How much would you pay for a calculator that was wrong 30% of the time?

Photo above - if AI hallucinations are bad, does that mean human hallucinations are good?

Big shot investors are bailing on AI stock darlings (see BBC link below). Yet my email in-box is full of spam telling me that Nvidia, Bitcoin, and gold are going to the moon in 2026. Netflix monthly subscription fees too, apparently. Mine seems to have doubled while I was watching Stranger Things.

What’s been missing from the “AI is great, or will AI crash” debate? An analysis of the product quality, and the theoretical size of the customer base. The article at bottom isn’t perfect, but it is compelling: AI takes mind blowing amounts of electricity, data, and expensive chips, yet yields diminishing returns with each successive generation. The opposite of Moore’s law about computing capabilities. (Google it)

The low hanging fruit has already been picked.

The assumption that more data and chips will always drive exponentially better AI performance is (according to the authors) “a flaw hiding in plain sight”. Their specific example;

“If I told you that my baby weighed 9 pounds at birth, and 18 months later it had doubled in weight,” Marcus posits, “that doesn’t mean it’s going to keep doubling and become a trillion-pound baby by the time it goes to college.”

AI experts claim as long as you give their software more food (data) their baby will naturally grow, unlike human babies, which would die from obesity. Those experts are confident that AI can never choke itself to death on excess.

That’s not the main problem, however. It’s the hallucination rate. After all those yearly LLM upgrades and advances, the error rate (ChatGPT-4) is still an astonishing 28.6%. It routinely invents fake sources, cites articles that never existed, gets established dates wrong, and assumes a $hitload of facts not in evidence. Yesterday I caught Google’s AI claiming that Tuesday is New Years Eve (12/31/25).

Let me repeat – the wrong answer 28.6% of the time. No wonder companies are giving it away for free. You couldn’t charge money for a desktop calculator with this error rate, either.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

We might finally know what will burst the AI bubble | BBC Science Focus Magazine

Top | New | Old

beckyromero · 36-40, F

I once had a YouTube video taken down because it zoomed out from Hitler's eyes with a soundtrack of one of his ranting speeches. The purpose was to mock a Republican state senator in Tennessee, Frank Niceley, who said if Hitler could overcome homelessness that anyone could.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/14/gops-frank-niceley-invokes-hitler-in-message-to-homeless/

But yet YouTube permits totally AI slop fiction, such as Patton conversing with a German general who had just surrendered and other NON events depicted as historical FACTS.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@beckyromero good one. except hitler did NOT "overcome" homelessness.

he made millions homeless in the nations he invaded and bombed. then he made german citizens homeless when allied bombers retaliated.

hippyjoe1955 · 70-79, M

In the mean time YouTube and other social media sites are full of AI generated falsehoods. Personally I find it wearisome as the same lines are recited over and over and over again. If I wanted that I would tune in to CNN.

View 1 more replies »

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@hippyjoe1955 upvoted. i read an article this morning: 20% of youtube content is "AI generated slop". it dominates in countries like India, where everybody can program a little, and is dirt poor.

the most popular youtube channel in india now? "Bandar Apna Dost". Its the adventures of a monkey flying in a helicopter made of tomatoes. it has 2.4 billion views.

https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/science/20-of-youtube-recommendations-for-new-users-are-low-quality-ai-videos/story

hippyjoe1955 · 70-79, M

@SusanInFlorida Remember the hamster dance craze? Aint technology won'erful?

beckyromero · 36-40, F

@SusanInFlorida

Its the adventures of a monkey flying in a helicopter made of tomatoes

Monkeys and India. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. 🤭

War Erupts in Asia: Monkeys Publicly Execute Entire Dog Population of Indian Village. School Children Now Targets.
https://similarworlds.com/politics/4161585-War-Erupts-in-Asia-Monkeys-Publicly-Execute-Entire

dancingtongue · 80-89, M

It's the old aphorism of power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Whoever came up with the term Artificial Intelligence is the absolute grifter since it implies actual intelligence when it is only the increased ability to sort and regurgitate data faster and more conveniently. And we all know how much of that "data" that exists on the Internet is at least flawed if not outright wrong, no matter which ideological extreme you may be viewing it from.

There is no creative thought; no rational analysis. No intelligence involved.

In the early days of IT there was a term, GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. Label it Intelligence if you want, but you are still indiscriminately sorting garbage.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@dancingtongue upvoted.

AI godfathers are urgently trying to find a way to limit AI "training" to actual human created materials, and dodge the mountains of stuff churned out by other AI systems.

as if human created text is objective and factual.

Reddit signed a huge contract to give exclusive rights to their user generated content to Google AI (link at bottom)

if Google ends up racist, white supremacist, anti-semitic, and fascist, we'll know how that happened.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/reddit-ai-content-licensing-deal-with-google-sources-say-2024-02-22/

jackjjackson · M

As much as they don’t like to be called on it EXPERTS are FAR from nearly always correct 🤣😂🤣 time always tells the truth.

Add a comment...