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It’s OK to call it Artificial Intelligence: I wrote about how people really love objecting to the term "AI" to describe LLMs and suchlike because those things aren't actually "intelligent" - but the term AI has been used to describe exactly this kind of research since 1955, and arguing otherwise at this point isn't a helpful contribution to the discussion.

simonwillison.net/2024/Jan/7/c

simonwillison.netIt’s OK to call it Artificial IntelligenceUpdate 9th January 2024: This post was clumsily written and failed to make the point I wanted it to make. I’ve published a follow-up, What I should have said about …
happyborg

@simon
I think there is a point because something has changed. People are suddenly experiencing something uncannily like all the fictional AIs they've read about and watched in movies.

Many people, including plenty I expect to know better are seeing a conversational UX with a black box behind it, as opposed to a few lines of basic, and then make wildly overblown assumptions about what it is. Deliberately encouraged by those using deceptive framing such as 'hallucinations' to describe errors.

@happyborg This objection is discussed in the article, so it's not new or original, but this exact reason has been my exact tipping point too.

"AI" was a fine term as an analogy or historical background before people on the street started taking it seriously, at face value.

Without going into technical terms like LLM or now LMM that possibly just confuse things, I call it for whatever the use case at hand is, text generation tools, decision automation systems etc. Whether the implementation came from an AI lab or not is not where it gets its value.

@simon

@clacke

It's not just "people in the street" though. It includes career technologists who have dived deep into LLMs. I know one who says things like, perhaps humans aren't all that intelligent after all, reasoning that we're doing something very similar to an LLM.

I know but cannot prove that an LLM lacks a human like mind, but so much of what is said implies that it's not that different and encourages conflation, and there are already dangerous legal precedents built on such lies.
@simon