I wish I could wave a magic wand and just make the word "AI" go away. It has no actual meaning. It could mean anything from your opponent in Mario Kart to Stable Diffusion.
I wish I could wave a magic wand and just make the word "AI" go away. It has no actual meaning. It could mean anything from your opponent in Mario Kart to Stable Diffusion.
"AI" == "what (through tech) can replace a professional"
It may seem similarly vague, but it does in fact open interesting, productive, and necessary questions. A "computer" was a professional crunching numbers - "replaced", "easily" because of the deterministic procedural nature of said work, but what about the technical effort to arrive there, and what about the less "mechanical" jobs? When do "processes" become "intelligence"?
Some of us had studied AI originally to study the mind - "how do we formalize thought". It's the interdisciplinary, transversal nature of the area.
Also maybe compare that with that large and important intersection between CS and Economics - the "science of optimization" and its implementation in efficient IT systems. The effort in terms of that different discipline may not be evident, yet lots of engineering is "optimizing" and the generalization of those solutions we call Economics (see the book Algorithms to live by).
So: the term "Artificial Intelligence" may not be important as CS solutions to practical problems are built (you just focus on the better solution), but there is relevance to the "side disciplince" of AI, and from that perspective that is the cone, the scope anyway. "How would an intelligent solver approach the problem".
> "AI" == "what (through tech) can replace a professional"
But as you point out, we used to have human calculators. So is a simple desk calculator a form of "AI"? If so, what type of software isn't AI?
> is a simple desk calculator a form of "AI"
If what it does is "taking care of the carry", it represents a pretty minimal requirement for intelligence - it does replace a professional that could do it, but that professional does not have to apply too much proficiency and cleverness to do its job. It is improper AI.
> what type of software isn't AI
That which would not correspond to the job of an intelligent entity. Maybe blitting bitmaps around a screen?
As I tried to convey, it is more of a matter of perspective: the area of "implementing ways to solve problems as an intelligent entity would". It is a discipline that intersects others - engineering, logic, brain science, philosophy, epistemology, maybe again economics (as "the science of optimality and efficiency" - as an intelligent solver would do)... Consider it a special discipline that spans many other realms.
> Maybe blitting bitmaps around a screen?
Okay, that makes sense. Even so:
> If what it does is "taking care of the carry", it represents a pretty minimal requirement for intelligence - it does replace a professional that could do it, but that professional does not have to apply too much proficiency and cleverness to do its job. It is improper AI.
I think you're underselling how much mental work is required to solve complex arithmetic. Yes, it's simple for a computer, but (1) even basic computers are extremely complex in absolute terms, and (2) even the most complex computing tasks could be considered simple once you break them down far enough—for example, a large language model is "just" fancy matrix multiplication.
So I feel like there's a "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" element here. Something becomes AI once it seems sufficiently advanced. But then time passes and it doesn't feel that advanced anymore.
I understand that human language doesn't always have a super precise definition, and I'm not trying to be pedantic. I think the term "artificial intelligence" is under-specified to the point of having virtually no meaning. To the extent that it is useful—obviously, a lot of people are using it conversation, so something is getting communicated—it's because it's possible to infer from context what someone is referring to (ie "the student used AI to write her essay" is clearly referring to an LLM, not Eliza).
We'd all be better off if we used words that describe what we're actually talking about.
Game AI uses behaviour trees, usually coded by hand. Decision trees are used for classification and are normally learned from data. The latter are a traditional AI technique from the early days of the modern machine learning era, in the 1990's.
I disagree. AI is doing exactly what it was predicted it would in science fiction.
The computer can now literally talk to you in natural language and then perfectly produce sophisticated actions in response to completely arbitrary and unstructured input. It trivially passes the Turing test. By any definition prior to the year 2023 we are living with Artificial General Intelligence and it’s here now.
Current LLMs don't pass the turing test.
Remember, the interrogator is allowed to be hostile, so they would obviously employ all known prompt injections and typical LLM 'gotchas' to figure out who the AI is.
So where are the androids? If it's AGI, why is it used as a tool, waiting to be prompted or executed by humans? Where is Skynet? Military applications still rely on human operators.
Robotics is advancing a bit slower, but is making progress as well.
Yes, but unlike a lot of science fiction, robots, LLMs and other AI remain tools for human use. Augmented Intelligence would have been the more accurate word for real world AI.
You realize llms as a field is barely 5 years old? Give it at least another 5.
I doubt LLMs will give us full embodied intelligence that science fiction androids have. Maybe some other approach. But I suspect for the forseable future LLMs, robots and other AI methods will remain tools, not independent agents like Star Trek Data or Skynet.
VLAs are new LLMs. Give them 5 years to develop. But even good old LLMs are still improving every six months.
Yeah. We'll be arguing "is it really AGI" for many more years. Meanwhile, everyone interesting is going to have moved on from that question, choosing to spend time on "who cares if it's AGI, can it do $foo", for whatever value of $foo is interesting to them. Whether the machine is folding clothes or folding proteins, AGI isn't well defined other than "I'll know it when I see it", so whether or not it's AGI, the question is what job is the machine capable of and is it cheaper than a human? A humanoid robot that can work a warehouse is not putting anyone out of a job if it costs a billion dollars, and neither is a digital AI employee that costs the company a billion dollars either.