The best description I've ever heard of AI is the following. I heard this in the 80s, and it has held up since:
AI is magic.
1: You see a magic trick. You are amazed by the magic.
2: You are shown how the trick works. You are impressed by the technique.
3: You learn how to perform the trick. Now it's not magic, it's sleight-of-hand, or mirrors, or misdirection.
This is why "AI" is always bullshit: once you understand it, it's not AI any more, it's something else.
@jwz As someone who got into the field during the “AI Winter” of the early 2000s.. what makes sad about most of what’s been going on for the last decade is that it completely loses the inquiry into and analysis of why the tricks work and if they can actually advance our understanding of cognition.
Though I suppose the response to the latest crop of LLMs does tell us a lot about human cognition on a macros scale… But we already knew these things via the Trump presidency I think.
jwz
Fritz Heckel