@simon one argument that you’re not addressing here is that it dates anything you are writing, in a way that makes it hard to understand without first understanding its contemporaneous terminology. Our current view of AI as an actual *technology*—statistical machine-learning techniques, as opposed to just the chatbot UI paradigm—is quite new and quite *at odds with* previous understanding of the term (like, say, expert systems). It may be at odds with future understandings as well.
@simon Also, not for nothing but you are giving the lay public _way_ too much credit when it comes to understanding the limitations of LLMs and PIGs. Numerous people are doing additional jail time because even highly-educated, nationally-renowned *lawyers* cannot wrap their heads around this. The term very definitely obscures more than it reveals, and the “well, actually” pedantic conversation about it’s inappropriateness *does* drive deeper understanding of it.
@glyph @simon I feel like “AI” has a very precise layman’s definition and a very vague practitioner’s definition. To a layman AI means AGI, “a computer that can think like a person.” To a practitioner AI means…? “Statistical ML ish?” “LLMs and PIGs?” “I get more funding if I call this AI?” The public has a very precise definition! That’s so rare. We shouldn’t water it down and say “oh that’s actually A~G~I” for no reason.
@simon @carlana this strikes closer to the heart of my objection. A lot of insiders—not practitioners as such, but marketers & executives—use "AI" as the label not in spite of its confusion with the layperson's definition, but *because* of it. Investors who vaguely associate it with machine-god hegemony assume that it will be very profitable. Users assume it will solve their problems. It's a term whose primary purpose has become deceptive.
🚲🦝 
@simon
The less you know the more confident you are. Just ask an LLM.
I intentionally avoid the term AI and advise other technically minded folks to do the same because it is a purely Marketing term. It will never have a meaningful definition.
Everything I've ever worked on to automate tasks with computers in the past 30 years would be called AI today by a Marketing Department despite none of it involving ML.
Their definition is "this term attracts attention and money", oriented around their goal. The lay person hearing it has a definition of "hype buzzword bingo score for Product Name". It doesn't communicate anything.
Elide the term AI from any context in which it gets used to describe something and it should still be just as meaningful. If not, nothing was being said.
Be right back. I'm gonna go hit Tab in my command line so the shell's AI can do what I want for me. 😛
@simon @carlana At the same time, a lot of the deception is unintentional. When you exist in a sector of the industry that the public knows as "AI", that the media calls "AI", that industry publications refer to as "AI", that *other* products identify as "AI", going out on a limb and trying to build a brand identity around pedantic hairsplitting around "LLMs" and "machine learning" is a massive uphill battle which you are disincentivized at every possible turn to avoid.
@simon @carlana personally I am trying to Get Into It over the terminology less often, but I will still stick to terms like "LLMs", "chatbots", and "PIGs" in my own writing. Not least of which because the tech behind PIGs/PVGs, LLMs, and ML classifiers are actually all pretty different, despite having some similar elements
