The problem is AI is now a term used far too widely and far too loosely, everything is “AI”. None of the tech I read about in the article is revolutionary (unless I missed something), it is just the application of known tech to a new role, blowing things and people up using devices with a greater degree of autonomy, lower cost and far greater scale of production than in the past. It’s just the next stage of “fire and forget”, using mini devices on a maxi scale.
Of course, that’s not to say it isn’t dangerous and morally and ethically troubling, especially the use of face recognition. But that’s war for you.
A backlash may have started against data centres over the space they take up and their water and electricity consumption. Plus, they create very few jobs.
I agree with this. Nothing described there is new capability in the warfare space (there are plenty of “fire and forget” weapons that can navigate themselves to targets in a contested electronic environment) and, as you say, the big difference is that it’s now available relatively cheaply and in volume, especially if you’re willing to take some risk.
The challenge for many nations is that they’re still in a mindset where everything has to be safety assured up the ying Yang, something I once described as a luxury of peacetime. A luxury that Ukraine has clearly discarded and rightly so. There’s nothing like war for rapidly driving progress in technology.
Edited to add:
Tangentially related, I’ve just bought a little DJI NEO drone for €130, so that I can check the roof after storms, and even the “AI” in that is phenomenal in that it can track an individual, do filming sequences around an individual while avoiding obstacles and, if you hold out your hand, it will return and land on it.
To be fair to the robot, it’s not actually in the act of taking a picture there - it’s holding a Fujifilm Instax instant film camera, and is extracting the taken image from the side of the camera…
Yes, I’m familiar with that sort of thing, but it’s a silly shot and caption combo. Long ago I used to do a lot of Polaroid SX70 stuff and in 1982 had a couple of prints in the 1st British Polaroid Open expo at the Photographers’ Gallery.
A suggestion came up in my YT feed today. It was presented as soul and funk music from the 1970s (the title was Deep Soul-Funk Grooves You’ve Been Searching For | Minimal Vinyl Session | ep9 ).
After a few moments, I felt something was a bit “off”. A bit like eating Shredded Wheat out of the box. And they were suspiciously clean recordings.
I Shazzammed several songs: nothing. It turned out it was AI-generated.
