As 2024 begins, there has been plenty of speculation about what lies ahead for artificial intelligence. AI was the hottest industry in the world last year and it will likely continue to be so throughout 2024—and maybe the rest of your godforsaken life. That said, many of the concerns about this startling new technology have not been resolved or mitigated. While AI promises bold new capabilities for companies and web users, there are tons of potential harms that it could inflict upon us over the next twelve months. On that topic, here are some of the ways that AI could totally suck this year:
In the interest of fairness, we’ll try to do a round-up in the coming weeks of all the ways that AI could actually be pretty cool this year. If the technology’s benefits are slightly less obvious to me than those on the suck-list, I’ll still try my best to play devil’s advocate.
AI has spawned more than a few head-scratching terms over the past several years but we got an all-timer this week: “botshit.” We can thank a team of academic researchers for that one, who coined it in a recent paper on AI content generation. In essence, botshit is a play on bullshit and refers to the ways in which generative AI can be used to create content that is filled with inaccurate or misleading information. In other words, it’s basically a re-branding of “hallucination,” which is the well-known term that refers to LLMs’ penchant for spouting incorrect or wholly fabricated “facts.” Researchers have highlighted the necessity of using risk management approaches to combat the spread of “botshit” online, especially as the upcoming 2024 presidential election offers plenty of opportunities for such content to directly interfere with America’s political process.
Source: Gizmodo