Subj : Artificial Intelligence... is really just "Someone Else's Intelligence To : All From : LundukeJournal Date : Fri May 05 2023 23:30:03 Artificial Intelligence... is really just "Someone Else's Intelligence" Date: Fri, 05 May 2023 22:23:44 GMT Description: Someone else's writing, painting, coding, speaking... someone else's work. FULL STORY ====================================================================== Sometimes, in computing, we give a name to an idea that is completely misleading. One of my favorite examples is The Cloud. We store files in The Cloud. We run services in The Cloud. Cloud, cloud, cloud. Well. What, pray tell, is The Cloud? Simple. The Cloud is nothing more than a vague way to refer to computers connected to the Internet. There is no Cloud. Not really. We talk it about it as if it were some magical thing that exists in some unspecified location that uses Star Maths and Wishy Thinking to handle all of our Internet-y needs. But its not. When someone says Save this file to The Cloud, what they are really saying is Save this file to a specific computer server. The phrase There is no Cloud there is only someone elses computer has become a common, amusing refrain in nerdy circles. You keep using that word The same thing is now happening with Artificial Intelligence a term that is profoundly misleading. Services like ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and others are making waves with their A.I. and gaining a huge base of users (and media attention) in the process. People are using ChatGPT to create everything from essays to answers to questions on history tests. GitHub is providing people with huge amounts of code for a wide variety of software projects. But how, exactly, are these A.I. systems creating all of this? By using keyword searching and pattern recognition software to find some pre-existing bit of information in its vast database and provide it to you. A database filled with word definitions, code, pictures, facts, poetry, newspaper articles, tweets, and every other nugget of information the A.I. can get its hands on. The acquiring of this data is called training. The companies which run these A.I. services train their A.I. by filling the database up with data from all across the Internet. And who, pray tell, made all of that training data in the first place? People. Like you and me. Writers, musicians, painters, students, politicians, programmers and even people posting their thoughts on Social Media. What does that mean, exactly? A.I. is Biff Tannen It means that what we currently call Artificial Intelligence is a piece of software which copies the work of people of all of us and passes it off as its own. A.I. is the kid who didnt prepare for a test so he copied the answers off you. Seriously. That is exactly what is happening when you ask ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot for something. It spits back at you something that someone else created. And its quite clever about it. It uses its vast database of code, words, etc. to tweak and alter the text it returns so that it appears, at first glance, to be original work. ChatGPT is a school bully demanding that the nerd do all of the Bullys homework for him then re-writing the homework himself so that it was in the Bullys handwriting. Thus fooling the teacher (hopefully). Just like what Biff Tannen did to George McFly in Back to the Future. The nerd, in this scenario does not get credit for his work. The kid getting his test copied, likewise, does not get credit. And neither do you. A.I. copies your work your social posts, articles, code, etc. and passes it off as its own. Artificial Intelligence is misleading Is A.I. artificial? Well. Sorta. Is A.I. intelligence? I mean. Kinda? I guess? In the same sense that Biff Tannen copying of George McFly could also be called a student doing his homework. Calling the current round of such systems A.I. is, at best, misleading. They are highly sophisticated impressively so cheating systems. Nothing more. Unfortunately these Cheating Systems these Biff Tannens are having a truly massive (and devastating) impact on the world. The end result As the usage of such A.I. systems increases and people become increasingly reliant upon them a few things are going to happen (and are already happening): Original authors are not credited for their hard work (in any way). Original work by humans is devalued, causing multiple catastrophic problems: Creators (writers, painters, etc.) are paid less and employed less. Less original, quality, interesting work is created. People get more dumberer. The more sophisticated the A.I. software gets the better it will be at pretending to have original ideas. The better it will get at copying your homework and fooling the teacher. At cheating. And its already incredibly good at it. The cheaters will copy the cheaters Let us end on something fun (and horrifying) to think about: What happens as the total amount of content (articles, posts, etc.) written by these A.I. systems continues to increase? And then those A.I. creations are fed back into the A.I. databases? A.I. will be trained ( *cough* ) on what other A.I. software (and itself) have already copied from others. That cycle will continue, with an increasingly rapid pace. Every error, misquote, and false statement will be recycled back into the system and its impact will be amplified. The truth is I am not sure what that looks like as time goes on. But, Ill tell you this right now its not awesome. Share Want to make sure you get every article and podcast? Be sure to be a subscriber to The Lunduke Journal of Technology . Subscribe now So many reasons to subscribe to The Lunduke Journal of Technology . Nerdy articles & podcasts every week. Plus A dozen eBooks Monthly PDF Magazine Premium Videos Other handy links: The Lunduke Journal of Technology Community Site The Lunduke Journal of Technology Podcast RSS Feed The Lunduke Journal of Technology Podcast on iTunes The Lunduke Journal of Technology Podcast on Spotify On Twitter (@LundukeJournal ====================================================================== Link to news story: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/artificial-intelligence-is-really --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 (Linux/64) * Origin: tqwNet Technology News (1337:1/100) .