Inspired by a recent talk from Richard Stallman.
From Slashdot:
Speaking about AI, Stallman warned that “nowadays, people often use the term artificial intelligence for things that aren’t intelligent at all…” He makes a point of calling large language models “generators” because “They generate text and they don’t understand really what that text means.” (And they also make mistakes “without batting a virtual eyelash. So you can’t trust anything that they generate.”) Stallman says “Every time you call them AI, you are endorsing the claim that they are intelligent and they’re not. So let’s let’s refuse to do that.”
Sometimes I think that even though we are in a “FuckAI” community, we’re still helping the “AI” companies by tacitly agreeing that their LLMs and image generators are in fact “AI” when they’re not. It’s similar to how the people saying “AI will destroy humanity” give an outsized aura to LLMs that they don’t deserve.
Personally I like the term “generators” and will make an effort to use it, but I’m curious to hear everyone else’s thoughts.
It’s the popular term, at the end, the meaning doesn’t really matter as long as everybody has the same agreement on what we’re talking about.
Don’t get too attached to cientific meaning of things.
Just like “atom” means “that you cannot cut”, but turns out you can actually split them into protons, neutrons and electrons. We just called them that way and although the meaning of the name doesn’t match reality, we stick to the term.
Yeah but reasonable people will readily agree that atoms are not “atomic” in the sense of being indivisible.
On the other hand grifters are really out here saying that computers are “intelligent”.
It’s also worth pointing out that people really did think atoms were indivisible but they updated their model based on new evidence. Meanwhile grifters never had any basis for their claims of “intelligence” and they will never change their grift despite overwhelming evidence.
But in your example the scientists didn’t stick to the term “atoms”. New terms were created (“Protons”, “Neutrons” etc) to describe the new thing.
They didn’t abandon the term “atom”, they kept it’s definition and created new words for things that didn’t meet that definition.
A proton, neutron, and orbiting electron is still referred to as a hydrogen atom. The term “atom” was never abandoned.
But we don’t agree. Tech companies are using the same term to describe ChatGPT and Data from Star Trek when they’re not the same thing.
One of those things can get fucked, the other is a sentient being who (as we all know) does the fucking. Not to mention data was an AI before OpenAI ever existed!
It’s annoying and messy but language evolves and changes.
Hell, there’s a whole category of words that are their own opposite called contronyms. So AI can mean both things and I’d argue makes it a contronym (meaning slop or artificial intelligence depending on context).
If you want to fix it then you need to tackle English as a whole and fix English (which hey I’m right there with you, give me Welsh any day instead).
“Language evolves and changes” describes evolving and changing language, not keeping it the same. Language evolves into more specific definitions, not less specific.
For example: you might say “LLMs are one form of intelligence”, I don’t agree with that, but it makes logical sense. But claiming “LLMs are the same thing as intelligence” changes the definition of “intelligence” to a much broader umbrella. If you want to change that definition then you also need to invent a new word that means “non-LLM intelligence”.
Intelligence also means the opposite of intelligence? I must not be intelligent enough for this brain wizardry.
There is absolutely no agreement. It’s grifters versus the truthful.