@adfichter Ich habs schon übers Wochenende geschrieben, aber als Forscher an der UZH war ich ziemlich bestürzt. Auf der anderen Seite leider aber auch nicht überrascht.
Wir bewegen uns in einem Umfeld, wo Forschenden (und Studierenden, leider) nun seit geraumer Zeit konstant eingebläut wird, dass es nichts wichtigeres gäbe, als Chatbots und Text-Generation zu erforschen.
Wenn ich Forschungspraktiken im Strudel dieses #aihype sehe (nicht nur an der UZH natürlich), sind diese aus meiner Perspektive negativ von der Ausrichtung der Forschungsgelder nach dem Hype und den apokalyptischen Narrativen der Tech-Unternehmen beeinflusst. Zugespitzt, die Gott-Maschine kommt, also ist fast alles zu ihrer Erforschung gerechtfertigt.
Dass es da Leute dann übertreiben, scheint mir die logische Konsequenz. Und aus meiner Erfahrung mit Einschätzungen zu digitalen Experimenten an unwissenden Teilnehmenden, wo das Forschungsteam argumentiert hatte, dass der potentielle Schaden ja minim sei, ist auch die Praxis im vorliegenden Fall durchaus konsistent dazu, was momentan als nicht bedenklich empfunden wird.
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#aihype
This is part of an actual email!
Your writing is so bad AI can't even use your writing or train on your writing.
My guy, I can assure you, that isn't the dunk you think it is.
This is very upsetting to me as it involves UZH, the University I work at.
However given attitudes toward #aihype I have seen circulating in professional contexts over the last years and among some in the broader digitalization research context I am involved in (not only UZH), I sadly also have to say I am not that surprised.
Maybe breathlessly telling researchers (and students!) that there is nothing more important than studying chatbots and text generation models for years might lead to some people who traded ethics for funding potential going too far? You think?
https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/114406677328082991
Tech Bros Want Creativity for Them, Not You | Patreon https://web.internal.patreon.com/_ssr_data/posts/tech-bros-want-127367896 https://www.patreon.com/posts/tech-bros-want-127367896 #NoPaywall #AI #AIHype
“Foundation models are incredibly effective at stringing together statistically plausible chunks of text in response to prompts. But to claim they are sentient is the modern equivalent of the dog who heard a voice from a gramophone and thought his master was inside.”
—Erik Brynjolfsson, Jun 12, 2022, quoted by Gary Marcus, Apr 25, 2025
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/new-adventures-in-ai-hype-our-language
#ai #aihype #llm #llms
Hey - I actually saw a use for LLMs today that made sense to me.
---> Making thought clouds.
Why does it work?
Thought clouds are forgiving. It's really hard to fuckup a thought cloud.
You're not going to fail because Word 12's font didn't correspond to its rate of occurrence.
Even if you leave words out or add in some novel but similar words it's really no big deal. The only way to really fail is to mix up vastly different thought clouds.
Like, if you mixed up the your death metal lyrics cloud and your Mr. Roger's fan club cloud - that might count as a failure.
But the other big reason is that thought clouds have no semantic or cognitive content; i.e. they don't actually mean anything.
And as such, LLMs are a perfect fit.
From my sister site at i-dont-like-ai.bksy.social, there I reposted this--not that I think in political terms, but, apart from that, what a post! #noai #aihype #cartoon #batman #howtomakepoints
HORRIBLY irresponsible reporting from KQED on so-called "AI therapy". while they do talk about a couple of horror stories and mention the privacy issues, they then call them "edge cases" and never critically examine the claims of the LLM hypesters; i.e. they take at face value that AI is actually doing some kind of therapy.
https://www.kqed.org/news/12037213/how-safe-is-ai-therapy
/cc @emilymbender @alex
Forcing the world into machines https://tante.cc/2025/04/24/forcing-the-world-into-machines/ #AI #AIHype
@KathyReid @rpardee
But the #AIhype claimed that reinforcement learning applied to synthetic data would overcome the plateau
https://www.jonvet.com/blog/llm-synthetic-data
Unfortunately a recent paper argues that RL doesn't unlock new skills -- it just uncovers that which was already in the training data
https://youtu.be/GvYCPpMI1mA
> Another recent quote that is quite relevant is from Sir Demis Hassabis, on agents in general, but applicable to fantasies about vibe coding agents, too, “If your Al model has a 1% error rate and you plan over 5,000 steps, that 1% compounds like compound interest.”
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/those-claiming-were-mere-months-away
"Well, is there any warning on when it makes a mistake?"
"No, that's the fun part - there is no warning! Have fun integrating it, it goes live with our customers Monday!"
And scene!
2/2
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/18/openais-new-reasoning-ai-models-hallucinate-more/
Good news everyone! #AI can now listen in on calls with your therapist and save all your self-doubt and insecurities for posterity!
Techbro did everything right by SV standards, he just made the mistake of getting caught, that's all.
｢ fintech founder in the US has been charged with fraud after it was found that his artificial intelligence shopping app relied heavily on Philippines call centre employees to complete the purchases manually ｣
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/ai-shopping-app-found-actually-051154923.html
One fundamental thing I wish was in more disability writings about AI, for example, this unquestioningly PR hype by @steven_aquino gets so close to hitting on the point I wish more would tackle. Even with the best technology, we're still disabled. This is ultimately why I find Techno Ableism to be particularly misleading. To be clear, he isn't peddling techno Ableism, but many in the blind community do. When this tech moves behind an expensive paywall, which, it will, the bandage for societies inaccessibility will be locked behind a steep paywall and I wish more examined what happens when #Enshittification comes for AI and how society and ableism haven't changed. https://www.curbcuts.co/blog/2025-4-9-googles-april-pixel-drop-shows-how-ai-can-be-more-transformative-than-trivial-pursuit #AI #AIHype
Announcing
AITRAP,
The AI hype TRAcking Project
Here:
https://www.poritz.net/jonathan/aitrap/
What/why:
I keep a very random list of articles about AI, with a focus on hype, ethics, policy, teaching, IP law, some of the CS aspects, etc., now up to 1000s of entries.
I decided to share, in case anyone is interested; I'm thinking of people who like @emilymbender, @alex, & @davidgerard . If there is a desire, I'll add a UI to allow submission of new links, commentary, hashtags.
Once again, Germany will get a minister of research without the slightest clue of
- how research is done
- how research is organized
- what the current issues are
- etc.
However, she has the right party membership and has already demonstrated eloquently being able to combine having no idea with a strong opinion (#blockchain).
That and the fact that we are still in an #aihype let me fear the worst. Mark my words!