I decided to be clever and use AI (DALL-E) to create a banner image for this site. I wanted to make a version of the classic “No Irish Need Apply” sign, from which the name of this site is derrived. But DALL-E is notoriously bad at generating text, as you can see in the image it created for me:

Stupid AI

Which brings up a common criticism of current AI systems: sometimes they just don’t work. They “hallucinate” facts and references. They can’t get hands right. They don’t really understand what they’re doing—and are therefore stupid and useless.

While it might be tempting to dismiss these systems’ potential because of their current faults, that would be a huge error. They’re getting better at an astonishing rate. Current generative AI systems have fixed their issues with rendering realistic body parts, hands and all. Oh, and now they can animate them too.

Scoffing at limitations like those illustrated by the above, uh, illustration is hubris. And we know what that gets us.