What if Generative AI turned out to be a Dud?
We recorded 23 claims from this post. 6 were checked against evidence. 17 can’t be checked. 6 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (23)
In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“With the possible exception of the quick to rise and quick to fall alleged room-temperature superconductor LK-99, few things I have ever seen have been more hyped than generative AI.”
Our reading: Generative AI is among the most hyped things the author has ever seen.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“Those revenues genuinely could grow by 1000x, but that’s mighty speculative. We shouldn’t simply assume it.”
Our reading: We should not assume generative AI revenues will grow 1000x, which is highly speculative.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“But, to begin with, the revenue isn’t there yet, and might never come.”
Our reading: Generative AI revenue is not yet there and might never materialize.
No horizon
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“I think coders will remain happy with generative AI assistance; its autocomplete nature is fabulous for their line of work, and they have the training to detect and fix the not-infrequent errors.”
Our reading: Marcus thinks coders will remain happy with generative AI assistance, because its autocomplete nature is fabulous for their work and they have the training to detect and fix its not-infrequent errors.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: Survey respondents are not necessarily representative of all programmers.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“Other potential paying customers may lose heart quickly.”
Our reading: Other potential paying customers of generative AI, beyond coders and undergraduates, may lose heart quickly.
No horizon
Scope: other potential paying customers (beyond coders and undergraduates)
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“But neither coding nor high-speed, mediocre quality copy-writing are remotely enough to maintain current valuation dreams.”
Our reading: Coding and mediocre copywriting use cases are nowhere near enough to justify current generative AI valuations.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The evidence does not establish that the valuation judgment was right or wrong.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“If Evans’ experience is a canary in a coal mine, the whole generative AI field, at least at current valuations, could come to a fairly swift end.”
Our reading: If user disillusionment like Evans' is representative, the generative AI field at current valuations could end fairly swiftly.
No horizon
Only if: if Evans' disillusionment is representative
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“Even OpenAI could have a hard time following through on its $29 billion valuation; competing startups valued in the low billions might well eventually collapse, if year after year they manage only tens or hundreds of millions in revenue.”
Our reading: OpenAI could have difficulty living up to its $29 billion valuation.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“Even OpenAI could have a hard time following through on its $29 billion valuation; competing startups valued in the low billions might well eventually collapse, if year after year they manage only tens or hundreds of millions in revenue.”
Our reading: Generative AI startups valued in the low billions might well eventually collapse if they earn only tens or hundreds of millions annually.
No horizon
Only if: if they manage only tens or hundreds of millions in revenue year after year
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“Microsoft, up for the year by nearly half, perhaps largely on the promise of generative AI, might see a stock slump; NVIDIA skyrocketing even more, might also fall.”
Our reading: Microsoft's stock, up nearly half for the year perhaps largely on the promise of generative AI, might slump, and NVIDIA's stock, which has risen even more, might also fall.
No horizon
Qualifier: perhaps largely on the promise of generative AI
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Perhaps the only use case that really seemed compelling to either of us economically was search (e.g., using Bing powered by ChatGPT instead of Google Search) — but the technical problems there are immense; there is no reason to think that the hallucination problem will be solved soon.”
Our reading: There is no reason to think that the hallucination problem, part of the immense technical problems facing the search use case, will be solved soon.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The two studies do not comprehensively assess the leading approaches or their prospects for near-term deployment.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“If it isn’t, the bubble could easily burst.”
Our reading: If hallucination is not solved soon, the generative AI bubble could easily burst.
No horizon
Only if: if hallucination is not solved soon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“We might not get the consumer protections we need, because we are trying to foster something that may not grow as expected.”
Our reading: The US might fail to get needed consumer protections because it is fostering generative AI, which may not grow as expected.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“if the premise that generative AI is going to be bigger than fire and electricity turns out to be mistaken, or at least doesn’t bear out in the next decade, it’s certainly possible that we could wind up with what in hindsight is a lot of needless extra tension with China, possibly even a war in Taiwan, over a mirage”
Our reading: If the premise that generative AI will be bigger than fire and electricity proves mistaken, or at least does not bear out in the next decade, it is certainly possible that we could end up with a lot of needless extra tension with China over a mirage, possibly even a war in Taiwan.
No horizon
Only if: if the premise that generative AI will be bigger than fire and electricity turns out to be mistaken, or at least doesn't bear out in the next decade
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“Everybody in industry would probably like you to believe that AGI is imminent. It stokes their narrative of inevitability, and it drives their stock prices and startup valuations.”
Our reading: Everybody in industry would probably like you to believe that AGI is imminent, because that belief stokes their narrative of inevitability and drives their stock prices and startup valuations.
No horizon
Qualifier: probably
Assessment: SupportedSaid
Observation
“We have not one, but many, serious, unsolved problems at the core of generative AI — ranging from their tendency to confabulate (hallucinate) false information, to their inability to reliably interface with external tools like Wolfram Alpha, to the instability from month to month (which makes them poor candidates for engineering use in larger systems).”
Our reading: Generative AI has many serious unsolved core problems, including hallucination, unreliable tool use, and month-to-month instability.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: API-Bank does not directly evaluate Wolfram Alpha or every model available in August 2023.
Assessment: SupportedSaid
Observation
““Scaling” systems by making them larger has helped in some ways, but not others; we still really cannot guarantee that any given system will be honest, harmless, or helpful, rather than sycophantic, dishonest, toxic or biased.”
Our reading: Scaling has helped only partially; no system can yet be guaranteed honest, harmless, or helpful.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The scaling results concern selected tasks and model series; they do not show that scaling generally fails.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“And, reality check, we have no concrete reason, other than sheer technoptimism, for thinking that solutions to any of these problems is imminent.”
Our reading: There is no concrete reason, other than sheer techno-optimism, for thinking that solutions to any of generative AI's core problems (such as hallucination, unreliable tool use and month-to-month instability) are imminent.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: This is an assessment of contemporary grounds for expectation, not a forecast scored against later events.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“It’s foolish to imagine that such challenging problems will all suddenly be solved.”
Our reading: It is foolish to imagine that generative AI's challenging core problems will all suddenly be solved.
No horizon
Assessment: SupportedSaid
Observation
“The technology we have now is built on autocompletion, not factuality.”
Our reading: Current generative AI is built on autocompletion rather than factuality.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The outcome depends on reading built on as the foundation rather than every component of a deployed system.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“If hallucinations aren’t fixable, generative AI probably isn’t going to make a trillion dollars a year. And if it probably isn’t going to make a trillion dollars a year, it probably isn’t going to have the impact people seem to be expecting.”
Our reading: If hallucinations aren't fixable, generative AI probably won't earn a trillion dollars a year or have the expected impact.
No horizon
Only if: if hallucinations aren't fixable
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“And if it isn’t going to have that impact, maybe we should not be building our world around the premise that it is.”
Our reading: If generative AI isn't going to have the impact people seem to expect, maybe we should not be building our world around the premise that it will.
No horizon
Only if: if generative AI isn't going to have the impact people seem to be expecting
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“I seriously doubt it. We have not one, but many, serious, unsolved problems at the core of generative AI”
Our reading: Marcus seriously doubts the projections of near-term AGI, including Dario Amodei's projection that we will have AGI in 2-3 years from August 2023.
Deadline passed Evidence as of
Limitation: This record does not assess whether AGI arrived by August 2026. The post describes AGI broadly, as general purpose AI 'as smart and resourceful as humans if not more so', but gives no test for it.
Held from this post (6)
These records did not pass every check, so nothing about them is published. Held is not a finding.
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The record does not meet the current rules. Our reading, not assessed: AGI is unlikely to arrive in the near term, e.g. within 2-3 years as Dario Amodei projected.
- The criteria are ambiguous. Our reading, not assessed: Generative AI valuations assume trillion-dollar markets while current revenues are reportedly only in the hundreds of millions.
- The criteria are ambiguous. Our reading, not assessed: Undergraduates will continue to use generative AI, but their pockets aren't deep and they will most likely turn to open-source competitors.
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The criteria are ambiguous. Our reading, not assessed: In Marcus's view, almost everyone is making the fundamental error of believing that generative AI is tantamount to AGI (general-purpose AI as smart and resourceful as humans, if not more so).