LLMs certainly hold potential, but as we’ve seen time and time again in tech over the last fifteen years, the hype and greed of unethical pitchmen has gotten way out ahead of the actual locomotive. A lot of people in “tech” are interested in money, not tech. And they’re increasingly making decisions based on how to drum up investment bucks, get press attention and bump stock, not on actually improving anything.
The result has been a ridiculous parade of rushed “AI” implementations that are focused more on cutting corners, undermining labor, or drumming up sexy headlines than improving lives. The resulting hype cycle isn’t just building unrealistic expectations and tarnishing brands, it’s often distracting many tech companies from foundational reality and more practical, meaningful ideas.
Those mistakes would be easily solved by something that doesn’t even need to think. Just add a filter of acceptable orders, or hire a low wage human who does not give a shit about the customers special orders.
In general, AI really needs to set some boundaries. “No” is a perfectly good answer, but it doesn’t ever do that, does it?
sure it does. it won’t tell you how to build a bomb or demonstrate explicit biases that have been fine tuned out of it. the problem is McDonald’s isn’t an AI company and probably is just using ChatGPT on the backend, and GPT doesn’t give a shit about bacon ice cream out of the box.
So, what happens if you order a bomb at the McD?
You get bacon on ice cream.