{"id":32541,"date":"2025-03-25T10:29:55","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T09:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.codemotion.com\/magazine\/?p=32541"},"modified":"2025-03-25T10:29:56","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T09:29:56","slug":"ai-hype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.codemotion.com\/magazine\/ai-ml\/ai-hype\/","title":{"rendered":"Lost in Translation: A Humorous Look at AI Hype, Bad Content, and Algorithmic FOMO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I find myself more and more often playing digital cop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides my side hobby of reporting the numbers of those damn call centers\u2014now increasingly sophisticated at bypassing filters\u2014these days I turn into a vengeful Dirty Harry every time I come across an article clearly created or poorly translated by AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Let’s be clear: there\u2019s nothing wrong with using AI for translations\u2014unless you\u2019re an 11-year-old who\u2019s supposed to be learning English.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The real problem is that most people don\u2019t even bother to proofread the output and publish absolute nonsense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That quote at the beginning? \u201cI wouldn\u2019t trust this overgrown pile of microchips any further than I can throw it\u2026\u201d It\u2019s from General Beringer in WarGames<\/em><\/strong>. In the Italian dubbed version, it was translated in a way that made cultural sense at the time. A literal translation would\u2019ve been unintelligible. But the expression on his face? That\u2019s universal\u2014and it perfectly mirrors how I feel every time I stumble upon yet another AI-generated article that no one even glanced at before publishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the fourth sentence\u2014when I spot a random gender switch, a number mismatch, or absurd repetition\u2014my inner \u201cmake my day\u201d trigger goes off, and I instantly banish the source from my feed.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t trust this overgrown pile of microchips any further than I can throw it\u2026!\u201d
This line by General Beringer, in the Italian dubbed version, was adapted to fit the style of the time while preserving its meaning\u2014because a literal translation would have made no sense in Italian.
The facial expression, though, is universal\u2014and perfectly captures the feeling you get when facing yet another AI-generated article that hasn\u2019t even been given a cursory glance.
<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
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In the past year, the endless stream of JavaScript frameworks<\/a> has finally been dethroned as the noisiest thing on the web\u2014AI has taken over, in all its specialized (or not) forms, flooding tech news sites everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I get a weird kick out of those newspapers that place AI news next to finance updates, sparking mental shortcircuits that lead people to buy Bitcoin. I like to imagine it\u2019s all a cunning NLP strategy rather than clueless editors mixing apples and oranges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, every time I read headlines like \u201cAI helped someone win the lottery\u201d<\/em>, my brain shuts down\u2026 until I remember my statistics professor\u2014sweaty and enthusiastic\u2014tossing coins from the lectern to show us how probability really works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, the fact that modern coins make it hard to tell heads from tails is, clearly, part of a global conspiracy to make us dumber and easier to manipulate. (Just like how LEGO sets are no longer general-purpose: now it\u2019s all Star Wars kits\u2014non-canon ones, no less.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Anyway, let\u2019s stay focused on the fact that every single day brings a flurry of flashy news about the latest LLM, the new GPT, or the next groundbreaking ML technique\u2014usually accompanied by chaotic graphs designed only to give a vague sense of depth to our collective FOMO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday it was ChatGPT and Claude<\/a>, today it\u2019s DeepSeek (aka DeepSick<\/em> among friends) teamed up with Cursor. Tomorrow? Expect new names with very little imagination, trained with carbon footprints big enough to patch up several holes in the ozone layer, and magically able to run on your neighbor\u2019s browser\u2014just like that, with no explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So how much AI content actually gets published every day?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If we only consider peer-reviewed scientific journals (which already have a high barrier to entry), the number is staggering: a search on PubMed for \u201cArtificial Intelligence and Scientific Publishing\u201d returns 5,470 articles<\/strong>. That\u2019s an average of about 450 papers a month<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for tech media and blogs, the number varies wildly\u2014and ironically, no AI was able to give me an actual count. (Probably out of shame, not ignorance.) Still, ChatGPT at least gave me a breakdown of the main content categories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n