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[–] 103 points 4 months ago (20 children)

Actual AI, learning models, not large language models hallucinating things.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    So this is more of machine learning than AI?

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  • [–] 39 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    AI is the larger umbrella term. LLMs, Machine Learning, CNNs, DNNs, RNNs, etc. all fall under that umbrella "AI" term.

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    Yeah, even pathfinding is "AI" but people associate it only with slop these days.

    Like some Dunning Kruger effect sweeping the world.

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  • [–] -2 points 4 months ago (13 children)

    LLM is "actual AI". I think the term you may be looking for is "generative AI".

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    In the old sense of the word, we don't have an actual AI yet, but it's true that LLM and AI have become interchangeable.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    All AI is actual AI. It doesn't need to be real intelligence to be artificial, should be obvious. Are you telling me artificial grass shouldn't be called that because a goat can't eat it?

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    No, he's questioning the intelligence part and not if it's artificial or not.

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  • [–] -2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Do you question the grass part of artificial grass? It's obviously not grass.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Except it is a fairly good artifice of grass. "AI" is not a good artifice of intelligence. GAI would be, but not LLMs or anything else we have today. They aren't trying to mimic intelligence. They're trying to mimic the output of intelligence. They don't think; they reproduce.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Except it is a fairly good artifice of grass.

    Good for what? Looking at? It's not gonna satisfy a goat.

    We only care for the look ("the output"), and we don't expect more of it, or sell it for more than it is. That's why it's not a controversial term for astroturf. It wasn't controversial for AI either until very recently. In 60 years of AI nobody has split hairs over output of intelligence. It's justified but weirdly misdirected anger.

    AI is a perfectly cromulent word for the thing.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago*

    Mostly for the thing we care about grass for: looking at and touching. We don't grow grass to feed goats. We grow grass for the appearance of grass. It serves no practical purpose in most places where grass is grown. Obviously it does have a place in nature, but not where you're putting artificial grass. The only purpose in those places was touch and appearance. It handles that fine.

    AI is a perfectly good term. It's just an overused one. It was great when it was in academia, and everyone knew what it meant, or in a sci-fi story, and people didn't think it existed. It's currently been used as a marketing term. People hear it and think it's intelligent. It isn't. The goal of using it for marketing was to create this distortion. They don't care to inform people of the meaning because the only reason it's valuable is because of the confusion.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Correct, but it’s semantics. Most people just think all AI is generative these days, and so I’m trying to differentiate.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    I'd even argue that generative AI is machine learning, except the learning stops when the training does so it's not learning continuously like ML in the classical sense.

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  • [–] 16 points 4 months ago

    "We've been trying to reach you about your cars extended warranty..."

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  • [–] 53 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    Fuck these headlines.

    We know this isn't about LLMs, but clearly the intent of newspapers and their backers is to make the general public believe it is.

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    Nah, this story has been developing since before the LLM boom. "AI" has never been rare in science headlines like this.

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  • [–] 17 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Yeah but now the meaning of the word AI has changed in most people's minds to mean generative ai and mostly LLMs.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Well, apparently journalists here are doing a good job and actually understand that generative AI and machine learning models pertain to the same family of techniques.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I wouldn't call that "doing a good job". If they were doing a good job, they would disambiguate Machine Learning from Generative AI. I don't know that they're doing this intentionally, but i would definitely appreciate that distinction being made.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I work in the field of machine learning as a researcher. There is no distinction. Machine learning is a set of techniques, Artificial Intelligence is a synonym which became popular in recent years.

    Generative AI only defines how a model is used, not what the model is. You might as well use a kNN model to do generative AI. Generative AI is machine learning. More specifically it is an application of supervised machine learning.

    Some people have started distinguishing machine learning to identify classical models and AI to definite stuff that uses deep learning.

    If you want to be specific you may use the name of the specific model, but that's a bit too much for an article title. Otherwise, the term AI is quite appropriate in this context and far more recognized than ML.

    And me myself never say AI, I don't like too much that it ingrains some feeling of intelligence; but for these articles i feel it is appropriate.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    As someone else who works in ML but as a user for research purposes, I agree that there is no technical distinction but we're talking about public communications here. You and I both know that AI and ML are the same thing. Most people do not. If I talked with my mom about AI she would assume I mean generative AI. She wouldn't understand the nuance in your comment.

    In fact, even as a researcher who uses both simple ML techniques and generative AI, I tend to make the assumption that when someone mentions AI they mean generative AI.

    Common language changes based on the common understanding of society. The fact that the technical terms mean something different from the common understanding in society means that we need to be even more careful with the terms that we use, especially with something as polarizing as generative AI.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    We have a different opinion here. I don't think general public has an understanding of the difference between the two things. It may be useful to teach people about it, but I'm not sure how much it would help. People understand generative AI when they hear AI because it's been the only thing they've been in direct contact with. Despite them using ML every day in different aspects of their life this is not something they get to know about. LLMs are different since they directly use the model.

    I feel it is good people are getting to know ML and the fact that it is a useful technology; the fact that currently it is associated with LLMs is a side effect. It probably would be better if it wasn't that way, but I do not see it as a big problem.

    On the fact that it is polarizing, sure that is currently the case; probably it won't be so in 10 years. That is nothing compared to the past 70 years in which ML has been used and applied in several fields with great success without anyone knowing it even existed.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    "The text appears to be a philosophical discussion of ethics, arts and human behavior, probably reflecting Stoic thought, the researchers say. "

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    If I recall correctly, that's consistent with the other scrolls from that library that have been deciphered by different methods, so at least some of the text is likely to be correct.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Yeah if I remember correctly, the villa where these scrolls were found housed stoic philosophers or something. It was also originally owned by Julius Caesars father in law.

    I actually visited Herculaneum a couple of years ago. Pretty cool sight. You can see the charred wooden beams of this villa sticking out of the dirt cliff. When no one was looking I picked small a charred wooden bit off the ground. Probably shouldn't have done that, but there were lots of these small pieces just lying there on the ground, and I couldn't help myself.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    Slightly off-topic: has anyone else had YouTube's algorithm pushing AI-generated videos that claim to be about stoicism but with actual content that's PUA bullshit? It's all quite weird. Even the few that were really about stoicism were halfbaked crap.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    "Dear diary, boy I sure hope that volcano doesn't erupt."

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)

    Does it have a load of em dashes in the text?

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago

    Do you want to awaken ancient Italian zombie hoardes? Because this is how you awaken ancient Italian zombie hoardes.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    How the fuck did the make the training set for this?

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Didn’t this happen years ago? I remember them doing the same thing using some heuristic algorithm long before llms were on the scene.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    The article never mentioned LLMs. LLMs only make up a small part of all AI tools. The AI in this sense is referring to machine learning models used to help digitally unroll the scroll and then another machine learning model that's used to detect the letters.

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  • [+] -10 points 4 months ago (3 children)