3 ms·

My worry with the current generation of LLMs branded as "AI" that at some point in the future long time after LLMs become fully obsolete, a new kind of AI tech

My worry with the current generation of LLMs branded as "AI" that at some point in the future long time after LLMs become fully obsolete, a new kind of AI tech will come along and it will be difficult to brand it because "AI" was already used before (see LLMs) and has negative snake-oil connotations. It's like humans calling the period they live in "contemporary". It make as little sense for stone age people to do it, as it did for medieval people and as it does for us. We need to start thinking more about the future and not the 10-years from now future but the 300 years from now future.

schmorptron 2y ago
I think that's the least of the problems, if there's anything we're good at it's adding superlatives to product names. You can call it Hyperintelligence, Quantum Intelligence. Although you have a point with the snake-oil connotations, which is hilarious because it's only because of overpromising. The tech that LLMs are today is absolutely mindblowing and not something I could have predicted 5 years ago in the days of GPT2.
lovich 2y ago
No need to worry, we’ve gone through this several times before https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter
Over2Chars 2y ago
AI has survived as a name for a few decades now. My prediction, based on no evidence or theory other than "the future will be like today, only in the future" is that AI will be called AI 300 years from now. Do you feel better now?
thih9 2y ago
Apple is exceptionally good at this, they have their own names for everything – from retina display to spatial computing, including calling AI “apple intelligence”. But this is popular outside of apple too, e.g. some years ago we decided to call servers “the cloud”. That new AI tech might be branded as something else but I doubt it would be a problem.
strogonoff 2y ago
“AI” is a vague non-term. In a way, it’s not unlike “DEI”. For some it denotes a useful idea and a mark of progress, for others it is a manifestation of doom, and in practical reality it is a trigger word to obtain investment, serve corporate optics and increase shareholder value. No one agrees on what “AI” means and most people do not have a good working definition, other than “hype alias for ML”. ML is not a perfect term for marketing use, either. It is obscure, and to many people “learning” hints at some sort of human-like education process (though it is an industry term that does not imply anything of the sort). I believe the most correct term to use in marketing and branding is… well, none. It is an implementation detail that presumably makes the product better at addressing certain problems or otherwise improve customer’s life. Talk about that instead.
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Agentus 2y ago
The semantic debate over the label “AI” continues. While I think some of these concerns of AI for haphazardly inserted llms or other learning algorithms inserted into a product might have some merit i think ultimately it might fail to recognize the source of the problem isnt in bad use of labels but is fundamental to label usage itself. The ship of Theseus conundrum has some lessons applicable to this. really its easy to point a label at tangible visual stuff, but pointing a label at more ephemeral stuff creates all manners of issues. First i’d be willing to say this following statement is true: ‘humans invented object identities and invented the labels, and also both the label machine and the labels pointing at identities they want to label’, well i guess darwin invented the machinery but humans willfully made the first use out of the machinery for that purpose. if humans choose to make labels and define where labels are applicable, theres never going to be an objective true valid standard sense of a word, except by convention but even that rests on ‘objective’ quicksand, unfortunately. beyond an argument on linguistics and the philosophy of language, that still leaves the substances of intelligence itself. while llms have clear huge gaps in inadequacies, i suspect its not far off from human capabilities by algorithm adjustments, adding architecture modularly (like reasoning), and ultimately through distillation and transfer learning, plus new techniques. Because of that, even dumb haphazardly shoehorned llms might surprisingly be closer to intelligence (or a core component thereof) than what even the most ardent semantic nazis would consider ( or archnemesis to LLms, PhD, Gary Marcus, orrrr also famous naysayer and contrarian, Yann Lecunn). 300 years on the exponential singularity timescale might actually be 5 to 10 years. but maybe it might be akin to TV standards of black before TVs became capable of true black. grey was black until oleds and now previous tv formats of black, aka really grey, can now retroactively be reclassified as grey. or how about usage of the words unlimited when it comes to cellular data. those naughty marketers and their definition bending usage of words.

schmorptron 2y ago

I think that's the least of the problems, if there's anything we're good at it's adding superlatives to product names. You can call it Hyperintelligence, Quantum Intelligence. Although you have a point with the snake-oil connotations, which is hilarious because it's only because of overpromising. The tech that LLMs are today is absolutely mindblowing and not something I could have predicted 5 years ago in the days of GPT2.

lovich 2y ago

No need to worry, we’ve gone through this several times before https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter

Over2Chars 2y ago

AI has survived as a name for a few decades now. My prediction, based on no evidence or theory other than "the future will be like today, only in the future" is that AI will be called AI 300 years from now. Do you feel better now?

thih9 2y ago

Apple is exceptionally good at this, they have their own names for everything – from retina display to spatial computing, including calling AI “apple intelligence”. But this is popular outside of apple too, e.g. some years ago we decided to call servers “the cloud”. That new AI tech might be branded as something else but I doubt it would be a problem.

strogonoff 2y ago

“AI” is a vague non-term. In a way, it’s not unlike “DEI”. For some it denotes a useful idea and a mark of progress, for others it is a manifestation of doom, and in practical reality it is a trigger word to obtain investment, serve corporate optics and increase shareholder value. No one agrees on what “AI” means and most people do not have a good working definition, other than “hype alias for ML”. ML is not a perfect term for marketing use, either. It is obscure, and to many people “learning” hints at some sort of human-like education process (though it is an industry term that does not imply anything of the sort). I believe the most correct term to use in marketing and branding is… well, none. It is an implementation detail that presumably makes the product better at addressing certain problems or otherwise improve customer’s life. Talk about that instead.

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Agentus 2y ago

The semantic debate over the label “AI” continues. While I think some of these concerns of AI for haphazardly inserted llms or other learning algorithms inserted into a product might have some merit i think ultimately it might fail to recognize the source of the problem isnt in bad use of labels but is fundamental to label usage itself. The ship of Theseus conundrum has some lessons applicable to this. really its easy to point a label at tangible visual stuff, but pointing a label at more ephemeral stuff creates all manners of issues. First i’d be willing to say this following statement is true: ‘humans invented object identities and invented the labels, and also both the label machine and the labels pointing at identities they want to label’, well i guess darwin invented the machinery but humans willfully made the first use out of the machinery for that purpose. if humans choose to make labels and define where labels are applicable, theres never going to be an objective true valid standard sense of a word, except by convention but even that rests on ‘objective’ quicksand, unfortunately. beyond an argument on linguistics and the philosophy of language, that still leaves the substances of intelligence itself. while llms have clear huge gaps in inadequacies, i suspect its not far off from human capabilities by algorithm adjustments, adding architecture modularly (like reasoning), and ultimately through distillation and transfer learning, plus new techniques. Because of that, even dumb haphazardly shoehorned llms might surprisingly be closer to intelligence (or a core component thereof) than what even the most ardent semantic nazis would consider ( or archnemesis to LLms, PhD, Gary Marcus, orrrr also famous naysayer and contrarian, Yann Lecunn). 300 years on the exponential singularity timescale might actually be 5 to 10 years. but maybe it might be akin to TV standards of black before TVs became capable of true black. grey was black until oleds and now previous tv formats of black, aka really grey, can now retroactively be reclassified as grey. or how about usage of the words unlimited when it comes to cellular data. those naughty marketers and their definition bending usage of words.