Tech Innovation is Dead

Headlines nowadays are all about the new big thing in IT, ChatGPT. Microsoft is launching a new "Bing" with their own version integrated into the search, and Google's also getting into the act with "Bard". It's all supposed to be very interesting and exciting.

I've heard it all before, and I'm not impressed. I stopped being impressed by "innovations" in IT at about the time that we all started touting the "Fourth Industrial Revolution". I turned my nose up at blockchain, and then crypto decided to collapse in a way that I found personally satisfying.

Part of it is how stodgy the Tech Industry has become, and the issue is in the name itself. "Tech" has become an "Industry" and is therefore not beholden to innovation as much as keeping shareholders happy. That's why, in spite of posting profits, Tech companies have been laying off people. Less employees equals less costs. Less costs means even more profits to keep shareholders happy.

This ChatGPT nonsense is more of the same.

For those not in the know, ChatGPT is a chatbot. You can write to it using natural language, and it'll understand you and reply. You don't need to understand coding or use parameters of any sort.

For those in the know, it's like ELIZA.

ELIZA, the computer therapist, was a program created in the 1960s. She'd simulate language to give the illusion that she understood what you were saying and carry forward a conversation. It was supposed to demonstrate how superficial communication was between man and machine.

Unlike ELIZA, ChatGPT is supposed to be able to learn, and collect (or collate) information from the internet.

Like ELIZA, however, ChatGPT is also a gimmick. In and of itself, it has no value, and that goes double for Microsoft and Google's copycats. It's supposed to make headlines, and get people talking, and attract investors, and that's it.

The first issue is that there's nothing new about ChatGPT. Technically, the current version of ChatGPT is the third generation of a language prediction model, that's been "taught" how to use language by having it read through millions of documents. Microsoft tried it out with Tay back in 2016, which swiftly turned into a Nazi thanks to the Internet.

That leads to the second issue is that ChatGPT adds nothing to the Tech Industry in its present form. The data it provides comes from the Internet up to the point that it was taught, meaning that the information is either:

1. Out of date;
2. Factually incorrect; or
3. Involves pornography or trolling.

Everyone's already seen the quality of information that AI has generated. CNET was using their own internal AI engine to write articles, which had multiple issues and factual errors. ChatGPT can be "hacked" to bypass the guidelines that are keeping it from becoming a Nazi like Microsoft's Tay. Microsoft's new Bing comes with a disclaimer regarding how it can "misrepresent" information. And Google's Bard came out swinging with incorrect information in its very first public demo.

But that's not the point of them, is it? The point is to impress shareholders, a bunch of stodgy old men with tons of money, who don't know and frankly don't care about making the world better in any way, and only with how much more money they can earn for the cash they're giving you today. The Tech Industry today is no different from any other industry that has lived far past its prime, and now only exists to bump up numbers on a stock market where people far removed from any understanding of IT can still make money off of it.

We've had a good run, but the days that Tech could introduce something new and truly innovative are over.