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It’s OK to call it Artificial Intelligence: I wrote about how people really love objecting to the term "AI" to describe LLMs and suchlike because those things aren't actually "intelligent" - but the term AI has been used to describe exactly this kind of research since 1955, and arguing otherwise at this point isn't a helpful contribution to the discussion.

simonwillison.net/2024/Jan/7/c

simonwillison.netIt’s OK to call it Artificial IntelligenceUpdate 9th January 2024: This post was clumsily written and failed to make the point I wanted it to make. I’ve published a follow-up, What I should have said about …

@simon "Artificial intelligence has been used incorrectly since 1955" is not a convincing argument to me (and means our predecessors are as much to blame for misleading the general public as contemporary hucksters claiming ChatGPT is going to cause human extinction).

@lgw4 I don't think they were wrong to coin a term in 1955 with a perfectly reasonable definition, then consistently apply that definition for nearly 70 years.

It's not their fault that science fiction redefined it from under them!

@simon Machines with intelligence similar to (or better than) that of humans (that is, the current popular concept of artificial intelligence) has been present in science fiction since the 19th century. Dystopian (and utopian) fantasies of humans subjugated (or assisted) by these machine intelligences have been science fiction tropes continuously since then. I would wager that John McCarthy was aware of this fact. No one "redefined it from under them."

Simon Willison

@lgw4 that's not an argument I'd heard before! I know science fiction had AI all the way back to Erewhon en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewho but I was under the impression that the term itself was first used by McCarthy

en.m.wikipedia.orgErewhon - Wikipedia