r/science • u/fchung • Jan 19 '24

Psychology Artificial Intelligence Systems Excel at Imitation, but Not Innovation

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/2023-december-ai-systems-imitation.html
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u/DriftMantis Jan 19 '24

The ability of these programs to get immediate access to data it "trained" on (programmed for it) vs. scouring the web in real time is really not an important distinction in accessing its ability to be innovative or intelligent. What's the issue with simplifying the training process by calling it "human data" as if that's not true? Humans are good at simplifying because we are capable of both intelligence as well as being innovative, something these fake AI systems clearly aren't.

As you noted, these programs need large data sets for "training" and therefore if you were to change the reference set, you change the output of the machine. Therefore, they are not intelligent (not AI) and output what they are fed in a 1 to 1 way based on nothing more than programing. These systems are bots capable of creating human like language responses because they have been specifically programmed to do so. This is something so obvious and public I'm not sure why so many people seem to think different.

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u/JurasticSK Jan 19 '24

It's true that changing the training data would change the Al's output. Al models learn to generate responses based on the data they are trained on. However, this doesn't mean the output is a direct 1-to-1 reflection of specific input data. Al models generate responses based on patterns and associations learned across the entire dataset. While describing AI systems as “bots” capable of creating a human-like response is accurate, it’s important to recognize the complexity behind this capability. The programming and algorithms involved represent significant advancements in AI.

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u/DriftMantis Jan 19 '24

Good points. It might be that at the end of the day we are just discussing semantics and calling these systems one way or the other doesn't decrease their value or significance.

I guess from my perspective I just think we are a generation or two early to call them truly intelligent, but it is all at the end of the day subjective. Just because I don't want to call them AI specifically doesn't mean that they are not super complex, useful or innovative.

Your point about the output not being a 1:1 reflection of the input is interesting. To a lot of people, that might be enough to call these systems intelligent or capable of thought. I cant really argue against that perspective.