Elon Musk's AI Isn't What You Think
By Michael Carr
Editor, Precision Profits
Banyan Nation,
Artificial intelligence is the latest “next big thing.” That’s exactly the right way to think of it … as the next big thing — but with an emphasis on next.
Elon Musk recently described its potential. According to CNBC:
[Musk said that] AI will have the potential to become the “most disruptive force in history” [… ] “We will have something that is, for the first time smarter than the smartest human.”
“It’s hard to say exactly what that moment is, but there will come a point where no job is needed,” Musk continued, speaking alongside British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. “You can have a job if you wanted to have a job for personal satisfaction. But the AI would be able to do everything.”
Musk seems to be thinking of a world where robotics and AI join forces. But that’s not likely in the next few years.
To see why, think about a nearby park. Could a robot do the maintenance? There are robots that can cut grass. For now, someone has to empty them. Robots to empty the robots would require a large amount of space.
Storing robots to trim trees would also require a large amount of space. When they’re working, they would limit the use of the park, or your yard.
Robots just aren’t ready for many physically demanding jobs. That delays Musk’s vision by many years.
AI is also not ready for many tasks. While it does seem to be good at writing, it has a tendency to be repetitive. It also loves to introduce ornate phrases for transitions. The current state of AI is that it’s capable of writing but not at a level most of us want to read.
That’s the problem with AI today. It can perform tasks, but humans still do many of those things better. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t start reaping massive benefits from it now. We just need to understand the limitations and work with them…
Working With the Limitations of AI
For most of us, AI is a great helper. It can be used to plan menus for the week and put together a shopping list. But it can’t cook or serve us dinner.
Understanding its limitations is important. Especially when it comes to important tasks like medicine or legal proceedings. Lawyers have been fined for including precedents AI made up in legal filings. That seems like a task well-suited for AI, basically acting as a search engine. But the fine shows that human experts need to review the work.
The same is true for investing. Managing risks is still important for AI systems. This might mean having algorithms flag suspicious information for further review.
I used AI to refine a trading strategy earlier this week. It told me the results were phenomenal. I had it check a few facts, and the results grew even more impressive.
Then I manually coded the strategy and discovered that it didn’t work at all. One of us made an error. Checking closely, I saw that AI was wrong.
This is just one example of how AI is useful but not the answer to all of our concerns. Maybe Musk’s vision will come true, and AI will replace the landscape teams we currently rely on to maintain our parks. But that’s unlikely in the next few years.
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