In recent days, there’s been a lot of controversy regarding Google’s AI project, now called Gemini.
There’s been problems with the images it produces when asked for, there’s been problems when it’s been asked philosophical questions and there are also allegations that it wrote fake reviews.
What’s all this drama for? Why is there such an urgent rush to push out an AI product?
Is anyone asking for it? Do we need it?
Despite what you think of Google it’s brought a lot of good into the world – Maps, Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Forms, Classroom, and Flights just to name a few of their products. And while we could use alternatives, their products are great.
And they’re trying to do something similar with AI. If there is to be AI, they want the world to use theirs.
So even if the answer to these questions is that we need it and people are asking for it, there is the point that bad actors will do their best to use it for their nefarious purposes. Is it worth going to all this trouble to put something out into the world that people will want to use to cause damage and hurt people?
Using whatever AI generated content they can for whatever they want to do with it.
Movies such as Blade Runner, the Matrix, and Minority Report warn us about the dangers of going down a dystopian rabbit hole. So instead of there being a race to push out AI, shouldn’t we be more circumspect?
Once it’s out there, it’s not going to be regulated in any way and become a complete free for all. By this stage, it will be too late to do anything about it.
The biggest concern with all of this is that there doesn’t appear to be anyone holding Google to task for any of this. Who is regulating any of this? All that happens is people try to get AI to do
crazy things which the media then reports on with its clickbait headlines.
Looking back, the Cold War arms race between the Russians and Americans was a massive waste of time and even bigger waste of money. But this is the way humans are wired. Someone else has something and we want it also. We need to have it which fuels the race until common sense prevails.
It’s great to have AI but at what cost? Until this can be answered, no one should be using it.