AI is not artificial intelligence, it's artificial what?
4th April 2024
Welcome to AI Collision 💥,
In today’s collision between AI and our world,
Shadbolt on AI from a decade ago
Same job, just picked up and sent offshore
Car, where’s my dude?
If that’s enough to send you offshore, read on…
AI Collision 💥 open data to bust bureaucracy?
I’m increasingly coming around to the idea that our future will heavily involve AI, but that it will very much end up as a technology revolution like the internet.
That’s good and bad.
As we’ve discussed before, there are pitfalls to the overreach of government interference in breakthrough technologies.
This was off the back of new EU regulations surrounding AI. At the time (only about three weeks ago) I said:
New laws designed to protect you from AI really means red tape and bureaucratic obstacles, with costs, designed to excrete fees and taxes from companies looking to develop the most exciting technology since the proliferation of the internet and the release of the world’s greatest financial asset, bitcoin.
They have no intention of protecting anyone except their own interests in maintaining their standing…
Not to be outdone by its former union, the United Kingdom has now inked a deal with the US to ensure the safety of AI.
According to the BBC report, the UK technology minster, Michelle Donelan, said, “Only by working together can we address the technology's risks head on and harness its enormous potential to help us all live easier and healthier lives.”
Thankfully some calmer heads do exist in this industry.
One of the UK’s finest minds around the development of AI, Sir Nigel Shadbolt said, “AI, like chemical science, nuclear science, and biological science, can be weaponised and used for good or ill.”
But he also went on to explain that the existential risks that are often attributed to AI “are sometimes a bit overblown”.
Sir Shadbolt has been a longstanding voice of reason in the data and AI world. In fact, ten years ago, in March 2014, I attended a keynote presentation of his at a tech conference in Germany where he spoke about open data and its importance for our future of AI. At the time I wrote:
Sir Nigel Shadbolt is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Chairman of the Open Data Institute (ODI).
In 2009 Sir Shadbolt became the Information Advisor to the UK Government along with one other man. The other man was Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web.
In his keynote this week Sir Shadbolt said we can’t stop the influx of data but we must do what we can to ensure we use it in the right way.
And the whole concept of such immense amounts of data and ways to use it properly is extraordinarily powerful.
In his talk the issue came to light that perhaps the power of data might even become a “bureaucracy buster”.
This is what Sir Shadbolt had to say specifically on this issue:
“One of the key features of open data, is it disintermediates large parts of the governmental bureaucratic process, it should do and it could do, and I think that’s one of the powerful motivations to open this data up. Is that other people will service things often better, more cheaply than the government IT providers.”
That idea of bureaucracy busting, I like that, but the practical nature of it is somewhat unlikely.
As we’re now seeing with the EU regulations and the UK/US AI safety agreement, the bureaucrats are bureaucratising as only they can do.
Which means a future of AI technology still proliferates and still presents huge opportunities in the market, but fundamentally it is compromised and coerced to fit the needs and demands of governments and world leaders.
I still hold out hope it’s not completely an outcome like we now have where government can backdoor programs and where they can co-opt data and information from our online lives to monitor and manage people.
But I do fear that when it comes down to the simplest aspect of all of these technologies – data – they will do anything and everything they can to get it, use it and manipulate it to gain and control power.
Still, while that’s not the free world as we might hope for, at least we’ve still got plenty of ways to potentially make money from the market! Not least through the stock market, riding gigantic waves of opportunity that present themselves to us year in, year out.
One of which is the perfect storm of what’s happening at the intersection of crypto and AI and how we can use both of these megatrends to our full advantage!
More on that for next week… keep an eye out for it!
AI Gone Wild 🤪 artificial Indians
Sometimes I don’t know how certain technology works. All I know is that it just does, and that is enough to make me happy.
For example, over the weekend I took my boys down to our local Decathlon store.
I got two swimming caps for the boys for when we go to the pool for swimming lessons, a floatation vest for my littlest for when we’re at the beach, and two new pairs of sunglasses for them – summer is on the way!
Usually when you’re checkout at the shops, you have a choice of going to the register or self-checkout.
Self-checkout here in Portugal is clearly a new thing for folks. I was at the newest Lidl that opened near me, with a half dozen self-checkouts, and not one of them was in use, but both regular registers had lines and queues behind them.
Thankfully I set the example and walked through to use them, with a horde of others following suit.
Anyway, back to the Decathlon… Here there are no “normal” registers, they’re all self-checkout.
But these are self-checkout with a difference.
What you do is walk up and then just dump everything you’ve got into the tray. You don’t need to scan anything. As you’re dumping in your goods, somehow they’re all scanned sometime between leaving your hands and hitting the bottom of the tray.
It was amazing. I dumped everything in and then went to pick up one of the items to scan, then realised it had already been scanned. All I had to do was pay and then take off.
Brilliant.
Of course I’ve got a bit of an idea as to how that works, and it requires a lot of sensors and semiconductors to ensure that you’re actually paying for what you’re purchasing.
What I’m 100% certain of though is that inside this self-checkout register there was not a whole bunch of small human beings carefully looking at and inputting my goods into the register.
As bonkers as that sounds, it’s exactly how some of Amazon’s recent “AI” has been working.
A while ago the company started these Amazon Fresh grocery stores with the hook that you could go in, grab whatever you wanted and just walk out. Using its advanced vision systems and AI the store would know what you grabbed and then charge it directly to your Amazon account.
Incredible right? Real AI working at its finest.
Except, it came to light that “just walk out” tech wasn’t as purely AI as one might think.
It was not artificial intelligence in play, but artificial Indians.
Erm, what did he just say?
You see, I’ve been duped. We’ve been duped.
The world has been duped.
And it’s Amazon’s fault.
Apparently Amazon had been sending the video feeds to around 1,000 workers in India to review and check and appropriately charge customers who had been using the “just walk out” tech at its Fresh stores.
In short, it’d taken the usual cashiers, moved the jobs to (the cheaper labour country of) India and then proceeded to get them to add items to customers’ receipts.
That’s not very AI of Amazon now is it!
It’s funny, and one of the wildest stories I’ve heard of this week. But it is also a reminder that while Amazon may have just spent $4 billion investing in an AI company, Anthropic, to advance its AI future, when it comes down to the crunch, cheap labour is still something a gigantic tech giant will still resort to.
Boomers & Busters 💰
AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).
Boom 📈
Brainchip Holdings (ASX:BRN) up 14%
WISeKey International (NASDAQ:WKEY) up 10%
Amesite (NASDAQ:AMST) up 8%
Bust 📉
Duos Technology (NASDAQ:DUOT) down 20%
BigBear AI (NYSE:BBAI) down 11%
Vicarious Surgical (NYSE:RBOT) down 10%
From the hive mind 🧠
So the Ukraine now have AI-enabled drones to help in their war against Russia. Now call me sceptical, but my guess is they’re not designed and made in Ukraine? I’m going to assume the US war machine is in top gear and that what’s good for the US AI state is good for its allies too.
Interesting this. I remember similar conversations and demands when MP3, Napster and new music formats came out, then when the streaming giants like Spotify started to dominate the market. I wonder if the next iteration of music format and deliver is heavily weighted in AI?
Just another example of why Nvidia is streets ahead of the competition. When organisations want to plug into the best in show AI they turn to Nvidia, every, single, time.
Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️ The Results Show
We’re skipping releasing a new poll this week, so that we can cover the results from our two previous polls last week and Tuesday.
First off, last week, we looked at the idea of investing in Dell stock at $114 and Super Micro Computer at $1,406.
These are two direct competitors to each other, and with Nvidia making a distinct move towards working with Dell, it certainly was a shot across the bow of Super Micro.
Interestingly since last week, Dell’s stock price has gone from $114 to $118 at the time of writing, and Super Micro has gone from $1,046 to $970.
Early doors, but it will be interesting over the next year as to who performs better.
Nonetheless, we did ask for your view as to whether Dell at $114 and with a higher market cap was more attractive than Super Micro at $1,046 and a lower market cap.
The results are in…
And the winner is…
Dell!
You can see the results of the poll below.
Then on Tuesday I had another idea.
And the best way to figure out if something is a good idea or not is to ask you, so I did.
I was curious to know that if an easy-to-access list of AI tools that you can test and try and integrate into your own life was something you’d be interested in.
So again, without further ado, here’s the results of Tuesday’s poll…
The result there is almost the same as the Dell outcome.
I was expecting that a list would probably be handy and that would be the outcome, which it was – but still 12% of people didn’t want it, so that’s something to mull over too.
Regardless, it is something I’ll do in the coming weeks. I’ll trawl back through our issues to ensure everything I’ve already covered is in there, and maybe add in a couple of things I’ve not gone into detail on yet as well.
And if you’ve got any recommendations to add to this list, be sure to leave them in the comments below.
Weirdest AI image of the day
80s Movie…Knight Rider: Car, where’s my dude? – r/Weirddalle
ChatGPT quote of the day
"Silicon is a miracle material. It has the ability to act like a conductor or an insulator, and it can amplify electrical signals or switch them on and off. It's like a chameleon that can change its color to fit its surroundings." - Federico Faggin
Thanks for reading, see you next week (and don’t forget to leave your comments below)
Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief
AI Collision
Is it clear yet whether Satoshi is/was real or perhaps a 'nom de plume' for a group or cell or individual? What's your view Sam V?
In relation to your comments around EU and UK/ US regulations (and generally) it always helps me to remember this simple fact; the UK is a negative rights based society and the EU is a positive rights based society. When people understand this it usually helps clarify where most of our difficulties come from.