As I previously warned, artificial intelligence companies are running out of data. A Wall Street Journal piece from this week has sounded the alarm that some believe AI models will run out of "high-quality text-based data" within the next two years in what an AI researcher called "a frontier research
This article is excellent, and raises a point that’s been lingering in the back of my head–what happens if the promises don’t materialize? What happens when the market gets tired of stories about AI chatbots telling landlords to break the law, or suburban moms complaining about their face being plastered onto a topless model, or any of the other myriad stories of AI making glaring mistakes that would get any human immediately fired?
We’ve poured hundreds of billions of dollars into this, and what has it gotten us? What is the upside that makes up for all the lawsuits, lost jobs, disinformation, carbon footprint, and deluge of valueless slop flooding our search results? So far as I can tell, its primary use seems to be in creating things that someone is too lazy to do properly themself like cover letters or memes, and inserting Godzilla into increasingly ridiculous situations. There’s certainly something there, perhaps, but is it worth using enough energy to power a small country?
weaponized deepfakes, propaganda as a service, ai spam, proof that you can strip-mine internet for everything of value relatively quickly, proof that you can pollute web with drivel that pleases google and cover anything of value relatively quickly, tool for destruction of some media companies, and that sweet, sweet speculative stock revenue
oh you mean for commoners? then you get fuck all, or maybe you get to be replaced by plagiarism machine of your boss’s choice that is Good Enough™
If we’re lucky, we might end up with a glut of cheap GPUs/server space once the bubble pops.