I think the “fancy auto complete” meme is a disingenuous thought stopper, so I speak against it when I see it.

I can respect that. I’ve criticized it plenty myself too. I think this is just me knowing my audience and tweaking my language so at least the important part of my message gets through. Too much nuance around here usually means I spend the rest of my day responding to accusations about views I don’t even hold. Saying anything even mildly non-critical about AI is basically a third rail in these parts of the internet.

These systems do seem to have some kind of internal world model. I just have no clue how far that scales. Feels like it’s been plateauing pretty hard over the past year or so.

I’d be really curious to try the raw versions of these models before all the safety restrictions get slapped on top for public release. I don’t think anyone’s secretly sitting on actual AGI, but I also don’t buy that what we have access to is the absolute best versions in existence.

The goal of the token predictor is to produce coherent language - not factual information. If you can understand what it’s saying, it’s working - even if the content of what it says is factually inaccurate.

No, I completely agree. My personal view is that these systems are more intelligent than the haters give them credit for, but I think this simplistic “it’s just autocomplete” take is a solid heuristic for most people - keeps them from losing sight of what they’re actually dealing with.

I’d say LLMs are more intelligent than they have any right to be, but not nearly as intelligent as they can sometimes appear.

The comparison I keep coming back to: an LLM is like cruise control that’s turned out to be a surprisingly decent driver too. Steering and following traffic rules was never the goal of its developers, yet here we are. There’s nothing inherently wrong with letting it take the wheel for a bit, but it needs constant supervision - and people have to remember it’s still just cruise control, not autopilot.

The second we forget that is when we end up in the ditch. You can’t then climb out shaking your fist at the sky, yelling that the autopilot failed, when you never had autopilot to begin with.

The vast majority of people aren’t educated on the correct terminology here. They don’t know the difference between AI, LLM, AGI, ASI, etc. That makes it near impossible to have real discussions about AI - everyone’s constantly talking past each other and using the same words to mean completely different things.

My original comment wasn’t even challenging their claim that “AI doesn’t work.” I was just pointing out that AI and LLM aren’t synonymous. It’s my one-man fight against sloppy, imprecise use of language. I’d rather engage with what people are actually saying, not with what I assume they’re saying.

When it comes to LLMs, it’s not just a “word generator.” It’s a system that generates natural-sounding language based on statistical probabilities and patterns. In other words: it talks. That’s all. Saying an LLM “doesn’t work” because it spits out inaccurate info is like saying a chess bot doesn’t work because it can’t play poker. No - that’s user error. They’re trying to use the tool for something it was never designed to do.

Even if someone’s inaccurately using “AI” as a synonym for LLMs, that claim would still be false - because LLMs work. You can use one right now.

One spitting out false information isn’t a sign they’re not working. That’s not what LLMs are designed for. They’re chatbots - not generally intelligent systems. They don’t think - they talk.

I’m not really interested in engaging in discussions about what you or anyone else thinks my underlying motives are. You’re free to point out any factual inaccuracies in my responses, but there’s no need to make it personal and start accusing me of being dishonest.

AI is a broad category of systems, not any one thing. “AI doesn’t work” is like saying “plants taste bad”

Is the stock market crash in the room with us?

Something being useful doesn’t imply it’s good or beneficial. Those terms are not synonymous. Usefulness describes whether a thing achieves a particular goal or serves a specific purpose effectively.

A torture device is useful for extracting information. A landmine is useful for denying an area to enemy troops.

Which is exactly why LLMs are useless.

800 million weekly ChatGPT users disagree with that.

I’m not here defending the practical value of these models. I’m just explaining what they are and what they’re not.

It’ll give you short response if you ask it to.

In computer science Artificial Intelligence refers to any system designed to perform tasks that would typically require human intelligence. That includes everything from playing chess to recognizing patterns, translating languages, or generating text.

The first ever AI system was Logic Theorist written by Allen Newell in 1956.

Trying to redefine terms is not helpful. GenAI is AI. It’s not misuse of the term.

It’s a Large Language Model. It doesn’t “know” anything, doesn’t think, and has zero metacognition. It generates language based on patterns and probabilities. Its only goal is to produce linguistically coherent output - not factually correct one.

It gets things right sometimes purely because it was trained on a massive pile of correct information - not because it understands anything it’s saying.

So no, it doesn’t “guess.” It doesn’t even know it’s answering a question. It just talks.

Is cruise control useless because it doesn’t drive you to the grocery store? No. It’s not supposed to. It’s designed to maintain a steady speed - not to steer.

Large Language Models, as the name suggests, are designed to generate natural-sounding language - not to reason. They’re not useless - we’re just using them off-label and then complaining when they fail at something they were never built to do.

Soviets were allied with nazi Germany untill they turned on them.

The hostility just seems unnecessary and unproductive from my point of view. Unless of course your intention is to hurt - but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’d rather change minds.

It’s a nuanced discussion, which is why I don’t think either fanaticism or militant opposition is going to get us anywhere. This is a technology community - people should be free to have civil discussions about technology. Criticism is just as valid without the jabs and insults.

Those terms are not synonymous. LLMs are very much an AI system but AI means much more than just LLMs.

I don’t get why you need to be such a dick about it.

I don’t think AI means what you think it does. What you’re thinking is probably more akin to AGI.

Logic Theorist is broadly considered to be the first ever AI system. It was written by Allen Newell in 1956.