(2024-11-27) Bjarnason The Intelligence Illusion, Second Edition: Why Generative Models Are Bad For Business

Baldur Bjarnason: 'The Intelligence Illusion (Second Edition): Why generative models are bad for business'. I’m publishing a second edition of my book The Intelligence Illusion (Second Edition): Why generative models are bad for business.

Why I’ve made a second edition

Generative models (GenAI) are bad for business. The harm they do to your work and business isn’t limited to their unreliability or regular failures.

These products are suffused throughout with flaws and errors that expose any company that decides to rely on them or let their employees use them to risks that under normal circumstances would be considered outright untenable.

People who are working in these companies are forced to try to be the lone voices of reason: maybe we should hold off until some of the more egregious flaws have been fixed?

Just telling a manager about the risks doesn’t work either. I know. That’s exactly the mistake I did with the first edition of The Intelligence Illusion. I outlined all of the risks in detail, often with suggestions for how they might get mitigated in the future and the only thing that managers took away from it was “these risks will get mitigated in the future.” But that suggestion of potential future mitigation, an assumption of mine born out of optimism, has turned out to be entirely wrong.