Is AI all a fad? A new report suggests very few people are using tools like ChatGPT and the hype is being misconstrued for actual public interest

[Windows Central]

A new report by the Reuters Institute and Oxford University indicates very few people are using AI, despite the overwhelming hype around the technology and its advances.

Is AI all a fad? A new report suggests very few people are using tools like ChatGPT and the hype is being misconstrued for actual public interest : Read more

 

[TheFerrango]

It’s not a fad as the product does exist and has limited benefits, but interest from the general populace is fabricated at best

 

[taynjack]

OpenAI has had a usable product for maybe a year? Give it time. The information superhighway wasn't widely embraced in the beginning either. iPhone and Android took some time to mature and become indispensable tools of the general public. Just like the average person didn't know what to do with the 4hrs of AOL access disks shipped to their home, people today just don't know what to do with AI yet.

 

[The Werewolf]

It’s not a fad as the product does exist and has limited benefits, but interest from the general populace is fabricated at best

That's not what "fad" means.

A fad is an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived and without basis in the object's qualities; a craze. The question here is whether or not there is a shared enthusiasm, and at least in the tech press, whether for or again, "AI" is basically everywhere to the degree that practically every top end software company is trying to cram it in somewhere.

So in the end what will determine if this is a fad or not is whether it sticks around in its current form.

Given that actual use of "AI" never really was that big and there's little evidence to support the idea that it will ever be a major part of the general public's toolset, then the odds are good it will die off and thus we have a fad.

 

[The Werewolf]

Not a fad.

We don't know yet. It may well be a fad. it certainly has all the earmarks of a typical fad. Over the top marketing. Trying to get people to use it whether or not they want or need it. Trying to tie it into every aspect of social interactions. I mean "AI" has "frisbee" and "hoola-hoop" written all over it.

In the end, we'll see if it's a fad if it settles down out of the hype phase and becomes something people actually use for real world productivity on an ongoing bases - and right now, the signs point to "no". It seems to solve a problem few people actually have.

 

[Bla1ze]

Not a fad, but it's definitely hyped up at the moment in the fact that everyone everywhere has to be telling us about their AI and jamming it into things and places it doesn't need to be. Eventually it'll fade into the background and just happen.

Unfortunately, I worry about this whole learning stage of the process. As we've seen, AI being implemented into everything hasn't always yielded the best results.

Take Google for example. People turn to Google when they have questions and such and with AI actively spitting out rubbish, that's actively causing harm.

 

[TheFerrango]

That's not what "fad" means.

A fad is an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived and without basis in the object's qualities; a craze. The question here is whether or not there is a shared enthusiasm, and at least in the tech press, whether for or again, "AI" is basically everywhere to the degree that practically every top end software company is trying to cram it in somewhere.

So in the end what will determine if this is a fad or not is whether it sticks around in its current form.

Given that actual use of "AI" never really was that big and there's little evidence to support the idea that it will ever be a major part of the general public's toolset, then the odds are good it will die off and thus we have a fad.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see AI fail miserably and vaporise billions worth of investment from companies shoe horning it where it doesn’t belong, I’m just not that sure nothing is going to stick, given the huge amount of AI stuff everywhere.

But yes, it does sound like a fad, same as blockchain a couple years ago

 

[BINARYGOD]

Wow - a study. One Study - and it says something I want to hear! NEAT!!! CLICK HERE PLEASE!!!!!

 

[bazanime]

I've been using it to help me proofread my documents and texts since I have dyslexia.
It's was nice making Xmas cards last year with copilot.
Language translation has improved a lot since I read manga and sometimes have to read raw copies.

AI in the public visible space may be a fad but once all the fanfare has died down it will quietly integrate into everyday life and it will be used naturally.

 

[DaveDansey]

I think using the term "AI" is a fad that will die down.

I don't consider upscaling or removing unwanted objects from a picture "artificial intelligence", yet they are coined as "AI Tools". It's just another way of processing data using LLM's and such. I've no problem with this sort of use. I'm sure many applications will utilise these techniques to provide new features; as an end user I couldn't care less if the feature uses "AI" code.

Windows new recall feature - there is no way I would even consider turning that on. It's trying to "solve" a problem that anyone with basic technical aptitude would never have in the first place. I can't recall ;-) ever being unable to find my own documents. I don't need reminding about a website I visited weeks ago - if I had any intention of revisiting it I'd have saved it to favourites, fail that, there's browser history. Storing many GB worth of data on my local drive in the form of thousands of images just feels weird to me. Surely I'd be better off just strapping a go-pro to my chest 24\7 if I really wanted to never forget anything! I've met lots of people who don't know how PC storage works and do struggle with navigating folders, so I guess this is targeted at them.

As for Tony Stark levels of artificial intelligence, although it sounds cool, does anyone really want a virtual, internet-connected personal assistant who knows everything about you and can recall anything anyone's done in an instant?

 

[cara.di]

That's not what "fad" means.

A fad is an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived and without basis in the object's qualities; a craze. The question here is whether or not there is a shared enthusiasm, and at least in the tech press, whether for or again, "AI" is basically everywhere to the degree that practically every top end software company is trying to cram it in somewhere.

So in the end what will determine if this is a fad or not is whether it sticks around in its current form.

Given that actual use of "AI" never really was that big and there's little evidence to support the idea that it will ever be a major part of the general public's toolset, then the odds are good it will die off and thus we have a fad.

Except AI has hundreds of practical uses. It will end up in automated phone systems, online support systems, programming tools, text authoring tools, image editing tools, and learning tools. I'm using it constantly because it's useful, not because it's a fad. You're clearly clueless and haven't tried using AI for anything productive.

Just yesterday, I used AI to make an image projection tool. I don't know of any fads in the past that could have done anything like it, except maybe a search engine or a library. Oh wait, search engines and libraries weren't fads? Seriously, it's not just "trying to be crammed" into all the top-end software; it's successfully being integrated into software to great benefit. Not long ago, I wrote a CLI tool that could do terminal commands for me. I haven't had to look at the help or Google how to use command line tools in over a year. Also, many people are now using AI without even realizing it, making it a core part of people's toolsets without knowing. It won't be long before basic browser spell check and grammar check is using large language models.

 

[Arun Topez]

The front-facing products are a fad, but the back-end AI technology isn't.
Microsoft especially wouldn't be pushing Copilot as hard as they are if they weren't desperate to get users to please their investors. Notice in their financials, they stated that Copilot was the reason of their sales increases, but their sales trends haven't drastically increased and they provided zero evidence and zero metrics to back up that claim.

The more these companies push things hard on people, the more people tend to not want to use it. It's basic psychology.

Consumers and even workers in general simply don't use these products because they don't really solve problems we have, it's more about content generation. Where AI shines is in the backend of product features, not as the product itself. So instead of focusing on Copilot/ChatGPT as products, they should be focusing on how that technology can be the backend for features. I think Adobe is doing it right by not shoving the word "AI" everywhere, but instead focusing on marketing features that use generative AI.

 

[John McIlhinney]

Windows new recall feature - there is no way I would even consider turning that on. It's trying to "solve" a problem that anyone with basic technical aptitude would never have in the first place.

You do realise that that means that it will be a benefit to the majority of Windows users. It's easy to forget, as the sort of person who spends time on a site like this one, that the majority of people understand very little about how to use a computer. I think that is one reason that many people aren't using AI now but will more and more. The study said that young people are most likely to use it and that's entirely predictable. Many older people simply don't know how and don't understand how it could help them. As more and more people effectively grow up with it, so it will become more a part of everyday life.

 

[xenred]

We don't know yet. It may well be a fad. it certainly has all the earmarks of a typical fad. Over the top marketing. Trying to get people to use it whether or not they want or need it. Trying to tie it into every aspect of social interactions. I mean "AI" has "frisbee" and "hoola-hoop" written all over it.

In the end, we'll see if it's a fad if it settles down out of the hype phase and becomes something people actually use for real world productivity on an ongoing bases - and right now, the signs point to "no". It seems to solve a problem few people actually have.

Yeah the issue with current AI marketing's are they are just all over the place, which indeed has a usual fad-like qualities. So many companies just slap "AI" on it despite not really an AI and just smarter algorithms or logics or simply not at all.

Even Microsoft is guilty of this, slapping AI on Snipping Tool for example when it's just an OCR that existed for decades. Many features we taken for granted aren't AI but just smart enough that it is useful.

So it's a bit of both in a sense that "AI" on everything is maybe a fad but true AI or machine learning tech will continue to be part of our everyday technology.l, but will be just more nuanced and natural without a need to scream it's "AI" written all over it.

 

[DaveDansey]

You do realise that that means that it will be a benefit to the majority of Windows users.

Most definitely. I completely agree people will get used to it, use it and think nothing more of it.

Maybe it'll never be a privacy concern, never be hacked and used against people (e.g. malware \ ransomware that can steal secrets like passwords from the data) . Most people won't know or care how much disc space it is consuming (and probably just buy a new device when it's 'full', or upgrade to a more expensive storage plan).

I'm part of a dying breed of people who like to question how things work and understand the intricacies. I like to take things apart and put them back together. I think this likely makes me more cynical and untrusting; maybe unnecessarily paranoid (probably to my detriment), most definitely sceptical. I love technology and advances in computing, but by my nature I'll always evaluate things more than the majority of people.

I think the recall feature will likely be quite clever and provide lots of people with a simpler way of interacting with their PC, it's just not something I can ever see myself desiring

p.s. JamesDax3 - fair play to you, I'm sure you're not alone. I'd find that so intrusively freaky, a personal assistant that knows me better than I know myself; it'd probably tip me over the edge!

 

[John McIlhinney]

I'm part of a dying breed of people who like to question how things work and understand the intricacies. I like to take things apart and put them back together.

I don't think that type of person is a dying breed. It's just that such people have always been in the minority and will always be. It's often also the case that people can be like that in one area and not another. I suspect that many people who are like that in a manual sense are still confused by things in a virtual space.

 

[ad47uk]

I think using the term "AI" is a fad that will die down.

I don't consider upscaling or removing unwanted objects from a picture "artificial intelligence", yet they are coined as "AI Tools". It's just another way of processing data using LLM's and such. I've no problem with this sort of use. I'm sure many applications will utilise these techniques to provide new features; as an end user I couldn't care less if the feature uses "AI" code.

Windows new recall feature - there is no way I would even consider turning that on. It's trying to "solve" a problem that anyone with basic technical aptitude would never have in the first place. I can't recall ;-) ever being unable to find my own documents. I don't need reminding about a website I visited weeks ago - if I had any intention of revisiting it I'd have saved it to favourites, fail that, there's browser history. Storing many GB worth of data on my local drive in the form of thousands of images just feels weird to me. Surely I'd be better off just strapping a go-pro to my chest 24\7 if I really wanted to never forget anything! I've met lots of people who don't know how PC storage works and do struggle with navigating folders, so I guess this is targeted at them.

As for Tony Stark levels of artificial intelligence, although it sounds cool, does anyone really want a virtual, internet-connected personal assistant who knows everything about you and can recall anything anyone's done in an instant?

Microsoft tried something like the recall feature with their timeline feature, and that failed, i turned it off as sone as it became available
To use a lot of AI stuff will require some sort of account, with windows their MS account, something I don't use.
The other thing is once they get people to use it they will start charging.

i am not against AI, to some extent, my problem is it being pushed into everything, I saw an advert on YouTube for Samsung, saying they have AI in their vacuum cleaners and washing machines, what a load of bull. Why would you need AI in a vacuum cleaner and washing machine?
I turn my vacuum cleaner on, move it around the floor, and it sucks up the dirt, my washing machine, I turn the dial to what I want and press the button to make it work, what else do you need?


As for AI in search engines, stick that idea, I am fine with the way it is. I will stay with Duck duck go, while they do have some sort of AI, it is not forced onto you.

As I said, I am not against some AI, I have used it to make backgrounds for videos, but to be honest, sometimes I can get better results by looking for them using a search engine and getting stuff that have been produced by other people.

AI needs to improve a lot before I would trust it.

 

[Jack Pipsam]

I think it will be. CoPilot will be looked back upon as Microsoft trying someone once again that the public in the end didn't care for. The average user struggles with File Explorer, good luck getting them to use CoPilot. What we're dealing with isn't even actually AI, it's just regurgitation that sometimes works, sometimes doesn't and is often some half-baked nonsense in the middle.
The challenges against it will only increase well. The plagiarism lawsuits haven't quite kicked off yet, where it's going to be obvious in some cases that a text/image generator clearly stole something and spat it out again, and I do suspect it'll get to a point where using certain tools will become an actual risk or liability to use for companies. If we treated end-users who take this content and republish it as plagiarists, that should and maybe will someday have a repercussion. Or at the very least, be increasingly frowned upon or treated as lazy. For example, I find it pretty sad that Windows Central still now makes use of Bing Image Generator.
Not to mention all the issues of those who are doing original work, but getting accused of AI work by faulty AI detectors, there'll be countless cases which will be brought up because of that. The already troubled education sector will enter a real difficult period from either-end because of all this.

On top of this AI will become increasingly trained on AI regurgitation, the quality will dip. The trust in the web will further nosedive beyond what it already is. Soon enough someone will die because they were given the incorrect medical information by one of these bots, or you'll have some crack-pot pseudoscience fed into the system as legitimate data to present to an end-user. This is all before the issues of AI spam, false-images, fake-news, misinformation, or the possiblity AI being used to scan conversations, facial recognition or being used by police/courts which could easily end up in disater.

All the while Microsoft swoons around as if AI is a wonderful thing, including this abhortent Recall junk.
This will end up being largely considered, a mistake. With those pushing for it being viewed with great contempt by historians.