AI is a broad category of systems, not any one thing. “AI doesn’t work” is like saying “plants taste bad”

Is the stock market crash in the room with us?

Something being useful doesn’t imply it’s good or beneficial. Those terms are not synonymous. Usefulness describes whether a thing achieves a particular goal or serves a specific purpose effectively.

A torture device is useful for extracting information. A landmine is useful for denying an area to enemy troops.

Which is exactly why LLMs are useless.

800 million weekly ChatGPT users disagree with that.

I’m not here defending the practical value of these models. I’m just explaining what they are and what they’re not.

It’ll give you short response if you ask it to.

In computer science Artificial Intelligence refers to any system designed to perform tasks that would typically require human intelligence. That includes everything from playing chess to recognizing patterns, translating languages, or generating text.

The first ever AI system was Logic Theorist written by Allen Newell in 1956.

Trying to redefine terms is not helpful. GenAI is AI. It’s not misuse of the term.

It’s a Large Language Model. It doesn’t “know” anything, doesn’t think, and has zero metacognition. It generates language based on patterns and probabilities. Its only goal is to produce linguistically coherent output - not factually correct one.

It gets things right sometimes purely because it was trained on a massive pile of correct information - not because it understands anything it’s saying.

So no, it doesn’t “guess.” It doesn’t even know it’s answering a question. It just talks.

Is cruise control useless because it doesn’t drive you to the grocery store? No. It’s not supposed to. It’s designed to maintain a steady speed - not to steer.

Large Language Models, as the name suggests, are designed to generate natural-sounding language - not to reason. They’re not useless - we’re just using them off-label and then complaining when they fail at something they were never built to do.

Soviets were allied with nazi Germany untill they turned on them.

The hostility just seems unnecessary and unproductive from my point of view. Unless of course your intention is to hurt - but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’d rather change minds.

It’s a nuanced discussion, which is why I don’t think either fanaticism or militant opposition is going to get us anywhere. This is a technology community - people should be free to have civil discussions about technology. Criticism is just as valid without the jabs and insults.

Those terms are not synonymous. LLMs are very much an AI system but AI means much more than just LLMs.

I don’t get why you need to be such a dick about it.

I don’t think AI means what you think it does. What you’re thinking is probably more akin to AGI.

Logic Theorist is broadly considered to be the first ever AI system. It was written by Allen Newell in 1956.

Either you’re talking confidently about something you couldn’t possibly know, or you’re risking the rest of your life in prison for leaking top-secret military info. Which is it?