#41: The 2022 Retrospective

AI Unfiltered is back from holiday break! Ian and Michael kick off 2023 by looking back and discussing some of the biggest stories of 2022, including text and image generators, the metaverse hype, Twitter, and much more!

Ian Bowie
Hello and welcome to AI Unfiltered with me, Ian Bowie, and our resident expert, Michael Stormbom, where we will be talking about everything to deal with AI in our modern digital society and what the future holds for all of us.

Michael Stormbom
What we want to do with this episode is basically talk about some of the stories we found interesting during 2022. And I think the two big ones that we have…

Ian Bowie
Dall-E.

Michael Stormbom
So image generators, yeah, text generators, text generators. I think those are the two big ones that were huge. Huge. Yes.

Ian Bowie
Coming back to, I suppose, a bit about the metaverse, I suppose.

Michael Stormbom
Metaverse, yes. Dare I say it’s possibly the most consequential AI news in a very long time, the quality of the text generators and also the image generators.

Ian Bowie
Absolutely. Yeah. Open AI are the ones that I’m most familiar with.

Michael Stormbom
Yes, but there’s plenty of…

Ian Bowie
I know there are others but I mean, are they kind of in the lead with the development of all this sort of stuff? Or are they Is there anybody that’s pretty much you know, same level

Michael Stormbom
I think they are sort of keeping each other competitive. I mean, for example, with the image generators, there are plenty of these around so I mean there’s DALL-E from Open AI, Midjourney we’ve spoken about, that’s the one that won the art competitions, and then of course, Stable Diffusion, which is the one I use quite a lot and yeah, so I mean, there’s… so much stuff has been happening in that field in the past year. So I mean, could you imagine in January 2022, a year ago, that we will be playing with this image generators and generating these cool images…

Ian Bowie
Of the quality that they are? Probably not no, yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s been a lot of talk for quite a lot of years, for sure about this. But suddenly, in those 12 months of 2022, there was a quantum leap forward in ability for sure, actually, which makes you wonder, what’s going to happen in 2023? Can they sustain that level of development, or have they taken a gigantic leap? And now it’s going to be just small steps again?

Michael Stormbom
Well, that is the question. So I mean, I of course, I think the next big thing will be then the video generators when that gets to a reasonable level. But yeah, it might just be that that sort of quantum later we saw in 2022. It might be some years before we see anything similar.

Ian Bowie
Anything similar. Yeah. So Hollywood doesn’t need to start shaking in its shoes. quite yet.

Michael Stormbom
Let’s see in five years. Yeah, yeah. Those were definitely the big ones for me, and I think they’re all in in the world of AI I would said very consequential developments there.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. I mean, that those are two huge things. And I mean, me as a writer, of course, you know, the text generators a big big thing, but I think other areas that I think are quite interesting, which they’re not exclusively AI, but they do use AI: scooters. You know, we did the scooter episode last year, and…

Michael Stormbom
We did it, but I don’t know if anything, particularly in that sense, revolutionary, happened.

Ian Bowie
We’re not not not not revolutionary, but just because I got hooked on them. Yeah. For me it was it was something quite interesting and and I got a little bit interested in you know, how they work and for example, you know, of course there were a lot of accidents, probably still are a lot of accidents with the scooters unfortunately. And the fact that, you know, the scooter companies started to limit the speeds of scooters depending on where they’re running in the city or what time they’re being used. And you know, that kind of technology so that was a small thing but quite a big thing for me.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. And I guess it remains to be seen what will happen with these scooters. So I mean, some cities they have just banished them altogether and other cities they have limited them quite severely. So I guess we have to see how it, how it will develop. But I mean, certainly personally, I very much like my scooter, it’s a very convenient way of getting around.

Ian Bowie
I mean, I suppose what they could do if they want to keep people safe, is they could banish the scooter rental companies and just say to people well, if you know, if you want to ride a scooter, that’s absolutely fine, but you’ve got to buy your own. And then you know how many people are actually going to go out and buy their own scooter compared to how many people are perfectly happy renting them?

Michael Stormbom
That is true and I mean if you can of course put restrictions on on these rental companies. So I mean, one concrete example is for example, not renting out scooters on a Saturday night when people might be intoxicated. Or Friday night as well. Yeah. So major sorts of accidents especially.

Ian Bowie
You just put a time limit you say: Right, okay. 10 o’clock at night. That’s it didn’t work.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. And I think that’s what they done in some cities.

Ian Bowie
scooters is another thing. And locals are we touched on the Metaverse. The Metaverse was was something that kind of, I think, became onto people’s radar in 2022.

Michael Stormbom
Yes. And it was Zuckerberg’s announcement there earlier in the year. I think probably the main story about the Metaverse is how much it is hype and how little they’re actually. I think that’s the big story about the universe at the moment.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. So I think they perhaps need to and hope maybe in 2023, we’ll hear some new news about how the Metaverse is going to pan out because I don’t think you know, we discussed last year about how they are trying to tell people that you know, property and land is all limited in the metaverse when we know it isn’t. So I think they’re gonna have to sort of rethink that.

Michael Stormbom
I mean, for sure. So I mean, I think people are catching on to the fact that with the money making scheme, you’re just trying to get money. I mean, it’s no actual there’s an actual value to me. No, no, no. Why on earth are you trying to push this onto us?

Ian Bowie
Exactly. Yeah, doesn’t work.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. And I’m not sure if we have touched upon this on our previous episode, but I mean, there aren’t a whole lot of users active in the metaverse so there was that one, where you were only like a handful of users. And I think Meta’s Metaverse, the user numbers there don’t really have to their projections. And there was actually, I read a story about the European Commission, they were hosting a virtual party in one of these metaverses. And only like a handful of people showed up. So no, I mean, I don’t think people are really, really into this yet.

Ian Bowie
I don’t think it’s been presented correctly. You know, I think it remains to be seen and maybe we will actually see it this year, that there’s been a rethink of what you know, the metaverse is and how it works and what it can be used for. Yeah, like I mentioned in our Christmas episode. Virtual Christmas Metaverse. Perfect.

Michael Stormbom
Yes. So hopefully someone is working on that one. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
But yeah, no, I think it needs to be and then also, I think…

Michael Stormbom
Of course in work. I think there’s a difference

Ian Bowie
See we always come back to work again, boring. I’m hedonist personally at heart. You know, I’m all about fun. You know, the whole idea of the metaverse for work leaves me cold, very cold.

Michael Stormbom
Yes, but I mean, education.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, education. Absolutely. It’ll be interesting to see what happens this year. Are there gonna be any educational innovations coming out? And then the other thing that we touched on in one of our episodes last year was virtual holidays, wasn’t it? Remember that?

Michael Stormbom
Yes, there is the summer resort episode.

Ian Bowie
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. You know, I mean, you know, will that gain any traction? You know, will people actually be interested in having virtual holidays,

Michael Stormbom
Well assuming someone now is working on the Christmas Metaverse, isn’t that a little bit on along the same…

Ian Bowie
What about a virtual Oktoberfest

Michael Stormbom
Drinking virtual beer?

Ian Bowie
Why not?

Michael Stormbom
Well, I personally I prefer the analog beer but.

Ian Bowie
Okay, fair enough. Yeah, yeah. But no, that was something else that we touched on? Which I thought was quite fun.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, we should do an Oktoberfest episode this year.

Ian Bowie
And then I think the other thing we sort of talked about, and I think we were actually slagged off quite a lot was the idea of autonomous vehicles.

Michael Stormbom
Yes. And I have a feeling we’ll continue doing thatt this year, but we’ll see.

Ian Bowie
I’m actually wondering because I think that are, of course, we know, that says, you know, obviously Ukraine and Russia and all that and the cost of living crisis and energy crisis and goodness knows what else dominated the news towards the end of 2022. But I also felt that suddenly there was a lot of silence around AV technology as a whole. Yeah, but no, that certainly got me thinking, yeah.

Michael Stormbom
Do you know which episode was our most popular from last year?

Ian Bowie
I know the scooter episode was quite popular, but I think there was something for a lot of areas. Yeah, so I thought so. Yeah. No. Tell me.

Michael Stormbom
So our most popular episode, the episode on Explainable AI.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. Yeah, you told me that last year as well.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. So that one has been consistently the top one. Then the experiment we did with translation sort of translated, yeah.

Ian Bowie
Well, that was brilliant.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, so that was for a long time. The second Yeah, second was proper episode. And then from the autumn, the episode, we did on doomscrolling seems to have been getting a lot of listeners for some reason. So that seems to be a topic that’s resonating with people.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, I can believe it because I feel at least somewhere through the autumn of last year, I felt that perhaps I was a little bit guilty of that as well.

Michael Stormbom
I think many of us were indeed.

Ian Bowie
I just wonder if it was also some kind of post-COVID thing as well, you know…

Michael Stormbom
The post-COVID doldrums. Yes. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
Something and we would, of course, we came out of it. And or we were just coming out of it. And Russia walks across the border into Ukraine and kicks off another global mess.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I mean, it’s been some years of quite…

Ian Bowie
Three, three years, three years in a row of nothing but basically, shit.

Michael Stormbom
Bad news. Yes, indeed. Yeah, really? Yeah.

Ian Bowie
But it just hasn’t been good news. I mean, hopefully now in 2023. We are going to see you know, some rays of sunshine.

Ian Bowie
For example Apple brought out their iPhone 14. And as you know, my iPhones rather old so I was literally thinking about upgrading but the particular model I wanted, was unavailable. A few people managed to get their hands on one. But not me, because of course, you know, sort of humming and hawing, sitting on the fence. And when I finally decided I’d like to push the button. Suddenly, hey presto, guess what? We might have a few in January. So let’s see. Yeah, nice. Okay, my old phones still working so I can manage. And maybe I wait for iPhone 15 now in September No, I don’t know.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Maybe iPhone 16 will be even better. With 25 cameras on it. I don’t know. I have no idea.

Ian Bowie
But maybe maybe maybe they’ll have some extra AI goodies.

Michael Stormbom
Image generation. System on Chip. Yes.

Ian Bowie
And also what about I mean, for example, what about if you would have technology whereby you take a photograph, and then from that photograph, you can create an avatar or you can project onto the table or something like that?

Michael Stormbom
I think that they… I think they can. I mean, I know I’m in my Samsung so I know it doesn’t generate the avatar for you automatically, but you can create an avatar for yourself and then I really and then you can have yes in each of these augmented reality stuff. That serves very little purpose beyond demonstrating that you can do it.

Ian Bowie
See, I’m very bad at reading the manuals of these things. Yeah, yeah. But what what else did we have in 2022? Yeah, well, I mean, smaller things.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Well, I mean, the image generator episode that we did. Well, actually, we did several of them. But yeah, but the first one so that one is one of the most popular episodes from the from the fall.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. Or even the autumn.

Michael Stormbom
Or even the autumn, if we’re going to use that language of yours. Yes, absolutely. I think the fall sounds more dramatic.

Ian Bowie
Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
The fall of AI Unfiltered.

Ian Bowie
That’s that’s how it is, no, no. The rise, the rise. Yes. Or a phoenix? Yeah.

Ian Bowie
I suppose just about development doesn’t even I think I think a lot of stuff started to happen in 2022. I think suddenly, the whole idea of artificial intelligence popped up on a lot of ordinary people’s radar for the first time.

Michael Stormbom
I think that is pretty much due to the text generators under image generators, because they are very concrete examples of what you can do with AI. If you’re talking about you know, optimizing supply chains and stuff like that, that’s interesting to people are interested in supply chain. Yes.

Ian Bowie
But it’s hidden. It’s hidden from from the general population. Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
And I mean, of course, we’ve spoken about manipulation and advertisements and yes, AI being used here. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
And it has been for years.

Michael Stormbom
For years and years. So of course, I mean, we are affected by it on a daily basis. Absolutely. Yeah. So people should definitely be more interested in it.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. Or I mean, the affected by or are we helped by? Yeah, there’s two ways of looking at it. You know, I mean, I used to have an advertising agency and I used to be one of those people. And you know, I mean,

Michael Stormbom
If you’re getting advertisements for something that you actually need?

Ian Bowie
Yeah. You know, when I was in the game, then of course, you know, everything we created. We believed it was there to help people you know, we weren’t we were not necessarily thinking in terms of manipulation, or arm twisting. You know, we were thinking in terms of how do we best get the message across in order to help people make the right decision, ie purchase this product?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. I mean, that’s when I said manipulation, I was talking more generally about social media.

Ian Bowie
Well, yeah, fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we were more traditional. We weren’t really. We weren’t in social media advertising and that kind of stuff. You know, we were very much in terms of product placement and packaging, design and copywriting. And mess it you know, all of that kind of stuff. They’re real, old fashioned stuff.

Michael Stormbom
So yeah, and I think that’s why it’ll be interesting to see what happens with Twitter. Yeah, Twitter has an outsized influence.

Ian Bowie
I would quite satisfied to see something like Twitter crash and burn because Yeah. I’m sorry if Elon loses a few billion on that, but, you know.

Michael Stormbom
He might have done the world a favor, yes.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, no, I would really like to see something like that disappear and turn to dust.

Michael Stormbom
I don’t feel like Twitter has been a net positive.

Ian Bowie
Well, I mean, I never used it but I just saw it is so unbelievably superficial.

Michael Stormbom
Superficial and just a cesspool of hate and trolling and harassment and yeah, no, I doubt that has gotten any better under…

Ian Bowie
What do you think made him buy it? Do you think he bought it so that he could destroy it?

Michael Stormbom
No, I mean, I think, I do think he has a genuine belief in this absolute freedom of speech. To the extent that we already know that he has violated that principle a couple of times, but But I do think he genuinely believes that. Twitter is an important public forum that should be…

Ian Bowie
But you said it isn’t. It’s just a cesspit of hate.

Michael Stormbom
It’s a cesspool of hate. And yeah, I was I think in that sense, Elon Musk might be doing humanity a favor, not quite the way he pictured it, but

Ian Bowie
Yeah, well, of course. We also talked about red and green AI.

Michael Stormbom
Yes. And which I sadly I don’t see that catching on really.

Ian Bowie
No, people weren’t very interested in you know,

Michael Stormbom
I think I mean, I know at least I’ve seen on some websites that, for example, where we have these AI models, so they stay put there. This was the carbon footprint of creating this model. So I think at least a little bit of raising awareness, but…

Ian Bowie
Maybe people don’t care. I mean, you know, if you think we’ve got, for example, DALL-E, all right. So

Michael Stormbom
Imagine the carbon footprint on that one.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, but But you know, it’s so much fun to play with that. I mean, this is what people want nowadays. You know, reality is so harsh, that people want an escape from reality. And that’s what all of these things provide. You know, it’s also the metaverse that if you would create you know, like I say Christmas metaverse. People want to escape their realities. They do and they don’t really, you know, that’s why people fly away on holiday, because it gets them away from their reality..

Michael Stormbom
So why people consume as much as absolutely we know, we know for an absolute fact that we need to consume less meat.

Ian Bowie
Yes. And yeah, and buy less stuff, but people don’t because less Yes, yes. Yeah. But people don’t. In fact, actually, if anything, they’re buying more. They’re traveling more. Yeah, so actually, you know, people in a way I don’t think that the vast majority people. It doesn’t really register on their radar because nothing that bad has happened yet. Yeah, it’s what we said for them. No, that’s right. No, and until it does, and it never will.

Michael Stormbom
Now because by the time it gets so bad that they noticed it’ll be too late.

Ian Bowie
Far too late and everybody gets wiped out. So you know, it just I mean, that COP-27 last year, it was just another cop out. That’s a cliche nowadays, you know, they’ve all been cop out. Oh, my God at the end of 2022 the British government actually granted a license to open a new fucking coal mine.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, ridiculous

Ian Bowie
In the northwest of the United Kingdom.

Michael Stormbom
The industry of the future.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, really. I mean, absolute nonsense.

Michael Stormbom
I mean, with apologies to the coal miners out there but I mean, come on, guys. Come on.

Ian Bowie
No but really know you know, a brand new coal mine for heaven’s sake. Really well, okay. They’ve granted it. But there’s going to be a lot of protests. I mean, I wonder if it’ll ever really go through but still, the point is that they granted the license.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, ridiculous. Yeah. You know, if there’s anything we’re hoping for 2023, it would be an awakening.

Ian Bowie
But no, going back to that idea of you know, red and green AI. I actually don’t really think that people think about how much energy such things are consumed because all they’re looking at them. They’re sitting at home using the algorithm. And the only sort of energy consumption that they’re personally aware of, is their own electric bill. Is what their computer consumes not what some massive in a cloud somewhere. No, that’s right. Data farm is consumed at all. They’re detached from that.

Michael Stormbom
Yes, without realizing how much, how large environmental impact it was to create those models in the first place. I mean, we’ve spoken about these large language models, they keep on growing ever larger in size, which means that they require a whole lot more processing power and electricity to create, so the environmental impact of those is rather massive and you just keep on growing. So…

Ian Bowie
And governments keep encouraging them. Oh, yeah. So so they squeak, oh, eat less red meat people, and then you know, right next door to where they’re having that broadcast, this whacking great Big Data farm, consuming mega tons of, of electricity.

Michael Stormbom
Powered by a coal power plant.

Ian Bowie
Probably yeah, you know, I mean, it’s just a joke, isn’t it really, at the end of the day, listen, we are on the fast track to hell, so we might as well just enjoy it. That seems to really, what the fuck, why, you know, why should we worry because we’re all heading for the same destination. And it ain’t gonna be pretty people.

Michael Stormbom
That it won’t, no.

Ian Bowie
But we might as well make the journey as fun as possible. Really? I think a lot of people have come to that conclusion.

Michael Stormbom
I think it’s a possibility.

Ian Bowie
I think they have Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
So I mean, some people just don’t care. And other people. Maybe the news is just so dire, that there is no hope. So therefore why try?

Ian Bowie
Yeah, pretty much. Yes. So just enjoy, have fun.

Michael Stormbom
And listen our podcast

Ian Bowie
And listen to our podcast. That’s how it is.

Ian Bowie
You’ve been listening to me Ian Bowie, and my colleague, Michael Stormbom, on AI Unfiltered, and for more episodes, please go to aiunfiltered.com. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai