SIO477: Debunking Bad AI Research, and Bad Coverage of AI Research
Serious Inquiries Only
Thomas Smith
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Alejandro and Julia of theluddite.org join us to debunk some terrible AI research, and the bad reporting compounding the problems on top of that. Also, what is AI? Can it ever think for itself?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to serious inquiries only. This is episode 477. I'm your host Thomas Smith. And today we're going to be talking about AI. And to some extent, we're going to be covering some basics, like what the hell is it? |
| 0:24.6 | What are these large language models? |
| 0:26.6 | What aren't they? |
| 0:27.7 | And things like that. |
| 0:28.5 | Our guest today are Alejandro and Julia from the Luddite.org. |
| 0:33.4 | You've heard Alejandro on the show before. |
| 0:35.3 | And they write very critically, very interestingly about AI and about AI studies and how a lot of them are very, very bogus. |
| 0:43.7 | And not to mention the reporting, which when a study is good is often misleading, but when a study is kind of suspect, who knows what the reporting on it will be and how closely it will |
| 0:55.4 | resemble reality. There's so much interesting stuff here. Seriously, fascinating conversation. |
| 1:00.7 | I, for one, am I'm pretty impressed by AI. There's certainly things that it's very good at, |
| 1:06.5 | and it's really interesting to think about it. It's really interesting to think about what it is, |
| 1:10.3 | and can it |
| 1:11.5 | really ever be considered to be like thinking in a real sense? Can it be a person in any sense eventually, |
| 1:17.3 | that kind of thing? Or is there a limit to what this exact kind of technology can even be? Those are |
| 1:22.8 | tough questions to answer. But where I think Alejandro and Julia are really getting at something is in taking |
| 1:28.6 | like an anti-capitalist look at it and seeing a lot of danger signs about it and a lot of the |
| 1:35.5 | misalignment of incentives going on. And also, it's one of my favorite kinds of SIO things, |
| 1:41.1 | which is debunking some bad studies or at least badly represented |
| 1:44.8 | studies about AI and what it can and can't do. All right, well, I'll take the usual break. |
| 1:49.5 | Please support the show at patreon.com slash serious pod. Seriously, it makes a huge difference. It's the |
| 1:54.1 | only reason the show continues. And you can avoid those ads by signing on over there. Thanks so much |
| 1:59.9 | to the patrons who make this happen. All right, we'll take a break and we'll get on over there. Thanks so much to the patrons who make this happen. |
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