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One thing I’ve noticed with the AI topic is how there is no discussion on how the name of a thing ends up shaping how we think about it. There is very obviousl

One thing I’ve noticed with the AI topic is how there is no discussion on how the name of a thing ends up shaping how we think about it. There is very obviously a marketing phenomenon happening now where “AI” is being added to the name of every product. Not because it’s actually AI in any rigorous or historical sense of the word, but because it’s trendy and helps you get investment dollars. I think one of the results of this is that the concept of AI itself increasingly becomes more muddled until it becomes indistinguishable from a word like “technology” and therefore useless for describing a particular phenomenon. You can already see this with the usage of “AGI” and “super intelligence” which from the definitions I’ve been reading, are not the same thing at all. AGI is/was supposed to be about achieving results of the average human being, not about a sci-fi AI god, and yet it seems like everyone is using them interchangeably. It’s very sloppy thinking. Instead I think the term AI is going to slowly become less marketing trendy, and will fade out over time, as all trendy marketing terms do. What will be left are actually useful enhancements to specific use cases - most of which will probably be referred to by a word other than AI.

jszymborski 2y ago
I say LLM when Im talking about LLMs, I say Generative ML when I'm talking about Generative ML, and I say ML when I'm talking about everything else. I don't know what AI is, and nobody else does, that's why they're selling you it.
RaftPeople 2y ago
Typically at this point in the hype cycle a new term emerges so companies can differentiate their hype from the pack. Next up: Synthetic Consciousness, "SC" Prediction: We will see this press release within 24 months: "Introducing the Acme Juice Squeezer with full Synthetic Consciousness ("SC"). It will not only squeeze your juice in the morning but will help you gently transition into the working day with an empathetic personality that is both supportive and a little spunky! Sold exclusively at these fine stores..."
- lproven 2y ago
  « A new generation of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots and computers, with the new GPP feature.” “GPP feature?” said Arthur. “What's that?” “Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities.” “Oh,” said Arthur, “sounds ghastly.” A voice behind them said, “It is.” The voice was low and hopeless and accompanied by a slight clanking sound. They span round and saw an abject steel man standing hunched in the doorway. “What?” they said. “Ghastly,” continued Marvin, “it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk about it. Look at this door,” he said, stepping through it. The irony circuits cut into his voice modulator as he mimicked the style of the sales brochure. “All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.” »
  - RaftPeople 2y ago
    :)
space_oddity 2y ago
Names carry powerful connotations and significantly shape how we think about and interact with technology
kelnos 2y ago
> There is very obviously a marketing phenomenon happening now where “AI” is being added to the name of every product. This isn't really a new phenomenon, though. The only thing new about it is that the marketing buzzword of the day is "AI". For a little while prior it was "machine learning". History is littered with examples of marketers and salespeople latching onto whatever is popular and trendy, and using it to sell, regardless if their product actually has anything to do with it.
elromulous 2y ago
+1. What happened to ML? With the relatively recent craze precipitated by chatgpt, the term AI (perhaps in no small part due to "OpenAI") has completely taken over. ML is a more apt description of the current wave.
- gwd 2y ago
  > What happened to ML? Well for one, five years ago, anyone doing machine learning was doing their own training -- you know, overseeing the actual learning part. Now, although there is learning involved in LLMs, you as the consumer aren't involved in that part. You're given API access (or at best a set of pre-trained weights) as a black box, and you do what you can with it.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 2y ago
  AI -> Machine learning -> Deep Learning -> LLM's - LMM's -> ?
  - notthatoldguy 2y ago
    AI -> Machine learning -> Deep Learning -> LLM's - LMM's new math for knowledge based systems <- ANN <- ML <- KRR <- LMM's
- keiferski 2y ago
  Yep, the difference is that ML doesn’t have the cultural legacy of the AI concept and thus isn’t as marketable.
- floren 2y ago
  After the AI Winter, people started calling it ML to avoid the stigma. Eventually ML got pretty good and a lot of the industry forgot the AI winter, so we're calling it AI again because it sounds cooler.
  - notthatoldguy 2y ago
    Interesting opinion but no AI is a science ML is just one of the areas of this science
mrcartmeneses 2y ago
Turbo
johnnyanmac 2y ago
Yeah, happens everytime. Remember when people were promising blockchain but had nothing to show for it (sometimes, not even an idea)? Or "cloud powered" for apps that barely made API calls? Remember when every and anything needed an app, even if it was just some static food menu? It's obvious BS from anyone in tech, but the people throwing money aren't in tech. >I think the term AI is going to slowly become less marketing trendy, and will fade out over time, as all trendy marketing terms do. What will be left are actually useful enhancements to specific use cases - most of which will probably be referred to by a word other than AI. it'll die down, but the marketing tends to stick, sadly. we'll have to deal with if AI means machine learning or LLMs or video game pathfinding for decades to come.
- Animats 2y ago
  > Remember when people were promising blockchain but had nothing to show for it (sometimes, not even an idea)? They're still on r/Metaverse_blockchain. Every day, a new "meme coin". Just in: "XXX - The AI-Powered Blockchain Project Revolutionizing the Crypto World! ... Where AI Meets Web3" "XXX is an advanced AI infrastructure that develops AI-powered technologies for the Web3, Blockchain, and Crypto space. We aim to improve the Web3 space for retail users & startups by developing AI-powered solutions designed explicitly for Web3. From LLMs to Web3 AI Tools, XXX is the go-to place to boost your Web3 flow with Artificial Intelligence."
  - Log_out_ 2y ago
    They too are a redlisted species now. Just prompt chatGPT to buisness speak wirh maximum buzzword boolshit and be amazed. When they came for the kool aid visionaries i was not afraid, cause I was not a grifter. This is a synergistic, paradigm-shifting piece of content that leverages cutting-edge, scalable innovation to deliver a robust, value-added user experience. It epitomizes next-gen, mission-critical insights and exemplifies best-in-class thought leadership within the dynamic ecosystem
somenameforme 2y ago
In the beginning I think some, if not many, people did genuinely think it was "AI". It was the closest we've ever gotten to a natural language interface and that genuinely felt really different than anything before, even to an extreme cynic. And I also think there's many people that want us to develop AI and so were trying to actively convince themselves that e.g. GPT or whatever was sentient. Maybe that Google engineer who claimed an early version of Bard was "sentient" even believed himself (though I still suspect that was probably just a marketing hoax). It's only now that everybody's used to natural language interfaces that I think we're becoming far less forgiving of things like this nonsense: --- - "How do I do (x)." - "You do (A)." - "No, that's wrong because reasons." - "Oh I'm sorry you're 100% right. Thank you for the correction. I'll keep that in mind in the future. You do (B)." - "No that's also wrong because reasons." - "Oh I'm sorry you're 100% right. Thank you for the correction. I'll keep that in mind in the future. You do (A)." - #$%^#$!!#$! ---
- ben_w 2y ago
  > In the beginning I think some, if not many, people did genuinely think it was "AI". Most people don't know what the academic discipline of AI involves, I've noticed a bit of that even on this website. LLMs, even the worst of them, are objectively is a member of the set of things which is termed AI by those working in that field. > (though I still suspect that was probably just a marketing hoax). He was fired for saying that it was sentient, and they didn't release the model externally at the time, and they only made Bard available in response to the competition from OpenAI/ChatGPT.
- pineaux 2y ago
  I love this. I want a t-shirt with this
- maigret 2y ago
  Yes, it's a language model, not a reasoning model. But people got confused at the start.
  - acuozzo 2y ago
    Or they are adherents to the hypothesis of Linguistic Determinism which preexisted LLMs by quite some time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism
jerieljan 2y ago
I'd like to think that AI right now is basically a placeholder term, like a search keyword or hot topic and people are riding the wave to get attention and clicks. Everything that is magic will be labeled under AI for now, until it gets seated into their proper terms and are only closely discussed by those who are actually driving innovation in the space or are just casually using the applications in business or private.
intended 2y ago
Hallucinations! A generative tool can’t Hallucinate! It isn’t misperceiving its base reality and data. Humans Hallucinate! ARGH. At least it’s becoming easier to point this out, compared to when ChatGPT came out.
- daemin 2y ago
  I liken current LLMs to that one uncle that can answer and has an opinion on everything even though he has actually no knowledge of the thing in question. Never says "I don't know", and never learns anything for more than a few moments before forgetting.
- DidYaWipe 2y ago
  Amen. But if you do, you'll still be attacked by apologists. Per the norm for any Internet forum... this one being a prime example.
- keiferski 2y ago
  Great example. People will say, “oh that’s just how the word is used now,” but its misuse betrays a real lack of rigorous thought about the subject. And as you point out, it leads one to make false assumptions about the nature of the data’s origin.
- mdp2021 2y ago
  Calculators compute; they have to compute reliably; humans are limited and can make computing mistakes. We want reliable tools - they have to give reliable results; humans are limited and can be unreliable. That is why we need the tools - humans are limited, we want tools that overcome human limitation. I really do not see where you intended to go with your post.
  - surfingdino 2y ago
    This. We have trained generations of people to trust computers to give correct answers. LLM peddlers use that trust to sell systems that provide unreliable answers.
  - 2y ago
surfingdino 2y ago
Couldn't agree more. We are seeing gradual degradation of the term AI. LLMs have stolen attention of the media and the general population and I notice that people equate ChatGPT with all of AI. It is not, but an average person doesn't know the difference. In a way, genAI is the worst thing that happened to AI. The ML part is amazing, it allows us to understand the world we live in, which is what we have evolved to seek and value, because there is an evolutionary benefit to it--survival; the generative side is not even a solution to any particular problem, it is a problem that we are forced to pay to make bigger. I wrote "forced", because companies like Adobe use their dominant position to override legal frameworks developed to protect intellectual property and client-creator contracts in order to grab content that is not theirs to train models they resell back to the people they stole content from and to subject ourselves to unsupervised, unaccountable policing of content.
- barber_the_dope 2y ago
  Very well written and thoughtful comment. Thank you.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > I wrote "forced", because companies like Adobe use their dominant position to override legal frameworks developed to protect intellectual property and client-creator contracts in order to grab content that is not theirs to train models they resell back to the people they stole content from and to subject ourselves to unsupervised, unaccountable policing of content. Adobe is an obnoxious company that does a lot of bad things, but it's weird to me seeing them cast in a negative light like this for their approach to model training copyright. As far as I know they were the first to have a genAI product that was trained exclusively on data that they had rights to under existing copyright law, rather than relying on a free use argument or just hoping the law would change around them. Out of all the companies who've built AI tooling they're the last one I'd expect to see dragged out as an example of copyright misbehavior.
  - wizzwizz4 2y ago
    > Out of all the companies who've built AI tooling they're the* last one I'd expect to see dragged out as an example of copyright misbehavior. I was surprised, too: I thought Adobe's main problem was their abusive pricing, and I was actually a little impressed by their take on this hype wave. And yet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40607442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40607442
davidgerard 2y ago
The term "artificial intelligence" was marketing from its creation. It means "your plastic pal who's fun to be with, especially if you don't have to pay him." Multiple disparate technologies all called "AI", because the term exists to sell you the prospect of magic.
namaria 2y ago
The 'intelligence' label has been applied to computers since the beginning and it always misleads people into expecting way more than they can deliver. The very first computers were called 'electronic brains' by newspapers. And this delay between people's mental images of what an 'intelligent' product can do and the actual benefits they get for their money once a new generation reaches the market creates this bullwhip effect in mood. Hence the 'AI winters'. And guess what, another one is brewing because tech people tend to think history is bunk and pay no attention to it.
- space_oddity 2y ago
  Newspapers often mislead people about stuff in general...
atoav 2y ago
The grifter is a nihilist. Nothing is holy to a grifter and if you let them they will rob every last word of its original meaning. The problem with AI, as perfectly clear outlined in this article, is the same as the problem with the blockchain or with other esotheric grifts: It drains needed resources from often already crumbling systems¹. The people falling for the hype beyond the actual usefulness of the hyped object are wishing for magical solutions that they imagine will solve all their problems. Problems that can't be fixed by wishful thinking, but by not fooling yourself and making technological choices that adequately address the problem. I am not saying that LLMs are never going to be a good choice to adequately address the problem. What I am saying is that people blinded by blockchain/AI/quantum/snakesoil hype are the wrong people to make that choice, as for them every problem needs to be tackled using the current hype. Meanwhile a true expert will weigh all available technological choices and carefully test them against the problem. So many things can be optimized and improved using hard, honest work, careful choices and a group of people trying hard not to fool themselves, this is how humanity managed to reach the moon. The people who stand in the way of our achievements are those who lost touch with reality, while actively making fools of themselves. Again: It is not about being "against" LLMs, it is about leaders admitting they don't know, when they do in fact not know. And a sure way to realize you don't know is to try yourself and fail. ¹ I had to think about my childhood friend, whose esotheric mother died of a preventable disease, because she fooled herself into believing into magical cures and gurus until the fatal end.
- fragmede 2y ago
  That is funny, because of all the problems with LLMs, the biggest one is that they will lie/hallucinate/confabulate to your face before saying I don't know, much like those leaders.
  - hengheng 2y ago
    Is this inherent to LLMs by the way, or is it a training choice? I would love for an LLM to talk more slowly when it is unsure. This topic needs careful consideration and I should use more brain cycles on it. Please insert another coin.
mdp2021 2y ago
> AGI is/was supposed to be about achieving results of the average human being, not about a sci-fi AI god When we build something we do not intend to build something that just achieves results «of the average human being», and a slow car, a weak crane, a vague clock are built provisionally in the process of achieving the superior aid intended... So AGI expects human level results provisionally, while the goal remains to go beyond them. The clash you see is only apparent. > I think the term AI is going to ... will fade out over time Are you aware that we have been using that term for at least 60 years? And that the Brownian minds of the masses very typically try to interfere while we proceed focusedly and regarding it as noise? Today they decide that the name is Anna, tomorrow Susie: childplay should remain undeterminant.
- keiferski 2y ago
  Building something that replicates the abilities of the average human being in no way implies that this eventually leads to a superintelligent entity. And my broader point was that many people are using the term AGI as synonymous with that superintelligent entity. The concepts are very poorly defined and thrown around without much deeper thought. > Are you aware that we have been using that term for at least 60 years? Yes, and for the first ±55 of those years, it was largely limited to science fiction stories and niche areas of computer science. In the last ±5 years, it's being added to everything. I can order groceries with AI, optimize my emails with AI, on and on. It's become exceptionally more widespread of a term recently. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=ai&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=... > And that the Brownian minds of the masses very typically try to interfere while we proceed focusedly and regarding it as noise? Today they decide that the name is Anna, tomorrow Susie: childplay should remain undeterminant. You're going to have to rephrase this sentence, because it's unclear what point you're trying to make other than "the masses are stupid." I'm not sure "the masses" are even relevant here, as I'm talking about individuals leading/working at AI companies.
  - mdp2021 2y ago
    I honestly never understood AGI as a simulation of Average Joe: it makes no sense to me. Either we go for the implementation of a high degree of intelligence, or why should we give an "important" name to "petty project" (however complicated, that can only be an effort that does not have an end in itself). Is it possible that the terminological confusion you see is because we are individually very radicated in our assumptions (e.g. "I want AGI as a primary module in Decision Support Systems")? > In the last ±5 years, it's being added to everything // I'm not sure "the masses" are even relevant here, as I'm talking about individuals leading/working at AI companies Who has «added to everything» the term AI? The «individuals leading/working at AI companies»? I would have said, the onlookers, or relatively marginal actors (e.g. marketing) who have an interest in the buzzword. So my point was: we will go on using he term in «niche [and not so niche] areas of computer science» irregardless of the outside noise.
maeln 2y ago
> One thing I’ve noticed with the AI topic is how there is no discussion on how the name of a thing ends up shaping how we think about it. There is very obviously a marketing phenomenon happening now where “AI” is being added to the name of every product. Not because it’s actually AI in any rigorous or historical sense of the word, but because it’s trendy and helps you get investment dollars. I was reading one famous book about investing some times ago (I don't remember which one exactly, I think it was a random walk into wall st, but don't quote me on that) and one chapter at the beginning of the book talk about the .com bubble and how companies, even ones who had nothing to do with the web, started to put .com or www in their name and were seeing an immediate bump in their stock price (until it all burst, as we know now). And every hype cycle / bubble is like that. We saw something similar with cryptocurrencies. For a while, every tech demos at dev convention had to have some relation to the "blockchain". We saw every variation of names ending in -coin. And a lot of company, that where not even in tech, had dumb project related to the blockchain, which for anyone slightly knowledgeable with the tech it was clear that it was complete BS, and they almost all the time were quietly killed off after a few month. To a much lesser extent, we saw the same with "BigData" (who even use this word anymore?) and AR/VR/XR. And now its AI, until the next recession and/or the next shiny thing that makes for amazing demos pops-out. It is not to say that it is all fake. There is always some genuine business that have actual use case with the tech and will probably survive the burst (or get brought up and live on has MS/Google/AWS Thingamajig). But you have to be pretty naïve if you think 99% of the current AI company will live in the next 5 years, and believe their marketing material. But it doesn't matter if you manage to sell before the bubble pop, and so the cycle continue.
- immibis 2y ago
  Long Island Iced Tea renamed to Long Island Blockchain for a stock price bump.
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    Hah, I forgot about that, and their subsequent delisting. That was about as blatantly criminal as you could get and in that particular hype train I remember some noise about that but not nearly enough.
konfusinomicon 2y ago
AI should be re-acronymed to mean Algorithmic Insights. artificial intelligence is akin to a ziplock bag doing algebra with no external interactions

jszymborski 2y ago

I say LLM when Im talking about LLMs, I say Generative ML when I'm talking about Generative ML, and I say ML when I'm talking about everything else. I don't know what AI is, and nobody else does, that's why they're selling you it.

RaftPeople 2y ago

Typically at this point in the hype cycle a new term emerges so companies can differentiate their hype from the pack. Next up: Synthetic Consciousness, "SC" Prediction: We will see this press release within 24 months: "Introducing the Acme Juice Squeezer with full Synthetic Consciousness ("SC"). It will not only squeeze your juice in the morning but will help you gently transition into the working day with an empathetic personality that is both supportive and a little spunky! Sold exclusively at these fine stores..."

lproven 2y ago
« A new generation of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots and computers, with the new GPP feature.” “GPP feature?” said Arthur. “What's that?” “Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities.” “Oh,” said Arthur, “sounds ghastly.” A voice behind them said, “It is.” The voice was low and hopeless and accompanied by a slight clanking sound. They span round and saw an abject steel man standing hunched in the doorway. “What?” they said. “Ghastly,” continued Marvin, “it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk about it. Look at this door,” he said, stepping through it. The irony circuits cut into his voice modulator as he mimicked the style of the sales brochure. “All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.” »
- RaftPeople 2y ago
  :)

space_oddity 2y ago

Names carry powerful connotations and significantly shape how we think about and interact with technology

kelnos 2y ago

> There is very obviously a marketing phenomenon happening now where “AI” is being added to the name of every product. This isn't really a new phenomenon, though. The only thing new about it is that the marketing buzzword of the day is "AI". For a little while prior it was "machine learning". History is littered with examples of marketers and salespeople latching onto whatever is popular and trendy, and using it to sell, regardless if their product actually has anything to do with it.

elromulous 2y ago

+1. What happened to ML? With the relatively recent craze precipitated by chatgpt, the term AI (perhaps in no small part due to "OpenAI") has completely taken over. ML is a more apt description of the current wave.

gwd 2y ago
> What happened to ML? Well for one, five years ago, anyone doing machine learning was doing their own training -- you know, overseeing the actual learning part. Now, although there is learning involved in LLMs, you as the consumer aren't involved in that part. You're given API access (or at best a set of pre-trained weights) as a black box, and you do what you can with it.
TrapLord_Rhodo 2y ago
AI -> Machine learning -> Deep Learning -> LLM's - LMM's -> ?
- notthatoldguy 2y ago
  AI -> Machine learning -> Deep Learning -> LLM's - LMM's new math for knowledge based systems <- ANN <- ML <- KRR <- LMM's
keiferski 2y ago
Yep, the difference is that ML doesn’t have the cultural legacy of the AI concept and thus isn’t as marketable.
floren 2y ago
After the AI Winter, people started calling it ML to avoid the stigma. Eventually ML got pretty good and a lot of the industry forgot the AI winter, so we're calling it AI again because it sounds cooler.
- notthatoldguy 2y ago
  Interesting opinion but no AI is a science ML is just one of the areas of this science

mrcartmeneses 2y ago

Turbo

johnnyanmac 2y ago

Yeah, happens everytime. Remember when people were promising blockchain but had nothing to show for it (sometimes, not even an idea)? Or "cloud powered" for apps that barely made API calls? Remember when every and anything needed an app, even if it was just some static food menu? It's obvious BS from anyone in tech, but the people throwing money aren't in tech. >I think the term AI is going to slowly become less marketing trendy, and will fade out over time, as all trendy marketing terms do. What will be left are actually useful enhancements to specific use cases - most of which will probably be referred to by a word other than AI. it'll die down, but the marketing tends to stick, sadly. we'll have to deal with if AI means machine learning or LLMs or video game pathfinding for decades to come.

Animats 2y ago
> Remember when people were promising blockchain but had nothing to show for it (sometimes, not even an idea)? They're still on r/Metaverse_blockchain. Every day, a new "meme coin". Just in: "XXX - The AI-Powered Blockchain Project Revolutionizing the Crypto World! ... Where AI Meets Web3" "XXX is an advanced AI infrastructure that develops AI-powered technologies for the Web3, Blockchain, and Crypto space. We aim to improve the Web3 space for retail users & startups by developing AI-powered solutions designed explicitly for Web3. From LLMs to Web3 AI Tools, XXX is the go-to place to boost your Web3 flow with Artificial Intelligence."
- Log_out_ 2y ago
  They too are a redlisted species now. Just prompt chatGPT to buisness speak wirh maximum buzzword boolshit and be amazed. When they came for the kool aid visionaries i was not afraid, cause I was not a grifter. This is a synergistic, paradigm-shifting piece of content that leverages cutting-edge, scalable innovation to deliver a robust, value-added user experience. It epitomizes next-gen, mission-critical insights and exemplifies best-in-class thought leadership within the dynamic ecosystem

somenameforme 2y ago

In the beginning I think some, if not many, people did genuinely think it was "AI". It was the closest we've ever gotten to a natural language interface and that genuinely felt really different than anything before, even to an extreme cynic. And I also think there's many people that want us to develop AI and so were trying to actively convince themselves that e.g. GPT or whatever was sentient. Maybe that Google engineer who claimed an early version of Bard was "sentient" even believed himself (though I still suspect that was probably just a marketing hoax). It's only now that everybody's used to natural language interfaces that I think we're becoming far less forgiving of things like this nonsense: --- - "How do I do (x)." - "You do (A)." - "No, that's wrong because reasons." - "Oh I'm sorry you're 100% right. Thank you for the correction. I'll keep that in mind in the future. You do (B)." - "No that's also wrong because reasons." - "Oh I'm sorry you're 100% right. Thank you for the correction. I'll keep that in mind in the future. You do (A)." - #$%^#$!!#$! ---

ben_w 2y ago
> In the beginning I think some, if not many, people did genuinely think it was "AI". Most people don't know what the academic discipline of AI involves, I've noticed a bit of that even on this website. LLMs, even the worst of them, are objectively is a member of the set of things which is termed AI by those working in that field. > (though I still suspect that was probably just a marketing hoax). He was fired for saying that it was sentient, and they didn't release the model externally at the time, and they only made Bard available in response to the competition from OpenAI/ChatGPT.
pineaux 2y ago
I love this. I want a t-shirt with this
maigret 2y ago
Yes, it's a language model, not a reasoning model. But people got confused at the start.
- acuozzo 2y ago
  Or they are adherents to the hypothesis of Linguistic Determinism which preexisted LLMs by quite some time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism

jerieljan 2y ago

I'd like to think that AI right now is basically a placeholder term, like a search keyword or hot topic and people are riding the wave to get attention and clicks. Everything that is magic will be labeled under AI for now, until it gets seated into their proper terms and are only closely discussed by those who are actually driving innovation in the space or are just casually using the applications in business or private.

intended 2y ago

Hallucinations! A generative tool can’t Hallucinate! It isn’t misperceiving its base reality and data. Humans Hallucinate! ARGH. At least it’s becoming easier to point this out, compared to when ChatGPT came out.

daemin 2y ago
I liken current LLMs to that one uncle that can answer and has an opinion on everything even though he has actually no knowledge of the thing in question. Never says "I don't know", and never learns anything for more than a few moments before forgetting.
DidYaWipe 2y ago
Amen. But if you do, you'll still be attacked by apologists. Per the norm for any Internet forum... this one being a prime example.
keiferski 2y ago
Great example. People will say, “oh that’s just how the word is used now,” but its misuse betrays a real lack of rigorous thought about the subject. And as you point out, it leads one to make false assumptions about the nature of the data’s origin.
mdp2021 2y ago
Calculators compute; they have to compute reliably; humans are limited and can make computing mistakes. We want reliable tools - they have to give reliable results; humans are limited and can be unreliable. That is why we need the tools - humans are limited, we want tools that overcome human limitation. I really do not see where you intended to go with your post.
- surfingdino 2y ago
  This. We have trained generations of people to trust computers to give correct answers. LLM peddlers use that trust to sell systems that provide unreliable answers.
- 2y ago

surfingdino 2y ago

Couldn't agree more. We are seeing gradual degradation of the term AI. LLMs have stolen attention of the media and the general population and I notice that people equate ChatGPT with all of AI. It is not, but an average person doesn't know the difference. In a way, genAI is the worst thing that happened to AI. The ML part is amazing, it allows us to understand the world we live in, which is what we have evolved to seek and value, because there is an evolutionary benefit to it--survival; the generative side is not even a solution to any particular problem, it is a problem that we are forced to pay to make bigger. I wrote "forced", because companies like Adobe use their dominant position to override legal frameworks developed to protect intellectual property and client-creator contracts in order to grab content that is not theirs to train models they resell back to the people they stole content from and to subject ourselves to unsupervised, unaccountable policing of content.

barber_the_dope 2y ago
Very well written and thoughtful comment. Thank you.
lolinder 2y ago
> I wrote "forced", because companies like Adobe use their dominant position to override legal frameworks developed to protect intellectual property and client-creator contracts in order to grab content that is not theirs to train models they resell back to the people they stole content from and to subject ourselves to unsupervised, unaccountable policing of content. Adobe is an obnoxious company that does a lot of bad things, but it's weird to me seeing them cast in a negative light like this for their approach to model training copyright. As far as I know they were the first to have a genAI product that was trained exclusively on data that they had rights to under existing copyright law, rather than relying on a free use argument or just hoping the law would change around them. Out of all the companies who've built AI tooling they're the last one I'd expect to see dragged out as an example of copyright misbehavior.
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  > Out of all the companies who've built AI tooling they're the* last one I'd expect to see dragged out as an example of copyright misbehavior. I was surprised, too: I thought Adobe's main problem was their abusive pricing, and I was actually a little impressed by their take on this hype wave. And yet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40607442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40607442

davidgerard 2y ago

The term "artificial intelligence" was marketing from its creation. It means "your plastic pal who's fun to be with, especially if you don't have to pay him." Multiple disparate technologies all called "AI", because the term exists to sell you the prospect of magic.

namaria 2y ago

The 'intelligence' label has been applied to computers since the beginning and it always misleads people into expecting way more than they can deliver. The very first computers were called 'electronic brains' by newspapers. And this delay between people's mental images of what an 'intelligent' product can do and the actual benefits they get for their money once a new generation reaches the market creates this bullwhip effect in mood. Hence the 'AI winters'. And guess what, another one is brewing because tech people tend to think history is bunk and pay no attention to it.

space_oddity 2y ago
Newspapers often mislead people about stuff in general...

atoav 2y ago

The grifter is a nihilist. Nothing is holy to a grifter and if you let them they will rob every last word of its original meaning. The problem with AI, as perfectly clear outlined in this article, is the same as the problem with the blockchain or with other esotheric grifts: It drains needed resources from often already crumbling systems¹. The people falling for the hype beyond the actual usefulness of the hyped object are wishing for magical solutions that they imagine will solve all their problems. Problems that can't be fixed by wishful thinking, but by not fooling yourself and making technological choices that adequately address the problem. I am not saying that LLMs are never going to be a good choice to adequately address the problem. What I am saying is that people blinded by blockchain/AI/quantum/snakesoil hype are the wrong people to make that choice, as for them every problem needs to be tackled using the current hype. Meanwhile a true expert will weigh all available technological choices and carefully test them against the problem. So many things can be optimized and improved using hard, honest work, careful choices and a group of people trying hard not to fool themselves, this is how humanity managed to reach the moon. The people who stand in the way of our achievements are those who lost touch with reality, while actively making fools of themselves. Again: It is not about being "against" LLMs, it is about leaders admitting they don't know, when they do in fact not know. And a sure way to realize you don't know is to try yourself and fail. ¹ I had to think about my childhood friend, whose esotheric mother died of a preventable disease, because she fooled herself into believing into magical cures and gurus until the fatal end.

fragmede 2y ago
That is funny, because of all the problems with LLMs, the biggest one is that they will lie/hallucinate/confabulate to your face before saying I don't know, much like those leaders.
- hengheng 2y ago
  Is this inherent to LLMs by the way, or is it a training choice? I would love for an LLM to talk more slowly when it is unsure. This topic needs careful consideration and I should use more brain cycles on it. Please insert another coin.

mdp2021 2y ago

> AGI is/was supposed to be about achieving results of the average human being, not about a sci-fi AI god When we build something we do not intend to build something that just achieves results «of the average human being», and a slow car, a weak crane, a vague clock are built provisionally in the process of achieving the superior aid intended... So AGI expects human level results provisionally, while the goal remains to go beyond them. The clash you see is only apparent. > I think the term AI is going to ... will fade out over time Are you aware that we have been using that term for at least 60 years? And that the Brownian minds of the masses very typically try to interfere while we proceed focusedly and regarding it as noise? Today they decide that the name is Anna, tomorrow Susie: childplay should remain undeterminant.

keiferski 2y ago
Building something that replicates the abilities of the average human being in no way implies that this eventually leads to a superintelligent entity. And my broader point was that many people are using the term AGI as synonymous with that superintelligent entity. The concepts are very poorly defined and thrown around without much deeper thought. > Are you aware that we have been using that term for at least 60 years? Yes, and for the first ±55 of those years, it was largely limited to science fiction stories and niche areas of computer science. In the last ±5 years, it's being added to everything. I can order groceries with AI, optimize my emails with AI, on and on. It's become exceptionally more widespread of a term recently. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=ai&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=... > And that the Brownian minds of the masses very typically try to interfere while we proceed focusedly and regarding it as noise? Today they decide that the name is Anna, tomorrow Susie: childplay should remain undeterminant. You're going to have to rephrase this sentence, because it's unclear what point you're trying to make other than "the masses are stupid." I'm not sure "the masses" are even relevant here, as I'm talking about individuals leading/working at AI companies.
- mdp2021 2y ago
  I honestly never understood AGI as a simulation of Average Joe: it makes no sense to me. Either we go for the implementation of a high degree of intelligence, or why should we give an "important" name to "petty project" (however complicated, that can only be an effort that does not have an end in itself). Is it possible that the terminological confusion you see is because we are individually very radicated in our assumptions (e.g. "I want AGI as a primary module in Decision Support Systems")? > In the last ±5 years, it's being added to everything // I'm not sure "the masses" are even relevant here, as I'm talking about individuals leading/working at AI companies Who has «added to everything» the term AI? The «individuals leading/working at AI companies»? I would have said, the onlookers, or relatively marginal actors (e.g. marketing) who have an interest in the buzzword. So my point was: we will go on using he term in «niche [and not so niche] areas of computer science» irregardless of the outside noise.

maeln 2y ago

> One thing I’ve noticed with the AI topic is how there is no discussion on how the name of a thing ends up shaping how we think about it. There is very obviously a marketing phenomenon happening now where “AI” is being added to the name of every product. Not because it’s actually AI in any rigorous or historical sense of the word, but because it’s trendy and helps you get investment dollars. I was reading one famous book about investing some times ago (I don't remember which one exactly, I think it was a random walk into wall st, but don't quote me on that) and one chapter at the beginning of the book talk about the .com bubble and how companies, even ones who had nothing to do with the web, started to put .com or www in their name and were seeing an immediate bump in their stock price (until it all burst, as we know now). And every hype cycle / bubble is like that. We saw something similar with cryptocurrencies. For a while, every tech demos at dev convention had to have some relation to the "blockchain". We saw every variation of names ending in -coin. And a lot of company, that where not even in tech, had dumb project related to the blockchain, which for anyone slightly knowledgeable with the tech it was clear that it was complete BS, and they almost all the time were quietly killed off after a few month. To a much lesser extent, we saw the same with "BigData" (who even use this word anymore?) and AR/VR/XR. And now its AI, until the next recession and/or the next shiny thing that makes for amazing demos pops-out. It is not to say that it is all fake. There is always some genuine business that have actual use case with the tech and will probably survive the burst (or get brought up and live on has MS/Google/AWS Thingamajig). But you have to be pretty naïve if you think 99% of the current AI company will live in the next 5 years, and believe their marketing material. But it doesn't matter if you manage to sell before the bubble pop, and so the cycle continue.

immibis 2y ago
Long Island Iced Tea renamed to Long Island Blockchain for a stock price bump.
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  Hah, I forgot about that, and their subsequent delisting. That was about as blatantly criminal as you could get and in that particular hype train I remember some noise about that but not nearly enough.

konfusinomicon 2y ago

AI should be re-acronymed to mean Algorithmic Insights. artificial intelligence is akin to a ziplock bag doing algebra with no external interactions