Beyond insane, climate-changed influenced weather, crazy-ass, mean-nasty Republicans, and general, overall stress and anxiety, now there comes Artificial intelligence (AI) to wrack our dwindling sensibilities.

Quick definition of AI (SAS): ‘Artificial intelligence (AI) makes it possible for machines to learn from experience, adjust to new inputs and perform human-like tasks. Most AI examples that you hear about today – from chess-playing computers to self-driving cars – rely heavily on deep learning and natural language processing. Using these technologies, computers can be trained to accomplish specific tasks by processing large amounts of data and recognizing patterns in the data.‘

And which leads to this (h/t tweet Just An Earth-Bound Misfit):

Dilbert Comic for January 17: https://t.co/sJUg17vUCu

— Dilbert (@Dilbert_Daily) January 17, 2023

(Click the ‘Toon for the whole strip.)

And in reference to that ChatGPT — via the Financial Times yesterday:

The $10bn investment that Microsoft is considering in San Francisco-based research outfit OpenAI looks set to become the defining deal for a new era of artificial intelligence.

If the US software giant is right about the far-reaching implications of the technology, it could also trigger a realignment in the AI world as other tech groups race to stake out their place in the new field of generative AI.

OpenAI grabbed global headlines last month with the launch of ChatGPT, an AI system that can answer queries and produce text in natural-sounding language.

But Microsoft executives believe the technology behind the service will soon have a deeper impact throughout the tech world.

“These [AI] models are going to change the way that people interact with computers,” said Eric Boyd, head of AI platforms at Microsoft. Talking to a computer as naturally as a person will revolutionise the everyday experience of using technology, he added.

“They understand your intent in a way that hasn’t been possible before and can translate that to computer actions,” Boyd said in an interview with the Financial Times before news of the possible deal.

[…]

The speed at which AI tools like this are passing from advanced research to everyday product may be unparalleled in tech history, according to AI experts. Codex was introduced in an OpenAI research paper only in the middle of 2021, but within a year Microsoft had turned it into a commercial subscription service.

According to GitHub chief executive Thomas Dohmke, 40 per cent of the code created by developers who use the service, called Copilot, is automatically generated by the AI system, halving the time it takes to create new code — a huge leap in efficiency after a decade of largely ineffective efforts to boost developer productivity.

“It’s a mind-blowing productivity statistic,” said Dohmke.

High-tech replacing human input?
Indian music composer Rahul Raj at Rolling Stone this morning concludes we can’t be duplicated:

There has always been uncertainty around new forms of expression. Plato famously declared that oral tradition supersedes written knowledge as the latter reinforces forgetfulness and disrupts our ability to recall information from within. Suffice it to say, whilst storytelling is very much still a living medium (especially with podcasts and audiobooks), written text is the predominant mode of correspondence. After all, how would we know what Plato said if somebody hadn’t written it down?

Writing did not make oral tradition obsolete, it merely changed the environment for how humans disseminate and digest information. Likewise, photography did not replace painting, digital artists did not replace traditional artists and AI will not replace human creativity. Unlike AI, people have the capacity to edit and add humanity to their work.

Despite all of AI’s tremendous potential, it can never replace human creativity because AI is a direct reflection of us. AI cannot replicate each of our individual lived experiences that help to formulate so much of our creative inspirations. AI can work alongside human creativity, but it can never replace it.

I guess we’re free for a while. Yet…
Futuristic AI from long ago taking charge:

Intelligence or not, here we are once again…

(Illustration out front: ‘A Break in Reality,’ by Xetobyte, found here.)