isn't the dunk you think it is.
Tech Bros Want Creativity for Them, Not You | Patreon https://web.internal.patreon.com/_ssr_data/posts/tech-bros-want-127367896 https://www.patreon.com/posts/tech-bros-want-127367896 #NoPaywall #AI #AIHype
“Foundation models are incredibly effective at stringing together statistically plausible chunks of text in response to prompts. But to claim they are sentient is the modern equivalent of the dog who heard a voice from a gramophone and thought his master was inside.”
—Erik Brynjolfsson, Jun 12, 2022, quoted by Gary Marcus, Apr 25, 2025
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/new-adventures-in-ai-hype-our-language
#ai #aihype #llm #llms
Forcing the world into machines https://tante.cc/2025/04/24/forcing-the-world-into-machines/ #AI #AIHype
"Well, is there any warning on when it makes a mistake?"
"No, that's the fun part - there is no warning! Have fun integrating it, it goes live with our customers Monday!"
And scene!
2/2
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/18/openais-new-reasoning-ai-models-hallucinate-more/
One fundamental thing I wish was in more disability writings about AI, for example, this unquestioningly PR hype by @steven_aquino gets so close to hitting on the point I wish more would tackle. Even with the best technology, we're still disabled. This is ultimately why I find Techno Ableism to be particularly misleading. To be clear, he isn't peddling techno Ableism, but many in the blind community do. When this tech moves behind an expensive paywall, which, it will, the bandage for societies inaccessibility will be locked behind a steep paywall and I wish more examined what happens when #Enshittification comes for AI and how society and ableism haven't changed. https://www.curbcuts.co/blog/2025-4-9-googles-april-pixel-drop-shows-how-ai-can-be-more-transformative-than-trivial-pursuit #AI #AIHype
Announcing
AITRAP,
The AI hype TRAcking Project
Here:
https://www.poritz.net/jonathan/aitrap/
What/why:
I keep a very random list of articles about AI, with a focus on hype, ethics, policy, teaching, IP law, some of the CS aspects, etc., now up to 1000s of entries.
I decided to share, in case anyone is interested; I'm thinking of people who like @emilymbender, @alex, & @davidgerard . If there is a desire, I'll add a UI to allow submission of new links, commentary, hashtags.
Once again, Germany will get a minister of research without the slightest clue of
- how research is done
- how research is organized
- what the current issues are
- etc.
However, she has the right party membership and has already demonstrated eloquently being able to combine having no idea with a strong opinion (#blockchain).
That and the fact that we are still in an #aihype let me fear the worst. Mark my words!
Denial regarding AI https://adactio.com/journal/21831 #AI #AIHype
Calling All Mad Scientists: Reject "AI" as a Framing of Your Work • Buttondown https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/calling-all-mad-scientists-reject-ai-as-a-framing/ #AI #AIHype
This article solidifies why I never take these #Accessibility businessmen/professionals seriously. First of all, for an accessibility practitioner, he doesn’t understand the technology he is writing about. A longer blog post will be coming, but this is why I roll my eyes at accessibility professionals today. AI is the future of accessibility - Karl Groves https://karlgroves.com/ai-is-the-future-of-accessibility/ #A11y #AIHype #AI
"My core theses — The Rot Economy (that the tech industry has become dominated by growth), The Rot-Com Bubble (that the tech industry has run out of hyper-growth ideas), and that generative AI has created a kind of capitalist death cult where nobody wants to admit that they're not making any money — are far from comfortable.
The ramifications of a tech industry that has become captured by growth are that true innovation is being smothered by people that neither experience nor know how (or want) to fix real problems, and that the products we use every day are being made worse for a profit. These incentives have destroyed value-creation in venture capital and Silicon Valley at large, lionizing those who are able to show great growth metrics rather than creating meaningful products that help human beings.
The ramifications of the end of hyper-growth mean a massive reckoning for the valuations of tech companies, which will lead to tens of thousands of layoffs and a prolonged depression in Silicon Valley, the likes of which we've never seen.
The ramifications of the collapse of generative AI are much, much worse. On top of the fact that the largest tech companies have burned hundreds of billions of dollars to propagate software that doesn't really do anything that resembles what we think artificial intelligence looks like, we're now seeing that every major tech company (and an alarming amount of non-tech companies!) is willing to follow whatever it is that the market agrees is popular, even if the idea itself is flawed.
Generative AI has laid bare exactly how little the markets think about ideas, and how willing the powerful are to try and shove something unprofitable, unsustainable and questionably-useful down people's throats as a means of promoting growth.
(...)
In short, reality can fucking suck, but a true skeptic learns to live in it."
Despite the hopeful tone this takes regarding LLMs and openly speculating if future LLM image descriptions will be better, this is a really great breakdown as to why AI is not capable of writing good image descriptions. Can generative AI write contextual text descriptions? - TetraLogical https://tetralogical.com/blog/2025/03/24/can-generative-ai-write-contextual-text-descriptions/ #AI #AltText #Accessibility #AIHype