• nednobbins@lemm.ee
      ·
      2 months ago

      There are a lot of scams around AI and there's a lot of very serious science.

      While generative AI gets all the attention there are many other fields of AI that you probably use on a regular basis.

      The reason we don't see the rest of the AI iceberg is because it's mostly interesting when you have enormous amounts of data you want to analyze and that doesn't apply to regular people. Most of the valuable AIs (as in they've been proven to make or save a bunch of money) do stuff like inventory optimization, protein expression simulation, anomaly detection, or classification.

    • xavier666@lemm.ee
      ·
      2 months ago

      Slight correction. AI is not a scam.

      While AI is a powerful tool, it enables people to do scams very easily.

      • nednobbins@lemm.ee
        ·
        2 months ago

        Maybe.

        There have been a number of technologies that provided similar capabilities, at least initially.

        When photography, audio recording, and video recording were first invented, people didn't understand them well. That made it really easy to create believable fakes.

        No modern viewer would be fooled by the Cottingley Fairies.
        The sound effects in old radio shows and movies wouldn't fool modern audiences either.
        Video effects that stunned audiences at the time just look old fashioned now.

        I expect that, over time, people will learn to recognize the low-effort scams. Eventually we'll reach an equilibrium where most people won't fall for them and there will still be skilled scammers who will target gullible people and get away with it.