Built on unearned hype.

  • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    I can’t wait for this current “A.I.” craze to go away. The tech is doofy, useless, wasteful, and a massive energy consumer. This is blockchain nonsense all over again, though that still hasn’t fully died yet, unfortunately.

    • otter@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      Like blockchain there is some niche usefulness to the technology, but also like blockchain it’s being applied to a myriad of things it is not useful for.

      • casmael@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        Also it’s not fucking ai is it. I actually find the blatant misuse of this term incredibly annoying to be honest.

        • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Arguably you are the one misusing the term. Even painfully mundane tasks like the A* pathfinding algorithm fall under the umbrella of artificial intelligence. It’s a big, big (like, stupidly big) field.

          You are right that it’s not AGI, but very few people (outside of marketing) claim that it is.

          • casmael@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            I’m going to argue quite strongly that my general, all purpose understanding of the words ‘artificial’ and ‘intelligence’ constitute the ‘correct’ definition for the term, and I don’t really care how ‘ai’ is defined ‘in industry’. It’s not intelligent, therefore it’s not artificial intelligence. You can redefine ‘intelligent’ in this context to mean whatever you like, but unless the general definition of the word changes then it doesn’t mean jack about shit.

            • 5gruel@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              So what is intelligence in your general, all-purpose understanding?

              Are newborns intelligent? How about dogs? Ants?

              You may argue that current AI is still behind an average human adult and therefore not intelligent, but academia is a bit more nuanced.

        • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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          1 month ago

          The term AI was coined in 1956 at a computer science conference and was used to refer to a broad range of topics that certainly would include machine learning and neural networks as used in large language models.

          I don’t get the “it’s not really AI” point that keeps being brought up in discussions like this. Are you thinking of AGI, perhaps? That’s the sci-fi “artificial person” variety, which LLMs aren’t able to manage. But that’s just a subset of AI.

          • casmael@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            ‘Intelligence’ requires understanding. The machine has no understanding, because it is not conscious. You can fiddle around with the definitions of these words until you’re blue in the face but this will be true in rain, sun, hail, puffed wheat, etc.

            • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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              1 month ago

              Did you check the link I posted? The term “Artificial Intelligence” is literally used for the sorts of topics in computer science that LLMs fall under, and has been for almost 70 years now.

              You are the one who is insisting that the meaning of the words should now be changed to something else.

        • anonymous111@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Yes, no one seems to raise this anymore. AI to me has always been something akin to computer sentience.

          Things like ‘self healing’ systems are being badeged as AI when they’re little more than an application load balancer.

    • Soup@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      This work will have lots of applications in the future. I personally stay as far away from it as I can because I just have zero need for it to write souless birthday card messages for me but to act like the work is doing nothing is kinda stupid.

      Every stage it’s been at people would say “oh this can’t even do X” and then it could and they’d so “oh it can’t do Y” and then it could and they’d say…do I really need to go on?

      The biggest issue with it all right, for me anyway, now is that we’re trying to use it for the absolute dumbest shit imaginable and investors are throwing tonnes of money, that could solve real problems we don’t need AI for, into the grinder while poverty and climate change run rampant around us.

    • Madrigal@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      It has its uses, but it is being massively overhyped.

      Having trialled Copilot and a few other AI tools in my workplace, I can confidently says it’s a minor productivity booster.

    • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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      1 month ago

      The total market cap across all cryptocurrencies is currently about 2.5 trillion dollars, which isn’t far below its all-time high of 3 trillion. If that’s something you’d say “hasn’t fully died yet” then AI’s not going to go away any time soon by that standard.

      • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        I didn’t specify cryptocurrencies. They were not the only “good” attached to blockchain hype. Besides, they are primarily money laundering schemes and also used to steal from the financially illiterate. Touting market caps doesn’t change the actual real-world use case.