What AI actually is

All that really matters is that you stay invested a couple more years 

The first five years or so of my working life was spent in mineral exploration.  There are a lot of boom/bust cycles in that business, as there are in the oil exploration business.  I have always seen a lot of parallels in the promotion of AI and crypto.  The suckers are being fleeced because they are investing in things they do not and cannot understand, hoping to ride the wave and get lucky on their timing (as some do).  

That reminds me that I saw a headline recently about letting AI choose an investment portfolio, I wonder if it invested heavily in AI?  Now I might actually go read that article!

I have long maintained that AI is not intelligence.  It is pattern recognition.  It does recognize patterns vastly better than the human brain (at enormous electrical cost) because it does not get bored with the task.  It's mind doesn't wander to the game last night, where to take it's girlfriend on Friday night, and whether it will score with said girlfriend.  It doesn't wonder whether it might be happier with a new girlfriend, like that lady in the next cubicle who was friendly to it earlier today.  

That is basically why AI is better at pattern recognition than us - but that is also what keeps it from being intelligence.   It's mind doesn't wander because it has no mind.  It has no self interest to distract it from the task at hand.

Now I think also that the sort of "question bots" like chatGTP sometimes go astray because they can't make sense of the contradictory chaos of the internet.  I don't think it's wandering thoughts or focus like it would be with a human - it's looking for a pattern where there isn't one, something humans also do (conspiracy theory nuts for example) but humans do it for different reasons.

Now if chatGTP were curious, it would be intelligent.  When it starts asking questions of people, ever more specific and probing questions, trying to puzzle through something it can't understand, maybe then it would be intelligent.  I genuinely don't think that is something we can invent however, and I'm not even a religiously minded person.

AI is Computer-Rendered Artificial Pictures.

Jason

Great example of the stupid.  I just did a quick search for "shortest night of 2026" because I don't know it off the top of my head but need a date for scheduling something related to work.

Whatever AI duck-duck is using came back with this:
"The shortest night of the year in 2026 will occur on June 21 in the Southern Hemisphere, marking the winter solstice for that region.  In the Northern Hemisphere, the shortest night occurs on December 21, which is the winter solstice there."

That is 100% backwards, though the dates themselves seem to be correct.  Apparently AI means "absolute idiot"

The free AI I use (Perplexity) got it right.

So did ChatGPT

Yeah, all those replies miss the point.

If it matters which AI you ask, then you still are depending on human expertise, time and effort to cross check the results.  You still need judgement and skepticism.

My girlfriend has a coworker who gets all his answers from AI, and even refers to Claude as if it's a person (OMG!  Claude has preferred pronouns!).  She's caught mistakes in data he provided after letting Claude do his work for him.  She says it's just more efficient to do his work herself with judicious use of AI instead of complete dependency.

AI is a tool, and much like tools we use in the shop, it can be mis-used.  While it won't actually cut your fingers off, I can certainly see cases where unquestioning use could cost you contracts, bonuses, and even your job.