For my job, I write general interest stories about computer science research. My colleagues call themselves "science writers." I dislike this term, but it's generally correct.
After three years here, I've written about a lot of weird research — everything from robots to reinforcement learning to cancer cells to virtual reality. All of it involves artificial intelligence. I've learned enough that now none of it seems weird anymore.
I've also learned enough that now podcasts and tech journalism are starting to make me mad, because most reporters have no idea what they're talking about. So I'm at the same level as, say, a second semester college freshman.
I like my job a lot, even though I have to talk to faculty members about their innovative machine learning algorithms when I barely passed high school calculus. It's a good job for me: I'm curious and I don't care about looking stupid. (Faculty are often astounded at what I don't know. Most of them are polite about it.)
All this to say: I now know just enough about computer science that the current "discourse" around AI is driving me nuts. It used to be that only the political chatter drove me nuts, because I had studied too much political science. Now the tech chatter is also driving me crazy. It's a good thing I don't read the news or there would be nothing left to read.
My most urgent request: can people please start using the right terms? AI as a concept has existed for like 70 years. It is not synonymous with ChatGPT! AI includes many different types of technology. Machine learning is just one type of AI and LLMs are a small subset of machine learning. And ChatGPT is just one brand of LLM! If AI is the internet, then ChatGPT is AOL.
Also: If you read anything that suggests AGI is coming within the next decade, you should immediately know that the writer is both full of shit and/or receiving a paycheck from a company working to build AGI. No one even understands yet where general human intelligence comes from! How exactly do you think these same people will build general artificial intelligence? I don't care if they have billions of dollars to do it. Throwing money at an idea doesn't make it magically appear.
Finally: you may think that AI is coming, but AI is already here. Do you use facial recognition to open your phone? Does Spotify recommend music for you to listen to? Do you sometimes follow people that Instagram recommends? Do you use GoogleMaps to check traffic? Do you check the weather forecast?? Do you exist in the world with a computer and a smart phone? To stop using AI you will need to learn how to time travel. And I bet AI could help with that.
The only question in my mind is what we do with AI. It's the same story as the internet: computer scientists invented this amazing network for sharing information and we used it to buy things (Amazon) and share what we ate for breakfast (social media). We did some good stuff with it too, but on the whole I'd say most people wish we had handled it better.
Now we have AI, and we can either use it to create fusion energy or we can use it to write mediocre student essays. I can tell you which technology I would like my children to have.
