Comment by kk58
3 years ago
Perhaps it's time to call this synthetic intelligence instead of AI which has an implicit understanding of an alternative method to construct a human like AI.
What is clear is that on this earth itself we have cetacean, corvid, cephalopod intelligence which is wired very differently. Perhaps we need to respect the diversity of intelligences that exist and study this growth in LLM and adjoint areas as just synthetic intelligence.
Rebranding maybe could help drive a level of objectivity this conversation on ethics etc that seems to be missing
I don't understand. "Synthetic intelligence" is just a synonym for "artificial intelligence". The term has all the same issues, does it not?
Actually I agree with them a new name would be helpful. I would propose inorganic intelligence to try to pick a term with less value judgments.
AI is really an overloaded term that includes 70 years of snake oil, Skynet, the Singularity and killer robots. I think we need a new name to start fresh.
And personally, I think we are extremely biased by our sci-fi to think of this tech as malevolent. As far as we can see, it can only know what we teach it since it relies on all of our perceptions to learn. LLMs seem both extremely promising as a useful tool and very pliant to the operator’s wishes. I’m way beyond “this is a fancy next word predictor” as I think it’s emergent behavior has many of the hallmarks of reasoning and novel inference, but at best I think it is only part of a mind and an unconscious one at that.
> Let’s forget the term AI. Let’s call them Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Inferences (SALAMI).
https://blog.quintarelli.it/2019/11/lets-forget-the-term-ai-...
> it can only know what we teach it since it relies on all of our perceptions to learn
> I think it’s emergent behavior has many of the hallmarks of reasoning and novel inference
You contradicted yourself here, right?
> The term has all the same issues, does it not?
It could be useful for a similar reason as the euphemism treadmill. We could leave behind all of the misguided assumptions about AI with the old 'artificial intelligence' nomenclature and move forward with 'synthetic intelligence' which has our new understanding of what systems like GPT-4 can do.
I'm thinking the problematic part of the term isn't the "artificial" part, but the "intelligence" part.
Since nobody actually knows what "intelligence" is, the word will mean to people whatever they want it to mean.
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I think Artificial Intelligence has taken on the meaning that the intelligence is real but just that it's coming from machines. Synthetic intelligence (at least to me) sounds more like we're acknowledging that the machines aren't really intelligent and just simulating intelligence.
Why not just eliminate the middle man and call it simulated intelligence? That at least implies that there are different levels of fidelity as quantified by number of parameters and training data set size.
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If we can’t (and we haven’t) define intelligence, how could we possibly define artificial intelligence or synthetic.
I had a chat with GPT about this and it came up with the term 'data grounded cognition' to describe an 'intelligence' that is derived purely from (and expressed through) statistical patterns in data.
I quite like the term, and it seems quite unique (perhaps cribbing from 'grounded cognition' though that's an entirely different idea AFAIK)
"Cognition" means understanding and knowing. As problematic as "intelligence" is when describing these systems, I think "cognition" is even worse. "Intelligence" is vague and "cognition" is specific, but "cognition" is also incorrect.
The googled definition says "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.", which I think fits ok.
Do you have a word that you prefer?
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AI has always meant so many things to so many different audiences. I think attempting to argue that X is AI but Y isn't is generally going to be a subjective endeavour of pedantry.
Here’s an essay on why we should start saying “synthetic intelligence” in certain contexts:
https://taylor.town/synthetic-intelligence
that is assuming. Why don't we simply refer to our own intelligence as 'human intelligence' instead. We don't really know what intelligence is. So adding modifier in front of it will just lead to more confusion. AI helps us understand what intelligence actually is, to learn more of it's very essence. It's not that we already know what it is.
"Collective intelligence" since all it's really doing is regurgitating what people have collectively posted online
What about "simulated intelligence"?