I posted our first AI roundup last month, and given the speed that this technology is likely to evolve, I can see us doing this once a month for a while. 

The future is now

Carol Roth shared some of the AI-related content from her new book in this post, “As AI makes gains, who owns your thoughts and your soul?” From personal biometrics and who knows and can sell that information to the digitizing of our consciousness, we are on some slippery slopes! 

With our current technology, what was in the realm of science fiction is now close to reality. Carol writes: 

As time goes on, and you license and rent more technology, using palm and fingerprint scanners for convenience or connect personal data to digital wallets and so on, what ends up happening with the unique characteristics, talent, biometrics and more that make you who you are?  

What happens to your thoughts?  

Imagine a future world. You have been in a terrible car accident. The paramedics arrived, but you are losing too much blood. It doesn’t look like you can be saved. The paramedics contact your next of kin and they give the ok. The paramedics reach around and dislodge a chip from your skull and return it to your family. 

Your family looks at your wishes and locates the new body you have chosen for yourself. Your chip, which connects to a backup downloaded copy of your brain, gets inserted into a new body. You come back to life, barely remembering the accident. You also look great in your new robotic body, which, per your choice, is about 20 pounds thinner and three inches taller.

I think I saw this movie . . .

Copyright requires a human

Josh Bernoff, my go-to expert about business books and writing, underlines the problems with AI-generated books that are getting spit out at such velocity that Amazon may need to update its policies. And in the no-BS style that is his brand he says, “You can’t copyright AI drivel. So don’t publish AI drivel.” Here’s why:

A district court judge has confirmed a ruling by the US Copyright Office that AI-generated art cannot be copyrighted. That’s yet another reason you should be using AI as a tool, not a text-generator.

Apparently, a human hand is needed for copyright protection, so if you are just blindly publishing AI-generated content without editing it, you won’t own the copyright. 

This does not mean that you can’t use AI to help generate outlines or drafts or whatever. You can absolutely do that if you want to.

Generative AI has issues 

While I don’t think this will happen, part of me hopes this curmudgeonly view about the AI boom petering out is correct. From this article, “Generative AI boom ‘could come to a fairly swift end’”:

Predictions about the potential impacts of generative AI may be overblown due to “many serious, unsolved problems” with the technology according to Gary Marcus, one of the field’s leading voices.

In a recent blog post, scientist and entrepreneur Marcus said generative artificial intelligence (AI) such as ChatGPT “probably isn’t going to have the impact people seem to be expecting.”

The New York University professor and Center for the Advancement of Trustworthy AI co-founder warned that governments could be making a mistake by gambling on “the premise that generative AI will be world-changing.”

In short, AI makes stuff up, and unless the technology can stop “hallucinating,” it won’t have the impact many are predicting. 

I recommend taking a quick look at all of these articles. 

If nothing else, you will sound smart at networking events – or dinner parties. 

Photo by Joseph Hersh on Unsplash