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Deep Learning "AI" systems are doing ever more impressive things, although there continues to be plenty of skepticism Out There about the underlying technologies.

And now there's increasing skepticism about the economic impact. An 8/2/2024 Atlantic article has the title "The Generative-AI Revolution May Be a Bubble", and the subtitle "Tech firms have been spending historic amounts of money on AI—but will it pay off?" A recent Goldman-Sachs report had the title "GEN AI: TOO MUCH SPEND, TOO LITTLE BENEFIT?", featured in a 7/24 Washington Post article "Big Tech says AI is booming. Wall Street is starting to see a bubble."

One idea about AI socio-economics has always been that wider and wider swaths of the world's population will want to pay for its participation in their daily lives, replicating the successes of social media and portable networked devices. But even if this is true, there are some hiccups along the way, such as Google's "Dear Sidney" Olympics ad:

There was a lot of negative reaction to that ad, for example Alexandra Petri, "I hate the Gemini ‘Dear Sydney’ ad more every passing moment", and Caroline Nimbs Nyce's "Google Wins the Gold Medal for Worst Olympic Ad" — so much that Google quickly pulled it. Here's the start of the WSJ's 8/2/2024 summary, "Google Pulls Olympic-Themed AI Ad After Failing to Stick the Landing":

Google pulled an Olympics-themed ad for its AI chatbot after it sparked backlash from viewers that the messaging was impersonal and dystopian, the latest misstep by Alphabet’s search giant in its rollout of the technology.

The advertisement, called “Dear Sydney” and created in partnership with Team USA, featured a father who uses Gemini, a chatbot based on Google’s most advanced technology, to help his daughter write a letter to Team USA track runner Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.

Critics online said the ad was tone-deaf because it took an innocent childhood experience—writing a heartfelt letter of admiration to a role model—and turned the task over to an algorithm. Parents especially were quick to note that a letter written by generative artificial intelligence detracts from the sentimental value it has when personally written by a child.  

That article ends with a reference to an earlier tone-deaf advertisement from another Tech giant:

Apple apologized in May for an ad that depicted an array of creative tools being crushed —including a piano and colorful paint brushes—saying it fell short of the company’s standards, after some critics said the ad highlighted their concerns that AI could replace human creativity.

(See "Tim Cook crushes it everything", 5/9/2024…)

Cory Doctorow has coined the metaphorical term "centaur" for the application of these ideas in the workplace ("The reverse-centaur apocalypse is upon us", 8/2/2024):

A centaur is someone whose work is supercharged by automation: you are a human head atop the tireless body of a machine that lets you get more done than you could ever do on your own.

A reverse-centaur is someone who is harnessed to the machine […]

There's certainly a lot of centauring Out There. But the main effect of several such out-sourced innovations in my own workplace has been to force many departments and centers to hire new human employees to deal with the bureaucratic "help" thus provided, which semi-automatically monitors lots of newly-tracked details through badly-designed interfaces to ill-fitting data models.  Which is not a very good  imitation of the 19th-century successes of industrial automation…

This seems to be a problem with the people designing, selling, and buying such systems, rather than with the underlying technologies. But as long as administrative productivity is defined by bureaucrats, I don't think it will be easy to fix the problems.

Update —  From David Segal, "So, Human Resources Is Making You Miserable?", NYT 8/3/2024:

A recent Business Insider story, titled “Everyone Hates Workday,” asked why half of the Fortune 500 uses this particular piece of software — which handles benefits and recruiting and facilitates pay equity analysis — despite creating “mountains of busywork for everyone.”

It’s not the software’s fault, H.R. veterans say. It’s the fault of your company, which hasn’t configured it wisely or trained you adequately. Workday is here to stay, and one Unleash attendee had this bit of advice for its legions of haters: “Buckle up, buttercup.

WorkDay's web site boasts

At Workday, AI is at the core of our platform. And as part of your workflow, it powers intelligent predictions and automation like no one else can.

As the Business Insider story explains — and as everyone I know with WorkDay Experience can testify — it also creates layers of counter-productive frustration.

August 4, 2024 @ 10:07 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Artificial intelligence

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