Separating AI reality from hyped-up fiction isn’t all the time easy. That’s why we’ve created the AI Hype Index—an easy, at-a-glance summary of every thing you should know concerning the state of the industry.
Nearly all businesses today appear to be pivoting to AI, even after they don’t appear to know exactly why they’re investing in it—and even what it really does. “Optimization,” “scaling,” and “maximizing efficiency” are convenient buzzwords bandied about to explain what AI can achieve in theory, but for many of AI corporations’ eager customers, the tons of of billions of dollars they’re pumping into the industry aren’t adding up. And perhaps they never will.
This month’s news doesn’t exactly solid the technology in a glowing light either. A bunch of NGOs and aid agencies are using AI models to generate images of faux suffering people to guilt their Instagram followers. AI translators are pumping out low-quality Wikipedia pages within the languages most vulnerable to going extinct. And because of the development of recent AI data centers, numerous neighborhoods living of their shadows are getting forced into their very own form of pivots—fighting back against the facility blackouts and water shortages the info centers cause. How’s that for optimization?
