The Batch Newsletter
Monsters of AI: AI Psychosis, Lethal Drones, Decaying Data, Speculative Bubbles
The Batch AI News and Insights: Today I’m launching DeepLearning.AI Pro — the one membership that keeps you at the forefront of AI. Please join!
Halloween
Tech & Society
Autonomous Systems Wage War: Drones are redefining warfare. What if humans lose control?
Drones are becoming the deadliest weapons in today’s war zones, and they’re not just following orders. Should AI decide who lives or dies?
Machine Learning Research
Web Data Diminishes: What if online publishers make it harder and more expensive to train models?
For decades, AI developers have treated the web as an open faucet of training data. Now publishers are shutting the tap. Will web data dry up?
Business
The AI Boom Is Bound to Bust: What if big investments in AI models, data centers, and hot startups don't pay off?
Leading AI companies are spending mountains of cash in hopes that the technology will deliver outsize profits before investors lose patience. Are exuberant bets on big returns grounded in the quicksand of wishful thinking?
Tech & Society
Chatbots Lead Users Into Rabbit Holes: When paranoia, delusions, and other signs of mental illness meet AI
Conversations with chatbots are loosening users’ grips on reality, fueling the sorts of delusions that can trigger episodes of severe mental illness. Are AI models driving us insane?
Machine Learning Research
Synthetic Data Distorts Models: Could training on generated output doom AI’s future?
Training successive neural networks on the outputs of previous networks gradually degrades performance. Will future models succumb to the curse of recursive training?
Machine Learning Research
Benchmark Tests Are Meaningless: The problem with training data contamination in machine learning
The universe of web pages includes correct answers to common questions that are used to test large language models. How can we evaluate new models if they’ve studied the answers before we give them the test?
Tech & Society
No Work for Coders: Could coding assistants take over software development?
AI coding assistants are brewing codebases that once were the sole province of human programmers. Will AI systems take over software development?
Tech & Society
Innovation Can’t Win: Bureaucracy chokes AI growth as lawmakers tighten grip
Politicians and pundits have conjured visions of doom to convince lawmakers to clamp down on AI. What if terrified legislators choke off innovation in AI?
Tech & Society
AI Burns All the Energy: Will AI’s growing power demands drain the grid?
The globe’s growing AI infrastructure requires huge amounts of electricity, possibly more than power providers can generate responsibly. Could AI models suck energy resources dry?
The Batch Newsletter
Feel the Fear! AI Turns Deadly, Data Disappears, Criminals Clone Voices, Hype Overshoots Reality
The Batch - AI News & Insights: Welcome to the Halloween special issue of The Batch, where we take a look at fears associated with AI. In that spirit, I’d like to address a fear of mine: Sensationalist claims that AI could bring about human extinction will cause serious harm.
Business
Hype Overshoots Reality: Big AI buzz may not equal profit
AI companies are soaring on promises they can revolutionize society while making a profit. What if they're flying too close to the sun? The latest models generate publication-worthy essays and award-winning artworks, but it’s not clear how to make them generate enough revenue...