Cory Doctorow: The people who tell you ‘AI is changing everything’ are lying

I generally respect this guy’s opinion (I probably use the term “enshitification” multiple times a week!), but pretending that “AI” and “Chabot” are interchangeable terms seems wildly reductive, and the subtle presumption that the process of changing is a binary changed/non-changed situation instead of a curve is just ignorant.

If the internet was “turned off” after 4 or so years not much would have changed, either.

To the average person (and this includes politicians, basically anyone not a software engineer developing the tools )who Cory generally writes to try and inform, they are the same.

Should they be? No. But that’s a whole different thing and trying to change that in the general public mind doesn’t change his current point about AI as the public thinks of it right now.

Speaking at the level of your target audience is wise, but there is a point where information is not just simplfied, but lost, and I think equating chat bots with AI in the broader sense is past that point. It would be like equating websites with the internet.

Is equating chatbots with AI any different than equating a bunch of if/else statements with AI? Is any of this AI considering none of it involves actual intelligence or informed decision making?

Sure AI is more than LLMs, but those are the face of it in the public’s eye and is what’s driving these trillion dollar corporate valuations, which then lead to every company on earth declaring that their product is “AI!”