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> calling the use of neural networks in statistical work "AI" is misleading at best. Neural Networks are not considered AI anymore? That just reinforces my th

> calling the use of neural networks in statistical work "AI" is misleading at best. Neural Networks are not considered AI anymore? That just reinforces my thesis that "AI" is an ever sliding window that means "something we don't yet have". Voice recognition used to be firmly in the "AI" camp and received grants from even the military. Now we have that on wrist watches (admittedly with some computation offloaded) and nobody cares. Expert systems were once very much "AI". LLMs will suffer the same treatment pretty soon. Just wait.

depereo 3y ago
Another entry in the 'marketing and technical terms don't mean the same thing despite using the same words' saga.
dartos 3y ago
The current usage of AI is a rather new market term. Where would you draw the line? Is prediction via linear regression AI? Also language is fuzzy and fluid, get used to it.
- Jensson 3y ago
  It was called machine learning 10 years ago since AI had bad connotations, but today people have forgotten and call it all AI again.
beeboobaa 3y ago
AI has always meant Artificial Intelligence. Intelligent and capable of learning, like a person. LLMs are not AI.
- outworlder 3y ago
  > LLMs are not AI. Neither are neural networks, by that definition. Or 'machine learning' in general. They all have been called "AI" at different points in time. Even expert systems – that are glorified IF statements – they were supposed to replace doctors.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    People thought those techniques would ultimately become something intelligent, so AI, but they fizzled out. That isn't the doubters moving the goalposts, that is the optimists moving the goal posts always thinking what we have now is the golden ticket to truly intelligent systems.
  - beeboobaa 3y ago
    Correct, we don't have AI yet.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  Some people are incapable of learning. Therefore, LLMs are AI? As far as I recall, the turing test was developed long ago to give a practical answer to what was and was not practically artificial intelligence because the debate over the definition is much older than we are
  - kristov 3y ago
    I think the Turing test is subjective, because the result depends on who was giving the test and for how long.
  - beeboobaa 3y ago
    Everyone is capable of learning else they'd have died as a toddler, or any time since when they tried to cross the road.
kromem 3y ago
Pretty soon? I already regularly see people proudly stating that LLMs "aren't really AI" and just "a Markov chain" (yeah sure, let's ignore the self-attention mechanism of transformers which violate the Markov property). For the sake of my sanity I've just started tuning out what anyone says about AI outside of specialist spaces and forums. I welcome educated disagreement from my positions, but I really can't take the antivaxx equivalent in machine learning anymore.
- mort96 3y ago
  What if we hold off on calling it AI until it shows sign of intelligence
  - cwillu 3y ago
    And what signs of intelligence are we looking for this year?
    - mort96 3y ago
      Some sign that it's more than autocomplete would be nice, maybe the ability to perform some kind of logical reasoning. ChatGPT does a good job of putting up an illusion of human-like intelligence, but speak to it for like 10 minutes and its nature as a plausible text generator quickly makes itself apparent
  - jhbadger 3y ago
    Chess was a major topic of AI research for decades because playing a good game of chess was seen as a sign of intelligence. Until computers started playing better than people and we decided it didn't count for some reason. It reminds me of the (real) quote by I.I. Rabi that got used in Nolan's movie when Rabi was frustrated with how the committee was minimizing the accomplishments of Oppenheimer: "We have an A-bomb! What more do you want, mermaids?"
    - Jensson 3y ago
      They chased chess since they thought if they could solve chess then AGI would be close. They were wrong, so then they moved the goalpost to something more complicated thinking that new thing would lead to AGI. Repeat forever. > we decided it didn't count for some reason Optimists did move their goals once you realized that solving chess actually didn't lead anywhere, and then they blamed the pessimists for moving even though pessimists mostly stayed still throughout these AI hype waves. It is funny that optimists constantly are wrong and have to move their goal like that, yes, but people tend to point the finger at the wrong people here. The AI winter came from AI optimists constantly moving the goalposts like that, constantly saying "we are almost there, the goal is just that next thing and we are basically done!". AI pessimists doesn't do that, all that came from the optimists that tried to get more funding. And we see that exact same thing play out today, a lot of AI optimists clamoring for massive amounts of money because they are close to AGI, just like what we have seen in the past. Maybe they are right this time, but this time just like back then it is those optimists that are setting and moving the goal posts.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jijijijij 3y ago
Maybe it's a good indicator of misuse when the paper didn't mention 'AI', or 'intelligence' once. > my thesis that "AI" is an ever sliding window that means "something we don't yet have Or maybe it's the sliding window of "well, turns out this ain't it, there is more to intelligence than we wanted it to be". If everything is intelligent, nothing is. If you define pattern recognition as intelligence, you'd be challenged to find unintelligent lifeforms, for example. You haven't learned to recognize faces, you are literally born with this ability. And well, life at least has agency. Is evolution itself intelligent? What about water slowly wearing down rock into canyons?

depereo 3y ago

Another entry in the 'marketing and technical terms don't mean the same thing despite using the same words' saga.

dartos 3y ago

The current usage of AI is a rather new market term. Where would you draw the line? Is prediction via linear regression AI? Also language is fuzzy and fluid, get used to it.

Jensson 3y ago
It was called machine learning 10 years ago since AI had bad connotations, but today people have forgotten and call it all AI again.

beeboobaa 3y ago

AI has always meant Artificial Intelligence. Intelligent and capable of learning, like a person. LLMs are not AI.

outworlder 3y ago
> LLMs are not AI. Neither are neural networks, by that definition. Or 'machine learning' in general. They all have been called "AI" at different points in time. Even expert systems – that are glorified IF statements – they were supposed to replace doctors.
- Jensson 3y ago
  People thought those techniques would ultimately become something intelligent, so AI, but they fizzled out. That isn't the doubters moving the goalposts, that is the optimists moving the goal posts always thinking what we have now is the golden ticket to truly intelligent systems.
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  Correct, we don't have AI yet.
readthenotes1 3y ago
Some people are incapable of learning. Therefore, LLMs are AI? As far as I recall, the turing test was developed long ago to give a practical answer to what was and was not practically artificial intelligence because the debate over the definition is much older than we are
- kristov 3y ago
  I think the Turing test is subjective, because the result depends on who was giving the test and for how long.
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  Everyone is capable of learning else they'd have died as a toddler, or any time since when they tried to cross the road.

kromem 3y ago

Pretty soon? I already regularly see people proudly stating that LLMs "aren't really AI" and just "a Markov chain" (yeah sure, let's ignore the self-attention mechanism of transformers which violate the Markov property). For the sake of my sanity I've just started tuning out what anyone says about AI outside of specialist spaces and forums. I welcome educated disagreement from my positions, but I really can't take the antivaxx equivalent in machine learning anymore.

mort96 3y ago
What if we hold off on calling it AI until it shows sign of intelligence
- cwillu 3y ago
  And what signs of intelligence are we looking for this year?
  - mort96 3y ago
    Some sign that it's more than autocomplete would be nice, maybe the ability to perform some kind of logical reasoning. ChatGPT does a good job of putting up an illusion of human-like intelligence, but speak to it for like 10 minutes and its nature as a plausible text generator quickly makes itself apparent
- jhbadger 3y ago
  Chess was a major topic of AI research for decades because playing a good game of chess was seen as a sign of intelligence. Until computers started playing better than people and we decided it didn't count for some reason. It reminds me of the (real) quote by I.I. Rabi that got used in Nolan's movie when Rabi was frustrated with how the committee was minimizing the accomplishments of Oppenheimer: "We have an A-bomb! What more do you want, mermaids?"
  - Jensson 3y ago
    They chased chess since they thought if they could solve chess then AGI would be close. They were wrong, so then they moved the goalpost to something more complicated thinking that new thing would lead to AGI. Repeat forever. > we decided it didn't count for some reason Optimists did move their goals once you realized that solving chess actually didn't lead anywhere, and then they blamed the pessimists for moving even though pessimists mostly stayed still throughout these AI hype waves. It is funny that optimists constantly are wrong and have to move their goal like that, yes, but people tend to point the finger at the wrong people here. The AI winter came from AI optimists constantly moving the goalposts like that, constantly saying "we are almost there, the goal is just that next thing and we are basically done!". AI pessimists doesn't do that, all that came from the optimists that tried to get more funding. And we see that exact same thing play out today, a lot of AI optimists clamoring for massive amounts of money because they are close to AGI, just like what we have seen in the past. Maybe they are right this time, but this time just like back then it is those optimists that are setting and moving the goal posts.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jijijijij 3y ago

Maybe it's a good indicator of misuse when the paper didn't mention 'AI', or 'intelligence' once. > my thesis that "AI" is an ever sliding window that means "something we don't yet have Or maybe it's the sliding window of "well, turns out this ain't it, there is more to intelligence than we wanted it to be". If everything is intelligent, nothing is. If you define pattern recognition as intelligence, you'd be challenged to find unintelligent lifeforms, for example. You haven't learned to recognize faces, you are literally born with this ability. And well, life at least has agency. Is evolution itself intelligent? What about water slowly wearing down rock into canyons?