Inspired by a recent talk from Richard Stallman.
From Slashdot:
Speaking about AI, Stallman warned that “nowadays, people often use the term artificial intelligence for things that aren’t intelligent at all…” He makes a point of calling large language models “generators” because “They generate text and they don’t understand really what that text means.” (And they also make mistakes “without batting a virtual eyelash. So you can’t trust anything that they generate.”) Stallman says “Every time you call them AI, you are endorsing the claim that they are intelligent and they’re not. So let’s let’s refuse to do that.”
Sometimes I think that even though we are in a “FuckAI” community, we’re still helping the “AI” companies by tacitly agreeing that their LLMs and image generators are in fact “AI” when they’re not. It’s similar to how the people saying “AI will destroy humanity” give an outsized aura to LLMs that they don’t deserve.
Personally I like the term “generators” and will make an effort to use it, but I’m curious to hear everyone else’s thoughts.
No
Exhibit A people are beginning to describe empty, hollow mass produced corporate slop as AI, it has become an adjective to describe worthless trash and I love it.
I support Stallman’s take. I think just saying “Fuck AI” is going to have almost zero effect on the world. I think we need to add nuance, reasoning, be accurate… Tell people WHY that is, so we can educate them. Or convince them to do something… Understand how these things work and why that’s good or bad to form an opinion… “Fuck AI” alone isn’t going to do any of that.
There’s literally nothing you could possibly do from an internet forum to have an effect on the world. This is for fun.
