Tag: technology

And yet more thinking about AI

Carl Setzer1 Comment
person reaching out to a robot

This morning, I read a LinkedIn post by Bryan Creely, who writes about career management and job hunting. (I highly recommend his work, btw).

I feel that this quote summarizes the whole thing:

They spent the last 3 years scaring us into believing we were about to go the way of the dinosaur.

And now they’re walking back that narrative and beginning to rehire for roles they eliminated due to AI.

That’s what pundits do, prognosticate, then shift, following the zeitgeist where it leads. That’s the case with AI. When they were selling AI to corporations and investors, it was all about replacing workers. That most jobs were going to be replaced by AI. But, anyway, as I expected, AI’s costs turned out to be more than estimated. I believe the abrupt rise in costs caught many companies completely off-guard, though I don’t think it was hard to predict. I wasn’t exactly right on my reasons, but I expected that token costs would have to go up. So, yay me.

Not too surprising, but we haven’t heard these pundits acknowledge their error or overestimation. Yet they are quietly walking back a lot of the hype. Better than a bursting bubble, though I’m not sure we’re out of the woods on that possibility yet.

One additional thing: I think those hyping AI were stunned by the way the public went negative on them. They seemed truly stunned by crowds of college grads booing them, by protesters at hearings for proposed data centers, and by the bipartisan nature of it all. But, really, your messaging leaned on the redundancy of most of the working population, and not-so-subtly hinted at mass unemployment and other such things. Add in electricity costs, and how the price increases are being pushed onto the communities these things are in, environmental costs, and it is so obvious that this was going to be the outcome.

So, it makes me feel better that we’re stepping back some from the irrational exuberance before this thing exploded. Yeah, I’m not convinced we’re free of the bubble collapsing, though my hope is that it’ll gently fizzle and deflate. I can be hopeful, after all.

Let me end with this comic from Pascal Bornett.

Scam Alert!

Carl Setzer1 Comment
a person with handcuffs holding a sign that says fraud

This really isn’t so much of an alert as a scam reminder. As you may know, I work at both a church and a non-profit. There’s a scam that’s been running through the church and non-profit community for some time now, but it’s a continuing one. Here’s an example of one a member got recently.

One modern challenge: scammers are utilizing various tools to connect people and institutions so they can send personalized messages like the one above. This one impersonated our pastor and was sent to a member of our congregation. It’s so easy to make these connections. These things make it that much harder to filter out the scammers.

A few details to feed your mind’s suspicions. At no org I’ve worked at or consulted with have we ever asked for gift cards. That should be the first suspicious thing. There are some additional clues, like the email address not being one he’s ever used. Of course, that requires looking deeper than many of us reflexively do. It sucks that we need to be even more vigilant and pretty much never trust an email.

The folks over at CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) have a nice guide to grow your awareness of scams. I encourage you to check that out.

This is an unfortunate part of modern life, I’m afraid. Let’s do our best to stay safe out there.

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.

Typewriter and Tea

Carl Setzer3 Comments

I stumbled upon this image on Pinterest. It brought back some stuff for me. I have long had a fondness for typewriters. I have long valued my typing skills highly. Once, I could type over 100 words a minute with high accuracy. Well, my speed is still pretty high, but my accuracy has weakened. I chalk that up to, first, spell-check, and later autocorrect. The tools have made me lazy. I’m working on building that back up, as I still value this.

Anyway, though I first learned to type on a typewriter, they were electric (I’m not THAT old). My first typing experience was on the IBM Selectric. A lovely, if noisy, machine.

I used these heavily from high school all the way through the Navy. Then they faded from dominance, though I’d still need to use one on occasion (usually for government forms). By the 2000s, they’d vanished.

Now, though I liked the act of typing, I was also motivated by envisioning a future dominated by computers. Being able to use the keyboard would be a powerful, powerful tool. Clearly, I called that right!

Yeah, perhaps the image above is AI (I’m quite confident it is), but that’s not really the point. I found it fun and “enough”. Which might be AI’s main contribution: it’s enough. Mediocrity commoditized. But it’s enough to get me thinking, to capture a mood. Enough, I guess.

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.

Power BI

Carl Setzer4 Comments

I’ve been adjusting my studies to focus on data. Right now, I’ve working on mastering Power BI, a Microsoft data analytics tool. Yesterday, as I’m finally starting to dive deep, I had a moment of sadness. I remember a role where this tool didn’t exist. I was cleaning up data from a multitude of sources, just me, Excel, and a wee bit of Visual Basic. And I had to tweak the process every month. The powerful tools in Power BI, and Power Query, would’ve been so helpful. I’m looking forward to what I can do with these modern tools.

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!

Hand-written notes…by robotic hands

Carl Setzer
prosthetic arm on blue background

On my friend Bill’s most recent blog post, one of the comments made me think. In particular, the notion of handwritten notes being the antithesis of digital. When I first read it, I was reminded of plotters. So, I jumped headfirst into this rabbit hole. That’s how I came across this project:

I found this whole thing fascinating. However, I’m left to wonder where the lines are between what’s truly, exclusively human, and the robot. What do you think of this?

Anyway, this looks like a fun project. Maybe someday I’ll have time enough to explore it in more depth than just watching the video.