Am I the only one getting agitated by the word AI (Artificial Intelligence)?
Real AI does not exist yet,
atm we only have LLMs (Large Language Models),
which do not think on their own,
but pass turing tests
(fool humans into thinking that they can think).
Imo AI is just a marketing buzzword,
created by rich capitalistic a-holes,
who already invested in LLM stocks,
and now are looking for a profit.
I remember the term AI being in use long before the current wave of LLMs. When I was a child, it was used to describe the code behind the behaviour of NPC in computer games, which I think is still used today. So, me, no, I don’t get agitated when I hear it, I don’t think it’s a marketing buzzword invented by capitalistic a-holes. I do think that using “intelligence” in AI is far too generous, whichever context it’s used in, but we needed some word to describe computers pretending to think and someone, a long time ago, came up with “artificial intelligence”.
Thank you for reminding me about NPCs,
we have indeed been calling them AI for years,
even though they are not capable of reasoning on their own.
Perhaps we need a new term,
e.g. AC (Artificial Consiousness),
which does not exists yet.
The term AI still agitates me though,
since most of these are not intelligent.
For example,
earlier this week I saw a post on Lemmy,
where a LLM suggested to a user to uninstall a package, which would definitely have broken his Linux distro.
Or my co-workers,
who asked development questions I had to the LLMs they use, which yet has to generate me something usefull / something that actually works.
To me it feels like they are pushing their bad beta products upon us,
in the hopes that we pay to use them,
so they can use our feedback to improve them.
To me they don’t feel intelligent nor consious.
I would argue that humans also frequently give bad advice and incorrect information. We regurgitate the information we read, and we’re notoriously bad at recognizing false and misleading info.
More important to keep in mind is that the vast, vast majority of intelligence in our world is much dumber than people. If you’re expecting greater than human intelligence as your baseline, you’re going to have a wildly different definition than the rest of the world.
Colleagues of mine have also recommended me uninstalling required system packages. Does that mean my colleagues aren’t intelligent/conscious? That humans in general aren’t?
After working 2 years on an open source ML project, I can confidently say that yes, on average, lights aint that bright sadly.