Readers are invited to send news items via

alanfharrison@icloud.com

The great AI delusion is falling apart

Telegraph 14 July 2025 - source online - bold text added

Is the secret of artificial intelligence that we have to kid ourselves, like an audience at a magic show?
Some fascinating new research suggests that self-deception plays a key role in whether AI is perceived to be a success or a dud.
In a randomised controlled trial – the first of its kind – experienced computer programmers could use AI tools to help them write code. What the trial revealed was a vast amount of self-deception.
“The results surprised us,” research lab METR reported. “Developers thought they were 20pc faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19pc slower when they had access to AI than when they didn’t.”
In reality, using AI made them less productive: they were wasting more time than they had gained. But what is so interesting is how they swore blind that the opposite was true.
If you think AI is helping you in your job, perhaps it’s because you want to believe that it works.
Since OpenAI’s ChatGPT was thrown open to the general public in late 2022, pundits have been forecasting huge productivity gains from deploying AI. They hope that it will supercharge growth and boost GDP. This has become the default opinion in high-status policy circles.
But all this techno-optimism is founded on delusion. The “lived experience” of using real tools in the real world paints a very different picture.
The past few days have felt like a turning point, as the reluctance of pointing out the emperor’s new clothes diminishes. “I build AI agents for a living, it’s what I do for my clients,” wrote one Reddit user. “The gap between the hype and what’s actually happening on the ground is turning into a canyon”
AI isn’t reliable enough to do the job promised. According to an IBM survey of 2,000 chief executives, three out of four AI projects have failed to show a return on investment, which is a remarkably high failure rate.
Don’t hold your breath for a white-collar automation revolution either: AI agents fail to complete the job successfully about 65 to 70pc of the time, according to a study by Carnegie Mellon University and Salesforce.
The analyst firm Gartner Group has concluded that “current models do not have the maturity and agency to autonomously achieve complex business goals or follow nuanced instructions over time.” Gartner’s head of AI research Erick Brethenoux says: “AI is not doing its job today and should leave us alone”.
It’s no wonder that companies such as Klarna, which laid off staff in 2023 confidently declaring that AI could do their jobs, are hiring humans again. This is extraordinary, and we can only have reached this point because of a historic self-delusion. People will even pledge their faith to AI working well despite their own subjective experience to the contrary, the AI critic Professor Gary Marcus noted last week.
“Recognising that it sucks in your own speciality, but imagining that it is somehow fabulous in domains you are less familiar with”, is something he calls “ChatGPT blindness”. Much of the news is misleading. Firms are simply using AI as an excuse for retrenchment. Cost reduction is the big story in business at the moment.
Globally, President Trump’s erratic behaviour has induced caution, while in the UK, business confidence is at “historically depressed levels”, according to the Institute of Directors, reeling from Reeves’s autumn taxes. Attributing those lay-offs to technology is simply clever PR, and helps boost the share price.
So why does the faith in AI remain so strong?
TOP
The dubious hype doesn’t help. Every few weeks a new AI model appears, and smashes industry benchmarks. xAI’s Grok 4 did just that last week. But these are deceptive and simply provide more confirmation bias.
“Every single one of them has been wide of that mark. And not one has resolved hallucinations, alignment issues or boneheaded errors,” says Marcus.
Not only is generative AI unreliable, but it can’t reason, as a recent demonstration showed: OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT4o model was beaten by an 8-bit Atari home games console made in 1977.
“Reality is the ultimate benchmark for AI,” explained Chomba Bupe, a Zambian AI developer, last week. “You not going to declare that you have built intelligence by beating toy benchmarks … What’s the point of getting say 90pc on some physics benchmarks yet be unable to do any real physics?” he asked.
Then there are thousands of what I call “wowslop” accounts – social media feeds that declare amazement at breakthroughs. As well as the vendors, a lot of shadowy influence money is being spent on maintaining the hype.
This is not to say there aren’t uses for generative AI: Anthropic has hit $4bn (£3bn) in annual revenue. For some niches, like language translation and prototyping, it’s here to stay. Before it went mad last week, X’s Grok was great at adding valuable context.
But even if AI “discovers” new materials or medicines tomorrow, that won’t compensate for the trillion dollars that Goldman Sachs estimates business has already wasted on this generation of dud AI.
That’s capital that could have been invested far more usefully. Rather than an engine of progress, poor AI could be the opposite.
METR added an amusing footnote to their study. The researchers used one other control group in its productivity experiment, and this group made the worst, over-optimistic estimates of all. They were economists.

source

-----------------------------------------

Story - Telegraph UK. Page 3. Link added. 10 July 2025

Chart-topping rock band turns out to be AI ‘hoax’

Listen to the synthetic track by ‘The Velvet Sundown’, a fake group which has amassed millions of Spotify streams here

The "band" has 1.1 million monthly listeners.

With soothing folk rock that sounded like an undiscovered gem from the 1960s, The Velvet Sundown quickly became a hit on Spotify.
After releasing their debut album, Floating on Echoes on June 5, the band quickly reached number one on the music streaming app’s daily viral chart in the UK, Sweden and Norway.
But now the band, which has 1.1 million monthly listeners, has now admitted that their music was actually created using AI as part of an “art hoax”.
The band has since amended their bio on their Spotify page to admit they are a “synthetic music project guided by human creative direction”.
The band’s two albums, which came out within weeks of each other, were not a “trick” but intended as a “mirror”, said the creators.
The Velvet Sundown was an “ongoing artistic provocation”, they said.
The admission split fans and ended weeks of speculation about the group, which even had photos showing the four “members” with beards, denim jackets and long hair like folk rock bands from the 1960s.

Same day on front cover.

TOP

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6 July

Story - Telegraph

Labour’s AI plans for schools risk creating ‘cardboard cutout’ students
artificial intelligence in schools
Labour has unveiled plans to roll out the technology across schools, allowing it to draw up lesson plans and even mark homework.
Ministers say that doing so will free up teachers to spend more time in the classroom helping their pupils rather than being bogged down in paperwork.
Ms Trott said: “If we ease teachers’ workloads by embracing this technology without caution, we risk crushing critical thinking underfoot.
“It’s a dangerous trade-off and only incentivises young people to use AI tools as a crutch.”
Labour’s plans to rapidly roll out artificial intelligence in schools risks creating a generation of “cardboard cutout” students, the Tories have warned.
Laura Trott, the shadow education secretary, said a switch to computer learning could dumb down academic standards.
Writing for The Telegraph, she said the growing use of ChatGPT, which can solve maths sums and write essays, was “dangerous”.
Her intervention comes after a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US found that relying on AI programs eroded students’ ability to think critically.
Labour has unveiled plans to roll out the technology across schools, allowing it to draw up lesson plans and even mark homework.
Ministers say that doing so will free up teachers to spend more time in the classroom helping their pupils rather than being bogged down in paperwork.
Ms Trott said: “If we ease teachers’ workloads by embracing this technology without caution, we risk crushing critical thinking underfoot.
“It’s a dangerous trade-off and only incentivises young people to use AI tools as a crutch.”
The MIT study found that human graders consistently marked down AI-written essays for their lack of originality and independent thought.
But when AI programs were presented with the same work they awarded it higher marks.
Ms Trott said the Government needed to wake up to the dangers of the technology and act to curb its growing use before “the horse has bolted”.
“If we let AI flatten thinking, we’ll end up with cardboard cutouts, everyone sounding the same, thinking the same,” she added.
“If vast numbers of students lean on chatbots to write, research and code for them, what remains of traditional education?
“We must demand education policies that protect and foster true thinking, not just tech-enabled shortcuts.”
It comes amid efforts to roll out a new “quality mark” for schools that can demonstrate that they are using AI in a responsible way.
The Good Future Foundation, a UK-based non-profit organisation, has developed the scheme, which it is hoping to roll out to hundreds of schools.
Daniel Emmerson, its executive director, said: “The potential for AI to make a positive impact is staggering, but the implications of irresponsible use are significant.
“The Government has already outlined how vital AI can be to the future of education in Britain.
“It is vital that our educators are given the support they need to understand and implement this technology in the classroom to confidently prepare all students to benefit from and succeed in an AI-infused world.

TOP

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Another interesting article completes the Telegraph page.

We risk starving children of the ability to think critically

By Laura Trott

It concludes with:

We must remember what makes us human. Creativity, individual thought, intellectual curiosity.
If we let AI flatten thinking, we’ll end up with cardboard cutouts, everyone sounding the same, thinking the same.
This soil cannot nurture the Shakespeares or JK Rowlings of tomorrow.
That loss is tragic. It’s time to act. We must demand education policies that protect and foster true thinking, not just tech-enabled shortcuts.
Because the future depends on minds, not machines.

Laura Trott is the shadow education secretary

TOP

-------------------------------------------

18 June

Story - Telegraph 18 June 2025 here.

In 2023, the UK had 111 robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR). source
See below.
This figure is below the global average of 141, and the UK ranks 24th in the world for robot density. more

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

18 May

Telegraph 18 May 2025

1 Robots are the new soldiers in China’s tech race against the West

Beijing’s early push for bot dominance should sound alarm bells in America and Europe

See inactive images and robots cavorting!

source

2 Paragraphs of interest:

1. For decades, walking robots have been a feature of science fiction without ever becoming a reality.
2. So when Elon Musk first revealed plans for Tesla’s humanoid “Optimus” robot three years ago, his vision was met with understandable scepticism.
3. He didn’t exactly help his case when showcasing the project by appearing onstage alongside a human pretending to be a robot.
4. As technology news site The Verge wrote at the time: “Don’t overthink it: Elon Musk’s Tesla Bot is a joke.”
5. Four years later, however, humanoid robots are no longer just a punchline.
6. Social media is now awash with videos of advanced Chinese robots completing an array of tasks, whether that be tap-dancing or running half-marathons.
7. Tesla's Humanoid Robot Optimus Watched You Take Out the Trash—Now It’ll Do It for You

TOP

----------------------------------------------

2.2 Robot revolution

Musk’s ambitious timelines are legendary in the tech world, but he is not alone in targeting a robot revolution.
For example, Germany’s Neura raised €120m (£100m) in January to develop its own two-legged robot called 4NE-1.
However, it is China where the technology is forging ahead, as dozens of start-ups are vying to build two-legged robots that can work in factories or as human helpers.
Given their potential capabilities, this is no doubt a source of concern for the West.
Robotics is “definitely becoming a geopolitical race,” says Reuben Scriven, a robotics and automation researcher at Interact Analysis, who claims: “It is likely that humanoids will see much faster adoption in China.”

2.3

Capability and cost

Over the years, plenty of humanoid bots have appeared as marketing gimmicks at tech trade shows, but in practice, they have been clunky and somewhat useless.
Yet recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) software and hardware design have brought highly advanced humanoid robots closer to reality.
For example, Musk’s Optimus more has shown off increasingly dexterous movements that could allow it to do jobs usually reserved for humans.
Then follows a robot jigging about.

2.4 Beijing - and UK at 5

Beijing has also since set up a dedicated robotics venture fund worth more than £100bn.
In some quarters, they believe advanced humanoids could increasingly plug gaps in China’s ageing labour market.
Currently, China has 470 robots in its workforce per 10,000 people, the third highest in the world behind only Singapore and South Korea. source
Searching the UK situation we find:
In 2023, the UK had 111 robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR). This figure is below the global average of 141, and the UK ranks 24th in the world for robot density. source
China to Invest 1 Trillion Yuan in Robotics and High-Tech Industries

TOP

----------------------------------------------------------------

7 May

Telegraph 7 May 2025

--------------------------------------------------------------

1 UK Councils can save money

1 Councils could save households £325 a year by using artificial intelligence

Tech companies will be required to tell musicians, artists and newspapers when they use their material to train AI models under an amendment backed by the House of Lords. more
The Government suffered a defeat on Monday 14 May 2025 from peers who argued that its Data Bill did not do enough to protect creatives from “theft” by AI firms. more
The amendment, which will now return to MPs for consideration, would force tech companies to strike licensing deals with content creators to use their work or face legal action. more
The debate came after more than 400 artists and industry groups, including Sir Elton John, Robbie Williams and Shirley Bassey, signed a letter urging Sir Keir Starmer to do more to protect the arts. more
Lord Black, the deputy chairman of the Telegraph Media Group, said the “centuries-old right” to copyright protection was in danger because the Government was “legalising theft” and allowing AI to “plunder someone else’s work and profit from it”. more

2 More

Councils could save households £325 a year by using artificial intelligence, the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) has said.
Deploying AI in local government could improve productivity, saving the taxpayer at least £8 billion across England and Wales.
A report by the institute said AI could be used to clear backlogs across public services and ensure that potholes were fixed more quickly. more
The study comes a week after another report by the Tony Blair Institute into net zero caused rows in the Labour Party.
The former prime minister warned that plans to phase out fossil fuels were doomed to failure, but later had to row back after Downing Street intervened.

source Telegraph 7 May 2025

links added

TOP

Readers are invited to send news items via

alanfharrison@icloud.com

The great AI delusion is falling apart

Telegraph 14 July 2025 - source online - bold text added

Is the secret of artificial intelligence that we have to kid ourselves, like an audience at a magic show?

Some fascinating new research suggests that self-deception plays a key role in whether AI is perceived to be a success or a dud.

In a randomised controlled trial – the first of its kind – experienced computer programmers could use AI tools to help them write code. What the trial revealed was a vast amount of self-deception.

“The results surprised us,” research lab METR reported. “Developers thought they were 20pc faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19pc slower when they had access to AI than when they didn’t.”

In reality, using AI made them less productive: they were wasting more time than they had gained. But what is so interesting is how they swore blind that the opposite was true.

If you think AI is helping you in your job, perhaps it’s because you want to believe that it works.

Since OpenAI’s ChatGPT was thrown open to the general public in late 2022, pundits have been forecasting huge productivity gains from deploying AI. They hope that it will supercharge growth and boost GDP. This has become the default opinion in high-status policy circles.

But all this techno-optimism is founded on delusion. The “lived experience” of using real tools in the real world paints a very different picture.

AI isn’t reliable enough to do the job promised. According to an IBM survey of 2,000 chief executives, three out of four AI projects have failed to show a return on investment, which is a remarkably high failure rate.

Don’t hold your breath for a white-collar automation revolution either: AI agents fail to complete the job successfully about 65 to 70pc of the time, according to a study by Carnegie Mellon University and Salesforce.

So why does the faith in AI remain so strong?

The dubious hype doesn’t help. Every few weeks a new AI model appears, and smashes industry benchmarks. xAI’s Grok 4 did just that last week. But these are deceptive and simply provide more confirmation bias.

“Every single one of them has been wide of that mark. And not one has resolved hallucinations, alignment issues or boneheaded errors,” says Marcus.

Not only is generative AI unreliable, but it can’t reason, as a recent demonstration showed: OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT4o model was beaten by an 8-bit Atari home games console made in 1977.

Then there are thousands of what I call “wowslop” accounts – social media feeds that declare amazement at breakthroughs. As well as the vendors, a lot of shadowy influence money is being spent on maintaining the hype.

This is not to say there aren’t uses for generative AI: Anthropic has hit $4bn (£3bn) in annual revenue. For some niches, like language translation and prototyping, it’s here to stay. Before it went mad last week, X’s Grok was great at adding valuable context.

But even if AI “discovers” new materials or medicines tomorrow, that won’t compensate for the trillion dollars that Goldman Sachs estimates business has already wasted on this generation of dud AI.

That’s capital that could have been invested far more usefully. Rather than an engine of progress, poor AI could be the opposite.

METR added an amusing footnote to their study. The researchers used one other control group in its productivity experiment, and this group made the worst, over-optimistic estimates of all. They were economists.

-----------------------------------------

Story - Telegraph UK. Page 3. Link added. 10 July 2025

Chart-topping rock band turns out to be AI ‘hoax’

Listen to the synthetic track by ‘The Velvet Sundown’, a fake group which has amassed millions of Spotify streams here

The "band" has 1.1 million monthly listeners.

Same day on front cover.

6 July

Story - Telegraph

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Another interesting article completes the Telegraph page.

We risk starving children of the ability to think critically

It concludes with:

Laura Trott is the shadow education secretary

-------------------------------------------

18 June

Story - Telegraph 18 June 2025 here.

In 2023, the UK had 111 robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR). source

See below.

This figure is below the global average of 141, and the UK ranks 24th in the world for robot density. more

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

18 May

Telegraph 18 May 2025

1 Robots are the new soldiers in China’s tech race against the West

Beijing’s early push for bot dominance should sound alarm bells in America and Europe

See inactive images and robots cavorting!

2 Paragraphs of interest:

For decades, walking robots have been a feature of science fiction without ever becoming a reality.

So when Elon Musk first revealed plans for Tesla’s humanoid “Optimus” robot three years ago, his vision was met with understandable scepticism.

He didn’t exactly help his case when showcasing the project by appearing onstage alongside a human pretending to be a robot.

As technology news site The Verge wrote at the time: “Don’t overthink it: Elon Musk’s Tesla Bot is a joke.”

Four years later, however, humanoid robots are no longer just a punchline.

Social media is now awash with videos of advanced Chinese robots completing an array of tasks, whether that be tap-dancing or running half-marathons.

----------------------------------------------

2.2

Robot revolution

Musk’s ambitious timelines are legendary in the tech world, but he is not alone in targeting a robot revolution.

For example, Germany’s Neura raised €120m (£100m) in January to develop its own two-legged robot called 4NE-1.

However, it is China where the technology is forging ahead, as dozens of start-ups are vying to build two-legged robots that can work in factories or as human helpers.

Given their potential capabilities, this is no doubt a source of concern for the West.

Robotics is “definitely becoming a geopolitical race,” says Reuben Scriven, a robotics and automation researcher at Interact Analysis, who claims: “It is likely that humanoids will see much faster adoption in China.”

2.3

Capability and cost

Over the years, plenty of humanoid bots have appeared as marketing gimmicks at tech trade shows, but in practice, they have been clunky and somewhat useless.

Yet recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) software and hardware design have brought highly advanced humanoid robots closer to reality.

For example, Musk’s Optimus more has shown off increasingly dexterous movements that could allow it to do jobs usually reserved for humans.

Then follows a robot jigging about.

2.4 Beijing - and UK at 5

Beijing has also since set up a dedicated robotics venture fund worth more than £100bn.

In some quarters, they believe advanced humanoids could increasingly plug gaps in China’s ageing labour market.

Searching the UK situation we find:

----------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------

7 May

Telegraph 7 May 2025

--------------------------------------------------------------

1 UK Councils can save money

1 Councils could save households £325 a year by using artificial intelligence

**If you think AI is helping you in your job, perhaps it’s because you want to believe that it works.**