The upside of AI

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

I think we’re all pretty aware of the downside of AI and how much content has been stolen from artists and photographers and writers. And I certainly know this better than most having spent the last 16 years feeding stuff that apparently just became grist for the AI overlords

But I’m starting to see a few lights at the end of the tunnel, albeit not in my usual tunnel.

It turns out that AI is extremely good at technical stuff. So I am slowly going through the site guided by AI to fix things like caching and site speed. It tends to read documentation before it does stuff and we’ve had some moderate improvements that should continue over the next couple of weeks as I make my way through the list, wait a day for new information from the analytics and then roll out the next recommendations based on this.

It’s probably something I should have done from the beginning, but tech guys can charge up to $200 an hour for this and that adds up pretty quickly. AI is a hell of a lot cheaper, even though that kills yet another profession.

I’m so torn with this as I think we’re at the very beginning of the huge change in society and employment, but at the same time I see the potential for improving the human condition in stuff like research. I don’t know, I’m equal parts excited and terrified.

[Larry Shone]

Yes AI does have its uses, definitely. But it needs to be kept out of the hands of joe public.

Our cameras have been using AI for years. The algorithm that controls AF was put in Minolta’s 7000 slr in 1987, it was called Fuzzy Logic but is a form of AI

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

I think that horse has bolted @greenlarry – you can already download some pretty powerful open source AI

[Robert Apple]

Be careful how freindly you get with it , we may already be chatting with Rob in side the matrix. And Larry is one of the programmers.

As Far as “I think we’re all pretty aware of the downside of AI”, I don’t think we have the slightest clue of the reality of or the height of the drop when it comes to the downside.

[Larry Shone]

Ah no I’ve been rumbled! 😮

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

I mean sure, but I don’t think we have any idea of the upside either. I think it’s a given that AI will be heavily involved in medical breakthroughs from now on in probably the majority of instances, for example. I think the upside is more likely, but.. I’m fully cognizant that this could go wrong. Didn’t Elon put a 10 or 20% chance on us turning into a robot dystopia?

[Robert Apple]

Elon said It’s not if it is going to turn against humans, it’s when, That’s what the Mars stuff is about, a place to escape to.

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

I wonder if he was on a ketamine high when he said that lol

[Michael Nowak]

From a few stories I’ve read, more blips than anything, AI is being used by the military and others to find, target, then deliver it’s findings as a list of recommendations’ for destruction with very little human oversight. From the little I know of AI it learns as it grows correcting mistakes faster than most humans will admit to making a mistake. I hope that for every one person teaching it to destroy there are 100 Doctors, engineers, and artisans teaching it to create.

Don’t forget to say please and thank you when you use AI it might just remember you as one of the nice ones after the take over. 🙂

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

I think it’s easy to get hung up on all of the negative stories and don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to diminish them because some of them scare the living crap out of me but I think we should also remember that this tech is giving researchers a lot more brain time on the actual research while automating a lot of the administration. From that alone, it is probably making quite a positive difference for a lot of people. Two stories stick out to me the first was that they have used AI to solve and create a brand new maths problem and the other one was an actual medical breakthrough unfortunately I can’t remember the specifics of that medical breakthrough but I do remember a 13% improvement in outcomes.

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