Professor Alan Smeaton:

This gives me the opportunity to bring up the last of my insomnia – the things that keep me awake at night – which is that big technology companies are very focused on releasing product rather than on scientifically understanding why, for example, how it came up with that answer. Very few companies are publishing scientific literature, analysis, papers and presentations that reveal the work they are doing in trying to understand why. The exception is probably a company called Mistral, which is French. Regarding all the others, the volume of scientific literature they produce at the major AI conferences has dropped over the past couple years because their human energy is focused on getting product out, getting the next version and getting the next technique available. It concerns me.

Eventually they will realise they are in kind of a prisoner’s dilemma, as I mentioned previously, and they will then be open and focused on understanding why. As consumers, we want to know why. We accept, or recognise, a certain amount of hallucinations come from these systems and we compensate for them by checking them. Eventually, we will get to a stage where we will not accept an error that comes from a system like that and we will want the company to understand why and stop that. We are not at that point yet. We are at the stage of grow, grow, grow, and get product out the door. However, consumer pressure will eventually lead those companies to re-evaluate and refocus on understanding why.