Minor Rant Against AI Marketing
I've been doing computer-related things since I was a kid on my dad's Franklin ACE 1000 and his Tandy.
I've built PCs, repaired servers, wired networks by hand, administered servers and built numerous applications.
I've coded in Perl, PHP, Java, VB, C#, VB.NET, JS and probably a few others.
I'm a jack-of-trades technologist. I transitioned into leadership several years ago from a senior .NET developer. I'm currently a Delivery Manager and I lead an agile software development team.
At this point, it seems well-established that “AI” and “artificial intelligence” are arguably not the same thing anymore. Large Language Models (LLMs) have dominated the conversation and the hype has been massive. AI has come to equal LLM which has lead to the initialism AGI for “artificial general intelligence”. AGI is meant to hold a space for the technology of sci-fi legend where computers can actually think and learn like a human.
The AI hype is so strong that a company called Nate got busted for lying to investors. The company had led investors to think that the company was using cutting-edge AI when, in fact, the company was using remote workers to do tasks. I suspect they were trying to cash in on the AI wave with remote workers with a “we’ll fix it later” attitude.
I read a crazy story a few months back regarding a brothel that was supposedly using AI. The article attempted to coin a new term: “analog AI”. As it turns out, this “analog AI” was just a person talking on a headset to interact with “clients” while the clients “interacted” with “equipment”. I found the term “analog AI” almost offensive!
The hype is so strong with AI and LLMs that I’ve intentionally stepped back to be a late adopter. I poke a stick at it every so often. My non-techie wife uses AI more than I do at this point. I’m going to let the dust settle a bit and see what comes out of all this.
