Common AI Misconceptions

Meredith's husband 0:24

Well, I want to talk about something that you mentioned last week.

Meredith 0:27

Oh.

Meredith's husband 0:27

You came home from one of your online courses and said something that someone else had said.

Meredith 0:33

I came home after an online course.

Meredith's husband 0:34

Well, you got up from your desk and told me about it. Yes, and somebody said something about AI. I don't remember what it was. I was kind of surprised to hear it, but I guess there are still lots of misconceptions out there about.

Meredith 0:48

AI, about AI, yeah, yeah.

Meredith's husband 0:51

I mean, we've talked about it a little bit, but I guess there are still people left on the planet who haven't listened to this, Believe it or not most people when they have questions about AI, they don't do anything about them.

Meredith 1:05

You research them.

Meredith's husband 1:07

So we're going to do an episode about them. You research them, so we're going to do an episode. I'm going to talk about common, what I think or what has been reported as common misconceptions about AI. Oh yeah, I'm going to ask you if you think they are common based on what you're hearing in your online groups.

Meredith 1:20

Yes.

Meredith's husband 1:21

And I'll either debunk or confirm them.

Meredith 1:24

I enter the ring.

Meredith's husband 1:26

You can then pass this episode around.

Meredith 1:28

Oh, I can, when you hear people saying things about AI.

Meredith's husband 1:31

Yeah, yeah, okay. So I'm just going to go through the list.

Meredith 1:35

Sounds good.

Meredith's husband 1:37

Number one AI is autonomous. So people think that AI can operate like a human being, like it's free, it can go do anything, it can get anywhere, it can get any information. It operates independently from people, basically.

Meredith 1:52

Like it can go and do projects on its own without any human prompts.

Meredith's husband 1:57

Like it can go get information from anywhere you ask it a question, it comes back with the right answer. You don't know where, when, to get it it just it found the information.

Meredith 2:07

I think that's not true, because it gets most of it from Google.

Meredith's husband 2:12

Well, that's what I have told you. But my question is do you think in your experience do other people just in general kind of think this is true?

Meredith 2:21

Yeah, yeah, because somebody said oh, I wrote something on Facebook and now my AI had it with my reviews, or something like that.

Meredith's husband 2:30

Okay. So, yes, you are correct. It gets well right now most of its information from Google, right? Not all, and that will probably continue to expand, but it has to. Ai has to have a set of data that it looks to, and when it gives you a response, it might seem like really good advice, but it's basically just a conglomeration of other stuff that it found online.

Meredith 2:56

Right and I know, when I was looking for the history of somebody's employment, that the first information that Chad EG gave was what they had put on LinkedIn.

Meredith's husband 3:11

Sure and that was.

Meredith 3:12

and I said no, actually that's false. Can you give some further information? And then she said oh, I can look into these, these would you like?

Meredith's husband 3:21

And I said yeah, so what it probably did and this might not be exactly right, but it probably went to Google, did a search, found the first link about that person's work history, that was on. Linkedin.

Meredith 3:32

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 3:33

Found that and you said no, and then it dug deeper into Google and found other results. That's probably what happened. Now it could also you know, ai engines don't have to use Google. They could use something else, like they could use Bing. They could use something else Like they could use Bing. They could use LinkedIn, like there could be an AI engine that's just for LinkedIn, or they could use something like Wikipedia, but it's got to use an existing set of information.

Meredith 3:58

Could they go through the meta channels things we post on Facebook in private groups- no, not in private.

Meredith's husband 4:08

If you need to enter a password as a user to get to something, it means AI is not going to have information. It's not going to have those credentials, it can't get to that information.

Meredith 4:16

Facebook, Instagram Unless the pages are public.

Meredith's husband 4:19

If the pages on Facebook are public, meaning you can just open a browser and go to that page without logging in, then fair game yes, interesting.

Meredith 4:28

Okay, that helps.

Meredith's husband 4:30

Number two AI understands things like humans. It's artificial intelligence. Do you think people feel that way? Yes, people, yeah, I think that's probably people do. Okay, so AI doesn't understand things the way that you and I think of understanding things.

Meredith 4:50

Probably.

Meredith's husband 4:53

It predicts things, it predicts words. It predicts outcomes based on training how the AI model was trained and based on what information is in their data set.

Meredith 5:04

And I figure that will increase at a galactic level.

Meredith's husband 5:09

It will get better and better. Yes, they will get better and better, but just by definition. No, it does not understand things, it just predicts things using existing information.

Meredith 5:18

Yeah, that's hard for my brain too.

Meredith's husband 5:20

So it is hard, because it'll say something that's.

Meredith 5:24

Oh, I understand how you're feeling, because blah, blah.

Meredith's husband 5:27

Yes, yeah, it does. It has a very nice, it fakes it really well.

Meredith 5:31

It really does.

Meredith's husband 5:33

But if you actually go and I did this you can actually go to ChatGT and ask it like hey, how do you learn things, how do you understand, how do you do this? It will start to explain it to you and I got to say it doesn't help much, it's still really confusing.

Meredith 5:46

Okay.

Meredith's husband 5:48

So it started like one of the things that it told me. One of the first things which just confused me more than anything was when it's putting together a sentence, it's really just according to probability, deciding on the next word to put in that sentence. And I was like what Kadrillionth of a second? So I said in response to chat at GGPT you mean it's so you're kind of giving me like the average of all the information that's out there? And it said like yeah, kind of sort of Like I mean that is a vast oversimplification.

Meredith 6:19

But yeah, dinosaur-da.

Meredith's husband 6:22

Okay, number three AI is always correct, whatever it says. That's correct, right, okay? So do you think that other people think that? Is that a common misconception, do you think?

Meredith 6:31

I don't know, I don't know. I think people are still kind of fearful of its power, right.

Meredith's husband 6:37

Okay, I think people are still kind of fearful of its power, right? Okay, well, I don't think people should be fearful of the AI that you and I are using right now. It's the AI that's going to be developed in the future.

Meredith 6:47

Yeah, it's all kind of. You know, it's like an octopus it's all part Many legs, many little suction cups, each with their own brain, but all part of the same octopus which you should never eat, exactly. Yay, we love them.

Meredith's husband 7:03

So yes, ai can produce incorrect information, and do it confidently.

Meredith 7:11

Yes, they say that at the bottom.

Meredith's husband 7:12

Yeah, true, but I've done this. I went to Google AI mode and asked about some stuff about SEO and it gave me flat-out information that was wrong, really. I know it was wrong Really, and I thought it was ironic because it seemed to be coming straight from Google, right, but it's basically it's just based on other blogs out there saying X, y, z. So you're only. On the whole, the internet is probably more or less accurate, hopefully more accurate than any inaccurate, but there's a lot of inaccuracies.

Meredith 7:44

Yeah, there's a lot, see, because I thought that if I asked a question to AI, it would be able to cut through the all the reviews, the paid reviews.

Meredith's husband 7:55

Right, yeah, no, not really. And that was one of the really big problems when Google rolled out one of its first versions Like AI you know, can't really tell the difference between a website like the Onion and the Wall Street Journal Like and so it started coming up with you know, I think the example was recipes for a pizza that included things like glue and sparkles Like yeah no, I think you misunderstood.

Meredith 8:21

That included things like glue and sparkles Like yeah, no, I think you misunderstood something there.

Meredith's husband 8:25

Oh, that's funny. Okay, so number four.

Meredith 8:26

Yeah.

Accuracy and Objectivity Myths

Meredith's husband 8:27

So AI is completely objective. How about that? Not necessarily accurate, but it is objective. This one's a little, I guess a little.

Meredith 8:37

It's a little vague because I'm trying to figure out what objective you mean.

Meredith's husband 8:42

Well, it doesn't Okay. So something can happen in the news, right, fox is going to report it one way and the New York Times is going to report the same thing in an entirely different way. Is AI going to choose a completely objective or is it going to have a let's call it an opinion? One way or the other.

Meredith 9:00

I would think it would not have an opinion.

Meredith's husband 9:04

Well, you're correct, it does not have an opinion. But again, it's going to follow the bias that is out there. If the internet that it's using the set of it, the data set, if it's 80% biased in one direction and 20% in the other direction, the responses that you're going to get are going to be 80% biased in one and 20%. It's not going to realize that there's some sort of middle ground. And try to calculate that.

Meredith 9:28

It doesn't recognize performance from fact.

Meredith's husband 9:31

I guess. So yes, another one number five AI can create new things like truly original things.

Meredith 9:39

No, no, no it cannot.

Meredith's husband 9:40

Do you think that's a common belief or do you think a lot of people still think, oh, it can create new stuff, sure.

Meredith 9:46

I don't think so, because a lot of the people that I interact with are artists.

Meredith's husband 9:50

Yeah.

Meredith 9:50

And there's a lot of, let's say, energy around that.

Meredith's husband 9:54

Yes, I understand. Yeah, absolutely. It cannot be truly original. Anything it comes back with is going to be somehow remixed, learned information or maybe combined. It might seem new, but it's not. By definition cannot be truly original.

Meredith 10:14

Yeah, it's often really cheesy sometimes, yeah, yeah.

Meredith's husband 10:17

Yeah, and that's getting better. That's something that I think is improving. But, yeah, true creativity, originality, empathy. Okay, number six, somewhat related AI can think ethically or morally, like it knows what's ethically right and wrong.

Meredith 10:33

I would say no to that.

Meredith's husband 10:35

And what do you think other people would say?

Meredith 10:38

I don't know.

Meredith's husband 10:39

That's right. That's right, that's correct. It does not have any values. This, to me, is kind of the scary part.

Meredith 10:44

Yeah, that's also. That goes on the rack.

Meredith's husband 10:48

Any ethical or moral guidelines that it does seem to have? Were basically Put there by the team that developed it.

Meredith 10:56

Okay, and that also. Then can that be? Yeah?

Meredith's husband 11:00

and that's why this is, that's why it's scary to me. Yeah that's so. Let's get off of this one.

Meredith 11:05

Yeah, let's move on to something a little more. Here's a.

Meredith's husband 11:07

I've got two more.

AI and Job Replacement Concerns

Meredith 11:08

Good. These are my favorites. Good.

Meredith's husband 11:10

Number seven.

Meredith 11:11

Yes.

Meredith's husband 11:12

AI is going to replace all jobs.

Meredith 11:14

Not all jobs. A lot of jobs, yes, a lot of jobs, a lot of jobs. It will.

Meredith's husband 11:20

I hear this one a lot. I hear there's a lot of talk about needing to use a universal basic income because there's going to be no jobs left, because AI is doing everything.

Meredith's husband 11:28

Yeah, so we're not going to have jobs, we're all just going to get money? I don't think so. I think about it like this sort of thing has happened many times in history. Yeah, think about the Industrial Revolution. Yeah, you know, from what I understand, before the Industrial Revolution, like 75, 80 percent of people worked in the farming industry. Whoa, yeah. Now those jobs vastly disappeared. Now, if you had asked those people beforehand hey, what's going to happen to your job? Yeah, it's going to be gone. Well then, what are you going to do? They wouldn't be like, oh, I guess I'm going to do nothing. Guess what New jobs were invented?

Meredith's husband 12:05

You've got new stuff to do.

Meredith 12:07

Always pivoting At a little more rapid pace now.

Meredith's husband 12:16

Yeah, now, good point. For example, like the kids today, even kids in college, whatever their career is going to be, it probably doesn't exist yet. Right, just like me, that's true for me. Like, if you ask me in college, what are you going to do? There was no such thing as SEO, but same thing, so I want that's. Something I wonder is, like what are kids learning today in school?

Meredith 12:37

To be an influencer. Yeah, that's something I wonder is like what are kids learning today in school?

Meredith's husband 12:40

To be an influencer? Yeah, so that I do expect, and that's probably going to be rocky. I mean, that's going to be a bumpy ride.

Meredith 12:45

And writing. People who are writers Correct. Even photographers are getting hit.

Meredith's husband 12:51

Some photographers. Yeah, what I see happening in photography. I don't think AI is going to replace what you do. You photograph children. If you're, say, a wedding photographer, ai is not going to be able to create photos of your wedding like things that actually happened. It's not like an actual snapshot of something that actually happened?

Meredith 13:17

This is true.

Meredith's husband 13:17

Just like if it could recreate a picture of your kid. Sure Is it going to be an actual picture of your kid. No, it can't do that Right.

Meredith 13:25

But here's my question Will it matter?

Meredith's husband 13:27

Well, I would think as a parent it would.

Meredith 13:29

I would think so.

Meredith's husband 13:31

And I would think as a married person. I'm not a parent, so I don't know, but I would think as a not no. As a married person, I don't want to look at fake images from my wedding like so yes, there is an insane amount of photos being produced by ai. Yeah, but they're to me anyway. They're not the type of photos that people are hiring and paying photographers to take that's what the hope is. Yes.

Meredith 13:57

But people can take a you know a picture from that. You just send them off your phone and create a headshot with it, with any background.

Meredith's husband 14:05

Yeah, headshot photographers would probably be the first ones.

Meredith 14:09

Yeah that's what I'm afraid of, Maybe we'll see. Back to good things.

Meredith's husband 14:14

Number eight, this is my favorite AI is a black box that nobody understands, and I'll tell you why I think that this misconception exists. It's because, a lot of times, the people who created AI, they'll say things like yeah, we don't really fully understand how it works.

Meredith 14:38

And so that's a sort of frightening statement yeah, yeah, I don't think anybody thinks it's a black box somewhere.

Meredith's husband 14:45

Well, not technically. I mean a black box like you don't know what's happening inside.

Meredith 14:50

Oh, that's very different. I thought you meant like a physical metal black box in the desert somewhere.

Meredith's husband 14:55

No, that's not it. I don't think.

Meredith 14:58

Okay, ask it again.

Meredith's husband 15:01

AI is a black box that nobody understands. So questions go into the black box, answers come out. Nobody has any idea how it happens.

Meredith 15:07

I don't think it's. Nobody has any idea. I don't think that's true, is it?

Meredith's husband 15:12

No, but there are there. You know, like I said, the people who created it. They don't even fully understand it.

Meredith 15:18

Really Like they don't know exactly.

The Future of AI Development

Meredith's husband 15:20

It's a big shift from the way programming has always been. Programming has always been a very specific you know exactly how it works. You write lines of code. Ai is a bit different.

Meredith 15:31

Okay.

Meredith's husband 15:32

And this is, I think, probably the most interesting thing about AI right now is we don't really know where it's going. So imagine you've written AI. Okay, you write, say, chat GPT-1, for example. Yeah, and you know, as someone who developed it, you have a pretty good understanding of how it works, right, okay, so you also use chat GPT-1 to help you develop chat GPT-2. Correct, okay, so chat GPT-1 to help you develop chat GPT-2. Correct, okay, so chat GPT-2,. You don't really have as much understanding. And then you use chat GPT-2 to help you develop chat GPT-3. Right, and then four, and then five, and then six. At some point you have literally no clue what's happening.

Meredith 16:14

Yeah, it's kind of like when you do a play and a moment kind of happens and then you redo that moment and then as an actor it becomes stale. So you try and make it fresh and then it's so far from the actual point that you have to cut it because it's a little bit indulgent.

Meredith's husband 16:34

Yeah, you would have to cut that part. Not that I would ever do that so that that, by the way, is my favorite, because that's the big question mark. Like we don't, in five years, ten years, we don't even know how long it's going to be but ai is going to create the next ai, and then we're not going to have any idea how it works whoa, that's pretty, that's pretty, cray, cray it's pretty creepy or yeah, yeah, it's pretty. Uh, let's not call it creepy let's not call it.

Meredith 16:59

It's pretty cray cray. It's pretty creepy.

Meredith's husband 17:01

Or yeah, it's pretty, let's not call it creepy, let's not call it creepy. It's pretty, it's creepy. Well, it's creepy, it's creepy, okay. But what I think you can take away from all this stuff as a website owner is when you go to ChatGPT or Google AI Mode or Perplexity or whatever you're going to use to help you create your blog. Let's say, for example, it's a great tool to brainstorm and can give you ideas. But just know that, yeah, things can be incorrect. You might want to double check stuff.

Meredith 17:27

Where would you double check it?

Meredith's husband 17:29

Well, you can go online and just check or ask it to check more sources, right? Sometimes I've just I've asked ChatGPT for something and it gives me a result, and it didn't really seem right and so I asked is this right or something? And it was like, oh good catch.

Meredith 17:43

No, yeah, yeah, I get a lot of good catches.

Meredith's husband 17:45

Yeah, so just know that. Don't plug something in and think you're going to get the ultimate correct, unbiased result all the time.

Meredith 17:54

Yeah, okay, that's good to know.

Meredith's husband 17:56

And then, what else should people take away from this?

Practical Takeaways for AI Users

Meredith 17:58

I think people should also take away the fact that, for example, when digital photography came, everyone thought that was going to be the end of film. Right, it wasn't. People still do film. It's kind of coming back as a niche, but things, the world that we're living in right now, things are going so fast and there's so much information Things are going so fast and there's so much information Very fast, and I would say, I think for probably all of us, your job might be at risk.

Meredith's husband 18:24

Yeah, but how can you take that and translate it into something that only a person can do? There's always going to be ways to do that.

Meredith 18:31

Haircutters, yeah, hairstylists.

Meredith's husband 18:34

Like elevator repairman.

Meredith 18:35

Yeah, like one of my Repair people.

Meredith's husband 18:38

Repair person, one of my colleagues. I was just talking to him the other day and his son decided not to go to college. He's going to go into HVAC repair and I'm like, actually that's kind of brilliant.

Meredith 18:50

Wait, what kind of repair.

Meredith's husband 18:51

Hvac is like your AC. It's like your heating and cooling for a building. Yep, seriously, and I was like yeah, the traits Like that's something right there.

Meredith 19:02

It would be very interesting if blue collar all of a sudden became white collar and things change.

Meredith's husband 19:07

I don't rule that out.

Meredith 19:09

That would be kind of wonderful.

Meredith's husband 19:11

So something you can do If you're having a conversation with anyone and they seem to suggest any of these things. You think they believe any of these things. Do them a favor and forward them this episode. There you go.