• nednobbins@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      30 days 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.

      • Chuymatt@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        30 days ago

        We are seeing it in healthcare for doing some great photo or record screening. I am sure it may put some folks out of a job, but it will save lives as well.

      • Juice@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        30 days ago

        Quantum computing. It might be a real thing but it’ll go through a grift phase first.

        Another one will be environmental carbon capture, like pulling carbon out of the atmosphere. This one would be easier to fake but might not get traction for longer since the ideological superstructure in our society is already built up so that it is hard for a political crisis to emerge due to global climate concerns. Even though climate change is worsening, and whole cities are being destroyed by hurricanes, the debate is still pretty stabilized. However since this grift will end up being sold as a commercial solution to a political problem, the grift will probably come from a larger player like Lockheed or Boeing, which would necessitate investing in the most evil companies in existence. Still you never know, Tesla stayed afloat for years without making a working product by selling carbon credits issued by the government to other car companies, so you might be able to bootstrap this one

    • xavier666@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      29 days 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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        25 days 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.