Episode 2534: Why Generative AI is a Technological Dead End
Something doesn’t smell right about generative AI. Earlier this week, we had a featuring a former Google researcher who described large language models (LLMs) as a “con”. Then, of course, there’s OpenAI CEO Sam Altman who critics both inside and outside OpenAI, see as a little more than a persuasive conman. Scam or not, the biggest technical problem with LLMs, according to Peter Vos, who invented the term Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), is that it lacks memory and thus are inherently incapable of incremental learning. Voss, the current CEO of Aigo.ai, argues that LLMs therefore represent a technological “dead end” for AI. The industry, Voss argues, has gone “fundamentally wrong” with generative AI. It’s a classic economic mania, he says. And, as with all bubbles in the past - like Dutch tulips, internet DotComs or Japanese real-estate - it will eventually burst with devastating consequences.
Peter Voss is a pioneer in AI who coined the term 'AGI' (Artificial General Intelligence) in 2001. As an engineer, scientist, inventor, and serial entrepreneur, he developed a comprehensive ERP package, growing his company from zero to a 400-person IPO in seven years. For the past 20 years, he has studied intelligence and AI, leading to the creation of the Aigo engine, a proto-AGI natural language intelligence that is revolutionizing call centers and advancing towards human-level intelligence.
Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.
Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
Dimitris Xygalatas: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living
Anna DeForest: How American Medicine, With Its Reliance on the Scientific "Data," Does Such a Bad Job of Dealing With Life's Greatest Mystery: Death
Mia Baytop Russell: How to Confront Corporate Burnout and Make Work Meaningful Again
Benjamin Cunningham: The Wife-Swapping Czech Double Agent Whose Sad Saga Captured the Nihilism of the Cold War Era
Phillip Levine: Why Biden's Student Debt Forgiveness Proposal Isn't the Solution to the Real Economic Injustices of the American College System
Christian Busch: Is the "Serendipity" of "Good Luck" Just More Neo-Liberal Pseudo-Science From Our Business School Elite?
Linda Villarosa: Why Racism Is the Deadliest Pandemic Afflicting Both African-American Lives and the Health of the Nation
Linda Kinstler: On How We Remember the Holocaust
Gary Weiss: What Donald Trump Might Have Learned From the Real-Life Story of Crazy Eddie
Anya Kamenetz on The Stolen Year: Kids, Covid, and the Catastrophic Cost of the Pandemic
William Deresiewicz: Can a Critic of "Wokeness" Really Be Genuinely Liberal or Progressive?
Sinclair McKay on Berlin: Life and Death in the City at the Center of the 20th-Century World
Dan Bouk on Reading Between the Data: Revealing the Hidden Stories of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the U.S. Census