Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, whose company has invested billions of dollars in ChatGPT maker OpenAI, has had it with the constant hype surrounding AI. During an appearance on podcaster Dwarkesh Patel's show this week, Nadella offered a reality check, arguing that OpenAI's long-established goal of establishing "artificial general intelligence," (AGI) an ill-defined term that roughly denotes the point at which an AI can best humans on an intellectual level, is nonsense. "Us self-claiming some AGI

“The real benchmark is: the world growing at 10 percent,” he added. “Suddenly productivity goes up and the economy is growing at a faster rate. When that happens, we’ll be fine as an industry.”

Needless to say, we haven’t seen anything like that yet. OpenAI’s top AI agent — the tech that people like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman say is poised to upend the economy — still moves at a snail’s pace and requires constant supervision.

  • ToaLanjiao@lemmy.worldEnglish
    354·
    12 hours ago

    LLMs in non-specialized application areas basically reproduce search. In specialized fields, most do the work that automation, data analytics, pattern recognition, purpose built algorithms and brute force did before. And yet the companies charge nx the amount for what is essentially these very conventional approaches, plus statistics. Not surprising at all. Just in awe of how come the parallels to snake oil weren’t immediately obvious.

    • Arghblarg@lemmy.caEnglish
      236·
      11 hours ago

      I think AI is generating negative value … the huge power usage is akin to speculative blockchain currencies. Barring some biochemistry and other very, very specialized uses it hasn’t given anything other than, as you’ve said, plain-language search (with bonus hallucination bullshit, yay!) … snake oil, indeed.

      • themurphy@lemmy.mlEnglish
        123·
        10 hours ago

        Its a little more complicated than that I think. LLMs and AI is not remotely the same with very different use cases.

        I believe in AI for sure in some fields, but I understand the skeptics around LLMs.

        But the difference AI is already doing in the medical industry and hospitals is no joke. X-ray scannings and early detection of severe illness is the one being used specifically today, and will save thounsands of lives and millions of dollars / euros.

        My point is, its not that black and white.

        • FauxLiving@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          2 hours ago

          On this topic, the vast majority of people seem to think that AI means the free tier of ChatGPT.

          AI isn’t a magical computer demon that can grant all of your wishes, but that doesn’t mean that it is worthless.

          For example, Alphafold essentially solved protein folding and diffusion models built on that discovery let us generate novel proteins with specific properties with the same ease as we can make a picture of an astronaut on a horse.

          Image classification is massively useful in manufacturing. Instead of custom designed programs purpose built for each client ($$$), you can find tune existing models with generic tools using labor that doesn’t need to be a software engineer.

          Robotics is another field. The amount of work required for humans to design and code their control systems was enormous. Now you can use standard models, give them arbitrary limbs and configurations and train them in simulated environments. This massively cuts down on the amount of engineering work ($$$) required.