The rise of Artificial Intelligence

caballeroseg

I am aware of the advances in artificial intelligence, which are growing at a breakneck pace since Chatgpt came out in 2022, especially chatbots. Image development applications are very interesting and spectacular, but I find them more limiting in terms of software or subscription costs.
The current uses of chatbots are manifold, and a future with assistants like Jarvis from Ironman or KITT from The Fantastic Car seems very close to me, regardless of the major concerns about the lack of privacy they currently have or the risks to humanity.

I currently use Chatgpt 3.5, Bing Chat, Bard and Aria (this one for now only from the opera browser). The one I find most reliable (although they all still make too many mistakes) is Bing Chat; the most artistic and best translator, in my opinion, is Chat GPT; Bard is not yet clearly positioned (it was recently released), and I have used Aria very little.

What experience do you have and what do you think of all this? It would be interesting to have a subcategory of artificial intelligence within the forum, considering the growth that all this is having.

Best regards,

Pesala

There is already a thread on Artificial Intelligence.

Science Fiction or Futurology?

Self Driving Software is soon going to cause major disruption to transportation as a service. The latest version uses end-to-end neutral nets, which is a major break-through.

The self-driving software can also be modified to control humanoid robots, which will disrupt the labour market.

I have not used ChatBot or other AI myself, but it can produce some amazing results. There is a user named Déborah on x.com who creates some amazing art using some AI tools, I presume.

Pesala

Dr. Jordan Peterson

“If a traffic camera catches you jaywalking in China, the digital ID system has you. It has your blood now; it has your genetic code; it has your photograph. It will convict you of jaywalking and take money out of your bank account.”

When AI is misused like this, the prospects are pretty gloomy. It may well come to Western countries in various guises before long. There are already cameras detecting cars entering the Ultra Low Emission Zone in London. Anyone with an older car will be charged £12.50 per day for driving in London.

ingolftopf

@caballeroseg
Hello, welcome here.

Have fun with the browser, the forum and on 'Mastodon': VIVALDI SOCIAL social.vivaldi.net

caballeroseg

@Pesala
Interesting thread you link to.

Deborah's creations seem to be made with Midjourney which is one of the most spectacular artificial intelligence illustration creators; but its subscription is not cheap.

caballeroseg

@ingolftopf

Thanks ^^

Catweazle

@caballeroseg, like all new technology it is a double-edged sword. In AI I am concerned about two things, the abuse that large companies do, using AI as a welcome tool to be able to even better profile and spy on users, as in the case of Bing Chat or Google Bard and other mainstream commercial apps from large companies. Also even worst, to use them for evil proposits.
The other point is to replace our own capabilities and intelligence with AI, making us completely dependent on it.

alt text

There are currently more than 1,500 AI apps and services and there are more every day, there are already several databases where they are listed.
https://www.futuretools.io
https://www.futurepedia.io
etc.

At the moment I use Andisearch, an AI search assistant. It was the first in the market, long before Bing Chat and Google Bard. It has an independent lenguage model and it's one of the most privacy protecting search engine with nice features. Anonymous, no account, free, no ads, no tracking or logging, no SEO crap. Reliable answers from trustworth sources, reader mode, YT videos sandboxed in the search results.

caballeroseg

@Catweazle
You are right. It seems that they are looking for a way to maximize the profitability of these new technologies by obtaining the maximum possible benefits without it being very clear that the benefit or detriment of this technology in the future of humanity matters.
On the other hand, in the particular use of these applications I have also noticed what you say, of becoming dependent and that we are losing the ability to make decisions by consulting these "intelligences" so much. The picture you put of wall-e is a total example.

It is also true that they greatly facilitate creative work, the use of language, translation, creation of texts, synthesis and multiple academic, scientific and research work, as well as leisure. For example one of the things I use chatbots is to recommend music according to my tastes and discover new things; and in general I am very surprised by their capacity to recommend "leisure things".
Whenever a new technology appears it scares us in general. It's like when shoes were invented; there would be people who not without reason might think that it would be better not to wear them, because the soles of our feet would get softer and more sensitive; than going barefoot.

I did not know Andisearch, thank you for the recommendation, it looks good; it seems the best of all in terms of privacy. I will give it a try.

Catweazle

@caballeroseg, I love Andisearch, it's a great tool.

AI is here to stay, but you have to be very careful in choosing which of these apps you can use and which ones are really useful.
My criteria are these:

They must be free if not used professionally, since paid apps involve publishing private and sensitive data, which in companies that traffic in user data can have dire consequences.

Privacy first, read well, although sometimes it is a pain, PP and TOS of the apps and services, this avoids unpleasant surprises. Preferably anonymous use without having to register.

Graphic applications with AI, ok some may find it fun to convert a phrase into an image, but ultimately, what's the point? They are almost always images in small format, which can be used for avatars and little else (like mine). Better to avoid the registration, the tokens and shit of these and directly download AI wallpapers in HD (Desktop and Mobile) from this page, that creates them automatically every hour without any intervention. Go to this page, choose the image you want and download it, that's all. No attribution, copyright or other conditions.

Other tools, such as removing the background or objects from a photo, the ones I have tried all have a fairly mediocre result, there have been tools and editors without AI for years, which do this much better with a few clicks.

Chatbots, well, they can have their uses, but personally I distrust them, the vast majority are automated to collect data for a company, you always have to choose which one well and take it with a grain of salt.

Human intelligence and common sense is very necessary to use AI properly.

elvisvan

@Catweazle i get what you worry about but the picture of a fat dude from wall-e is a bit overdramatic lol

Catweazle

@elvisvan, I don't think that it is too overdramatic, Wall-e is naturally a film, which makes children laugh, but adults are choked as a brutal warning about our society of unbridled consumption, which makes our planet uninhabitable if we do not change.

With AI we are like children with new toys, as before with other technologies, becoming more and more dependent on it, until we can no longer survive without it.

If one day a solar flare causes a massive electrical blackout in a country, due to the EMP effect (there was already this in the past, although at that time the effect was only that some telegraph stations were burned, but today it would be the worst case), over weeks or months, a large portion of the population will die.

Happy then, those who have a garden with vegetables, some chickens and a well with water, would be the only survivors.

Without electricity there is no AI, no Internet, no Smartphone, no food supplies, no transportation, no water purification, no fuel, because the pumps will not work, no health supplies, no means of communication, no emergency services, no infrastructure... .Game over.

LonM

Most of the chat "AI" is being made by big tech companies without any real business plan. One can hope that they will simply choke themselves out of a market, kind of like how big hollywood streamers are, or like how google can't seem to keep successful products going more than a few years, or like cryptocurrencies which were the big fad only to go nowhere because they weren't all that valuable beyond the hype.

Aaron

@Pesala said in The rise of Artificial Intelligence:

When AI is misused like this

misused?

Pesala

Not all AI is created equal

Waymo Traffic Jam

Assuming that this video is genuine, I guess that some smart students got together and all ordered a Waymo at the same time and place. I bet they were all

DoctorG

Well, the new AI is so good and positive to all. Is'nt it?
https://english.elpais.com/technology/2023-09-22/mothers-unite-against-ai-generated-nude-photos.html

Pesala

There are two kinds of people in the world:

Glass half-empty people. They focus on the negative and the potential disadvantages of anything new.
Glass half-full people. They focus on the positive and the potential benefits of anything new.

An intelligent person weighs up the pros and cons, warning of the need for caution and regulation to prevent its misuse, while focusing on how it can be improved and applied to new projects. Intelligent humanoid robots, for example, could take over all boring, physically demanding, and dangerous tasks, greatly reducing the costs for manufacturing and construction. The backward-thinking trade unions might oppose progress, wrongly thinking that it will lead to a loss of well-paid jobs. They fail to see that it would release human beings to be creative, giving them more time to care for family members, or the disadvantaged in society.

Imagine the cost-savings and stress relief if a disabled or elderly relative could be helped to bathe, use the bathroom, and eat, by a humanoid robot that could also provide intelligent conversation, while keeping in touch with relatives who are now able to return to productive employment, instead of relying on expensive, home-help to care for disabled family members.

AI is already taking the hard-graft out of writing, coding, and design. Architects and designers used to spend countless hours drawing and measuring lines on huge sheets of paper, but all of this work has been taken over by computer-aided design. Once a design is nearly complete, 3D printing can produce a prototype for testing, or even for making the finished product.

LonM

@Pesala said in The rise of Artificial Intelligence:

Intelligent humanoid robots, for example, could take over all boring, physically demanding, and dangerous tasks, greatly reducing the costs for manufacturing and construction. The backward-thinking trade unions might oppose progress, wrongly thinking that it will lead to a loss of well-paid jobs. They fail to see that it would release human beings to be creative, giving them more time to care for family members, or the disadvantaged in society.

I don't think it's fair to smear trade unions like that. The recent strikes by the American Hollywood unions are being driven in part by the fact that studio executives want to kill off exactly the kind of creative work that you're saying AI will free us up for 1. And much of AI is being built on the back of very low-paid workers with poor protections, so it's more accurate to say it will encourage more demanding and dangerous tasks. 2

And as for taking the "hard graft" out of work - Chatbot based AI, which is what I'm assuming you're referring to, is so error-prone that anyone using it in a professional setting should double check everything it is writing, as there's no guarantee that it is safe or reliable. You mention coding, but even the engineers that made the AI systems say it is "worse than useless" 3.

"An intelligent person weighs up the pros and cons", well upon weighing the overwhelming cons against the few pros, the intelligent conclusion would be to not place much faith in it.

Catweazle

AI is here to stay and there is no other way to use it sensibly. I have nothing against certain uses that can be useful, I use, for example, Andisearch.
In any case, I consider this a useful application, since it does not invent results, as Chatbots do. It even allows a search with a traditional search engine, to choose, if it do not find a clear answer (rarely),
Other one is maybe Phind, made specally for devs, to search scripts and codes or Perplexity, which combine a Chat with an search engine, but is less complete as Andi and also not so private.
Text2Image/video, well, may have some uses, but in this I applaude Google's plan to insert an invisible and indelible watermark in them, to avoid problems for real artistic works, since it allows us to easily differentiate a work of an artist from the one created with AI.
AI in industry, eg to find new compounds or drugs, can also be very useful, although they can also be used for bad purposes, as was recently shown in an AI from a pharmaceutical company, where a simple change in a line of code, caused this AI starts to design chemical and biological weapons. This naturally must be strictly controlled.
As I said, AI yes, but using the own intelligence and ethics.

PearlMiller

This post is deleted!

wintercoast

@LonM said in The rise of Artificial Intelligence:

And as for taking the "hard graft" out of work - Chatbot based AI, which is what I'm assuming you're referring to, is so error-prone that anyone using it in a professional setting should double check everything it is writing, as there's no guarantee that it is safe or reliable. You mention coding, but even the engineers that made the AI systems say it is "worse than useless" 3.

I've been playing with these quite a bit recently both for coding and math assistance (I'm doing a Math for AI course). I've found them to be useful even when they get the answers wrong. But they are not a substitute for not thinking for yourself alongside them.

For example, in a recent math case I was unclear about the presentation in the course. After firing a question at the AI it gave an improved explanation of the concept but actually calculated its answer incorrectly. I was able to deduce this, ironically, from the very concept it had explained to me! I then told this to the AI and it corrected itself.

The AI works best when you already have some knowledge of the topic or domain, rather than when you're completely ignorant. So, don't ask it to write code when you've literally had no experience of coding yourself.