Google will unlock the limits of AI | Mayer talk | Reconnect
Penned while celebrating all the moms
What can AI do?
Artificial Intelligence, AI, is not an all-things-to-all-people technology. It’s not a Facebook or Windows. It’s a tool, almost a principle if technology can be such a thing. It’s a way of programming so that the system is not just fixed, but learning and hungry for fresh models to expand its understanding of its surroundings, people, and interactions. AI has no consciousness or personality, aside from whatever’s been programmed in. It has no goals or intentions, again, beyond those set by its algorithms.
It can be singular in its pursuit of those programmatic goals because, unlike humans, AI doesn't naturally take other dependencies into account, unless, of course, it’s been programmed to do so.
AI is still vastly limited in its ability to compete with the human brain, but, like a savant, it can be so incredibly good at a single task that it can often appear to outthink humans.
Even there, there, AI is flawed. It may produce decent papers and news articles but shows no concerns about making up facts to fill in the gaps. That’s because AI is not a fundamentally ethics-driven system. As with everything else about AI, its fairness and ethics are derived from the original program and are usually a perfect reflection of baked-in biases.
What transforms AI from dumb and limited to powerful and useful is data, the more of it the better.
As I watched Google roll out its wildly aggressive plans for introducing AI into everything from email to messaging, to image manipulation and writing to search, I realized that no one can match Google’s data advantage.
So far, the best generative AI systems already rely on vast amounts of freely available online data and images. It’s the same data Google will use but Google’s knowledge graphs organize data so that it already makes more sense to the AI. There is a chance that Google’s predigested data could result in in more accuracy, fewer hallucinations, and even more human-like AI systems.
If you thought we were at an AI tipping point before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Mayer’s time to speak
Speaking of Google, I had a great conversation a couple of weeks ago with former Google exec and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.
I’ve been watching Mayer for years. She’s been deeply influential in the search space and certainly left her mark on Yahoo (not all good, I’ll grant you).
Not long after Mayer took over the helm at Yahoo, I tried meeting with her. I flew to Yahoo’s California headquarters where I was told Mayer was not taking meetings yet. I was annoyed. However, when I sat down with Mayer, she offered a plausible explanation.
When Mayer took over at Yahoo, Chase’s Jamie Dimon recommended that she do no PR during her first six months as CEO. She found it so freeing that she extended it into a year. If nothing else, it helped her focus.
For what it’s worth, the Mayer I finally met turned out to be open, funny, and very smart. You can read the full story here.
Disconnected
Some weeks ago, I wrote about how a cable/internet upgrade upended my entire smart home with many gadgets unable to connect or upgrade to my new network. Most people told me this was my fault. I should’ve told the tech to use my old SSID and password. Others told me, just go in and change it myself.
This week, I did just that, or at least I tried to. I went into my router settings, where I found two networks, the 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Both were set to the new SSID and password. To make things easier, I thought I would change just one to my old SSID and password and leave the new one untouched.
Naturally, the system didn’t like that and told me that the new SSID that was already working on the system (and was created by the cable company) was using a disallowed term in the SSID. The only way it would work was if I changed both networks to the one name. I went with my old one.
Good news: Everything worked again.
Bad news: All of my wireless cable boxes stopped working.
One technician visit and $80 later. It’s all working again.
All I can say is that if this is hard for me, what’s it like for people who aren’t tech-savvy?
That’s all for now,
Happy Mother’s Day to all who celebrate.
Be good to each other