This reflects the hubris of the tech world that overestimates its own intelligence....
The trouble with reacting to provocations like this, even if the indignation is genuine (it's basically always genuine) is that it leads to much less interesting discussions.
Not only that, there's the whole cult of intelligence issue, which attracts people who are very skilled at presenting themselves as uber-intelligent even if their greatest talents like in the realm of social engineering and bureaucratic manipulation (many highly successful academics fall into this category). This is a kind of 'smartness', but not necessarily the kind that helps one grasp complex maths.
What we call 'smartness', or 'actual skill' is the product of some degree of native intelligence and the amound of time and energy spent developing that intelligence in a particular area via diligent effort.
Meanwhile, intelligence research continues to be one of the more fruitful (and reliable) fields of the social sciences
This might also be an either-or situation - i.e. some people specialize in the ability to quickly grasp a wide variety of knowledge at a relatively shallow level, others specialize in in-depth knowledge of a particular subject, and it's impossible to be really good at both.
Maybe to a limited extent, but most of the difference is likely natural ability.
Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
But I also agree that for many other smart people, what these things do is sort of an "obvious" result of doing bulk statistics on lots of data. The particulars can sometimes be surprising, but the aggregate result "thing that confidently generates false data" isn't.
In between, there seems to be a very passionate, and very excited group of people who don't get it and think the AI magic is "thinking". Some of these people may also be smart, but they sure don't have a strong complete vertical understanding of the topic. These people are numerous, and provide lots of conflicting and confusing information at about the level of through of the latest popular science breakthrough article -- setting wrong expectations all along the way.
Also consider: if LLMs weren't as big as they were, would the people pursuing this still be the "smartest engineers?" Would their efforts still be as brilliant? If you answered no to any of those, why not?
This Medium blog post is not the PR person for the "tech world".
What about “I want to thank both you and the original article author”? Should it be “or” instead of “and”?
This seems a reach to me. I think your confusion is not unfounded and is not uncommon, but I think it's also extremely (and moreso?) common to read the sentence as the author intended. It took me 0ms to puzzle out the meaning because the intended meaning was the natural assumption of my brain.
Besides that, it seems a bit absurd to me to say that "and" and "as well as" have entirely distinct meanings. They're not totally interchangeable, but there is overlap.
What is said here could almost have the same logical outcome as saying "the most challenging problems have no brilliant solution until one of the smartest people come along".
Nothing about attraction whatsoever, factored out instead.
Still seems pretty sensible when it works.
Now pick 3 top mathematical wizards.
Would it have been possible to achieve that status unless they had already accepted (and overcome!) challenges that were too much for those who came before?
And maybe still have their hands full with remaining challenges which were already accepted before AI came near enough to be considered within reach?
It should be most obvious to those having the best numerical abilty, to figure that more than just 3 of the smartest people will be needed with the growing number of challenges that nobody has even tried to overcome, sometimes not even recognize.
And if I can't tell the difference between a human generated piece of art and an AI generated one, then I find that fascinating, not threatening. It says a lot about 1) your own tastes and perceptions, 2) the meaning of art in general, and 3) what exactly it means when activities previously considered solely human are mastered by programs, such as what happened in the past with chess engines, etc.
I think these are all exciting developments, and I look forward to seeing how art will evolve in the way the emergence of chess engines changed strategy for humans moving forward.
The interesting stuff is asking what is an artist trying to convey or explore within the nuances of the medium they are working with: why does neon genesis rebuild movies use live action camera techniques and what does that do to the overall themes of the work? Why does one painting use the texture of the paint instead of the color theory of the paint as a message conveyor? How is the use of reflective or matte surfaces communicating an environment in an installed art piece?
Furthermore, of the very smart people I know, the intellectually stimulating stuff is kind of bizarre, and avenues of finding this stuff or funding this stuff is being drowned out by comparatively understimulating works. Artists usually fund their more unusual pursuits with the commercial work that MidJourney/Stable Diffusion targets.
For some, this is an important aspect of art appreciation, and I would expect those people to continue to gravitate toward human produced art. For other people who don't have that background, and don't think about those things, the difference won't be relevant to them, and they'll judge the end product based on their own personal and arbitrary criteria. What's interesting about an artwork to one person makes it banal to another, and no amount of academic study or criticism will change peoples' tastes.
Let's not forget that often creators themselves aren't always actively thinking about composition, texture, color, etc, and part of the work for them can be as black box out of their subconscious as the creation of a neural network.
Similar to people being fooled by white wine dyed red, I think we'll also have critics who remark on how absolutely human a work of art has to be due to X/Y/Z, only for it to be revealed to be an AI work. That I think encapsulates a lot of what I look forward to in terms of the debate over what exactly about art is human-specific and what it means for something, human or not, to have artistic capabilities.
I thought it would be upset so I kind of introduced the topic lightly.
I was relieved how much he didn’t care.
I completely agree with you. A button click image will never relate to most people like a real work of art.
I think the same about television. I think we all like Seinfeld because we know he is a real person with real experiences that we can relate too. I think this is important.
The threat is that it will no longer be viable to make money from creative works. A completely trivial and laughable concern if you don't live in a society that believes you have to "earn a living".
Although I see a comparison to previous technologies replacing human jobs, I'm willing to put that point aside and focus solely on AI.
Will AI generated content be cheaper? Will AI content be more interesting and engaging than anything a human could create? If there is no economic demand for human generated artwork, then should it still be viable to make money from it? Is there reason to believe the people who remain in the art market won't be able to make more money by occupying niches that AI art doesn't serve, or by selling to "hipsters" or "luddites" who are anti-AI art? It used to be the only way to make real money through art was having a patron. Perhaps there will be wealthy people who will still be willing to patronize human artists.
Historically, we are in a special place in history where average people can make a living through creative work, but it's not at all an easy industry to break into, even today, and it has always been competitive and everchanging, just as art itself. Economics aside, people have always produced art for intrinsic purposes, and they will continue to do so even when the profit motive is gone.
The only artists I can think of that died with at least some money had sponsors that encouraged their work.
So I’m not sure much changes here.
If AI is supposed to stop us all from working, then those people will just be better off.
That's not relevant. There are tons of working artists today and there have been for decades. But if a person can't pay rent by selling their art, things suddenly change for millions of people.