Gongol.com Archives: March 2025
March 28, 2025
Don't oversubscribe to the hype
In the midst of another artificial intelligence hype cycle -- this one driven by an update to ChatGPT that permits users to mimic the cartoon style of Studio Ghibli and other animators with astonishing similarity -- OpenAI has announced a "temporary" rate limit on the number of images that users can request. ■ Popular new technologies are often swept up in irrational crescendoes of public enthusiasm. Looking back, there have been periods when adding the prefix "e-" or the words "atomic" or "electric" were enough to summon the same kind of enthusiasm that gets applied to any use of "AI" today. (To take just one example, the snack we know as Triscuit is a portmanteau of "electricity biscuit"; such was the power of that word in its heyday.) ■ Knowing that a neat new technology isn't god-like remains of the utmost importance. AI, for now at least, consumes lots of energy -- hence the throttling back of ChatGPT image requests -- and we put ourselves in grave danger if we overestimate its power without some modesty about how it is used. ■ No one is irreversibly harmed if a wave of image requests generates a few duds along the way. But things could go profoundly wrong if artificial intelligence is drafted to re-write the code that generates Social Security payments, as it appears may happen soon. Hype can be dangerous when it's untethered from caution to hold it back. Temperance isn't often a path to popularity, but it's a necessary insurance policy against the kind of irrational exuberance that creates huge mistakes.
