Tag: ai

I’m fascinated by this AI music video

Carl Setzer1 Comment
stylized ai typography on pink background

I often listen to these AI-generated tracks. I find them soothing. Many of the videos, though, are wild in their AI mistakes/hallucinations. I’ve seen boats and airplanes zooming backwards, people walking through walls, each other, all kinds of things. At least once, a person launched upwards into the air, up into the sky. Now, this one below is interesting as the subject remains pretty still (he is supposed to be a whirling dervish, though), but this cloud of sand billows out from his stationary feet. Besides that, I find the colors rich and vibrant, the details nice, but the billowing sand is…odd.

Anyway, I hope your Wednesday was fantastic and that your June is off to a good start.

Are we nearing the end of AI’s hype cycle ?

Carl Setzer3 Comments

I just watched this video and it got me thinking about the future of tech. One of the key things they point out is how many of the AI prognosticators are now so walking so much of it back. Companies are hiring back some of those laid off. The drive to push everyone into using AI for everything is hitting up against costs, as tokens are no longer free, or subsidized. Anyway, check it out! It’s only about 10 minutes long.

I’ve written about AI before, and about how the current costs are not the true costs. That much of the operational costs of AI have been underwritten by investors. And that’s not tenable. I’ve been seeing more and more articles about these costs being passed long to users. I’m seeing companies burn through yearly token budgets in the first quarter of the year. I’m seeing companies pull back on the requirement to use AI. Yeah, the hype seems to be waning.

So, are you seeing the same signs? Let me know what you’re seeing.

Claude’s Mythos and AI Magnified Fears

Carl Setzer6 Comments

I missed the intro of Claude’s Mythos, and only started hearing about them in the ensuing panic. This article has a good rundown of the issues that have the cybersecurity world nervous. I do recognize that this could simply be hyperbole meant to bring extra attention (marketing) to the product, but I thought it worth looking into deeper.

Anthropic just made AI scarier

Update:

The Vox article above is (inconsistently) paywalled. I was able to get back and view it one more time before it locked me out again. So, let me give a quick summary of the concerns here.

“Claude Mythos Preview was designed for general use, Anthropic says, but during testing, the company found it extremely effective at identifying vulnerabilities in the security systems of all types of software, creating potentially massive security concerns.” So, Mythos is the ultimate hacker.

With this in mind, Anthropic has limited Mythos to a handful of tech companies and banks (Project Glasswing), with the hope that those orgs will be able to shore up their defenses before Mythos exposes their vulnerabilities.

“How is Anthropic choosing who to share this technology with?

They’re essentially looking for cyber defenders or companies that a lot of people depend on, and that downstream it would be a huge issue if they got hacked in any way, shape, or form.” It looks like the folks at Anthropic are deciding for themselves, which is all well and good. I think it would be good to slowly roll it out to other orgs, for the same reason. Why is Chase allowed to patch their vulnerabilities while my local credit union is not?

Anyway, these tools are more effective than we think, and in ways we have not imagined. I’m glad that, at least in this instance, we had the ability and wherewithal to be cautious.

Fun With AI: “Smart Ass”

Carl Setzer3 Comments
fun with AI

I’m continuing to explore AI. I haven’t done much with image creation yet, though I have done some.

Came up with this idea after making a smart-alec comment to a colleague. Just a natural flow from there. Simplest of prompts: ‘Please create an image of a donkey in a lab coat lecturing college students, label it “smart ass”‘.

Yes, it’s silly, but shows the power of these tools. Maybe a minute of effort.

PS, that includes the “featured image” on this post.

Anyway, AI is a critical tool and not going away anytime soon. I intend to study it and understand both its strengths and weaknesses. It will impact so much tech, from coding to network management. I’m doing my best to be proactive, not reactive, to emerging tech.

A Critique On AI Hype

Carl Setzer8 Comments
hand of a person and a bionic hand

AI is seemingly everywhere right now, and I’ve written a bit about it before. As I’ve started diving more deeply into it, I see all the hype about how AI will be disrupting work. Well, I’ve developed a somewhat contrarian viewpoint to the prevalent viewpoint of “AI taking over everything”. Here are a few random thoughts on the whole thing right now.

A lot of what AI is replacing now, and expected to in the near future, runs on the assumption that it will remain (nearly) free. However, most of the current costs are funded by investor dollars. As MIT recently reported, 95% of AI initiatives are failing to generate value. So, the only way companies are gaining value from AI is via its low cost. And the operating costs are significant. Data centers are expensive, both to build and to operate. GPUs aren’t cheap to buy. The environmental costs are steep. And, right now, those costs are being paid from investor dollars. When those dry up (investors need to make a return on that investment at some point, and that needs to be greater than the investment as well as the current operational costs. I expect the point when investors stop feeling FOMO and start worrying about making a return will be coming soon. I expect that when the costs become the responsibility of the consumer, the price will escalate abruptly and steeply. Will a junior developer really be displaced by ChatGPT or CoPilot? Or will we suddenly find junior developers much more cost-effective?

Adding to this, I’ve seen discussion about how AI infrastructure investment is potentially masking a recession. Thus, I’m concerned that we’re missing the weakening economy, things like continued tech-sector layoffs, and are not paying attention to some big economic weaknesses. If AI investment dries up, and layoffs start compounding, the dominoes start to fall, and that brings a significant recession/depression. Which will muddle this significantly.

Anyway, I think that we are in a bubble regarding AI. Like the Dot Com bubble, I think that AI will herald significant technological changes. AI is a powerful tool, and will continue to be so. However, I am confident that the techno-dystopia predicted by AI hyper-meisters will not materialize. I’m not sure we can even conceptualize what it will look like at the end of this cycle. But I am confident that those who have mastered AI will benefit greatly from the coming revolution. There are opportunities, and now is the time to make the investment in understanding them.

An AI Manifesto

Carl Setzer5 Comments
bionic hand and human hand finger pointing

Cassidy Williams is a tech blogger I’ve followed for years. Recently, she wrote about her views on AI Usage, which I find exceptionally relevant right now. She references the “AI Manifesto” by Damola Morenikeji. Damola suggests creating an /AI section on your page, which I think I’ll do soon. But I’m just starting the exploration now.

I believe the transparency around our respective use of AI is critical. Being able to trust what you see is becoming harder.

Me? I’ve used AI as something of an editor for this site, and have explored using it to create pages. I’ve never been 100% satisfied with what Gemini or ChatGPT has created, but I will say it’s carved my workflows significantly. I don’t envision ever wholly turning things over to AI, and see the possibility of adopting Cassidy’s attitude of “Everything on this website is written by me, personally, not an AI.” This quote she shared really gives me pause: “If you couldn’t be bothered to write something, I won’t be bothered to read it”. Yeah, I feel that. I know there’s a reason it’s called “AI slop” and the last thing I want to do is contribute to the enshittification of the internet.

So, have you created a “Slash AI” page? If so, have you shared it to this list (https://slashai.page/)? If not, but you want to, submit it here. Are you planning on it? Let me know! I’m intensely curious.

AI Impacts On Admin Work

Carl Setzer1 Comment
woman in professional wear seated in front of monitor

I’ve heard a LOT about the expected impacts of AI on developers. When I was laid off right at the beginning of the pandemic, I opted to make a career pivot into Web Development, so I’ve paid attention to this trend closely. Add in all the lay-offs within the whole developer community, and this career, so recently highly lucrative, has become rather bleak. So much so that I’ve been looking backwards at returning to admin work (which is one of my two jobs right now). Now I see that admin work will be getting hit pretty hard by AI, too.

Earlier this week, I was on a Google Meet. With that, we used the built-in tool to create meeting notes. And, my God, it worked nicely! I was quite impressed. Now, as a long-time admin, taking and distributing meeting notes has been a significant part of my work. I’m confident that this will be done by AI going forward. And I expect that transition to be pretty quick.

Another key part of being an admin is scheduling travel. I expected AI to be able to coordinate travel pretty well. So, I did an experiment where I gave ChatGPT a very rough itinerary for a multi-stop business trip, asked it to recommend flights and hotels. It did a nice job with a few extra prompts. I had a pretty solid itinerary within 2 minutes. Impressive.

After just these two considerations, I am confident that AI will revolutionize Admin work significantly. With the job outlook for this work bleak (BLS projects a loss of 12,400 admin jobs between 2024 and 2034), and AI eroding the work, I expect it to become harder to find roles. (Yet it’s the main type of work I’m recruiters reach out to me for…go figure). It makes my decision to pivot to web development during the pandemic, and now shifting to data analysis seem that much more prudent.

Anyway, onwards!

Seth Godin’s “The Use (And Design) Of Tools”

Carl Setzer1 Comment

As I read Seth’s post today, I started wondering how tools like AI can be impacted by, or actually impact the attitude of “Too Busy To Learn”. I think one of AI’s key potentials is to make the need to understand the tool’s operation non-essential (think coding).

Mainly, I think the future will be dominated by those who understand the tools, not by the people who can simply operate them.

AI Generated Island Vibes

Carl Setzer

I have a fondness for YouTube music videos and often play them in the background while I’m working. Lately, I’ve been feeling island vibes, so that’s what I’ve been choosing. Today, this one rolled into my algorithm and, well, AI is struggling.

The music is fine, pretty much spot on for my mood. But the video, though…oh my! We have cliffs that move into each other, and then fade away, boats just appearing in bays, a speed boat zipping across the sky, and my favorite: two party boats, one of which is speeding backwards with another boat, right off the stern, moving at the same speed but sideways. Ah, physics!

So, AI is pretty amazing and has a lot to offer, but it’s not quite ready to take over the world.

Music via YouTube

Carl Setzer3 Comments

I like to listen to Trip Hop while I’m working. Today this one popped into my feed:

What first caught my attention was that this DJ was streaming from her kitchen, which is pretty cool. Oh, and I’m very jealous of this kitchen! But then I noticed this:

A stuffed llama! I thought “That’s so cool”. And, sure, that marks me as one type of nerd. But it gets better! I then think “LLama”…Large Language Ama”. Hmmm….now if I ever build an AI platform, I’m going to call it “LL Llama”. Sounds like a stutter.

Ok, I’ve flung enough dad jokes your way. Do you like to listen to a certain type of music while you’re working? What sort?