""Artificial General Intelligence" which has been clearly hijacked to mean something else."
I mean, the goalposts shifted. The game Go used to be considered to require true AI. Passing the turing test. Scanning, analyzing and improving complex codebases largely on their own would have been considered some sort of AGI by me 6 years ago.
Now sure, we all know they lack true understanding. But it gets blurry at times what that does mean.
But I don't buy that there will be a magic point, where self improving AGI explodes towards singularity. The current approach is very, very energy and compute intense and that is unlikely to change.
Maybe the dystopian AI development will result in energy funding and advancements that actually benefit most of us. I really hope all this turns out in a net positive for humanity. If we wont get true "AGI", which we are far far away from, we at least could make some advancements in different areas.
Well, I surely hope so, but I feel less positive if that means a nuclear power plant is parked before every new rushed datacenter
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3351721/chin...
But in general I do believe AI has the potential to be a great positive for humanity on its own - if the open models stay strong and not only a few people control them.
I can see your reasoning. Unfortunately I see and experience everything wrong with AI in my daily life. People ask it what gifts to buy for their loved ones or use it as therapist substitute. Humans are not ready for this technology. A lot of us are even losing the ability to read properly (even though thats related to technology in general). It's extremely scary. The only advantage humans have is an extraordinary big brain and a pair of thumbs, we can't afford to use our brains less.
I mean, people are doing dumb shit since the beginning of times and I considered this society as messed up since way before LLMs.
And yes, humans as a whole are not even ready for cars or nuclear weapons. We build and used them anyway.
But my brain is still pretty busy and I don't think the younger generation is getting dumber because of LLMs, rather mindless consuming TikTok and co
LLMs are a also great learning tool and anyone using them should know their limits quickly. Not all do, though. That is obvious.