Trust in AI technology and the companies that develop it is dropping, in both the U.S. and around the world, according to new data from Edelman shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: The move comes as regulators around the world are deciding what rules should apply to the fast-growing industry. “Trust is the currency of the AI era, yet, as it stands, our innovation account is dangerously overdrawn,” Edelman global technology chair Justin Westcott told Axios in an email. “Companies must move beyond the mere mechanics of AI to address its true cost and value — the ‘why’ and ‘for whom.’”
I don’t get all the negativity on this topic and especially comparing current AI (the LLMs) to the nonsense of NFTs etc. Of course, one would have to be extremely foolish/naive or a stakeholder to trust the AI vendors. But the technology itself is, while not solid, genuinely useful in many many use cases. It is an absolute positive productivity booster in these and enables use cases that were not possible or practical before. The one I have the most experience with is programming and programming-related stuff such as software architecture where the LLMs absolutely shine, but there are others. The current generation can even self-correct without human intervention. In any case, even if this would be the only use case ever, this would absolutely change the world and bring positive boosts in productivity across all industries - unlike NFTs.
People who understand technology know that most of the tremendous benefits of AI will never be possible to realize within the griftocarcy of capitalism. Those who don’t understand technology can’t understand the benefits because the grifters have confused them, and now they think AI is useless garbage because the promise doesn’t meet the reality.
In the first case it’s exactly like cryptography, where we were promised privacy and instead we got DRM and NFTs. In the second, it’s exactly like NFTs because people were promised something really valuable and they just got robbed instead.
Management will regularly pass over the actual useful AI idea because it’s really hard to explain while funding the complete garbage “put AI on it” idea that doesn’t actually help anyone. They do this because management is almost universally not technically competent. So the technically competent workers who absolutely know the potential benefits are still not able to leverage them because management either doesn’t understand or is actively engaging in a grift.