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Re: Is this where we are going with AI?

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Jim Jackson <jj@franjam.org.uk> wrote:
> A friend of mine had a problem with external speakers/mic for his laptop 
> - he does talks to groups. So he asked his new friend "copilot". Guess 
> what - co-pilot suggested he needed a gizmo, helpfully saying it was 
> available from Amazon. Off he goes and purchases this, and ... he's 
> still having problems. Ah says his friend "copilot", "now you mention it
> what you need is actually this gizmo for, guess where, Amazon!
> And seemingly there are still problems, but he has it working-sort-of.
> 
> So are big companies paying to get adverts in AIs?

Probably. Whether or not it's happening already, it seems
inevitable at some point given the incredible profits AI companies
need to try and extract to recoup their investments.

> Or is it just regurgitating the stuff it's scraped from Amazon?

It will also be reading reviews on other websites that may have
been sponsored by Amazon, with purchase links pointing there, so
the bias could be somewhat accidental simply because products have
been trying to get lots of hits from web searches that use the same
keywords the AI is looking for.

This is why I consider AI pretty useless for such things - you
often don't get the chance to judge the trustworthyness of its
source material for yourself. Then there's the nonsense it just
seems to pull out of thin air entirely...

> And my friend has learnt nothing new from co-pilot. He has no real 
> further understanding about the problem he had. Co-pilot had not 
> educated him. But he does have some new buzz words that he picked up 
> from the conversation.
> 
> It could be, of course that he'd have got no further by entering into a 
> conversation with humans on a bulletin board, or indeed here on usenet. 
> I have no way of knowing.
> 
> I reckon to use one of these tools well, you already need to be somewhat 
> of an expert in the area of discussion - so you can spot the 
> hallucinations and where it is off the mark. 

Even then they still describe their hallucinations in dangerously
convincing ways, wrapping them with lots of irrelevent but
correct facts from elsewhere. More misleading than any response
from a human, who would never work that hard to sell such lies in
an unimportant online discussion.

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Is this where we are going with AI? Jim Jackson <jj@franjam.org.uk> - 2026-05-12 18:26 +0000
  Re: Is this where we are going with AI? none <none@none.rip> - 2026-05-12 20:49 +0200
    Re: Is this where we are going with AI? oldernow <oldernow@dev.null> - 2026-05-13 00:07 +0000
      Re: Is this where we are going with AI? none <none@none.rip> - 2026-05-13 02:28 +0200
        Re: Is this where we are going with AI? oldernow <oldernow@dev.null> - 2026-05-13 02:58 +0000
  Re: Is this where we are going with AI? ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) - 2026-05-12 18:56 +0000
    Re: Is this where we are going with AI? Jim Jackson <jj@franjam.org.uk> - 2026-05-12 19:19 +0000
  Re: Is this where we are going with AI? Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> - 2026-05-12 20:10 +0100
    Re: Is this where we are going with AI? Jim Jackson <jj@franjam.org.uk> - 2026-05-12 19:17 +0000
      Re: Is this where we are going with AI? Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> - 2026-05-12 20:32 +0100
  Re: Is this where we are going with AI? none <none@none.rip> - 2026-05-12 21:52 +0200
  Re: Is this where we are going with AI? not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2026-05-13 08:12 +1000
    Re: Is this where we are going with AI? Jim Jackson <jj@franjam.org.uk> - 2026-05-13 09:48 +0000
      Re: Is this where we are going with AI? oldernow <oldernow@dev.null> - 2026-05-13 12:18 +0000
      Re: Is this where we are going with AI? not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2026-05-14 08:52 +1000
  Re: Is this where we are going with AI? Adrian Caspersz <email@here.invalid> - 2026-05-13 20:48 +0100
    Re: Is this where we are going with AI? none <none@none.rip> - 2026-05-13 21:59 +0200
  Re: Is this where we are going with AI? Oregonian Haruspex <no_email@invalid.invalid> - 2026-05-13 21:46 +0000
    Re: Is this where we are going with AI? Jim Jackson <jj@franjam.org.uk> - 2026-05-14 08:52 +0000

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