Garbage In, Garbage Out and AI

I grew up in the computer age, in High School I took a new computer math course using punched cards to write and input our programs. In University we used modems to connect to the mainframe and submit our programs over an analog telephone line. In business we accessed an infant internet consisting of intra-organizational world-wide connections. Later, I used the first portable computer, which had 5.25” floppy drives. Years later, we had our own server with considerable speed, storage capacity, backups and computing memory. Now, most everything functions through your personal computer interface – a cell phone. 

Throughout the development of computer systems an initial paradigm held true, “Garbage in, Garbage out.” It means that errors, falsehoods, flaws, illogic, inadequate design would yield a wrong, worthless, corrupted, warped, result. AI, Artificial Intelligence, is the newest computer iteration dumped upon the public at tremendous cost by the High-Tech Oligarchs. Politicians have raised concerns and passed laws to preserve humanity’s safety. Microsoft was first with their ChatGPT, (already charged with violating existing copy-writes in its process) Google has followed with its own AI, which was just discovered to have built-in racial and gender bias. It produced a female hockey player and a black George Washington as an answer to a query. Google didn’t offer an explanation or apology, but retracted their product, presumably to better hide its overt “woke” design.

The Oligarchs spent billions to produce this flawed, lousy, biased, woke product. They will force a positive return on their investment even though it is garbage, producing garbage. My actual experience with ChatGPT, involved a calculation of the shear strength of a 2” oak dowel 2” deep in a pine 4×4.  wherein the AI told me, “It involves complex calculations and engineering considerations.” I responded, “You are not very smart or helpful. A computer should be able to do very complex calculations instantly.” It continued to raise objections about constraints, so I asked for a list of them and they were simple, some already provided. In its answer, it failed to consider the strength of the wood the dowel was in and of which I had already described. When I previously researched my question on the internet, one response was from a person who couldn’t answer the question, but wanted to sound superior and raised all sorts of objections and constraints. The AI no doubt found this and may have adopted it as an approach. The internet is full of people who know very little, but desire to appear smart. Of course, I was not looking to see how much weight I could load onto a beam put together with dowels, but assure myself that my approach was many multiples of the actual weight limit it might ever carry. One doesn’t need a structural engineer for simple projects around the farm that can be easily over-engineered. However, the adage proved true, Garbage in, Garbage out.