Shocking technology news this week as… here, let the Macalope just have an AI summarize it.
“AI is the coolest and everyone loves it.”
What?! No! That’s not… gah.
“OpenAI, Google and Anthropic Are Struggling to Build More Advanced AI” (Bloomberg)
It appears the wheels might be coming off AI a bit.
Which, honestly, is probably the problem right there. The Macalope isn’t a programmer, but even he knows these things shouldn’t run on wheels. They should run on silicon. So if you’re running your AI on wheels, that’s the first thing you should try to fix.
You’re welcome, AI companies.
According to Bloomberg OpenAI, Google and Anthropic are all finding diminishing returns on their efforts to get “untapped sources of high-quality, human-made training data” at the same time they are faced with high costs associated with running the word-sausage-making machines they’ve already shipped.
You may cry the Macalope a river, AI companies. On the first item, these companies have routinely appropriated content without consent and, even when they’ve asked for consent, have done it in the most difficult manner to get out of possible. On the second item, burning the Earth to a crisp in order to get your large language model to tell people to eat rocks and glue… the Macalope guesses we’ll see which kills humanity first, global warming or death by misinformation.
It is certainly possible this is just a speed bump on the road to machines that, if they are not really thinking, at least appear to be doing so. However, it’s more than a bit sigh-inducing to see AI start to disappoint in the same way that the previous energy vampire technologies (apologies to Colin Robinson) like crypto did. Way back in June (remember June?), the Macalope wrote:
The Macalope doesn’t consider himself someone prone to conspiracy theories, but he would not be surprise to find out years from now that Nvidia has been running a powerful psychological ops campaign that dreams up technologies that require its boards to run and then convinces venture capital firms to invest in them.
If it turns out AI is running out of gas and suddenly next year there’s some other processor-intensive technology that comes out that just happens to need GPUs, well, let’s just say this is looking less like a conspiracy theory and more like an educated guess. Also, the Macalope should probably put an expiration date on that “AI running on gas” metaphor because the incoming U.S. presidential administration would probably be all too willing to allow it to literally run on gas.
AI is a party Apple is probably happy to have arrived to late and maybe leave early, but the company’s not immune to the collective yawn this technology seems to engender. As more people are testing the iOS 18.2 beta, more are experiencing the… “joys” is definitely the wrong word there. “Nightmare fuel” is probably a little strong, but more directionally correct. Ah. More are experiencing the fever dreams produced by Image Playground. Summaries often aren’t much better, apparently going so far as to turn children into husbands which is super awkward.
IDG
AI was supposed to drive a wave of upgrades to new phones for Apple but it’s a technology that few have asked for that often delivers results no one asked for.
Absolutely everyone: [nothing at all]
AI: “EAT ROCKS!”
Absolutely everyone: “Who said that?!”
Apple will, of course, continue to do just fine (thank you, services revenue) and is probably better poised to pivot away from this if it continues to run into a brick wall than many of its competitors.
The Macalope started with a joke about summaries but he has to say Apple’s summarize tool did a pretty good job on this column:
AI companies face challenges in improving their models due to limited data and high costs. Despite initial excitement, AI’s performance has fallen short of expectations, raising concerns about its future. Apple, while not immune to AI’s limitations, is better positioned to pivot away from it due to its strong services revenue.
Still, the Macalope would have highlighted the metaphors used: “AI seems like its wheels are coming off and it’s running out of gas and headed for a brick wall.”
Author: The Macalope, Contributor, Macworld
The Macalope is a longtime observer of the tech industry and Apple. In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.