this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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@Reva "Hey, should we use this statistical model that imitates language to replace my helpdesk personnel?" is an ethical question because bosses don't listen when you outright tell them that's a stupid idea.
There are people who genuinelly think there's actual artificial intelligent thinking behind something like ChatGPT.
Reminds me of my grandmother - a poor illiterate peasant woman - when she came to live with us in the big city and who got really confused when the same actor appeared in multiple soap operas on TV. She saw the "living truthfully in imaginary circunstances" of good actors (or, lets be honest, the make-believe of most soap opera actors) and because of here complete ignorance on the subject confused acting with real life.
I think there's a lot of this going on and, hopefully, like with my grandmother most such people will eventually understand that the well done lifelike surface-level impression does not guarantee that what is behind it is a matching reality (people really living that life in the soap opera or an actual intelligence in this).
The word AI has at least 3 different meanings. People who understand the subject usually just mean machine learning. But there is also AI we see in movies (which is usually a sentient computer) and AI in games (which is just programmed NPCs). I think most people confuse the stuff they see in movies with machine learning.
I think marketing execs are COUNTING on that misinterpretation to make the product seem like more than it is.
Are you familiar with the 1980s program Racter? It wasn't trained on the entire internet like LLMs are, but it kind of feels like an extension of that. Except Racter's output was more amusing.
Yeah, it's kinda scary to see how much people don't understand modern technology. If some non-expert tells them AI can't be trusted, they just believe it. I've noticed the same thing with cryptocurrencies. A non-expert says it's a scam and people believe it even though it's clear they don't understand anything about that technology or what it's made for.