Having just finished an intensive course in AI usage, I think it's time for some reality to come into the conversation on this topic and to drop a lot of the hyperbole that seems to constantly swirl around this subject.
Some Americans are prone to hyperbole at the best of times, you only have to listen to the drivel that comes out of the mouths of some of their CEO's to become frustrated. Elon Musk has been promising AI driven cars for almost a decade now - with zero delivery or expectation that it will be in the near future. Sam Altman talks everything his company does in such over ambitions terms that it is now almost funny when a small Chinese AI model blows his multi million dollar one into the weeds, with some extenuating conditions.
Now, to be up front, I use AI daily for a whole host of uses and for 85% of the time it saves time and energy and is accurate, but for the other 15% of time it produces programming code that is flawed and requires considerable amendment or an elongated conversation with the AI to get to the place you want to be. Also some of AI's halucinations(AI incorrect nonsense) can be not only wrong but quite dangerously wrong - I experienced this with a Linux server PAM security file - ChatGPT got the config completley wrong. What it proposed looked right, but further investigation showed if I had used it as is - it would have rendered the server unaccessable. Just imagine a junior without 30 years experience just implementing that - no time saved - but a massive amount of work just created to fix it.
This brings me to the nonsense I see in the media about what we have today with AI and where this will lead. I think most of the predictions are either grossly pessimistic or optimistic and lead people to come to all the wrong conclusions.
There is no doubt these tools will make a huge difference to an awful lot of different jobs, but today we are right at the start of this process for 99% of the population who struggle with differentiating between a browser and an application. The main operating systems are working to introduce the new technology in a user friendly way and this is having some success but is still not completely normal for most people. The PC hardware companies are also ramping up the spec's and ability of everyday machines to be able to run simple AI models - but they are mostly on their way and not delivered yet.
I think for anyone wanting to dip their toe into the waters, the best and most privacy aware internet web tool currently is one offered by DuckDuckGo called Duck.ai - which allows you to keep your task private and offers a selection of models to utilise. This really is a good place to start.
You can also go completely remote using a tool like Ollama, which allows you to load the models locally and keep all your conversations on your local machine - if it has the power and Memory to do this.
I think my conclusion is simply this, don't believe the hype, just get stuck into the new technology, like you would any other tool and see what it can and can't do for you. Be sceptical of the CEO's claiming they have just invited a model that achieves the singularity - and treat the people saying we have just invented the end of human kind with the same distain. Work will change, jobs will change and it will be more severe to some than others but with new technology that has always been the case. I'm sure there are still many weavers miffed with the spinning jenny 🤣
And no, I didn't get a AI to write this, but I probably could have.
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