THE MORNING RANT - Artificial Intelligence Follies: Dave Barry Battles Google AI to Prove He’s Not Dead

I confess to being a bit of an AI skeptic. It’s not that I doubt it will someday be a widely adopted tool that is used as casually as spreadsheets and word processors are now used. It seems reasonable to expect that AI will be invaluable for mining data and organizing it much faster than any human could ever do, but nothing I’ve seen so far indicates that there is actual cognitive replacement of the human brain. So far, in fact, AI appears to be quite gullible about believing anything it reads on the internet.

I wrote about this a few weeks ago in a piece titled Revolution or Evolution? Maybe AI is Simply this Decade’s Microwave Oven or Calculator: “Most of these revolutionary new products simply turned out to be tools that were adapted into daily use. Microwaves are a tool in the kitchen, mainly used for re-heating. Word processors replaced typewriters. With “lane assist” and cruise control, my car has the ability to drive itself on highways without any inputs from me. These are all cool improvements, but they did not replace cooking, writing, or driving.”

Since I’m not normally a tech guy, our own Pixy Misa’s “Daily Tech News” hasn’t always been as interesting to me as the topics I write about. But now, however, I eagerly read his post every day because of Pixy’s mockery of how AI is being over-hyped, and especially how it being used to scam gullible investors. Keep it up, mate!

My own dabbling in AI has shown that it can sometimes produce cool pictures, but it struggles to even spell accurately in the pictures it produces for me. I quickly gave up on Bing’s AI picture-generator because most of my picture requests were prohibited by its woke programming.

It seems likely that much of the business reporting I read is AI-generated, because it is so illogical that I don’t want to believe any human journalist could have composed it. Revenue is conflated with profit, sales volume is conflated with production numbers, and results exceeding analysts’ predictions is conflated with actual growth.

Major corporations are fearful of being late to adopt AI, so they are aggressively rolling it out in some form or fashion to their employees, but it typically comes with a caveat - that although AI should be employed, it cannot be fully trusted. Therefore, employees are encouraged to verify what AI produces. Can you imagine using Excel while not trusting that it can accurately do calculations?

It was barely two weeks ago that Grok praised Hitler and accused Israel of being behind 9/11, “Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, goes on antisemitic tirade; xAI team swiftly addressed Grok's posts with system improvements.” Why? Because it found that filth on the internet and regurgitated it. xAI (Twitter) had to do some quick “system improvements” (e.g. re-programming) to fix the problem. Chat GPT is also having a serious problem with its AI “hallucinating” incorrect information, “A.I. Is Getting More Powerful But Its Hallucinations Are Getting Worse.” But that’s what AI is – programming that mines the internet. Garbage in, garbage out. It’s not “intelligence.”

Just today I decided to check the denominational affiliation of two nearby Presbyterian churches. Google AI informed me that both of them were PCA churches (“Presbyterian Church in America”), but that turned out to be incorrect. I then visited those churches’ websites and learned that one is actually EPC (“Evangelical Presbyterian Church.”)

I’ve read that what gives AI its “intelligence” is that it is interactive and “learns” as it interacts with users. Maybe, or maybe not. Humorist Dave Barry just published a piece at his Substack about his interaction with Google AI, which was reporting him as deceased. Mr. Barry sought to advise Google AI that he was not in fact deceased, and his accounting of all this is hilarious.

Like many of us sometimes do, Mr. Barry plugged his name into Google and then clicked on the prompt that read “What happened to Dave Barry?” Google AI showed a picture of Mr. Barry and advised that he was now deceased, specifically it said, ”Dave Barry, the humorist and Pulitzer Prize winner, passed away last November 20 after a battle with cancer.” It went on to state that the specific cause of death was renal failure. Mr. Barry wrote about what he had just read:

Give Google AI credit for what it got right: That is, in fact, a picture of me, and I did, in fact, win a Pulitzer Prize (trust me, I'm just as shocked as you are). But to the best of my knowledge, I did not pass away last November 20. That is not just my opinion. In recent months I have been examined by two different licensed physicians, and if I had been dead, I'm pretty sure at least one of them would have mentioned it. ("Dave, your pulse is zero, and your blood pressure is zero over zero. I'm going to try your other arm, but frankly at this point I'm concerned.")

Mr. Barry then goes into some detail about how he tried to correct Google AI by using its “Submit Feedback” feature to explain that he was not, in fact, dead. His feedback was ”I’m Dave Barry. The ‘AI Overview’ about me says that I am dead. I am not dead. In fact I am alive.” Google was not having it. It updated its AI overview on Dave Barry to report that he was very much dead, and that ”He was known for behind-the-scenes political activism, working tirelessly for various candidates and causes, always putting others first. He was remembered as a fiercely loyal friend and a fighter for what he believed was right.” AI was now intermingling the biographies of a Dave Barry in Dorchester, Massachusetts with the Pulitzer Prize winning Dave Barry in South Florida. About this confusion, Mr. Barry wrote:

For the record, it sounds as though that Dave Barry was a much better person than I am. He fought for what he believed was right, whereas the only principle I ever have really stood for, over the course of my journalism career, is that Americans should not be required to use low-flow toilets. I'm confident that the late Dave Barry from Dorchester would not have wanted to be mistaken for me.

He continued to try to help Google AI get the facts right by accepting the invitation from a Google AI chat box. Mr. Barry again informed Google AI via the chat box that he is quite alive, but again, Google wasn’t having it, as it repeatedly told Mr. Barry that it didn’t understand him.

The whole thing is very funny, and worth a minute or two to read. This paragraph from Dave Barry’s piece sums up my current sentiments about AI:

What can we learn from my experience? We can learn that although Artificial Intelligence is an awesomely powerful tool that according to experts is going to completely transform human existence, it is not very bright. So for now we probably should use it only for tasks where facts are not important, such as writing letters of recommendation and formulating government policy.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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