The LLM peddlers seem to be going for that exact result. That's why they're calling it "AI". Why is this surprising that non-technical people are falling for it?
That's why they're calling it "AI".
That's not why. They're calling it AI because it is AI. AI doesn't mean sapient or conscious.
Edit: look at this diagram if you're still unsure:
In the general population it does. Most people are not using an academic definition of AI, they are using a definition formed from popular science fiction.
The I implies intelligence; of which there is none because it's not sentient. It's intentionally deceptive because it's used as a marketing buzzword.
I think an alarming number of Gen Z internet folks find it funny to skew the results of anonymous surveys.
Yeah, what is it with GenZ? Millenials would never skew the results of anonymous surveys
Lots of attacks on Gen Z here, some points valid about the education that they were given from the older generations (yet it's their fault somehow). Good thing none of the other generations are being fooled by AI marketing tactics, right?
The debate on consciousness is one we should be having, even if LLMs themselves aren't really there. If you're new to the discussion, look up AI safety and the alignment problem. Then realize that while people think it's about preparing for a true AGI with something akin to consciousness and the dangers that we could face, we have have alignment problems without an artificial intelligence. If we think a machine (or even a person) is doing things because of the same reasons we want them done, and they aren't but we can't tell that, that's an alignment problem. Everything's fine until they follow their goals and the goals suddenly line up differently than ours. And the dilemma is - there's not any good solutions.
But back to the topic. All this is not the fault of Gen Z. We built this world the way it is and raised them to be gullible and dependent on technology. Using them as a scapegoat (those dumb kids) is ignoring our own failures.
Not the fault of prior generations, either. They were raised by their parents, and them by their parents, and so on.
Sometime way back there was a primordial multicellular life form that should have known better.
The main point here (which I think is valid despite my status as a not in this group Gen Z) is that we're still like really young? I'm 20 dude, it's just not my or my friends fault that school failed us. The fact it failed us was by design and despite my own and others complaints it's continued to fail the next generation and alpha is already, very clearly struggling. I really just don't think there's much ground to argue about how Gen Z by and large should somehow know better. The whole point of the public education system is to ensure we well educate our children, it's simply not my or any child's fault that school is failing to do so. Now that I'm an adult I can, and I do push for improved education but clearly people like me don't have our priorities straight seeing who got elected...
Tbh, I’m in my 40ies and I don’t think my education was so much better than what younger generations are getting. I’m a software engineer and most of the skills I need now are not skills I learned in school or even university.
I started learning programming when I was 9 because my father gave me his old Apple II computer to see what I would do. At the time, this was a privilege. Most children did not get that kind of early exposure. It also made me learn some English early.
In high school, we eventually had some basic programming classes. I was the guy the teacher asked when something didn’t work. Or when he forgot where the semicolons go in Pascal. During one year, instead of programming, there was a pilot project where we’d learn about computer aided math using Waterloo Maple that just barely ran on our old 486es. That course was great but after two months the teacher ran out of things to teach us because the math became “too advanced for us”.
And yes the internet existed at the time; I had access to it at home starting 1994. We learned nothing about it in school.
When I first went to university I had an Apple PowerBook that I bought from money I earned myself. Even though I worked for it, this was privilege too; most kids couldn’t afford what was a very expensive laptop then, or any laptop. But the reason I’m bringing it up is that my university’s web site at the time did not work on it. They had managed to implement even simple buttons that could have been links as Java applets that only worked on Windows. Those were the people I was supposed to learn computer science from. Which, by the way, at the time still meant “math with a side of computer science”. My generation literally could not study in an IT related field if we couldn’t understand university major level math (this changed quickly in the following years in my country, but still).
So while I don’t disagree about education having a lot of room for optimization, when it comes to more recent technologies like AI, it also makes me a bit salty when all of the blame is assigned to education. The generations currently in education, at least in developed countries, have access to so much that my generation only had when our parents were rich or at least nerds like my father (he was a teacher, so we were not rich). And yet, sometimes it feels like they just aren’t interested in doing anything with this access. At least compared to what I would have done with it.
At the same time, also keep in mind that when you say things like education doesn’t prepare us for AI or whatever other new thing (it used to be just the internet, or “new media”, before), those who you are expecting the education from are the people of my generation, who did not grow up with any of this, and who were not taught about any of it when we were young. We don’t have those answers either… this stuff is new for everyone. And for the people you expect to teach, it’s way more alien than it is for you. This was true when I went to school too, and I think it’s inevitable in a world moving this fast.
This. I also see lots of things feeling like "oooooh these young people!" Also covid would have been gen alpha. Gen Z is mostly in their 20s now
They also are the dumbest generation with a COVID education handicap and the least technological literacy in terms of mechanics comprehension. They have grown up with technology that is refined enough to not need to learn troubleshooting skills past "reboot it".
How they don't understand that a LLM can't be conscious is not surprising. LLMs are a neat trick, but far from anything close to consciousness or intelligence.
This is an angle I've never considered before, with regards to a future dystopia with a corrupt AI running the show. AI might never advance beyond what it is in 2025, but because people believe it's a supergodbrain, we start putting way too much faith in its flawed output, and it's our own credulity that dismantles civilisation rather than a runaway LLM with designs of its own. Misinformation unwittingly codified and sanctified by ourselves via ChatGeppetto.
The call is coming from inside the ~~house~~ mechanical Turk!
Same generation who takes astrology seriously, I’m shocked
I wasn't aware the generation of CEOs and politicians was called "Gen Z".
We have to make the biggest return on our investments, fr fr
Lots of people lack critical thinking skills
That's a matter of philosophy and what a person even understands "consciousness" to be. You shouldn't be surprised that others come to different conclusions about the nature of being and what it means to be conscious.
Consciousness is an emergent property, generally self awareness and singularity are key defining features.
There is no secret sauce to llms that would make them any more conscious than Wikipedia.
If it was actually AI sure.
This is an unthinking machine algorithm chewing through mounds of stolen data.
That is certainly one way to view it. One might say the same about human brains, though.
To be fair, so am i
I wish philosophy was taught a bit more seriously.
An exploration on the philosophical concepts of simulacra and eidolons would probably change the way a lot of people view LLMs and other generative AI.
to be honest they probably wish it was conscious because it has more of a conscience than conservatives and capitalists
I’ve been hearing a lot about gen z using them for therapists, and I find that really sad and alarming.
AI is the ultimate societal yes man. It just parrots back stuff from our digital bubble because it’s trained on that bubble.
At some point in the mid-late 1990s, I recall having a (technically-inclined) friend who dialed up to a BBS and spent a considerable amount of time pinging and then chatting with Lisa, the "sysadmin's sister". When I heard about it, I spent quite some time arguing with him that Lisa was a bot. He was pretty convinced that she was human.
I tried to explain a directory tree to one of them (a supposedly technical resource) for twenty minutes and failed. They're idiots. They were ruined by baby tech like iPhones, iPads, and now AI.
The batshit insane part of that is they could just make easy canned answers for thank yous, but nope...IT'S THE USER'S FAULT!
edit: To the mass downvoting prick who is too cowardly to comment, whats it like to be best friends with a calculator?
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
