Whether it’s massive rat penises or made-up airline policies, AI is going rogue

Two recent stories about artificial intelligence (“AI”) running amok deserve attention because they show that AI is not ready for primetime. What’s worrisome, though, is that it’s being used in primetime despite its obvious problems. That’s because, whether in the worlds of science or business, the problems really don’t matter that much.

The first and funniest story comes from a scientific paper that appeared in a journal called Frontiers in Cell and Development Biology. The authors at the Honghui Hospital in China used AI imagery to illustrate the report about signaling pathways for sperm stem cells.

However, one of the images is…well…let’s just say that it comports with my mostly chihuahua’s beliefs about his own manly organs, and that’s not even counting the gibberish words included in the image:

It might be considered an AI cock-up on a massive scale.

A scientific paper purporting to show the signalling pathway of sperm stem cells has met with widespread ridicule after it depicted a rodent with an anatomically eye-watering appendage and four giant testicles.

The creature, labelled “rat”, was also sitting upright in the manner of a squirrel, while the graphic was littered with nonsensical words such as “dissilced”, “testtomcels” and “senctolic”.

A cut-away image showed “sterrn cells” in a Petri dish being picked up with a spoon.

If that’s what’s really going on with the rat population, there are more harmful chemicals in the world’s waterways than even the most ardent environmentalist realized. The article, by the way, has since been retracted.

The same report from The Guardian points out, however, that it’s very likely that this purported “science” essay is a warning of things to come. There is a growing risk that people, to get published, will start faking their research using AI.

Of course, thanks to COVID and so-called transgenderism, Western science is already completely corrupt. AI may only be the icing on the cake.

AI is also beginning to affect businesses, as Air Canada discovered when it tried to outsource customer relations to an AI program:

Canada’s largest airline has been ordered to pay compensation after its chatbot gave a customer inaccurate information, misleading him into buying a full-price ticket.

Air Canada came under further criticism for later attempting to distance itself from the error by claiming that the bot was “responsible for its own actions”.

Amid a broader push by companies to automate services, the case – the first of its kind in Canada – raises questions about the level of oversight companies have over the chat tools.

[snip]

Air Canada must pay Moffatt C$650.88, the equivalent of the difference between what Moffatt paid for his flight and a discounted bereavement fare – as well as C$36.14 in pre-judgment interest and C$125 in fees.

Computers operate using an inexorable logic that will hunt for answers and, if they’re not available, create them out of whole cloth. AI imagery can amusingly show just how artificial systems struggle with concepts that the human brain instantly understands. As readers may have noticed, to avoid copyright issues, I often use image-generating programs for my essays here at AI. However, I’m always careful to note that the images are fake.

Given its convenience, I don’t see the AI genie going back in the bottle. It’s just too easy to use.

That’s especially true for corporations that have concluded, as Air Canada did, that a chatbot is much cheaper and easier than a real employee. The hiccup of paying a few hundred dollars in damages is still better than trying to accommodate the needs of a multi-gender, multi-racial, completely crazy employee with big demands and unlimited employment rights.

And as I said, since the left has already corrupted science, AI has the advantage of making the entire process easier, as long as one doesn’t mind the occasional giant rat penis. The only way to stop this trend would be for Congress to pass legislation applying to scientific publications the same fraud standards that we apply in other areas of the law (although, one hopes, with more honesty than fraud claims are being used against Trump).

Image from X.

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