The AI Hype Index: The people can’t get enough of AI slop – MIT Technology Review

MIT Technology Review’s highly subjective take on the latest buzz about AI
Separating AI reality from hyped-up fiction isn’t always easy. That’s why we’ve created the AI Hype Index—a simple, at-a-glance summary of everything you need to know about the state of the industry.
Last year, the fantasy author Joanna Maciejewska went viral (if such a thing is still possible on X) with a post saying “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.” Clearly, it struck a chord with the disaffected masses.

Regrettably, 18 months after Maciejewska’s post, the entertainment industry insists that machines should make art and artists should do laundry. The streaming platform Disney+ has plans to let its users generate their own content from its intellectual property instead of, y’know, paying humans to make some new Star Wars or Marvel movies.
Elsewhere, it seems AI-generated music is resonating with a depressingly large audience, given that the AI band Breaking Rust has topped Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart. If the people demand AI slop, who are we to deny them?
The idea that machines will be as smart as—or smarter than—humans has hijacked an entire industry. But look closely and you’ll see it’s a myth that persists for many of the same reasons conspiracies do.
The experimental model won't compete with the biggest and best, but it could tell us why they behave in weird ways—and how trustworthy they really are.
India is OpenAI’s second-largest market, but ChatGPT and Sora reproduce caste stereotypes that harm millions of people.
They managed to cut the size of the AI reasoning model by more than half—and claim it can now answer politically sensitive questions once off limits in Chinese AI systems.
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