This actually aggravates me incessantly, so I will address it now. Personally, I do not think “next token prediction” is “AI” because I do not think humans are sophisticated auto-complete machines. I know various monied technologists contend human brains are essentially “like” robots, but I think that means certain moneyed technocrats watched too much television during their formative years.
Now, we have so-called “AI” being hyped rather incessantly throughout industries, as a few rich dudes seek to manipulate populations rather overtly. And it makes sense: these dudes/companies don’t actually have better ideas that can stand up to scrutiny. Rather, they’ve revealed themselves to be willing to shamelessly mislead people at a rather extreme scale.
Referring to much of the research being done for drug discovery, weather forecasting, industrial assembling, and web search as “AI” misleads people by using a single term for several different pursuits. Part of me thinks this is intentional deceit, but I acknowledge some producers may be simply using a generic and popular term to try to reach larger audiences and/or appear more “with it.”
I will add I heard on some investment podcast that a lot of folks are very lonely, and now social media sites can have bots message them. This terribly depressing idea was celebrated as “good.” Similarly, I have heard another investment podcast talk enthusiastically about how retirement homes can offer robots to folks who live there. What in the Black Mirror are these people talking about?! I was under the impression that technology was made by humans, and that we have technology to help _us_. The ideas people are suggesting now seem like the stuff of nightmares and suggest computers were a mistake.
This all takes us back to where we began: Why are chat bots even called “AI.” I heard that the big chat bot companies have (I suspect low-paid) people working on the responses, making the outputs more conversational. As far as I can tell, this is just another level of deception: the big (so-called) “AI” companies want to deceive people further, so that folks start ascribing thoughts and feelings to their chat bots. That type of deception degrades the entire marketplace, and all of this leads me to think of The Opium Wars, except this time, it is American companies largely degrading the cognitive capabilities of Americans. I’m no military historian, but attacking yourself seems like a bad strategy.