AI Washing: Separating the Bots from the Bull

You might have noticed that we’re on a bit of an AI journey at 3 Sided Cube. And by bit, I mean, we are DEEP into our AI era, hard at work at HQ experimenting and tinkering with different applications to ensure we aren’t here to merely participate, but forever innovate.

I’m Joel Dolling, Project Manager extraordinaire at 3SC and here to contribute to your AI regularly scheduled programming. As a PM, I’m already seeing an uptake on certain AI applications, but today, I wanted to dive into a comical/concerning trend I’m seeing with “AI Washing”.

AI is the buzzword du jour, so naturally some companies are hopping on the bandwagon to capitalise on the fascination and volume of searches surrounding AI, making their products or services appear cutting-edge and innovative.

This new wild west is in its infancy (and the gold rush is ON!) so it’s difficult to be discerning which makes it fairly easy to mislead consumers, investors, and the general public, as it may create unrealistic expectations about the capabilities of a particular product or the level of AI integration.

We’ve seen this kind of clever smoke and mirror marketing with “green washing”, but unlike oil giants making an arbitrary pledge to cut their carbon footprint (lol), AI washing is a little trickier to suss out. To avoid falling for AI washing, it’s essential for all of us as users and consumers to conduct due diligence and critically evaluate the claims made about AI in products and services.

Let’s put that critical thinking to use and go through a few examples to find out…

The first, and what I think is the most egregious example of fake AI is the Coca Cola flavour that is apparently “AI powered”. On the web page for the new flavour, Coca-Cola said that “We challenged ourselves to explore the concept of what a Coke from the future might taste like”. Frankly, I think this is preposterous for a drink that has had the same taste for over 100 years.

On the subject of “is this AI” though, the page explaining the product is not convincing me. There is a lot of talk about imagining what the year 3000 would taste like, and a lot of AI-generated imagery which leads me to believe that the flavour itself is devoid of AI input.

To be honest, this might be a good thing though, if you asked AI what the year 3000 might taste like, it would probably be a robust blend of tarmac and diesel fumes, which I’m not sure would make a great drink. I asked ChatGPT (which is fantastic and an actual AI product) what the year 3000 would taste like and it said “the taste of the year 3000 is beyond our current capacity to predict accurately”.

I don’t know about you, but I believe that.

Conclusion: My thoughts on this one are that the flavour was concocted by humans and the branding was prompted into life using AI.

Spotify: AI DJ

This one really gets to me.

In 2023, Spotify unveiled the ”AI DJ” which is a strange experience where a voice talks to you in between songs like a late-night commercial radio host. There’s a button to click if you don’t like the vibe of the music they play and they switch it up. The thing is, Spotify has been able to suggest content to you based on its algorithm and your listening history for years, maybe even a decade. There is nothing new about the songs the “AI DJ” plays because it seems to just use the Spotify algorithm, however, it does seem to be an AI-generated voice (the “DJ”) talking to you.

One thing that somewhat bothers me about the AI DJ is that it cannot be reasonably expected to be better at selecting music than the algorithm that already exists (and is definitely not AI). I think that this product was created more for the novelty of including AI, rather than AI being added because it adds material value to the proposition.

Conclusion: I’m prepared to concede on this one. The voice has to be generated by AI, but the songs it chooses are what I am dubious about. Try it regardless, nothing like a disembodied robot voice comin’ attcha in-between your favourite tunes.

Flippy

This is one I doubt you’ve heard of. There’s now an “AI-powered” robot that flips burgers (among other fast food-related things). For this one, I do not doubt that this is AI, however, where I would question this is that there are already robotic arms that make drinks on cruise ships that are not AI-powered, so why is this different? What is the benefit of adding AI to this production process? I am frankly confused about Flippy.

Conclusion: I understand that the commercial drive behind the development of Flippy is that Flippy replaces 3 line cooks, so saves the business money. Where I am dubious is the longevity of Flippy. Will it be revolutionary or will businesses look back on it as an expensive mistake that didn’t work? If you own a moderate size burger restaurant and a Flippy please holla.

Finding Wally

“The meaning of life is not simply to exist, and to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, and to conquer.”

Thank you, Google for that quote. One of life’s simple pleasures is finding Wally (or Waldo). In finding Wally, the thrill is in the chase. In a light-hearted attempt to ruin the fun, someone has invented an AI Wally finder. Fortunately, this is where Wally’s cheat code cannot be bought, which is nice. If this was a product you could buy, I would be incredulous, but I think that this is a fun idea in its current form.

Conclusion: Personally, I’ll stick to the audio book (skip to 6:00 to find Wally). Much more enjoyable.

As you can see, these examples are little more than non-AI-related tech and clever marketing, but while you’re here…let’s talk about some seriously cool applications of AI doing some undeniable good around the world.

AI-Assisted First Aid

Another Way AI is contributing to a better world is in the acute first aid space, where AI takes the fast-paced information gathering and output. Imagine watching Casualty (when it was on) and seeing someone getting wheeled from the ambulance to the hospital without the person trying to relay everything they could remember on the journey because the hospital team already knows everything about the patient and the situation thanks to AI.

Conclusion: This is something that we at 3 Sided Cube love to see. I wonder if one day, information input to our first aid apps could integrate with such a system. What a world that would be!

AI Disaster response

The number of disasters is projected to reach 560 a year – or 1.5 disasters a day – by 2030.

We’re all too familiar with waking up to news of the latest horrible disaster to be unleashed on humanity. The loss of life is an awful eventuality of this reality. But AI can help with that!

xView2 has been deployed in earthquake wreckage, wildfires, and flooding to successfully help workers on the ground be able to find areas that were damaged that they were unaware of. Every minute counts in a disaster and delayed arrival of search and rescue happens expedited and targeted with the help of xView2. Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, the World Bank, the International Federation of the Red Cross, and the United Nations World Food Programme have all used the platform in response to the 2023 earthquake in Turkey.

AI is used by the algorithms employing a technique similar to object recognition, called “semantic segmentation,” which evaluates each individual pixel from 120 miles up in space of an image and its relationship to adjacent pixels to draw conclusions where to concentrate search and rescue efforts.

Conclusion:

The code is open source and the program, free to use. This incredible piece of technology is out there to save lives and there’s no one sitting behind a giant desk, stroking a bald cat and counting their billions with each disaster that rolls in – it’s just out there doing good! It seems future disaster response and recovery efforts should always include xView2.