ARE WE BEING DUPED INTO THINKING AI IS THE NOVELTY OF THE YEAR?

 

This is a strange world we are living in. Even garbage collection companies are now claiming to use AI! I kid you not.

 

Everybody is in, just like during Y2K, ISO Standards, the dot com craze, Carbon credits, SEO, blockchain, the cloud. A tsunami of AI claims has appeared suddenly, as if this were something new. Coaches, authors, pundits, advertising agencies, the media, seminar promoters are reeling in the bucks, most are not really offering much but smoke and screen, but everybody is feeling modern and signing up.

 

Digital sound  sampling has been around since the 80s. Intelligent phone systems have been around for a while. Good old Alexa was launched in 2014! Google is based on AI since day one, only the word algorithm is not all that sexy. Image altering cell phone filters have been available for a long time. What is Photoshop but AI? Health coverage decisions have been made by AI for many years. Decisions on prioritizing social media posts have been made by Facebook, Twitter, etc since they came about. Who do you think feeds you playlists on Spotify and youtube? Also, who do you think calculates Uber prices since 2010? Finally, translation AI has not improved all that much in the last 20 years, despite the hype.

 

The list goes on.

 

You get the point. There is nothing new about AI, it is not as innovative as purported to be. In fact, the phrase AI slop has been coined back in 2020, when offensive (for Christians) shrimp Jesus memes proliferated on the internet. That was 5 long years ago.

 

What changed?

 

The only noticeable change is that in the last few months most software now come with intrusive AI assistants, in some cases difficult or impossible to remove. In fact, since these started appearing on free and subscription sites alike, computer performance has been dreadful. Simply turning on a computer in the morning can be challenging, until AI sleuths have settled down. What will be done with such information is a matter of concern.

 

Carlos de Paula is one of the top Brazilian Portuguese translators in the USA since 1982. And now a top Portuguese AI Translation editor as well. 

 

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