Comment by ftxbro
3 years ago
> 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.
I’m partial to Plausible Regurgitation
>Since nobody actually knows what "intelligence" is
Everybody knows what intelligence is. Even if we can't agree on a precise definition, it's pretty obvious that it's the thing that humans and other animals do that involves learning, reasoning, planning, and problem solving. We can also agree that being successful at certain tasks constitutes intelligence. Solving a math problem is intelligence. Writing a poem is intelligence.
>Everybody knows what intelligence is
Much like...
"Everyone knows what porn is"
"Everyone knows who god is"
"Everyone knows what beauty is"
The devil is in the details and rather generic words that describe a gradient can never capture the exact nature of what we're trying to define in specific situations.
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I disagree. I think that nobody knows what it is, as demonstrated by the fact that there is such a wide disagreement about what it is.
> We can also agree that being successful at certain tasks constitutes intelligence. Solving a math problem is intelligence. Writing a poem is intelligence.
As an example, I don't agree that either of those things indicates intelligence all by themselves. We've had programs that nobody would call "intelligent" to do both of those things for decades.
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