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I don't think we have a different usage based on the label "intelligent" or "not intelligent". I would leave this discussion to (armchair) philosophers, and foc

by soco 2y ago

I don't think we have a different usage based on the label "intelligent" or "not intelligent". I would leave this discussion to (armchair) philosophers, and focus on the utility and risks - which are exactly the same, regardless of the label we put on the box, because the products in the box do exist and act in the same way. An automaton with access to the red button can kill humanity just the same as an AI with access to the red button - the problem is giving it access to the red button, which the AI fans often seem all to happy to give.

_heimdall 2y ago
Words matter though, if one wants to call it intelligence we first have to define what that means then use that definition. Plenty of people have tried to define it and there's isn't one answer for that, but I've never seen anyone argue that intelligence boils down only to computation. To call these tools intelligent means that there is more to it than computation, and that's an important difference. The risks aren't the same here. Computation, if we want to say these "AI" tools are nothing more than complex math, is only as risky as the person using it. Intelligence is potentially more dangerous, regardless of what traits you may think is required in addition to computation to make it intelligent. We don't actually know how these LLMs work at time of inference and we can't analyze the trained dataset to understand why it would give an answer. That's fairly benign under the "its just computation" view, but that black box is full of unknown risk with any definition of intelligence because we don't actually understand how the thing works, why it does what it does, or what it will do next.
- soco 2y ago
  An unhinged man with a gun is significantly riskier than an unhinged man without a gun, so I'm not sure I get your argument. But if you mean it in the philosophical/categorizational way, I'll just move on because I don't have the knowledge or the interest to label big things while they're flying towards my head - I rather duck first and see afterwards what they were.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    Right, an unhindged man with a gun is worse than without a gun. A gun that can itself become unhinged is likely worse, or at least more of an unknown. When intelligence comes into the picture the question is what the intelligent thing will do, not how a person will use it. If its just a tool that a person can use it almost certainly isn't itself intelligent at all.

by soco 2y ago

_heimdall 2y ago

Words matter though, if one wants to call it intelligence we first have to define what that means then use that definition. Plenty of people have tried to define it and there's isn't one answer for that, but I've never seen anyone argue that intelligence boils down only to computation. To call these tools intelligent means that there is more to it than computation, and that's an important difference. The risks aren't the same here. Computation, if we want to say these "AI" tools are nothing more than complex math, is only as risky as the person using it. Intelligence is potentially more dangerous, regardless of what traits you may think is required in addition to computation to make it intelligent. We don't actually know how these LLMs work at time of inference and we can't analyze the trained dataset to understand why it would give an answer. That's fairly benign under the "its just computation" view, but that black box is full of unknown risk with any definition of intelligence because we don't actually understand how the thing works, why it does what it does, or what it will do next.

soco 2y ago
An unhinged man with a gun is significantly riskier than an unhinged man without a gun, so I'm not sure I get your argument. But if you mean it in the philosophical/categorizational way, I'll just move on because I don't have the knowledge or the interest to label big things while they're flying towards my head - I rather duck first and see afterwards what they were.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  Right, an unhindged man with a gun is worse than without a gun. A gun that can itself become unhinged is likely worse, or at least more of an unknown. When intelligence comes into the picture the question is what the intelligent thing will do, not how a person will use it. If its just a tool that a person can use it almost certainly isn't itself intelligent at all.