AI technology as a dubious messiah – an opinion

The best thing about AI is that nobody talks about blockchain anymore, said an occasional c't author some time ago. I am now growing impatient for a new hypermessiah to finally turn the corner so that we can soon say: "The best thing about hypermessiahs is that nobody talks about AI anymore." Until then, however, we are likely to see all kinds of failures to solve problems with AI for which there would be far better approaches.

An opinion by Peter Siering

Peter bears the c't branding, which is available upon request after 30 years of editorial membership. He is the lead ram in the Systems & Security department. Although he feels at home under Linux, macOS, and Windows, he prefers aluminum fruit for his daily writing work. He occasionally programs, finds networks exciting, and likes to reach for the Raspi. For him, PCs have long been fast enough, so he enjoys buying used hardware. He even knows where the soldering iron gets hot, even if the Make colleagues then turn away out of decency.

For me, the crown of AI disasters is currently held by Microsoft's Recall. Not because it handles user data excessively, not because Microsoft initially presented an insecure implementation, but because the developers are trying to solve a purely organizational problem with technology. Anyone who has worked in IT for any length of time knows this well: a company is poorly organized, and the people in charge hope to solve the organizational problem with technology.

Technology superstition

This has led to many bloody noses recently – but it was essentially those who bought into the technology superstition who paid the price. Paradoxically, Microsoft has long since discontinued the previous attempt to provide users with orientation in its own data salad, the activity history: No app developer was interested – but that's what the feature depended on.

Well, good. So Redmond is now throwing technology at the problem: AI is supposed to make everything better. Recall reads screenshots, runs OCR and image recognition on the snapshots created. Once again, technology makes up for a lack of self-organization. Great, you think? Actually, yes, but I'm bothered by the price: the new processors consume energy that we humans would perhaps put to better use in other ways.

Recall won't be the last example of AI compensating for problems that we could solve better ourselves if we weren't so stupid. Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google & Co. are already upgrading their AI data centers for this purpose. Let's hope for the planet's sake that the blockchain successor to the blockchain successor will soon turn the corner and solve real problems this time.

(ps)