Richardcyoung.com

The Online Home of Author and Investor, Dick Young

  • Home
  • How We Are Different
  • About Us
    • Foundation Principles
    • Contributors
  • Investing
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
  • Your Survival Guy
  • The Great Reset
  • COVID-19
  • My Rifles
  • Dividends and Compounding
  • Your Security
  • The Swiss Way
  • Dick Young
  • Debbie Young
  • Key West
  • Paris
  • Dick’s R&B Top 100
  • Liberty & Freedom Map
  • Bank Credit & Money
  • Your Survival Guy’s Super States
  • NNT & Cholesterol
  • Work to Make Money/Invest to Save Money
  • Your Health
  • Ron Paul
  • US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool

Artificial Intelligence Is Coming, But It’s Not Quite There

January 24, 2023 By Richard C. Young

By Jirsak @ Shutterstock.com

There has been a lot of buzz in the news lately about ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence that has even the brain trust over at Google shaking with fear over their search monopoly. Long-time technology reporter Andy Kessler took a look at ChatGPT and found that it’s close, but not quite there. He writes in The Wall Street Journal:

With every new piece of technology—today it’s generative artificial intelligence like OpenAI’s ChatGPT—I’m fascinated by the possibilities but always ask: Will it scale? Can it get smaller, cheaper, faster, better? Early releases are usually clunky. After the initial “huh, I didn’t know that was possible,” often comes denial and ridicule. I’ve been guilty of this. So how do you figure out what works and what’s a dud?

ChatGPT uses machine learning to find patterns of patterns in training data, mostly written by humans, to produce human-sounding prose in response to prompts. Machine learning is the greatest pattern-recognition system ever invented. It’s why Alexa’s voice interface works and how Google can find you in photos from when you were 3.

I’ve played around with ChatGPT, and it’s pretty good—if you need to turn in a high-school freshman term paper. Its answers are dull, repetitive and often filled with mistakes, like most freshmen.

Speaking of dull, lawyers may have the greatest reason to be nervous. In February, online ticket fixer DoNotPay will coach someone to fight a speeding ticket in a live courtroom using its AI chatbot speaking into the defendant’s earpiece. DoNotPay has even offered $1 million to the first lawyer arguing before the Supreme Court who agrees to wear an earpiece and repeat what the bot says.

Pure digital technology almost always scales. In 1970, Intel’s 3101 memory chip with 64 bits (not 64K) sold for nearly $1 a bit. Today, $1 can buy 10 billion bits of memory. Moore’s Law, the doubling of chip density every 18 months, is Scale City. Compare the original slight iPhone with today’s iPhone 14 Pro Max.

Will other technologies in the news—the metaverse, Crispr gene editing, fusion, quantum computing—scale?

The metaverse’s digital worlds, from games to fitness apps, sit on servers in the cloud, so they can definitely scale in complexity, resolution and speed. It’s the human interface I worry about. Wearing ski-goggle dongles to traverse the metaverse goes only so far. A screen an inch from your eyeballs causes headaches and nausea. Apple will reportedly unveil a mixed-reality headset this spring, though Bloomberg suggests the company’s “lightweight augmented-reality glasses” are delayed until at least 2024. Invention is still a necessity. Plus, like VCRs and e-commerce, we need a killer app to bring the technology to the masses.

Nuclear fusion saw a breakthrough in December at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a system that produced 3.15 megajoules of power, more than the 2.05 megajoules pumped in by 192 lasers. Cheap electricity is coming! But read the fine print. The lasers required 300 megajoules of electricity to generate the 2.05 megajoules of output. More work is required. And the fusion chamber requires precision-made pellets of heavy hydrogen in a diamond shell. That doesn’t sound scalable to me.

Quantum computing has shown early indications that it can scale but—physics pun alert—may have a tough time jumping to the next level. Computing units are known as quantum bits, or qubits. Early prototypes were four- or eight-qubit machines. IBM recently showcased 433 qubits. Will it double every few years? Maybe. This has cyber types nervous. It might take 6,000 qubits to break today’s encryption, though that machine may be a decade or more in the future.

As far as gene editing and the amazing advances with Crispr technology, note that biology is slow, both its processes and advances. Even the latest, mRNA vaccines, let our bodies do the work. You can’t speed it up. Gene editing to remove sickle-cell disease can cost $1 million a treatment. Lifesaving gene editing will scale, but not at the pace of digital technology.

So will generative AI scale? Inevitably. We already have silicon chips, such as Google’s Tensor, purpose-built for machine learning and AI. We’re seeing baby steps so far. According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, ChatGPT costs “probably single-digit cents per chat.” That gets expensive quickly. One of the reasons the company is selling equity to Microsoft is to gain access to cheap cloud computing.

Over time, ChatGPT will get faster, cheaper and, like Google searches, more focused and accurate. But remember, AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on. Garbage in, garbage out. I asked it: “Write 800 words in the voice of Andy Kessler on whether ChatGPT scales.” It was as bad as a New York Times guest essay. Generative AI could be stuck at high-school freshman level for a while. But hey, if it wins a Supreme Court case, that may be good enough.

If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for my free weekly email.

Related Posts

  • The Future of Medicine: Artificial Intelligence
  • Tiny Slovenia Becomes Artificial Intelligence Powerhouse
  • China Adding Artificial Intelligence to Submarines
  • Is the World in an Artificial Intelligence Arms Race?
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Richard C. Young
Richard C. Young is the editor of Young's World Money Forecast, and a contributing editor to both Richardcyoung.com and Youngresearch.com.
Latest posts by Richard C. Young (see all)
  • Will Western Tanks Be a Game Changer in Ukraine? - January 26, 2023
  • Is Putin’s Meat Grinder Working? - January 26, 2023
  • Pat Buchanan Retires - January 25, 2023

Dick Young’s Must Reads

  • The Clock is Ticking: You Must Protect Your Family
  • Boom—Your Life Changes
  • Work to Make Money/Invest to Save Money
  • Stunned Democrats Against “Defund Police”
  • Your Survival Guy Prefers Bombardier’s Global Express 7500
  • Progressive Liberalism Has Dragged America near Ruination
  • Democracy: The Most Dangerous and Insidious Effect of Majority Rule.
  • A Look at the Future of Main Street America
  • How Can You Maximize Natural Immunity to Viruses?
  • Rich Grandchild, Poor Grandchild

Our Most Popular Posts

  • Pfizer CEO Terrified of Real Questions About His Vaccines
  • America's Super States and Stocks that Respect YOU
  • Give Me Clean, Efficient Gas
  • How the Biden Administration Is Destroying Our Energy Infrastructure
  • The Rich Seek More from Bank Accounts
  • Artificial Intelligence Is Coming, But It's Not Quite There
  • Is Kevin McCarthy’s GOP Willing to Do What It Takes on Debt?
  • The Sound of Silence
  • Strengthen Your Defenses Against Stroke
  • Forty Years Ago, Jogging a Mile a Day and Still Going

Disclosure

RSS Youngresearch.com

  • 4 Life Changing Words for Your Survival Guy: “You Should Try This”
  • Suddenly, Holding Cash Looks Good Again to Many
  • Anti-Carbon Crusaders in Davos Talk ESG and OPM
  • Is Passive Investing Already Passé?
  • Welcome to Hotel California, Where You Can Never Leave
  • What You’re Telling Me Matters
  • Can Banks Compete with Apple Pay and PayPal?
  • America’s Super States and Stocks that Respect YOU
  • Markets Are Calling the Fed’s Bluff
  • Don’t Let Your Lazy Cash Eat all Your Food

RSS Yoursurvivalguy.com

  • 4 Life Changing Words for Your Survival Guy: “You Should Try This”
  • Anti-Carbon Crusaders in Davos Talk ESG and OPM
  • Welcome to Hotel California, Where You Can Never Leave
  • What You’re Telling Me Matters
  • The Rich Seek More from Bank Accounts
  • California’s Wealth Tax Will Drive Out Remaining Rich Residents
  • Political Establishment Irate over Conservative Challenges to ESG
  • Congratulations Mikaela Shiffrin on 83rd Win
  • America’s Super States and Stocks that Respect YOU
  • NYC Bleeding Revenue as Wealthiest Flee the City

Will Western Tanks Be a Game Changer in Ukraine?

The Power of Words

4 Life Changing Words for Your Survival Guy: “You Should Try This”

Is Putin’s Meat Grinder Working?

California Unions Could Spike the Slowly Recovering Supply Chain

Ukraine Filled with Russian Sympathizers and Collaborators

Copyright © 2023 | Terms & Conditions | About Us | Dick Young | Archives