Predictions about the potential impacts of generative AI may be hugely overblown because of "many serious, unsolved problems" with the technology according to Gary Marcus, one of the field's leading voices.
3 months ago: Everyone’s going to lose their jobs!
Today: Generative AI’s dead!
More realistically: Generative AI is a tool that will gradually get better over time. It is not universally applicable, but it does have a lot of potential applications. It is not going to take over the world, nor will it just suddenly go away.
That’s pretty much been my take from the beginning. My main concerns were and still are:
IP law, specifically copyright infringement
correctness - ChatGPT makes stuff up
detection - esp for school
My main fear was that it would be more useful for scammers and fraudsters than legitimate uses because of the above issues. I still have those concerns.
With any new technology that people say well change the world overnight, take a step back and think it through. For example:
self driving cars - we still have taxis, Uber, etc, so it hasn’t taken over despite being here for years
robotics in manufacturing - it’s incredibly expensive to put together and end to end robotic factory, so there are still plenty of manufacturing jobs
automated fast food - again, the most I’ve seen is increased number of kiosks, that’s it
And so on. People freak out about new tech, then a couple years later they realize that it’s not “finished” and there will be plenty of time to adapt. Unless we recover an alien spaceship or something, that’s just not how technology progresses. Eventually generative AI will redically change our society, but it’ll take decades, so by the time your job is threatened, you’ll be ready to retire.
3 months ago: Everyone’s going to lose their jobs!
Today: Generative AI’s dead!
More realistically: Generative AI is a tool that will gradually get better over time. It is not universally applicable, but it does have a lot of potential applications. It is not going to take over the world, nor will it just suddenly go away.
That’s pretty much been my take from the beginning. My main concerns were and still are:
My main fear was that it would be more useful for scammers and fraudsters than legitimate uses because of the above issues. I still have those concerns.
With any new technology that people say well change the world overnight, take a step back and think it through. For example:
And so on. People freak out about new tech, then a couple years later they realize that it’s not “finished” and there will be plenty of time to adapt. Unless we recover an alien spaceship or something, that’s just not how technology progresses. Eventually generative AI will redically change our society, but it’ll take decades, so by the time your job is threatened, you’ll be ready to retire.