Artificial Intelligence - General News

AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference

On April 17, 2025, the MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing welcomed Arvind Narayanan, Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University, to discuss his latest book, "AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference," co-authored with Sayash Kapoor.
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View: https://youtu.be/C3TqcUEFR58?si=BBNvqIUQ2zannm3g


Narayanan suggests three ways to shape AI for the better:
  1. Resist overhyped and harmful applications
  2. Guardrails for specific risks
  3. Limit tech companies' power and redistribute AI benefits
He has also identified a set of established narratives about AI:
  1. Superintelligence that will usher in utopia
  2. Superintelligence that will doom us
  3. It's a fad that will pass, we should be sceptical of it,
when it's more likely to be transformative but over decades.

There's a lot more to the video but I highlighted these because even though this is a news topic, the narratives still permeate it thoroughly. Kapoor also publishes a newsletter which seems worth a rummage at least and probably merits more.

aisnakeoil.com

AI Snake Oil | Sayash Kapoor | Substack

Debunking AI hype. The book gives you foundational knowledge and the newsletter covers new developments. Click to read AI Snake Oil, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
aisnakeoil.com aisnakeoil.com
 

“Our research indicates significant complexity required for deployments of Nvidia systems in comparison to traditional data centers—cooling, configuration and orchestration challenges throughout the supply chain,” Goldberg wrote in a research report.

The analyst noted that all of Nvidia’s largest customers are also looking to design their own chips.
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Interesting points for the whole industry.

Regards,
 
Scammers using AI have reinvented what used to be known in the American Civil War as 'Bounty Jumping'.

If you're a community college student in California, there's a chance that at least one of your fellow students is actually an AI bot robbing taxpayers. Recent data from the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office suggest that these bots have stolen more than $10 million in federal financial aid and upward of $3 million in state aid between March 2023 and March 2024.
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AI Bots in California Steal Over $10 Million in Federal Financial Aid
 

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