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We can like it or dislike it, but no matter how we feel about it, new technologies based on artificial intelligence are finding their way into our lives. The first steps may still be laughed at, but they are already showing breathtaking results. Suddenly I can form longer English sentences myself.

The images attached below were created within a few seconds by artificial intelligence (the grille's lack of the distinctive tombstone design may be due to historical amnesia rather than technical problems).
I asked the computer to rebuild and reopen the Packard Motor Car Company and the last image shows a "photo" of a 1942 Custom forgotten in a flooded basement.

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No question AI is going to be a force in the coming years. Jury is still out on whether it will be for good or evil. It is already hard to tell what is real and what is not both in images and written words. That is just plain scary when it comes to trusting a newspaper or magazine article.

Authors are already seeing fake books under their name that they get no royalties for. Something else about a legal brief that was good enough to get accepted by the court comes to mind. Article I read on that said it was so good the only way it got caught out was someone else wanted to use a precedent cited in the brief and actually checked some of the listed cases and found no record of them.

Saw another article where it said artists are banding together to try and incorporate something or some process in their work. I didn't understand it but somehow it supposedly "poisons" the work AI generates so it becomes obvious it is fake. If it works, great but as the technology improves doubt it works for long.

One good thing is AI is being incorporated in medical diagnostic software and is able to catch minuscule anomalies easily missed in some x-rays. Guess it is also able to find and remember things easily missed in mass screenings so a pattern is noticed much earlier than if a human alone was compiling the data.

Of course, for what it's worth the articles I read may have all been generated by AI and be as fake as some of the cars being touted as MacArthur's Clippers.

While I have my issues with aspects of AI (i.e. programming it to be illogical or ignore facts), the company I work for is leveraging it to help instructors build out structure for online courses, etc. It actually did a pretty decent job at creating a course structure on the history of Packards, including some thumbnail images for various eras.

Packard building is in Ontario according to AI

The funny thing is that AI misses certain historical details: a plastic orange cone in the first image is hilarious as this was a much later invention.

AI is like drones. It probably has a few practical uses, but much of its appeal will be to thieves, tyrants, manipulators, aka "influencers", and aggressive and intrusive advertisers.
Moviemakers will probably use it to eliminate "stars" and the expense and trouble that most of them generate. Its impact on general employment may be disasterous.

Perhaps one use for it would be automatronic prison guards, though I suspect that some more clever inmates would soon have it working FOR them.

If I had a full-on classic limousine with a chauffeur, I'd keep him or her around to keep the car clean inside and out. But he or she would ride in the back while I did the driving. I do NOT want a self driving car, or anything approaching one. I don't want my household appliances conspiring against me, either, or collecting information, or organizing strikes, or reporting my habits and activities to some authority or other.

"Targeted" ads and algorithmic attempts to curate what news and information and search results I can access already aggravate me. Imagine how AI will cause that stuff to snowball!

Applaud the effort, pretty pictures capture the eye, not the mind, but not to worry, that's no Packard factory and it can't even spell the name right on the sign?
Intelligence quotient(IQ) is the accepted measure of intelligence. What's the IQ of chatGPT or other AI? Surprised they don't say?
Long run on sentences are not acceptable in english diction.
Belongs in my, "kid's playing with computers" file. such as "All we have to fear is fear itself, gridley"?
Let's move forward in the future this time, we're way to stuck in the past.
I can't dis the technology as I did work 2+ decades ago in the roots of it(neural nets) and found it to have merit for solving problems that were heretofore intractable. But recall it's data set driven so garbage in/garbage out still applies. Vague begets vague.
Like any tool, it can be misused. Try taking out a spark plug with a screw driver...

Wasn't that "fear itself) quote Roosevelt? Did Gridley ever reply to his superior? (Admiral Dewey?)

When it comes to AI, its best to remember the old programmer adage GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. As masses of unvetted information are added to the data base, the output will be increasingly meaningless gibberish.

And to be blunt about it: any nation of people who puts their complete trust in AI-generated information gets everything it deserves.

Steve