The AI Breakdown First Five - Thursday August 17, 2023

5. AI at “Peak of Inflated Expectations”

If you caught yesterday’s episode, you’ll have heard my argument for why we’ve passed the peak of hype. Gartner agrees, announcing that AI is right at the very peak of inflated expectations on its oh-so-famous hype cycle. Don’t worry though, they still say it will have a “profound impact on business and society.”

4. McKinsey Premiers Lilli

Speaking of yesterday’s episode (boy I’m really shilling it hard, huh?) — one of the predictions I made was that part of the next wave would be businesses premiering their own custom-purposed generative AI tools. Well, meet Lilli, a new AI for McKinsey employees that allows them to interact with hundreds of thousands of documents relating to interviews and previous projects.

3. George Hotz-Eliezer Yudkowsky Debate

In general, I tend to think the whole “debate” culture that has emerged on Twitter is pretty not useful, but this conversation between AI doomer-in-chief Eliezer Yudkowsky and hacker George Hotz is an exception, not only because both participants are genuinely smart and thoughtful, but because the conversation is had in good faith.

2. OpenAI Acquires Open Minecraft-Clone Studio

On the one hand, OpenAI acquiring a small studio isn’t necessarily some big surprising or notable thing. On the other hand, given that they have been experimenting with Minecraft-style environments and that Minecraft-style environments have been home to some of the more interesting agent experiments…

1. Snapchat AI Has A Mind Of Its Own

Snapchat users were well and freaked out yesterday when Snapchat’s My AI feature jumped far out of its normal mode of small chats with users to post a seemingly incredibly random video of a wall. The company said it was a glitch, but this was reassuring to exactly no one.

BONUS: The Rumor Mill Is Getting Louder

_{The Latest AI Breakdown Episodes}

Thanks for reading! How did this edition hit you?

• The AI Breakdown podcast - https://pod.link/1680633614

• The AI Breakdown YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@theaibreakdown

• The AI Breakdown Discord - https://bit.ly/aibreakdown

Signing off from the future’s past - NLW