I had been worried about not finding anything worthwhile to blog about; but then ChatGPT came to fruition. While I had mentioned it earlier, I could not fathom how quickly this would take the centre-stage to grab attention. I refuse to use ChatGPT for blog here, though I might get some summariser for long-form or PDF’s in the future. Generative AI is the next wave of cancerous growth designed to cause a lot of disruption. We seriously don’t need it.
This falls under the classic head of “illusion of progress”. Large Language Models can only generate text convincingly, because they can statistically predict the next occurrence of the words. Beyond that, there’s no “magic” happening. The discussion is mostly on the “ethics” and the “closed nature” of what sounds like an ironic name: “OpenAI”. There’s nothing open about it. My bigger bet is on the recommendation algorithms, and it is saddening to witness that the brightest minds of the century grab the attention of millenials on stupid dance moves and create trends. Instead, the same resources can be deployed at scale to figure out protein modelling, identification of newer therapeutic molecules, or even simulating the molecular processes by having better visualisation. That’s why I insist these are illusions of progress designed to cause societal disruption and represent a weaponisation of “Artificial Intelligence”.
Natural evolution in computing is paramount to “push the boundaries”, but we seriously don’t want biased write-ups on the societal disruptions. While there are “news” around entire ethical teams being disbanded, people fail to realise they represent cost centres for any company. Once the hard realities of commerce hit the bottom, “ethical teams” like the “IT support” are the first ones to be culled. Likewise, virtue signalling around “diversity” isn’t going to cut ice once the idea of meritocracy is culled from the lexicon, and instead the goal posts shift towards ensuring equitability. Those pressing issues don’t get the work done.
The genie has been uncorked; the oncoming tsunami will hit everyone. We should better prepare ourselves to understand the process, rather than hide under. This will eventually be the way forward.
Stay tuned!
RadOncNotes 