> cynical () positions on some controversial questions.
I feel "cynical" is an inappropriate word here.
We may have to, for the same (ecumenical) reasons that thinkers like
Churchland, Hofstadter, Dennet, Penrose and company have all struggled
with, eventually accept the impossibility of proof of (existence or
non-existence) on any hypothesis of "machine mind". The pragmatic
response is, "does it offer utility for me?". And that's all that can
be said. Anyone's choice to accept or reject ideas of machine
intelligence will remain inviolably personal and beyond appeal to
"proof" or argument. I think that's something we'd better get used to
sooner rather than later, in order to avoid a whole lot or partisan
misery and wasted breath.
I think the way he sketches the the AI labs as "marketing geniuses" for not just releasing their models as auto-correct is a bit cynical, as well as implying in general that these labs are muddying the waters on purpose by not agreeing with <authors position> and by engaging in "hype" (believing in the technology).
Sorry, "inappropriate" might have been inappropriate :) What am I
trying to say here?....that we're soon gonna find ourselves in an
insoluble and exhausting debate around machine thinking and its value.
The choice unfortunately seems to correlate with the person's age. Younger generations will have no trouble treating LLMs as actually intelligent. Yet another example of "Science progresses one funeral at a time.”
Definitely a "citation needed" moment I think. Friday, I was with a
lot of 12 year olds all firmly of the opinion that it's a "way to get
intelligence/information" but it's not actually intelligent. (FWIW
in UK they say "for real life intelligent") I noted this distinction.
Or rather, I noted because that's what they're taught. So teachers,
naturally pass on the commonsense position that "it's still just a
computer". That means waiting for funerals will not settle the matter
either. That's not to say a significant sect of more credulous "AI
worshippers" will not emerge.
There was a paper a while back on AI usage at work among engineers and it was very strongly correlated to age. This is not surprising, technology adoption is always very dependent on age. (None of this tells you if the technology is a net good)
I feel "cynical" is an inappropriate word here.
We may have to, for the same (ecumenical) reasons that thinkers like Churchland, Hofstadter, Dennet, Penrose and company have all struggled with, eventually accept the impossibility of proof of (existence or non-existence) on any hypothesis of "machine mind". The pragmatic response is, "does it offer utility for me?". And that's all that can be said. Anyone's choice to accept or reject ideas of machine intelligence will remain inviolably personal and beyond appeal to "proof" or argument. I think that's something we'd better get used to sooner rather than later, in order to avoid a whole lot or partisan misery and wasted breath.