this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
238 points (93.1% liked)
Technology
58091 readers
3064 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I've lost track, is AI a good thing today or a bad thing?
AI is just the name that journalists use for all algorithms these days.
Although it's been used for a fairly wide array of algorithms for decades. Everything from alpha-beta tree search to k-nearest-neighbors to decision forests to neural nets are considered AI.
Edit: The paper is called
Reinforcement learning and deep neural nets are buzzwordy these days, but neural nets have been an AI thing for decades and decades.
For real. I've started to replace "AI" with "program" or "software" in my head every time I read a headline.
So are you saying this is an algorithm?
Just a big pile of if statements.
"ifs are a code smell"
And AI is a buzzword that englobes a variety statistical tools. Articles write AI to evoke generative tools in people minds, but very specialized tools are at work here.
AI is a very broad term, ranging from physical AI (material and properties of a robotic grabbing tool) to AI (as seen in many games, or in a robotic arm to calculate path from current position to target position) and to MLAI (LLM, neural nets in general, KNN, etc.).
I guess it's much the same as asking "are vehicles bad?". I don't know, are we talking horse carriages? Cars? Planes? Electric scooters? Skateboards?
Going back to your question, AI in general is not bad, though LLMs have become too popular too quick and have thus ended up being misunderstood and misused. So you can indeed say that LLMs are bad, at least when not used for their intended purposes.
Its a tool, it can be used for both. Just like any other tool, a hammer for example. Excellent killing weapon, but also great for driving nails.
A scalpel can be used to cut or to heal, depending on the skill and intentions of the wielder.
Learned that from Stanislov Grof. He was talking about LSD.
Two nice examples
AI is most likely here to stay, so if you have it do "good" things effectively, then's it's a good boi. If it is ineffective or you have it do "bad" things, then it's a bad boy.
Its neither good nor bad. Its a powertool (for now) its as good as the people who are behind it. Both in ethics and expertise credentials.
AI is just the tool. Its not good or bad by itself.
Skynet assures you it's a good thing. Matrix disagrees because it points out that Skynet is closed source and no one knows what it's really doing.
The funny thing is that "AI" (aka machine learning) even when open source nobody knows what it is doing and why.
Good thing, because one day our robot overlords will read this and I want to be on record having said that.
Yes.
Yesn't. Maybeer?