VIENNA - 

ANDREA KOMLOSY

One can define the ‘AI tipping point’ as being the moment when AI-driven machines offer better solutions than humans can achieve. Technology optimists increasingly believe that this threshold is about to be crossed - or already has been - in a growing number of realms. Still, while one should acknowledge the strengths of AI applications - namely, that they can process huge amounts of data much faster and more comprehensively than human minds - one should not confuse AI with the creative, non-linear intelligence of humans, which enables everything from empathy to irony, cynicism, and ambiguity - qualities that AI is yet able to replicate.

Consider ChatGPT, one of the largest and most powerful language-processing AI models to date. Even if one concedes that such models will continually improve themselves, ChatGPT falls far short of crossing the aforementioned tipping point. At best, it delivers plastic language that fits within cultural constraints, including political correctness and other imposed guidelines. New ideas are another matter altogether.

Yet AI applications - not least language assistants and chatbots - are increasingly penetrating people’s daily lives, seducing people with the promise of never-ending optimization. The data that lies at the root of that promise are thus becoming the hottest commodity of cybernetic capitalism, key to the profitability not only of the tech sector, but also of industries like healthcare, pharma, and biotech. So, AI-enabled applications - which use the insights derived from existing data to manipulate users into providing still more data - continue to proliferate.

The result of this is that the companies behind