Over the last few years, the world of AI has boomed into a global phenomenon. We cannot pick up a book or open an article on the internet without being reminded of how AI has positively impacted our lives. Personally, I have followed each new press release with excitement and poured through hundreds of hours of video footage showing the amazing results that can be obtained from the various AI models available for use.
And I have bought into the hype that we are all benefitting from this surge in artificial intelligence. I have to wonder though, whether it has been for the better.
Let me explain why.
I recently came to the following realisation when I was performing a menial task at home, putting away my clean laundry. As you can imagine this is not something that I enjoy doing. In fact, I would rather do anything else. And there are many tasks at home that I could bundle under the same umbrella. I would, if truth be told, much rather be sitting in front of my computer optimising the code running my home server, or writing code for one of the sensors on my IoT network, or tinkering in my garage, or adding some new material to my book, or the myriad other things that I find more exciting and interesting.
All the current forms of AI that are being rammed down our throats (here’s pointing at you Microsoft) are great at creative endeavours; drawing, writing, researching, designing. Everything that I, and most other human beings, also love doing!
I do not want an AI to do these tasks for me so that it frees up my time for all the tasks I dislike. I would rather AI research looks into doing the menial tasks, freeing up my time for the things I love doing. Now that makes a lot more sense to me.
I wear two hats: one is firmly in the electronics field and here, I can marvel at the advances that have taken place with AI and especially inferencing at the edge, a truly useful adaptation of AI.
The other hat is in the programming/education camp. And here I have major concerns. Every student I have is heavily invested in using AI to produce work instead of creating code. I believe that coding is a creative endeavour, an art form if you wish. Trying to piecemeal AI-generated code together is never going to produce decent applications. After all, the AI model has been trained on information available on the internet – average code at best. Coding should be fun, and using AI is detracting from that sense of fun, excitement, and pride in getting something to work.
The companies that develop LLMs need to change direction and concentrate on developing AI that frees up our time, not so that we can have more time to do the tasks we don’t want to do in the first place, but rather to allow us more time to do what we love.
But I suppose monetising their systems is their first priority, not how they can BEST serve the human race.
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