I agree: it is more than faintly infuriating that when people say AI what the vast majority mean is LLMs.
But, at the same time, we have clearly passed a significant inflection point in the usefulness of this class of AI, and have progressed substantially beyond that inflection point as well.
So I don't really buy into the idea tha OpenAI have gone out of their way to foist a watered down view of AI upon the masses. I'm not completely absolving them but I'd probably be more inclined to point the finger at shabby and imprecise journalism from both tech and non-tech outlets, along with a ton of influencers and grifters jumping on the bandwagon. And let's be real: everyone's lapped it up because they've wanted to - because this is the first time any of them have encountered actually useful AI of any class that they can directly interact with. It seems powerful, mysterious, perhaps even agical, and maybe more than a little bit scary.
As a CTO how do you think it would have gone if I'd spent my time correcting peers, team members, consultants, salespeople, and the rest to the effect that, no, this isn't AI, it's one type of AI, it's an LLM, when ChatGPT became widely available? When a lot of these people, with no help or guidance from me, were already using it to do useful transformations and analyses on text?
It would have led to a huge number of unproductive and timewasting conversation, and I would have seemed like a stick in the mud.
Sometimes you just have to ride the wave, because the only other choice is to be swamped by it and drown.
Regardless of what limitations "AGI" has, it'll be given that monicker when a lot of people - many of them laypeople - feel like it's good enough. Whether or not that happens before the current LLM bubble bursts... tough to say.
But, at the same time, we have clearly passed a significant inflection point in the usefulness of this class of AI, and have progressed substantially beyond that inflection point as well.
So I don't really buy into the idea tha OpenAI have gone out of their way to foist a watered down view of AI upon the masses. I'm not completely absolving them but I'd probably be more inclined to point the finger at shabby and imprecise journalism from both tech and non-tech outlets, along with a ton of influencers and grifters jumping on the bandwagon. And let's be real: everyone's lapped it up because they've wanted to - because this is the first time any of them have encountered actually useful AI of any class that they can directly interact with. It seems powerful, mysterious, perhaps even agical, and maybe more than a little bit scary.
As a CTO how do you think it would have gone if I'd spent my time correcting peers, team members, consultants, salespeople, and the rest to the effect that, no, this isn't AI, it's one type of AI, it's an LLM, when ChatGPT became widely available? When a lot of these people, with no help or guidance from me, were already using it to do useful transformations and analyses on text?
It would have led to a huge number of unproductive and timewasting conversation, and I would have seemed like a stick in the mud.
Sometimes you just have to ride the wave, because the only other choice is to be swamped by it and drown.
Regardless of what limitations "AGI" has, it'll be given that monicker when a lot of people - many of them laypeople - feel like it's good enough. Whether or not that happens before the current LLM bubble bursts... tough to say.