Shhhh, don't disturb the hivemind.

This isn't my first time, don't worry.

When this development phase of ai slows down you’ll end up with as many or more model types than there are people on this planet, so just like with people, some models will be great resources and valuable tools, some will be excellent time wasters, some will be terrible, some will be malicious, etc

I think most people don't know what AI is. AI has been improving things for decades. Most people assume AI means LLMs now. I think they suck in many ways, but to deny that they have zero value is dumb.

I think a lot of those people have one specific idea of what AI is, and don't realize how they are making machines more energy efficient, and analyzing patient data to cure diseases. It's a tool that is being used for both good and evil.

They think that because thats how it has been reframed as. Overwhelmingly so. To the point that I don't understand why people pretend not to know that llm and Ai are synonyms in the modern vernacular.

Do I like that? No, it annoys the hell out of me. It also annoys the hell out of me that the word literally doesn't mean literally anymore. However I don't get to control how language evolves. Nor do you. It's silly to pretend otherwise. Llms and AI are the same thing when people are talking about AI in the news, and in politics, and in the world. You're just going to have to get used to that.

I don't know how many people have the absolute position that it "can't be used as a tool to improve anything".

There's a lot of "it's risky and expensive and anti-labor, so I don't think we should be pouring all this effort into it"

They're expressing a sentiment, not making a factual statement.

Ofcourse AI can improve things - it already has. Even LLMs have their use cases. However while improving some things it can meanwhile also make other things much worse.

AI is a broad, unspecific term. It's like the term "plants" - it covers everything from grass to giant redwoods but we have more specific terms for the subcategories for a reason. If we just refer to all life that photosynthesizes as plants then nobody knows which plant you're talking about. Nowadays when someone speaks of AI it's relatively safe to assume that they're talking about one of the multimodal frontier models (that are not only LLMs) but it's sloppy, imprecise use of language and it will lead to people talking past each other.

In the classical sense AI refers to a system capable of performing any cognitive task typically attributed to a human. Under this definition, even an Atari chess engine is an AI. However nowadays the meaning has shifted a little and the term typically refers to a system that has been trained with a bunch of data.

I think you’re in denial.

Absolute statements are easy to dismiss as you only need to come up with a single counter example to prove them wrong.