Yes! This is a brilliant explanation of why language use is not the same as intelligence, and why LLMs like chatGPT are not intelligence. At all.
Which about five minutes ago was precisely what the term ‘artificial intelligence’ meant, but since tech companies managed to dumb down and rebrand ‘AI’ to mean “anything utilizing a machine-learning algorithm”,
Oh look, the universal signal for “please ignore me, I am a simpleton”.
I had no idea that all these years (up until “five minutes ago”) I had been playing video games against human-level artificial intelligences 🙄
I’d respond to the rest of it, but there’s no point, she doesn’t have the first clue what she’s talking about. To quote Shakespeare: “it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
The term AI has been rebranded multiple times, but the latest usage is definitely a marketing term used to boost investor sentiment.
Investors are falling for it too. It’s funny because I think they were finally coming to realize the broken promises of untold wealth to be gained via tech’s early offerings, and starting to realize that their business model is pretty limited (surveillance capitalism with the end goal of ad tech… Which is why Google is willing to end the open web to stop adblockers), and then conveniently “GenAI” is elevated to prominence as what we call “AI” and everyone loses their minds again with fantasy instead of asking how this thing could possibly make any money.
Will I get the free version of this thing to reword “fuck you” in a passive aggressive, more corporate friendly way so I can send off an email to the company? Sure. Will I subscribe to a service that provides that capability? Fuck no.
I do have to say though that I think a lot of programmers appear to have a type of writer’s block that I just don’t understand, and perhaps the only money generating method for these things other than continuing to push ads may be their purchase as corporate tools. I think the integrations, though faddy and obvious, will be the first things to sail out the door when someone gets the bill, because the APIs often bill via token and these piles of garbage require quite a bit of token to be exchanged to come to any kind of satisfactory result.
EDIT: I wanted to add two things:
- I think it’s funny that you used the “sound and fury” quote in regards to an article written about ChatGPT because that’s largely what I think ChatGPT is…
- I find it hilarious that the first, obvious money making application of ChatGPT is to generate junky bullshit websites that undermine the ad-tech business models of the major tech companies…which is a thing we’re already seeing.
Yes, now that it has become a marketable product, the term “AI” feels like a buzzword due to overuse. But in actual fact it is still being used (by most vendors) consistent with how it has been used for like 40 years. ML, video game opponents, chess engines: all of these have been referred to as “AI” for at least that long. Anyone who thinks that calling GPT or Stable Diffusion “AI” started “five minutes ago” (or even that it is in any way novel) has to be someone whose only exposure to the concept of “AI” has been through Sci-Fi movies, and not the actual, real field of AI that has been developing for decades. It is, therefore, a very clear signal that the person knows fuck all about the subject and so cannot possibly form a valid opinion. It’s just a generic angry response.
And frankly, I think ChatGPT would do a better job of that than the author of the article. At least we wouldn’t be wasting actual, valuable, human brain resources making this drivel.
it is still being used (by most vendors) consistent with how it has been used for like 40 years. ML, video game opponents, chess engines: all of these have been referred to as “AI” for at least that long. Anyone who thinks that calling GPT or Stable Diffusion “AI” started “five minutes ago” […]
I agree it is not novel, but to me the more important point is: It’s not even wrong. Artificial Intelligence is a fitting, descriptive term for a decision making tool. Regardless of use case or sophistication (within limits).
Like we can talk about the (degree of) intelligence of a mouse, without equating the mouse’s intelligence to our own.
Sometimes we emphasize the difference by talking about “narrow AI”, the opposite of wide AI, or AGI (‘general’). People somewhat educated on the topic understand that human-level general intelligence is currently only achieved by humans, with no clear way to reproduce that artificially (and serious doubts up to academic levels if that will ever happen). Thus, everyone generally understands “AI” without further specification means “narrow AI”, not “AGI”.
To step into the room now and say, “tech companies managed to dumb down and rebrand ‘AI’ to mean ‘anything utilizing a machine-learning algorithm’” just shows how little the author understands the topic.
