Not a Genius move: Resurrecting war hero Alan Turing as your 'chief AI officer'
- Reference: 1714639606
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/05/02/genius_group_alan_turing/
- Source link:
In a world where it is hard to imagine the IT industry hitting a new low, the chatbot slinger has outdone itself by needlessly co-opting the name and approximate image of Alan Turing, one of the founders of modern computing who made a lifesaving contribution to the allied war effort only to die young under tragic circumstances.
Seemingly unaware of his own crassness, Genius Group CEO Roger James Hamilton took to [1]Xitter yesterday to welcome the organization's "new Chief AI Officer, Alan Turing – resurrected after 70 years."
British Second World War codebreaker Alan Turing receives Royal pardon [2]READ MORE
"I believe [Genius Group] is the 1st US public listed company to appoint an #AI to its C-Suite," he boasted.
The whole thing is a bad-taste marketing gimmick designed promote a white paper allegedly written by the eponymous chatbot in which Genius talks about "Preparing for a Post Turing Test World."
[3]
Disregarding the fact that the Turing Test has [4]fallen out of favor as any kind of assessment of artificial intelligence, Genius calls its marketing pamphlet "a mind-blowing read with his new 'Super Turing Test' for AGI," according to the company.
[5]
[6]
What's mind-blowing is Genius Group's inability to stop and consider the dilemma: is it better to (a) use the image of a computing legend seemingly without permission, or (b) not do that terrible, ill-advised, awful thing.
They chose (a) obviously. Genius indeed.
[7]Watch: Rare Second World War footage of Bletchley Park-linked MI6 intelligence heroes emerges, shared online
[8]Ticker tape and a binary message: Bank of England's new Alan Turing £50 must be the nerdiest banknote ever
[9]Missing Alan Turing memorabilia to be returned to Blighty from the US, 36 years after it went walkabout
[10]Larry Ale-ison institute invests in Oxford pub linked to Tolkien, CS Lewis
Led by Grady Booch, a software engineer famed for developing the Unified Modeling Language, the social media reaction was swift and brutal.
"Absolute and complete trash. I hope that Turing's heirs sue you into oblivion," [11]he said on the social media platform now calling itself X.
[12]
One intrepid Twitter user went so far as to [13]discuss the wisdom of the decision with the Turing chatbot itself.
The response was that the choice "raises important ethical considerations, including respect for the individual's legacy, the wishes they may have expressed during their lifetime, and the feelings of their surviving family and members of the public."
But it didn't answer the question.
[14]
The point Genius Group is so wantonly missing is that Turing was a real person whose life meant something, both in terms of the history of computing and mathematics, but also in society.
In 2009, then-UK prime minister Gordon Brown issued an unequivocal apology to Turing on behalf of the government. Shortly before he took his own life in 1954, Turing was sentenced to chemical castration for being gay, which was illegal at the time.
That this legacy should be cheapened as a marketing trick speaks volumes about today's tech industry. Genius Group should be ashamed. It should remove the image, end the campaign, and apologize. ®
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://twitter.com/rogerhamilton/status/1782876879495561534
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2013/12/24/turing_pardoned/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZjNkQutn1MSZuumYkyyoAwAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/04/agi_llm_distant_dream/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZjNkQutn1MSZuumYkyyoAwAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZjNkQutn1MSZuumYkyyoAwAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/04/mi6_personnel_bletchley/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/25/turing_50_quid/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/10/turing_memorabilia_recovery/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/26/larry_ellison_oxford_pub/
[11] https://twitter.com/supertolerant/status/1785429873290338310
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZjNkQutn1MSZuumYkyyoAwAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://twitter.com/supertolerant/status/1785429873290338310
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZjNkQutn1MSZuumYkyyoAwAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
No need for AI. Nature will ensure the evolution of someone who can score lower and worse on any scale.
At least they didn't choose to resurrect infamous Austrian aquarellist as a chief AI fuhrer.
What does the "C" stand for . . .
In C-suite?
Re: What does the "C" stand for . . .
Clueless?
Culpable?
Catastrophe?
Re: What does the "C" stand for . . .
See you next Tuesday...
Re: What does the "C" stand for . . .
Just in case this is a serious question, the C stands for "Chief" ... CEO, CIO, CFO etc. etc.
Oh, wait, is that politically incorrect these days?
*woof woof*
"What's that lassie? The AI techbros have fallen into the well of incredibly bad taste and need rescuing? Again?? "
*wuff growl woof woof*
"...they did what with Turnings image to make themselves look impressive?"
*snarl bark wuff*
"I agree. Leave them to rot. We can find another source of drinking water, and hopefully it'll stand as a lesson to the rest of them"
These clowns don't deserve the protection of limited liability companies. Bankrupt them into the next century, I say.
Steven R
With who's image?
Woopsy.
Fucking idiots.
'nuff said.
Well, yeah.
"the Turing Test has fallen out of favor as any kind of assessment of artificial intelligence"
It never was an assessment of AI, at least not to anybody who actually studies AI. Consider that Turing himself called it "the imitation game".
Passing the so-called "Turing Test" is fairly easy. Any idiot can do it.
What is difficult is having the ability to take the so-called "test" in the first place.
Re: Well, yeah.
Passing the so-called "Turing Test" is fairly easy. Any idiot can do it*.
* Citation needed.
Text-to-Speech bot...
...Can impersonate a wide variety of people with the current state of the art. Yet just because they can doesn't mean they should. Corporate profits seem to always Trump good taste.
Every time you think AI Firms can't get any lower, they show that there's always someone ready to pick up the shovel...