Comment on YSK that "AI" in itself is highly unspecific term
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 days ago
And "intelligence" itself isn't very well defined either. So the only word that remains is "artificial", and we can agree on that.
I usually try to avoid the word "AI". I'll say "LLM" if I talk about chatbots, ChatGPT etc. Or I use the term "machine learning" when broadly speaking about the concept of computers learning and doing such things. It's not exactly the same thing, though. But when reading other people's texts I always think of LLMs when they say AI, because that's currently what they mean almost every time.
Perspectivist@feddit.uk 5 days ago
In computer science, the term AI at its simplest just refers to a system capable of performing any cognitive task typically done by humans.
That said, you’re right in the sense that when people say “AI” these days, they almost always mean generative AI - not AI in the broader sense.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 days ago
Yeah, generative AI is a good point.
I'm not sure with the computer scientists, though. It's not any task, that'd be AGI. And it's not necessarily connected to humans either. Sure they're the prime example of intelligence (whatever it is). But I think a search engine is AI as well, depending how it's laid out. And text to speech, old-school expert systems. A thermostat that controls your heating with a machine learning model might count as well, I'm not sure about that. And that's not really like human cognitive tasks. Closer to curve fitting, than anything else. The thermostat includes problem-solving, learning, knowledge, and planning and decision making. But on the human intelligence score it wouldn't even be a thing that compares.
Perspectivist@feddit.uk 5 days ago
Any individual task I mean. Not every task.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 days ago
Yeah, I'd say some select tasks. And it's not really the entire distinction. I can do math equations with my cognitive capabilities. My pocket calculatir can do the same, yet it's not AI. So the definition has to be something else. And AI can do tasks I cannot do. Like go through large amounts of data. Or find patterns a human can not find. So it's not really tied to specific things we do. But a generalized form of intelligence, and I don't think that's well defined or humans are the measurement.