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AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

economist.com

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Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#11

Post by ktallett »

Eisenstein wrote: post #5
ktallett wrote: post #3

What do they mean what if? It is similarly based to something that has existed for around 4 decades. It of course is at a higher standard of efficiency and able to search through and combine more data but it isn't new. It is just a normal technology and this was why myself and many others were shocked at the initial hype.

> It is similarly based to something that has existed for around 4 decades. Four decades ago was 1985. The thing is, there was a huge jump in progress from then until now. If we took something which had a nice ramped progress, like computer graphics, and instead of ramping up we went from '1985' to '2025' in progress over the course of a few months, do you think there wouldn't be a lot of hype?

But we have ramped up slowly, it's just not been given in quite this form before. We have previously only used it in settings where accuracy is a focus.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#12

Post by michaeldoron »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #8

AI is technology that does not exist yet that can be speculated about. When AI materializes into existence it becomes normal technology. Let's not forget there has been times when if-else statements were considered AI. NLP used to be AI too.

NLP is still AI - LLMs are using Natural Language Processing, and are considered artificial intelligence.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#13

Post by marginalia_nu »

1c2adbc4 wrote: post #10
marginalia_nu wrote: post #8

AI is technology that does not exist yet that can be speculated about. When AI materializes into existence it becomes normal technology. Let's not forget there has been times when if-else statements were considered AI. NLP used to be AI too.

Do you have a suggestion for a better name? I care more about the utility of a thing, rather than playing endless word games with AI, AGI, ASI, whatever. Call it what you will, it is what it is.

I don't particularly mind the term, it's a useful shibboleth separating the marketing and sci-fi from the takes grounded in reality.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#14

Post by el_nahual »

1c2adbc4 wrote: post #10
marginalia_nu wrote: post #8

AI is technology that does not exist yet that can be speculated about. When AI materializes into existence it becomes normal technology. Let's not forget there has been times when if-else statements were considered AI. NLP used to be AI too.

Do you have a suggestion for a better name? I care more about the utility of a thing, rather than playing endless word games with AI, AGI, ASI, whatever. Call it what you will, it is what it is.

We have a name: Large Language Models, or "Generative" AI.

It doesn't think, it doesn't reason, and it doesn't listen to instructions, but it does generate pretty good text!

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#15

Post by sfpotter »

redwood wrote: post #7

I think the "calculator for words" analogy is a good one. It's imperfect since words are inherently ambiguous but then again so is certain forms of digital numbers (floating point anyone?). Through this lens it's way more normal

Floating point numbers aren't ambiguous in the least. They behave by perfectly deterministic and reliable rules and follow a careful specification.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#18

Post by simonh »

ctoth wrote: post #6

What if this paper actually took things seriously? A serious paper would start by acknowledging that every previous general-purpose technology required human oversight precisely because it couldn't perceive context, make decisions, or correct errors - capabilities that are AI's core value proposition. It would wrestle with the fundamental tension: if AI remains error-prone enough to need human supervisors, it's not t…

LLMs do have to be supervised by humans and do not perceive context or correct errors, and it’s not at all clear this is going to change any time soon. In fact it’s plausible that this is due to basic problems with the current technology. So if you’re right, sure, but I’m certainly not taking that as a given.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#19

Post by chpatrick »

el_nahual wrote: post #14
1c2adbc4 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a suggestion for a better name? I care more about the utility of a thing, rather than playing endless word games with AI, AGI, ASI, whatever. Call it what you will, it is what it is.

We have a name: Large Language Models, or "Generative" AI. It doesn't think, it doesn't reason, and it doesn't listen to instructions, but it does generate pretty good text!

[citation needed]

People constantly assert that LLMs don't think in some magic way that humans do think, when we don't even have any idea how that works.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#20

Post by ACCount37 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #8

AI is technology that does not exist yet that can be speculated about. When AI materializes into existence it becomes normal technology. Let's not forget there has been times when if-else statements were considered AI. NLP used to be AI too.

"AI" is a wide fucking field. And it occasionally includes systems built entirely on if-else statements.
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