The Bluestocking: the one where AI finally learns what a blackbird is (we hope)

[Magpiecomplex]

Welcome all, New Year (nearly), new thread!

AI has gone into meltdown!

Wot, no crocks?

Sorted!

Oh, no! That top one is not an image for bedtime.

😁 Luckily I actually look more like this one!

(From The Guardian, March 2019)
"When I appeared nude in a play on Broadway in the early 70s, a nasty little critic said I was built like a brick mausoleum with insufficient flying buttresses. He should have seen me after the menopause, there was no shortfall then! It was devastating at the time."

Should there be a naughty step in TB for nasty little* men where they are subjected to a hard stare? Or a naughty shed in the back? Preferably draughty and cold. To learn some manners.

*not being sizeist as meaning little of thought or character.
hmm… Is that still sizeist? Maybe I mean not being heightist? 🧐

I am one of the hyper-norked, and what I will say is that it means I have a generous cleavage in which to put things that would go in the pockets that, as a woman, I do not have.

Same. Very handy when doing that prepping before the snow multi weather hazard event..

Ditto. Very useful when hypo-pocketed. Or indeed apocketed (as in, without pockets).

Moving from norkage to AI - both equally valid topics at the Bluestocking, n'est-ce-pas?

I heard an interview with the author of a book on AI which was very revealing. She said that it was a mistake to think of AI as a tool, it's more of a new species.

The interviewer pointed out that AI still makes a lot of mistakes and produced things that are called 'hallucinations' [that's when I thought of the Bluestocking and its many-fingered somewhat human creatures..] so it's not all it's cracked up to be. Or at least, 'yet'.

The expert replied that AI is replicating humans, and humans make mistakes so it's unreasonable to expect AI NOT to make mistakes. And AI is learning, 'like a child'

At this point, I had to pick my jaw up off the floor [no no please don't AI it!] - she was actually praising AI for being so human that it makes mistakes... whaaaat?
I wanted to ask her what the heck is the point of replacing humans with AI, if AI doesn't bring advantages like greater speed and accuracy?? Why not just let the humans keep their jobs, aided by forms of tech that can guarantee accuracy as well as speed?

There was a very muddled conversation about 'using AI for good' and the importance of regulation and how it was society's responsibility to see to it that it was not misused etc etc, but she didn't explain what control existing societies could have over this new paradigm which includes a whole new species..

She also said that companies using AI are responsible for all the mistakes that AI [inevitably] makes .... does that mean that everything produced by AI has to be checked word by word, presumably by a human, because you never know what nonsense, perhaps even actionable nonsense, it might come up with?

Shortly after bigging up AI for making mistakes just like us humans, she said that AI was already making great contributions in the field of ...oncology... 😱

Here's the book - maybe the interview didn't do it justice:
A Strategy for Human-AI Symbiosis.: Concepts, Tools, and Business Models for the New AI Game Paperback – 3 Nov. 2024
by Dr. Alexandra Diening.

Shortly after bigging up AI for making mistakes just like us humans, she said that AI was already making great contributions in the field of ...oncology...

Well, that's hugely reassuring.

IIRC from a previous discussion of lab coats, you've definitely got them.

I'd like to revise my previous suggestion of terms & go for:
scantinorks & plentinorks.

No, I think exiling them from the Bluey is punishment enough. There could perhaps be an oubliette in the street outside, where prisoners can smell the gravy & hear the Tunnocks being unwrapped, but that's as close as I'd want them.

'She also said that companies using AI are responsible for all the mistakes that AI [inevitably] makes .... does that mean that everything produced by AI has to be checked word by word, presumably by a human, because you never know what nonsense, perhaps even actionable nonsense, it might come up with?'

It would be interesting to see a legal contract between an AI company & a user.

Shortly after bigging up AI for making mistakes just like us humans, she said that AI was already making great contributions in the field of ...oncology...

The thing is though, some AIs/machine learning systems already are genuinely useful, though usually as an adjunct to expert humans rather than replacing them. There are systems trained on huge amounts of clinical data that may pick up something from an image which might otherwise be missed, which will flag it for further investigation by a human. Others are based on massive amounts of hard scientific data combined with domain-specific knowledge (that might be a pun...) such as AlphaFold2 for predicting protein structures from sequences, which I've mentioned before.

I see what you mean, Errol, and agree that fast and accurate AI is already being beneficial e.g. in medicine.

The speaker was mostly talking about next-level AI, the 'new species', and she was almost dismissive of large language models and generative AI, as if they were, like, sooooooo 2024.

As you say, current versions are already able to do impressive tasks with not just speed but accuracy, and her idea that we should embrace the human-ness of future versions of AI by accepting that if we make mistakes, AI should too, is what made me go wtf? It sounds like irrational exuberance is in the driving seat!

Right, where's that hot chocolate bowser? I have been staggeringly efficient today and done a lot of admin, and as a result I am simply staggering now...

Oubliette is a fantastic word, and criminally underused. Every women's pub should have at least one oubliette.

Indeed.

CTBITO (chuck the bastard in the oubliette)?

So next gen AI is useless and will therefore have vast sums of money thrown at it? I can be useless!

Maybe the route to a 'generalised intelligence' type of AI may be by 'childlike learning'.

But we don't let children work in an office!

But we don't let children work in an office!

Oh, I don't know. Today's Tiktok débâcle suggests the Labour Party does.

I've spent the day sleeping off the vegetable stupor from yesterday! I could manage a hot chocolate right about now!

Oh, I don't know. Today's Tiktok débâcle suggests the Labour Party does.

I've not seen the details but would we call that 'work'?

Here you go Boily. The bar gerbil is lining them up for us.