this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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ELI5
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Explain it to me like I am 5. Everybody should know what this is about.
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AI doesn't really exist yet. Media, back in 1870, called Tesla's magnetically controlled boat artificial intelligence, and again in the 80s when computer scientists invented the game of life. But even now nothing we've made so far can do decision making. ChatGPT, the smartest out there, is really just a versatile prediction engine.
Imagine if I said, "once upon a" and asked you to come up with the next word, you'd say, "time" as you've heard that phrase hundreds of times. I then asked you to come up with the next word, and the next you might start telling me about a princess locked in a tall tower protected by a dragon. These are all stereotypical elements of a "once upon a time" story. Nothing creative, just typical. Chat GPT has just read way more than you or I ever could and is really good at knowing more stereotypical stories and mixing them together. There is no "what is best for humanity" only "once upon a time..."-made up stories.
What your saying doesn't exist is an Artificial General Intelligence, something approaching the conscious human mind. Your right that doesn't exist.
AI doesn't just mean that though.
What we're dealing with right now is the computer equivalent of growing mouse brain cells in a petre dish, plugging them into inputs and outputs & getting them to do useful things for us.
The way you describe chat GPT not being creative, is also theoretically how our own brains work in the creative processes. If you study story structure & mythology you'd find that ALL successful stories boil down to a very minimalist set of archetypes & types of conflict.
While technically true, when people colloquially say AI, they basically mean AGI. This distinction just confuses people. The OP and normal people asking about AI generally just mean AGI.
Unfortunately, people label ChatGPT etc as "AI" because it's technically true, but it's basically the reason why confusion like this post exist.