Given what I have seen I am inclined to think humanity is nearing the peak of its development; in the next century, they will inch forward with resource-inefficient tech that progresses at an ever-slower rate until the land cannot support it.
Large language-models and modern 'AI' is mostly little more than a glorified amalgamation of advanced search-engines. What information things like Chat GPT and Google AI overview can give you is something able to be found by a series of Google searches. The images it can compile is akin to pulling every applicable image and stacking it all before carving out a rough outline encompassing general details of the acquired data. The recognition-software is similar to preexisting software, except now able to pull information from a greater available bank of data to get more accurate results (having more to compare things with).
It strips away the middle-process of human query input to dig through a mountain of links to find info. It is no more a revolutionary idea of technology as a modern I-pad; the expansion of a preexisting concept to encompass greater utility and applications under the guise of efficiency for the consumer, not the producer.
A self-sustaining sentient AI is, to me, nothing more than an illusitory pipe-dream; the hollow shell of the concept that is current 'AI' is already massively difficult to sustain without building countless data-centres and consuming millions of tonnes of fresh-water per second. Refinement to save on resources seems like the next logical push, but monopolisation of advanced tech in this sector puts more focus on making the technology capable of doing more, to quash its market-competitors and finding a way to leach money from users.
I expect that to backfire. Already some AI companies are starting to realise they are in over their heads, and cutting funding/software platforms to save costs. The industry will not 'pop', but the rate at which it grows on a level of overall innovation will begin to stagnate as the existing technology is modified to perform increasingly specialised tasks benefitting specific industries, and the growth of the 'intelligence' of an artificial intelligence becomes more costly to keep up with.
The way I see it, AI is something that is here to say; it makes life 'easier' for those that have it, and cuts out the need to think, as stated so many times before. It revolutionises applications for cognitive refinement in an industrial sense, shaves down the risk of human-error, becomes everybody's 'trustworthy' way of getting good info... but I'll be damned if it isn't jarring to see human input and advice- the result of years of experience- disregarded on a whim in favour of a small digital text-box.
You see people who have spent decades of their life on a single matter, to try to know it from front to back, to understand a topic with such focus that they may as well have spent their lives on nothing else. And yet- simply because they are human, and it seems humans are both too much trouble to ask and is also capable of human error- they are easily cast aside in favour of the thing that is modern AI.
Feels like spitting in the face of humanity.
What people used to fear from calculators and Google seems to have finally stuck with modern 'AI'.
People who used to type for years with broken sentences and half-assed responses have magically begun to write eloquent sentences with picture-perfect grammar on the Internet... things like well-wishes or Happy Birthday! messages suddenly turn into beautiful heartfelt pieces of written art.
Makes you wonder how much of that is legitimate, or written by AI. And if any of what is said is truly genuine, if all it took was a few blunt words to a piece of software to generate a message of supposed 'meaning'.
Decades ago, people used to think the 2020s would have such advanced futuristic tech so as to seem like something out of The Jetsons. That hardly seems to be the case today... though I have yet to live those years yet, I suspect the few decades ahead will see little good or revolutionary change from the present-day.
Humanity, the way I see it, is reaching its aging years, I don't have much hope for its continued existence some hundreds of years in the future.
But- none of us will be alive to see the world as we know it crumble to bits; so who knows.
Rant over, admittedly haven't read the most of the thread- I should probably go back and do that now.
