@aral Coincidentally, I wrote to my MP the day before Starmer said this nonsense. I was writing specifically about the consultation on weakening UK copyright law to allow AI grifters to launder the commons with no repercussions, which is framed as 'we obviously want to give everything away and kill the British creative industry to make some Americans richer, help us find the most efficient way of doing that'.
The relevant part of my letter was:
Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of understanding in government of how current 'AI' systems work. Announcements by members of the cabinet could easily be press releases from companies trying to sell things on the current hype wave. The only ray of sunshine has been the skepticism from the MOD. Much of the current hype wave surrounding generative AI is from companies run by the same people behind the Bitcoin / blockchain / web3 hype (which consumed a lot of energy, made the climate disaster worse, and failed to produce a single useful product).
There are a few places where machine learning techniques have huge value. Anomaly detection can be very useful for at-scale early diagnosis of various medical conditions, but this alone will not fix the NHS. Most of the hype has failed to create any products of real value. For example:
77% of employees report that using AI tools makes them less productive[1].
A study on Google's own workers found that using AI tools made them less productive[2].
OpenAI, the flagship company driving the hype wave is still making massive losses[3], including losing money on the $200/month subscription plan[4].
Software written using AI has more security vulnerabilities[5]
It is not worth throwing the UK's creative sector under a bus to provide more money for these companies and their investors.
If you want a good overview of these problems, I'd recommend Pivot-to-AI[6] as a starting point. Beyond this, I'd also point out that OpenAI has been caught harvesting data from sites whose terms of use specifically prohibit it[7] (see also the LibGen article on Pivot-to-AI). Breaking the law should not be rewarded and no opt-out can work with people who do not follow the law. Opt in is the only viable solution.
The footnotes were:
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/torconstantino/2024/09/12/77-of-surveyed-employees-say-ai-tools-make-them-less-productive/
[2] https://redmonk.com/rstephens/2024/11/26/dora2024/
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/27/openai-sees-5-billion-loss-this-year-on-3point7-billion-in-revenue.html
[4] https://9meters.com/technology/ai/openai-loses-money-on-200-month-pro-plan-because-people-are-using-it-too-much
[5] https://arxiv.org/html/2404.03823v1
[6] https://pivot-to-ai.com
[7] https://aoir.social/@aram/113811386580314915
I don't encourage people to send the same text to their MPs, because that gets ignored, but a set of citations like this may help push back.
Aral Balkan
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)
Fazal Majid
Tim B
DeltaWye
Tariq
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