Member-only story
Does Anyone Really Understand AI?
There is so much to say about AI. And so much being said about AI. Still, no one seems to completely understand it. Not even the experts, some of who publicly admit to scratching their heads. That’s the ‘honest’ experts. Most don’t admit anything. Of course. But here’s the point: How can we put to use, take advantage of, something we don’t understand?
You may have had the same reflection more than once recently: How can we have such a ball, a frenzy almost, and not understanding what it’s all about? Look at the world (and this is nothing to be proud of): Billions of dollars spent on development — monthly. Thousands, more like tens of thousands brilliant brains at work. What do they do? Ask them and you get a shipload of tribe language, unintelligible to most us, and maybe to them too. But it gets them off the hook — for now.
What we see — from the outside — is unclear goals, minimal revenue, enormous datacenters dubious results and formidable amounts of precious energy spent — every second — in a world that is severely short on that particular resource. The wasted energy on cryptomining suddenly became like a small fish in a big pond.
Seriously, this doesn’t add up. While the world is drowning or burning in climate disasters, we’re spending all these critical resources on something we don’t really understand? Of course, I do hear the counterpoints. ‘Look at all the achievements.’ Indeed, look at all the achievements. Where they are and how they come about: Typically pointed systems with clear, attainable goals, specific purposes with reasonable budgets and business plans. They protect borders, datacenters, infrastructure, banks and companies (security), they find needles in (data)haystacks every minute and save lives in medical and many other settings (smart search & analysis). They contributes to smarter designs, new products, improved services, better medicine and a lot of other things.
This is good, right? Of course. And let’s for this discussion call this group ‘pointed AI’. It’s a small part of the entire field, which is dominated — at least as far as publicity goes — by what’s often called ‘general’ or ‘generative’ AI — two very different branches that accidentally melted together because we (the public) and the media read too fast (or too sloppy) and mix them up all the time. By the…
