this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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Can we stop calling these technologies "AI?" Then can we stop talking about them?
Why did no one care about the misuse of the term AI until these image generators or LLMs? Seriously, people have been talking about video game "AI", chess "AI" and stuff like that. It's understood that when people say "AI" they don't mean "general machine intelligence" or anything like that. And frankly LLMs and image generators fit the bill better than most of the things we've used the term for previously
As for "can we stop talking about them", these and LLMs are already having some pretty huge impacts on modern society - for better or worse, it'd be pretty odd for us all to decide to just stop talking about them.
The difference from prior use of the term "AI" and these technologies is, as you said, before it was understood that it was a short hand, not actual intelligence. Now you have a bunch of panicky people acting as if skynet has arrived.
They really haven't had much of an impact beyond people talking about them all the damn time, especially the fear mongering. At present, these are really just expensive toys. Computer image and gibberish generators.
The real concerns with developing technologies should be in regards to things like facial recognition and so-called self driving cars. These technologies present actual dangers to society and public safety, not to mention the complex legal questions that come with their use.
^They really haven't had much of an impact beyond people talking about them all the damn time, especially the fear mongering. At present, these are really just expensive toys. Computer image and gibberish generators.
I highly disagree. Almost everyone I know under the age of 40 uses LLMs to some extent in the course of their job already, whether it's as simple as composing emails or as significant as using copilot/chatGPT to code. And just today I read an article about an entire call center getting laid off this week to be replaced by an LLM.
I completely agree that a lot of the hype is overblown, but "AI" is absolute significant in our society, and so we talk about it
It seems everyone you know under the age of 40 is in a very specific subset of the workforce. They do not represent a significant portion of the workforce. I would love to read that article about the call center so I can keep an eye out for news when that plan completely fails. I'm assuming it must be a consumer facing call center to be so brazen. They wouldn't risk business accounts (big money) on an llm, the technology just isn't there.
https://nationalpost.com/news/business-owner-hires-chatgpt-for-customer-service-then-fires-the-humans
And I don't disagree that it will fail, but the fact that it's happening in the first place makes it significant and so worth talking about. Whether or not its a good idea, companies all over the world are exploring ways to replace human labor with these products, and thats what makes it significant.
Thanks for the link.
Facial recognition and image generation is the same technology applied in a different way