A year later, AI continues to struggle

An update on AI and businesses, chip wars, time management for neurodivergence, and RAYE

Jun 10, 2024

Hi friends,

Over the past year, have been doing a lot of work on the business front, building up Stranger Creative and rebranding a few of our projects (including this newsletter). Excited to start back writing on topics that we’re ruminating on with our teams and clients.

Since we last connected over a year ago, AI is still a hot topic. A few pieces of reflection…

1. LLMs will probably not solve global humanitarian issues

When large language models first launched, we were sold this technology as the solve for global epidemics, cancer, and climate issues. Currently, we’ve yet to see any substantial global human impact beyond an influx of spam.

In fact, the $7T budget that Sam Altman was seeking to further innovate AI could already solve:

What’s missing is not technology — it’s willpower. We have the collective capital to solve these major issues and yet all we’ve created are chatbots and image generators.

2. LLMs are deteriorating and struggle to be adopted beyond hype

Google’s Gemini recommends putting glue on pizza and eating rocks. Researchers have found ChatGPT susceptible to creating lies and covering up its crimes. And latest training data for GPT-4o is polluted by spam and porn.

Truth is, we’re running out of training data. Companies have scraped every corner of the internet and “there aren’t 10 more internets’ worth of human-generated content for today’s AIs to inhale.”

It’s uncertain how these LLMs will innovate beyond what we have today when they all share the same messy internet. It’s actually getting worse.

And since our last conversation, we see this in our data — there hasn’t been much adoption of these tools beyond hype.

3. Data is key — protect it

Most recently, Adobe and Slack came under fire over their updated Terms of Use policies, forcibly opting paying customers and their data into the company’s AI training models. Microsoft rebranded data collection features as innovation, and Reddit is selling user data through lucrative licensing deals to train AI models.

As we continue to figure out where this technology is headed, one thing is for certain — your data is gold and should be treated as such.

For our community

✨ Applications now open for QTBIPOC Design UX Bootcamp. For QTBIPOC creatives. No design or tech experience needed. Scaled pricing. Scholarships available. Applications close Fri Jun 21, 2024.

✨ We’re hosting a Drag Bingo for our QTBIPOC creatives on Tue, Jun 17.

✨ Recently published our 50th Yellow Glitter episode featuring Miss Shu Mai chatting about her drag, activism, and our queer Asian communities.

Something to Read

For anyone interested to dig further into AI and chips, highly recommend reading Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller. It sheds light into the history of chip manufacturing, why Japan is no longer a technology leader, how Taiwan became a central base of global chip manufacturing, and challenges we may potentially face with US / China relations.

Something to Try

Tiimo is a fascinating app — time management for neurodivergent folx. It’s beautifully designed and has an interesting take on to-do lists and time management.

Something to Listen

I absolutely love RAYE’s journey from ghost songwriter for Beyoncé, Little Mix, Rihanna (to name a few) to finally debuting her own music blending pop, R&B, and jazz. Her Tiny Desk Concert is one of my all-time favorites.

As always, thanks for reading! Any extra thoughts? Reply to email me directly. 💌

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With Metta (loving-kindness),
Steven

Brought to you by Stranger Creative, a design studio creating digital interfaces and products for emerging tech and commerce brands, with a mission to design for good.