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Watching the Generative AI Hype Bubble Deflate
(ash.harvard.edu)
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this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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"It's part of the history of the field of artificial intelligence that every time somebody figured out how to make a computer do something—play good checkers, solve simple but relatively informal problems—there was a chorus of critics to say, 'that's not thinking'"
-Pamela McCorduck
"AI is whatever hasn't been done yet."
- Larry Tesler
That's the curse of the AI Effect.
Nothing will ever be "an actual AI" until we cross the barrier to an actual human-like general artificial intelligence like Cortana from Halo, and even then people will claim it isn't actually intelligent.
Well at least until those who study intelligence and self-awareness actually come up with a comprehensive definition for it. Something we don't even have currently. Which makes the situation even more silly. The people selling LLMs and AGNs as artificial intelligence are the PT Barnum of the modern era. This way to the egress folks come see the magnificent egress!
They already did. AGI - artificial general intelligence.
The thing is, AGI and AI are different things. Like your "LLMs aren't real AI" thing , large language models are a type of machine learning model, and machine learning is a field of study in artificial intelligence.
LLMs are AI. Search engines are AI. Recommendation algorithms are AI. Siri, Alexa, self driving cars, Midjourney, Elevenlabs, every single video game with computer players, they are all AI. Because the term "Artificial Intelligence" by itself is extremely loose, and includes the types of narrow AI all of those are.
Which then get hit by the AI Effect, and become "just another thing computers can do now", and therefore, "not AI".
That's a disturbing handwave. "We don't really know what intelligence is, so therefore, anything we call intelligence is fair game"
A thermometer tells me what temperature it is. It senses the ambient heat energy and responds with a numeric indicator. Is that intelligence?
My microwave stops when it notices steam from my popcorn bag. Is that intelligence?
If I open an encyclopedia book to a page about computers, it tells me a bunch of information about computers. Is that intelligence?
If AI helps us realize that a thermometer fits the definition of Intelligence when it shouldn’t, then it’s entirely valid to refine the definition