I've decided to stop calling current generative deep learning systems "AI". It may seem like it doesn't matter, but the language we use changes the way we think.

What term will I use instead? Depending on the context, I'm going to use the terms "model", "LLM", "bot", "language model", "image generator", "ML", "machine learning", "deep learning", or "neural network".

In fact I'm going to entirely stop using the term AI (except for maybe accidentally), since to me the term is useless and overloaded (opens new window). By virtue of centuries of sci-fi and philosophical baggage it implicitly evokes the much more clear and useful concept of AGI (opens new window), so I will just use the term AGI when I actually want to grapple with that concept.

But aren't these systems "intelligent?"

No. LLMs are statistical models of language. Language is very powerful, and since billions of humans have used it to encode complex patterns of cognition, successfully modeling language gets you a frequently useful model (opens new window) of cognition itself. I'm not saying a computer system could never actually "do" cognition, just that these current ones don't.

Even if a system is created that seems to genuinely "do" cognition, if it doesn't also have the self-concept and motivational systems that seem to make humans conscious (assuming consciousness isn't one of the fundamental forces of nature or something (opens new window)), I would still be more inclined to call it a cognition program or something, not an AI.

I'm not really interested in getting into the nature of intelligence or consciousness in this post (maybe later). But I've seen enough from these models to feel like an idiot putting them alongside Skynet (opens new window) or The Architect (opens new window).

People have been doing this forever. AI is what we call new modes of computation that people don't understand yet (opens new window). Companies often even have the audacity to call bog standard statistical techniques like random forests (opens new window) AI.

Just because a tool automates a task you would normally use your general intelligence to do doesn't mean it's "intelligent". By that definition even a calculator is intelligent.

These systems are useful, and they're certainly essential waypoints on the path to AGI. But they aren't even close (opens new window) to the destination.