AI slop till you drop

It may come as a small surprise to some of you that I, an Information Technology savant (perhaps), would be unwilling to accept teh new hotness which is AI.  

 

How is it that you work in IT, and yet, you're unwilling to accept the inevitability of AI being force-fed into every aspect of your life? Don't you know AI can emulate your voice, likeness, and show you the sex life you wish you were having (via deep fakes)? 

 

 

No, I do not want AI to paint me like one its French girls; nor do I want it to create a movie based upon a one-sentence prompt; nor do I want it to generate a track of Michael Jackson doing Gangster Rap; nor do I want it to write a track in the style of Eminem; nor do I want a chatbot in the style of Marilyn Monroe. 

 

I do not want it to be creative.

 

And yet, that is, perhaps, its biggest draw card. It is only as good as the resources at its disposal, and that, my friends, is where things get a little sticky. For we are the resource. Everything which is accessible on the internet has either been legally or illegally scraped for their AI models. Even this blog could easily be used to generate a surly and apathetic perspective of humanity ... but I digress.

 

Perhaps, if the breadth of its current uses were limited to generating things I despise, perhaps the rest of the world could live with that. But, no, its use is far more nefarious than merely exuming and forcing dead creatives to do the latest in tiktok dances on a whim. The amount of energy used by AI dwarfs the comparative toe-dip of crypto - especially as every glue-eating CEO wants to get in on the latest in tech bubble schtick and is pushing AI into every crevice of your devices.

 

At this point, I'm through caring about society. They're such complete and utter sociopathic morons that I have given up hope of any of them taking a moment to think, let alone care, about anyone else. Perhaps there are others in this world who feel like me - but not in the seats which matter. The cost to house all the data required by AI has moved into the ExaBytes (billion GigaBytes); the energy required to train these models requires Terawatts (more than 1.21 gigawatts) and, as usage increases, signficantly more than before the 'AI age.'

To make matters worse, AI is not particularly intelligent. It's just a heuristic model which uses weighted gates to determine its next choice. It really is very stupid. The fact that you get anything coherent out of it at all is probably the more impressive aspect of it all. But, as they say, if you throw enough monkeys at the problem, eventually you get Shakespeare. Or at least some kind of facsimile.

 

 

When is the right time?

Perhaps I'm in the minority. Well, actually, I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority but, anyway, here goes ...

So, Kobe is dead and I'm a little indifferent to his passing. Now, before you think I have some kind of prejudice towards him, hold up - I'll explain. As an athlete he had achieved everything you can in his chosen profession. He had experienced everything he could as a celebrity. He had achieved everything that was required as a father. He has experienced more in his 41 years of life than many people would in their lifetime. If he had drawn up a bucket list I doubt there would be much that he hadn't already done. So, perhaps, this was the right time for him to go.

Death is never a fun thing to experience (or so I've been told) but sometimes it isn't necessarily a loss. I was happy when my grandmother died because she had lived a full life and managed to die with her dignity still intact. I am firmly of the belief that if you truly love that person you'll ensure they do not suffer unnecessarily. Till the end she still had her faculties, no hip on one side (!) but somehow had never complained while still managing to find the good in the day. For her, her life was her family, so it made sense for her to wring out every last day in the pursuit of family.

But back to Kobe: if I had to hazard a guess, his best days were behind him. He would no longer have the fame or the competition or the money getting trucked in that he did at his apex. All he had to look forward to was degrading health and perhaps watching his kids grow up. Maybe that's enough for him but I do know his family is set up for life (and probably even their kids). Although I personally think that his competitive nature would mean that he may start to resent his inability to compete. It isn't great that his daughter's life was cut short but we all know life isn't always fair. Other celebrities that I would say died at the right time were: Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Princess Diana, David Bowie, Prince ... to name a few. For those whose lives revolved solely around a certain skill-set (looks/acting/music) - and they were no longer revered in their medium of choice - is probably about the time their services on earth are no longer required. Perhaps I'm being harsh but I think there's a certain (demented?) logic to it.