this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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AGI is not a new term. It's been in use since the 90s and the concept has been around for much longer.
I agree that we should use more specific terms whenever possible. I call LLMs "LLMs" or "language models". Not that it's inaccurate to call them AI, but it's not useful either. AI is an extraordinarily broad term. Pac-Man had AI. And there's a large portion of the population who thinks it means something much, much more lofty and specific than it ever really has. At this point, the term should probably be abandoned. Any attempt to reclaim it is bound to fail.
I see this as yet another example of a technical term being bastardized by mainstream press who do not understand the field. It happens all the time with tech. I remember when "virus" actually meant something; the industry eventually abandoned the term because it was bastardized to the point of uselessness; now we just say "malware" and if we need to refer to viruses specifically...well we just don't for the most part.
This is a linguistic problem more than a technical problem.
It's not new today, but it post-dates "AI" and hit the same problem then.
And before AI we had "Thinking Machines".
Perhaps we should go back to that. OpenAI et al can brand themselves "Think-Tech"
I also go to great lengths to say LLMs vs. AI.
But, I also spent most of my career in the "mainstream press," and reporters can be surprisingly blasé about what technology means if that isn't their beat. I've had to spike a story or two about new police tech that includes zero quotes from anyone outside the PD and their vendor. I've held an order of magnitude more so they could be fixed ahead of publication.
And this was 15-20 years ago, when newsrooms employed people with more than three years of experience. I heavily curate my news diet on an ongoing basis, as outlets can go down the shitter in a matter of weeks with buyouts.
What we get today from many supposedly reliable outlets is not helpful to society.