[luketaylor]

Referring to this type of optimization program just as “AI” in an age where nearly everyone will misinterpret that to mean “transformer-based language model” seems really sloppy

[saithound]

Referring to this type of optimization as AI in the age where nearly everybody is looking to fund transformer-based language models and nobody is looking to fund this kind of optimization is just common sense though.

[benterix]

You are both right. Because the term "AI" is so vague and can mean so many things, it will be used and abused in various ways.

For me, when someone says, "I'm working on AI", it's almost meaningless. What are you doing, actually?

[benterix]

I think it's actually this repo:

https://github.com/artificial-scientist-lab/GWDetectorZoo/

Nothing remotely LLM-ish, but I'm glad they used the term AI here.

[bee_rider]

How can one article be expected to fix the problem of people sloppily using “AI” when they mean LLM or something like that?

[rachofsunshine]

I use "ML" when talking about more traditional/domain specific approaches, since for whatever reason LLMs haven't hijacked that term in the same way. Seems to work well enough to avoid ambiguity.

But I'm not paid by the click, so different incentives.

[Lionga]

Just do not use AI for anything except LLMs anymore. Same way that crypto scam has taken the word crypto.

crypto must now be named cryptography and AI must now be named ML to avoid giving the scammers and hypers good press.

[a_victorp]

Just don't use the term AI. It has no well defined meaning and is mostly intended as a marketing term

[coldtea]

By doing its part and using the term correctly.

The real problem is not people using the term incorrectly, it's papers and marketing material using the term incorrectly.

[fragmede]

Thinking "nearly everyone" has that precise definition of AI seems way more sloppy. Most people haven't even heard of OpenAI and ChatGPT still, but among people who have, they've probably heard stories about AI in science fiction. My definition of AI is any advanced computer processing, generative or otherwise, that's happened since we got enough computing power and RAM to do something about it, aka lately.

[IanCal]

Then that definition is at odds with how the field has used it for many decades.

You can have your own definition of words but it makes it harder to communicate.

[southernplaces7]

>Most people haven't even heard of OpenAI and ChatGPT still

What? I literally don't know a single person anymore who doesn't know what chatGPT is. In this I include several elderly people, a number of older children and a whole bunch of adults with exactly zero tech-related background at all. Far from it being only known to some, unless you're living in a place with essentially no internet access to begin with, chances are most people around you know about chatGPT at least.

For OpenAI, different story, but it's hardly little-known. Let's not grossly understate the basic ability of most people to adapt to technology. This site seems to take that to nearly pathological levels.

[advael]

This exact kind of sloppy equivocation does seem to be one of the major PR strategies that tries to justify the massive investment in and sloppy rollout of transformer-based language models when large swaths of the public have turned against this (probably even more than is actually warranted)

[pharrington]

I'll bet that almost everyone who reads Quanta Magazine knows what they mean by AI.

[tomrod]

I know, but can we blame the masses for misunderstanding AI when they are deliberately misinformed that transformers are the universe of AI? I think not!

[victorbjorklund]

Yea, I can tolerate it when random business people do it. But scientists/tech people should know better.

[layer8]

While nowadays misleading as a title, I found the term being used in the traditional sense refreshing.

[andai]

That's how I feel about Web 3.0...

[buu700]

Web 3(.0) always makes me think of the time around 14 years ago when Mark Zuckerberg publicly lightly roasted my room mate for asking for his predictions on Web 4.0 and 5.0.

[zeofig]

Absolutely agree.