Artificial intelligence and the elephant in the data room

Artificial Intelligence is a major issue these days for all sorts of reasons ranging from union concerns over likely job losses to the big question mark hanging over its huge energy appetite, but there’s another fat elephant in the room - can it be trusted as a reliable source of information?

Based on my latest experience, I would say no… maybe.. or to quote Split Enz, Sometimes. If you ask a question and receive a seemingly definitive answer within seconds, keep that in mind.

Like a lot of others, I frequently rely on Google Ai to check dates of historical events, the spelling of some surnames, or even trivia relating to streaming service entertainment, but occasionally to also catch up with a major political issue. My advice - don’t accept its “facts” at face value. Check and check again and if you find the Ai bot has given you a bum steer, tell it so.

On the trivial side, I recently asked it to explain the ending of an SBS series titled This is Not a Murder Mystery which definitely was a very involved murder mystery.  It involved several leading 1930s surrealist artists including Salvador Dali holed up in a rambling British country estate as the body count mounted.

Good stuff, but the Ai bot told me the killer was actually the bloke who persisted against adversity and eventually solved the crimes.

I pointed that out and received an apology correcting its original version.

No worries, that’s not likely to affect our way of life or the cost of living, but when it comes to politics and major issues, a wrong answer might. And if I was a conspiracy theorist, I might say it’s intentional (perish the thought!)

To cut to the chase, I was engaging the very chatty chatbot in a discussion on so-called “renewable energy” and whether it would be able to meet the huge demands of expanding Ai data centres, when I asked it about the Coalition’s current energy policy. In fact, I asked it twice because I didn’t believe the first answer:

Me: “So the policy doesn't include building seven government-owned nuclear power stations now.”

Ai: “Yes, the policy absolutely includes building seven government-owned nuclear power stations.

“The plan establishes that the Federal Government would own the assets, using a Commonwealth funding model similar to NBN Co or Snowy Hydro. The Coalition intends to build these stations at the sites of seven retiring or retired coal-fired power plants across five states:

●      Tarong, Queensland

●      Callide, Queensland

●      Liddell, New South Wales

●      Mount Piper, New South Wales

●      Loy Yang, Victoria

●      Northern Power Station, South Australia (designated for Small Modular Reactors)

●      Muja Power Station, Western Australia (designated for Small Modular Reactors)

“Lifting the legislative ban on nuclear technology is simply the first legal step required to allow this construction to take place. Under the timeline, the Coalition aims to have the first operational reactors online in the mid-2030s, while keeping existing coal and gas plants running longer to bridge the gap.”

I knew the Coalition had distanced itself from the former overly ambitious and poorly promoted plan that former Opposition leader Peter Dutton took to the last election.

The Ai bot also provided a link to the latest policy which it obviously hadn’t bothered to read, which brought to mind the bland claim from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese prior to the failed Voice Referendum that the much-hyped Uluru Statement from the Heart was just a one-page document, not the actual 26 page missive which he didn’t need to read.

So I persisted with my chatty bot: