The myth of “alpha wolves” and all the men who build a toxic social and psychological image of themselves and other men because of it, apparently because they would like to live in a zoo and get into conflicts with other men they have never met before or something.
But seriously, there were some grave errors in how this came to be. This wasn’t observing wolves in their natural environment. There are no “alpha wolves” in nature. The researcher, David Mech, who was in part responsible for this stupidity has been working since then to correct this, but media and society already swallowed the misconception too hard.
Next one:
“LLMs are not AI.” Yes, they are. AI is a scientific label for a bunch of methods, algorithms, and models.
“But they are not ‘intelligent’.” My dear fellow flesh bag, we do not even have a clear definition of what ‘intelligence’ even is. Come up with a good one, then let’s talk about this particular label. Until then, you can rename AI to ‘pesto alfredo’ for all I care as long as we agree what kind of methods we mean by that to categorize a bunch of computer science stuff.
In the opposite corner:
“We have achieved AGI with LLMs”. No, we have not. There is still a substantial lack of capabilties and properties.
Or: “LLMs are sentient and self-aware”. To the best of my knowledge, they are not. To be fair, there is little room for debate, which often boils down to stuff like semantic arguments about consciousness and definitions of understanding, but the consensus is that they are not.
Another one:
“Homeopathy cures diseases.” No, it doesn’t. It has a placebo effect but that’s pretty much about it.
There is more:
“Evolution theory is just a ‘theory’.” No, it’s a proven set of explanations and models supported by overwhelming empirical evidence.
Popular confusion of the colloquial use of the word “theory” with the scientific one.
Colloquial meaning: a guess, hunch, speculation, or unproven idea.
Scientific meaning: a well-substantiated explanatory framework supported by extensive evidence and capable of being tested and potentially falsified.
And there is even more, but I have already written a wall of text and am tired now.
Oh plenty…
The myth of “alpha wolves” and all the men who build a toxic social and psychological image of themselves and other men because of it, apparently because they would like to live in a zoo and get into conflicts with other men they have never met before or something.
But seriously, there were some grave errors in how this came to be. This wasn’t observing wolves in their natural environment. There are no “alpha wolves” in nature. The researcher, David Mech, who was in part responsible for this stupidity has been working since then to correct this, but media and society already swallowed the misconception too hard.
Next one:
“LLMs are not AI.” Yes, they are. AI is a scientific label for a bunch of methods, algorithms, and models.
“But they are not ‘intelligent’.” My dear fellow flesh bag, we do not even have a clear definition of what ‘intelligence’ even is. Come up with a good one, then let’s talk about this particular label. Until then, you can rename AI to ‘pesto alfredo’ for all I care as long as we agree what kind of methods we mean by that to categorize a bunch of computer science stuff.
In the opposite corner:
“We have achieved AGI with LLMs”. No, we have not. There is still a substantial lack of capabilties and properties.
Or: “LLMs are sentient and self-aware”. To the best of my knowledge, they are not. To be fair, there is little room for debate, which often boils down to stuff like semantic arguments about consciousness and definitions of understanding, but the consensus is that they are not.
Another one:
“Homeopathy cures diseases.” No, it doesn’t. It has a placebo effect but that’s pretty much about it.
There is more:
“Evolution theory is just a ‘theory’.” No, it’s a proven set of explanations and models supported by overwhelming empirical evidence. Popular confusion of the colloquial use of the word “theory” with the scientific one.
Colloquial meaning: a guess, hunch, speculation, or unproven idea.
Scientific meaning: a well-substantiated explanatory framework supported by extensive evidence and capable of being tested and potentially falsified.
And there is even more, but I have already written a wall of text and am tired now.
People think theory = hypothesis. A theory is something proven, which started as a hypothesis…
pretty much toxic masculinity co-opted that false saying.