Founder of The Dawn Project Dan O’Dowd explores how the ugly truth about the AI systems developed by Silicon Valley is hidden in the fine print, demonstrating that the Magnificent Seven’s defective AI systems are useless for anything beyond trivialities, in International Policy Digest.
Dan’s article was published in International Policy Digest, 22 August 2024, and can be read here.
Hype around Silicon Valley’s shiny new Artificial “Intelligence” systems has become a frenzy. The Magnificent Seven are continuing to pour billions of dollars into developing AI-powered chatbots, image generators and self-driving cars. But hidden in the fine print is a damning admission from Big Tech that their AI is useless for anything beyond trivialities.
The developers of these systems are quick to boast about the supposedly revolutionary impact of their AI. Sam Altman claimed that ChatGPT “will kill some classes of jobs entirely”, despite the fact that ChatGPT can’t correctly list US states ending in Y. Elon Musk has made false promises for over a decade about Tesla’s “mind-blowing” self-driving AI, which will still illegally blow past a stopped school bus and run down a child crossing the road.
The same manufacturers who peddle these AI systems quietly acknowledge that their AI is useless for anything important. ChatGPT’s usage policy forbids “Making high-stakes automated decisions” including managing critical infrastructure, essential services or employment.
Google says Gemini is capable of “truly amazing things” but makes provisions to ban its use in serious applications, including air traffic control systems and nuclear facilities.
Meta prevents the use of Llama in heavy machinery and critical infrastructure.
Nowhere is this more evident than at Tesla, where the yawning chasm between Elon Musk’s claims about the software and its actual capabilities grows every year. In 2016 Musk said that a self-driving Tesla “at this point can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person. Right now” yet in 2024 Tesla’s self-driving AI can only drive 134 miles before its driver has to take over to prevent a crash.
Musk said in 2019 that “Next year for sure, we will have over 1 million robotaxis on the road”, but was forced to postpone Tesla’s August 2024 robotaxi unveil by three months despite the already five-year delay.
Customers who bought a Tesla in 2019 believing it would make them “$30,000 a year” in robotaxi income have never received a single cent from Musk’s false promises.
Silicon Valley executives have become modern-day itinerant preachers selling patent medicine. They profess to be masters of new technology that will reshape human civilization, but caution against using AI for anything more serious than banal research tasks and mundane image generation. The public is suckered in by promises of incredible technology and never reads the small print which shows that supposedly “intelligent” systems are in reality useless. It is high time to expose these snake oil merchants for who they really are.