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Comment by parineum | Hacker News Reader

> Anyone that says LLMs do not qualify as AI are the same people who will continue to move the goal posts for AGI.

I have the complete opposite feeling. The layman understanding of the term "AI" is AGI, a term that only needs to exist because researchers and businessmen hype their latest creations as AI.

The goalposts for AI don't move but the definition isn't precise but we know it when we see it.

AI, to the layman, is Skynet/Terminator, Asimov's robots, Data, etc.

The goalposts moving that you're seeing is when something the tech bubble calls AI escapes the tech bubble and everyone else looks at it and says, no, that's not AI.

The problem is that everything that comes out of the research efforts toward AI, the tech industry calls AI despite it not achieving that goal by the common understanding of the term. LLMs were/are a hopeful AI candidate but, as of today, they aren't but that doesn't stop OpenAI from trying to raise money using the term.

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AI has had many, many lay meanings over the years. Simplistic decision trees and heuristics for video games is called AI. It is a loose term and trying to apply it with semantic rigour is useless, as is trying to tell people that it should only be used to match one of its many meanings.

If you want some semantic rigour use more specific terms like AGI, human equivalent AGI, super human AGI, exponentially self improving AGI, etc. Even those labels lack rigour, but at least they are less ambiguous.

LLMs are pretty clearly AI and AGI under commonly understood, lay definitions. LLMs are not human level AGI and perhaps will never be by themselves.

> LLMs are pretty clearly AI and AGI under commonly understood, lay definitions.

That's certainly not clear. For starters, I don't think there is a lay definition of AGI which is largely my point.

The only reason people are willing to call LLMs AI is because that's how they are being sold and the shine isn't yet off the rose.

How many people call Siri AI? It used to be but people have had time to feel around the edges where it fails to meet their expectations of AI.

You can tell what people think of AI by the kind of click bait surrounding LLMs. I read an article not too long ago with the headline about an LLM lying to try and not be turned off. Turns out it was intentionally prompted to do that but the point is that that kind of self preservation is what people expect of AI. Implicitly, they expect that AI has a "self".

ChatGPT doesn't have a self.

AI and AGI are broad umbrella terms. Stuff like Alpha Zero is AI but not AGI while LLMs are both.

Engaging in semantic battles to try to change the meanings of those terms is just going to create more confusion, not less. Instead why not use more specific and descriptive labels to be clear about what you are saying.

Self-Aware AGI, Human Level AGI, Super-Human ANI, are all much more useful than trying to force general label to be used a specific way.

> Engaging in semantic battles to try to change the meanings of those terms is just going to create more confusion

You're doing that. I've never seen someone state, as fact, that LLMs are AGI before now. Go ask someone on the street what Super-Human ANI means.

> I've never seen someone state, as fact, that LLMs are AGI before now.

Then you probably haven't been paying attention.

https://deepmind.google/research/publications/66938/

> I've never seen someone state, as fact, that LLMs are AGI before now.

Many LLMs are AI that weren't designed / trained to solve a narrow problem scope. They can complete a wide range of tasks with varying levels of proficiency. That makes them artificial general intelligence or AGI.

You are confused because lots of people use "AGI" as a shorthand to talk about "human level" AGI that isn't limited to a narrow problem scope.

It's not wrong to use the term this way, but it is ambiguous and vague.

Even the term "human level" is poorly defined and if I wanted to use the term "Human level AGI" for any kind of discussion of what qualifies, I'd need to specify how I was defining that.

I'm not confused at all. Your own personal definitions just further my point that tech people have a much different classification system that the general populous and that the need for those excessive classifications is that way ambitious CEOs keep using the term incorrectly in order to increase share prices.

It's actually very funny to me that you are stating these definitions so authoritatively despite the terms not having any sort if rigor attached to either their definition or usage.

> It's actually very funny to me that you are stating these definitions so authoritatively despite the terms not having any sort if rigor attached to either their definition or usage.

Huh? My entire point was that AI and AGI are loose, vague terms and if you want to be clear about what you are talkng about, you should use more specific terms.

"Just ask AI" is a phrase you will hear around enterprises now. You less often hear "Google it". You hear "ChatGPT it".

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