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The average person sees it as "AI" like we think of from the movies. It's a machine brain that can think and communicate. In reality it's just a really good tex

The average person sees it as "AI" like we think of from the movies. It's a machine brain that can think and communicate. In reality it's just a really good text generator that's really good at sounding confident.

dmix 3y ago
Oversimplifying things doesn’t help anyone here. People don’t understand the limitations of AI/LLMs because it wasn’t a normal part of their lives until recently. They don’t need to understand how it works to understand that it has limitations and it’s going to be occasionally wrong. The average person is well aware software isn’t perfect, things break all the time. This is no different. It’s not a leap to think people will start grasping what current AI can and can’t do simply through a) careful communication and mostly importantly b) using it themselves. Much of the talk about AI safety is just an elaborate dance around this idea that users will never understand the limitations and will freak out. But these high profile cases (and warning labels) are exactly how people will learn the flaws exist and they’ll get used to the process of it getting slowly better and better.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  That's a very good point. There's precedent for it too. Humans themselves are black boxes too, and yet almost everyone grows to have a good handle on limitation of individuals, both in general and specific to contexts and individuals one encounters. It's not just peer-level understanding - parents quickly learn to understand the limitations and failure modes of newborns, and maintain that understanding as their children grow. Now human-human understanding is cheating, since we all share the same hardware architecture. But we have no problem with getting a grasp on animal behavior and limits either. Really all it takes is enough personal observation and interaction. It's like we're wired for "getting a feel" for complex systems over time.
  - brightlancer 3y ago
    > Humans themselves are black boxes too, and yet almost everyone grows to have a good handle on limitation of individuals, both in general and specific to contexts and individuals one encounters. IME, this is completely false. "Very smart people" regularly repeat absurd misinformation because they didn't do basic fact checking. Academics, politicians, bureaucrats, police, etc. regularly respond to challenges with an Appeal To Authority, and it _works_. We're AWFUL at this. > It's not just peer-level understanding - parents quickly learn to understand the limitations and failure modes of newborns, and maintain that understanding as their children grow. No, not as a general statement. Most parents are really bad at understanding the limitations of their children. Even school teachers (who took classes on understanding the limitations of children) are really bad at it.

dmix 3y ago

Oversimplifying things doesn’t help anyone here. People don’t understand the limitations of AI/LLMs because it wasn’t a normal part of their lives until recently. They don’t need to understand how it works to understand that it has limitations and it’s going to be occasionally wrong. The average person is well aware software isn’t perfect, things break all the time. This is no different. It’s not a leap to think people will start grasping what current AI can and can’t do simply through a) careful communication and mostly importantly b) using it themselves. Much of the talk about AI safety is just an elaborate dance around this idea that users will never understand the limitations and will freak out. But these high profile cases (and warning labels) are exactly how people will learn the flaws exist and they’ll get used to the process of it getting slowly better and better.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
That's a very good point. There's precedent for it too. Humans themselves are black boxes too, and yet almost everyone grows to have a good handle on limitation of individuals, both in general and specific to contexts and individuals one encounters. It's not just peer-level understanding - parents quickly learn to understand the limitations and failure modes of newborns, and maintain that understanding as their children grow. Now human-human understanding is cheating, since we all share the same hardware architecture. But we have no problem with getting a grasp on animal behavior and limits either. Really all it takes is enough personal observation and interaction. It's like we're wired for "getting a feel" for complex systems over time.
- brightlancer 3y ago
  > Humans themselves are black boxes too, and yet almost everyone grows to have a good handle on limitation of individuals, both in general and specific to contexts and individuals one encounters. IME, this is completely false. "Very smart people" regularly repeat absurd misinformation because they didn't do basic fact checking. Academics, politicians, bureaucrats, police, etc. regularly respond to challenges with an Appeal To Authority, and it _works_. We're AWFUL at this. > It's not just peer-level understanding - parents quickly learn to understand the limitations and failure modes of newborns, and maintain that understanding as their children grow. No, not as a general statement. Most parents are really bad at understanding the limitations of their children. Even school teachers (who took classes on understanding the limitations of children) are really bad at it.