Ben Evans (@kittylyst@mastodon.social)

1y

And another section trying to offer a useful way forward: Let’s tell people it’s “not AGI” instead

https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jan/7/call-it-ai/#not-agi-instead

Let’s tell people it’s “not AGI” instead #

If we’re going to use “Artificial Intelligence” to describe the entire field of machine learning, generative models, deep learning, computer vision and so on... what should we do about the science fiction definition of AI that’s already lodged in people’s heads?

Our goal here is clear: we want people to understand that the LLM-powered tools they are interacting with today aren’t actually anything like the omniscient AIs they’ve seen in science fiction for the past ~150 years.

Thankfully there’s a term that’s a good fit for this goal already: AGI, for “Artificial General Intelligence”. This is generally understood to mean AI that matches or exceeds human intelligence.

AGI itself is vague and infuriatingly hard to define, but in this case I think that’s a feature. “ChatGPT isn’t AGI” is an easy statement to make, and I don’t think is even up for debate.

The term is right there for the taking. “You’re thinking about science fiction there: ChatGPT isn’t AGI, like in the movies. It’s just an AI language model that can predict next tokens to generate text.”

1y

... OK, I'm cutting myself off now - I added one last section, "Miscellaneous additional thoughts", with further thinking inspired by the conversation here: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jan/7/call-it-ai/#misc-thoughts - plus a closing quote from @glyph

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1y

@simon @glyph This is an interesting piece, Simon - thank you for writing it.

I wonder if you're not somewhat undermining your own argument somewhat.

There is no reason at all why the interface to an LLM needs to be a chat interface "like you're talking to a human". That is a specific choice - and we have known for decades that humans will attach undue significance to something that "talks like a person" - all the way back to Eliza. 1/

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1y

@simon @glyph Therefore, this is an explicit design choice on the part of the product designers from these companies - and I struggle to see any reason for it other than to deliberately exploit the blurring of the distinction between "AI" & AGI - for the purpose of confusing non-technical investors and thus to juice valuations - regardless of the consequences. 2/

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1y

@kittylyst @glyph I'm more than happy to undermine my own argument on this one, I don't particularly strong opinion here other than "I don't think it's particularly useful to be pedantic about the I in AI".

100% agree that the chat interface is a big part of it, and also something which isn't necessarily the best UI for working with these tools, see also: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Oct/17/open-questions/#open-questions.005.jpeg

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1y

@kittylyst @glyph The thing I've found particularly upsetting here is the way ChatGPT etc talk in the first person - they even offer their own opinions on things some of the time! It's incredibly misleading.

Likewise the thing where people ask them questions about their own capabilities, which they then convincingly answer despite not having accurate information about "themselves" https://simonwillison.net/2023/Mar/22/dont-trust-ai-to-talk-about-itself/

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1y

@simon @glyph Absoluely - this is what I'm getting at when I say that these are explicit product design decisions without a convincing justification other than to cynically juice valuations.

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