Huge AI Funding Leads To Hype and 'Grifting,' Warns DeepMind's Demis Hassabis (ft.com) 30
The surge of money flooding into AI has resulted in some crypto-like hype that is obscuring the incredible scientific progress in the field, according to Sir Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind. From a report: The chief executive of Google's AI research division told the Financial Times that the billions of dollars being poured into generative AI start-ups and products "brings with it a whole attendant bunch of hype and maybe some grifting and some other things that you see in other hyped-up areas, crypto or whatever."
"Some of that has now spilled over into AI, which I think is a bit unfortunate. And it clouds the science and the research, which is phenomenal," he added. "In a way, AI's not hyped enough but in some senses it's too hyped. We're talking about all sorts of things that are just not real." The launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot in November 2022 sparked an investor frenzy as start-ups raced to develop and deploy generative AI and attract venture capital funding. VC groups invested $42.5bn in 2,500 AI start-up equity rounds last year, according to market analysts CB Insights. Public market investors have also rushed into the so-called Magnificent Seven technology companies, including Microsoft, Alphabet and Nvidia, that are spearheading the AI revolution. Their rise has helped to propel global stock markets to their strongest first-quarter performance in five years.
"Some of that has now spilled over into AI, which I think is a bit unfortunate. And it clouds the science and the research, which is phenomenal," he added. "In a way, AI's not hyped enough but in some senses it's too hyped. We're talking about all sorts of things that are just not real." The launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot in November 2022 sparked an investor frenzy as start-ups raced to develop and deploy generative AI and attract venture capital funding. VC groups invested $42.5bn in 2,500 AI start-up equity rounds last year, according to market analysts CB Insights. Public market investors have also rushed into the so-called Magnificent Seven technology companies, including Microsoft, Alphabet and Nvidia, that are spearheading the AI revolution. Their rise has helped to propel global stock markets to their strongest first-quarter performance in five years.
Bound to happen. (Score:3)
As soon as someone sniffs the possibility of making money for nothing..
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And their chicks for free.
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money for nothing.. And their chicks for free.
That's the music video from which Tesla got the ideas for the design of the cybertruck.
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Well, that's also giving money for nothing (of value), but that's not what Knopfler had in mind when writing that song...
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And everyone said my Lego porn had no value. Now I get blocky chicks for free. [reddit.com]
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and their own jet airplane
oh no (Score:3)
Oh no, tell me it ain't so. Hype and grifting? Surely that has never happened before.
Re: Hype & grifting? Surely never happened B4 (Score:2)
We are proud to have invented hype and grifting at GriftGPT.com. Some claim it's happened before, such as the dot-com and mortgage bubbles of the 2000's, and the 1980's AI bubble, but our highly accurate product, HypeGPT, says otherwise. We did it first!
P.S. Don't call me Shirly, at least not on weekdays.
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TurtlesGPT
Why the quotes? (Score:2)
Grifting is a perfectly good word, and has been around for a long time.
And AI - artificial idiocy - is all grift.
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Don't ask us, we didn't write the headline. Ask the Financial Times.
Of course it could have been edited before hitting the main page but you didn't ask about that.
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Any word that has a chance to get a news site sued, but another person said the word first, they'll quote it even in the headline. Effectively shifting the blame for using the word to the person who originally said it. It's another form of "allegedly."
Well... duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you expect something else to replace Dunning Krugerrands as the new hot thing for investment? Of course it's a grift. What else would it be?
Investors are desperate enough to throw money at anything in the vain hope that finally something sticks because there simply isn't any worthwhile investment on the horizon anymore. Anything you could invest in usually requires someone else to buy that shit, and consumers are fucking broke and CANNOT buy anything but what they need for survival.
And survival is pretty much cornered by now, there ain't a lot of investment opportunities here.
So they grasp any straw you hand them, and I'm even sure that even they know it's a grift, they just hope they find the bigger fool before the shit hits the fan.
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Investors are desperate enough to throw money at anything in the vain hope that finally something sticks because there simply isn't any worthwhile investment on the horizon anymore.
Which is good, because it means we finally are slowly getting out of the mindless hype drives and can start fixing the mountains of technological debt that cretins like MS and others have created and continue to create. Will probably take a century or longer, but if we do not start soon, a lot of technology will become unusable and we will need to start from scratch in many areas. Not that other engineering disciplines did any better before they managed to become providers of reliable and dependable technol
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Sorry, but nope.
The eternal growth gospel MUST be true. Else, the quarter bonuses may suffer. So we have to cannibalize more. We have exploited the foreign markets 'til they didn't budge anymore and suddenly start to build their own crap without us, so we went and squeezed our domestic workers to the point where they no longer have any more to buy our crap. We have to find some other way to keep the perpetual growth going. The hype will tide us over another year or two with fake growth and investment in mor
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No idea why I had to think of this song now... [youtube.com].
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Well, you describe the deranged mental state of many people and especially many "leaders" quite nicely. Not that whole tribes or even nations vanishing is a thing without precedent. The only thing that worries me here is the level of globalization we have and hence how little working fragments of society may be left after the next such event.
Well, at first I wasn't going to listen to him (Score:2)
But since he has "Sir" in front of his name, obviously he's a superior human and his opinions should matter more than my own!
However there's a twist - there's a paywall in front of "Sir"'s thoughts! I guess I'll never know what he thinks after all! ... or should I give them money, since after all he's a "Sir" and he talked to them?
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At least UK bestowed "Sir" on a Beatle instead of say Ted Nugent. It shows they have some standards.
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At least UK bestowed "Sir" on a Beatle
Quite appropriate for an article about overhyped bullshit and grifting, sir. Bravo.
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While true, it would certainly be interesting to see Ted Nugent meeting the king!
There is no "incredible progress" (Score:2)
There is some progress, mainly in the natural language interface. Apart from that, some is some small, incremental progress and the training data sets have gotten larger, mainly by criminal commercial copyright infringement being done to get that data. As a consequence, answer quality is low and hallucinations are frequent.
Same as previous AI hypes, this one is 95% hype and 5% (generously estimated) substance.
Incredible progress (Score:2)
Incredible
adjective
So implausible as to elicit disbelief; unbelievable.
Now this is funny. (Score:2)
"Some of that has now spilled over into AI, which I think is a bit unfortunate. And it clouds the science and the research, which is phenomenal," he added. "In a way, AI's not hyped enough but in some senses it's too hyped. We're talking about all sorts of things that are just not real."
For some reason, that wording is hilarious to me. "AI's not hyped enough but in some senses it's too hyped." Do these dudes get their irony detectors disabled before spewing their stupid? WTF?
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That text was possibly AI generated.
At least I hope that no human would be stupid enough to write crap like that unironically.
Crypto-like hype? (Score:2)
..."brings with it a whole attendant bunch of hype..."
I guess a good example of the hype he's talking about is Google's own assertion that AI is going to make their search engine better.
And? (Score:2)
Hell, There's an entire finished Wile E Coyote movie sitting around unreleased because the tax write off is worth more than the movie.
Step right up and gitcher AI right-cheer. (Score:2)
Satisfaction guaranteed, and it's entirely possible that some of it might even be yours.
And yet the money machine keeps cranking (Score:2)
It never ceases to amaze me how there is always piles of dollars to funnel into this stuff. Does no one ever demand a return? Are the tax advantages of carry over losses so great that they would rather have that than millions upon millions in cash???
Bitcoin and NFTs I get. There is at least a possibility for a return and NFTs are a great way to launder money so there's still a benefit of some kind there. But with scams like this, blockchain, etc there is no return. The money is just gone.
Please someone