AI Sings the Blues

Quite a few of you aren't thrilled or enamored by GenAI (Generative Artificial Intelligence) with things like ChatGPT or CoPilot. Some of you love it or find it fascinating. My guess is many of you are like me and you're not quite sure how useful this is with a healthy dose of skepticism.

No matter how you feel, I find this piece on AI Blues fascinating to read. It talks about some of the problems with AI and how people are becoming less tolerant of the small errors that AIs make. I think people might be upset with some of the issues, but I also think these are types of things we might see in a colleague as well, and we might tolerate them for much longer than we think.

The thing in the piece that really caught my eye is that training models to make less errors might make them less creative. I don't think they are very creative, but I do think part of the idea is that they might do something better than we could do, at least for those of us working in a space where we're a beginner to intermediate (or advanced beginner). In many cases, we'd expect better output from a model.

The note about training not being often or in-depth enough as well is interesting. Perhaps some of the models ought to be trained separately, with some having a more specific focus, like learning Python and producing very few errors, or learning Python to produce interesting solutions to large scale problems even if there are some errors in the code.

I could see similarly more tightly trained models for other areas, such as marketing email or legal issues. Maybe we need a lot of different models tailored for different jobs. Of course, if companies are struggling to generate revenue on AI already (and I think they are), then can they afford to train and retrain specific models focused for smaller audiences?

Maybe, and maybe Moore's law will help bail out some AI experiments, but I'm not sure. For now, I continue to experiment, and I think skilled tech people ought to do the same. I don't think it will replace us, but I do think it can be a useful tool in many ways to help us become more productive.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Join the debate, and respond to the editorial on the forums

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