Today's AI systems – generative AI tools such as ChatGPT – are not truly intelligent

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Sam Altman, chief executive of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, is reportedly trying to find up to US$7 trillion of investment to manufacture the enormous volumes of computer chips he believes the world needs to run artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

Altman also recently said the world will need more energy in the AI-saturated future he envisions – so much more that some kind of technological breakthrough like nuclear fusion may be required.

Altman clearly has big plans for his company's technology, but is the future of AI really this rosy? As a long-time “artificial intelligence” researcher, I have my doubts.

Today's AI systems – particularly generative AI tools such as ChatGPT – are not truly intelligent. What's more, there is no evidence they can become so without fundamental changes to the way they work.

One definition of AI is a computer system that can “perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings”.

This definition, like many others, is a little blurry: should we call spreadsheets AI, as they can carry out calculations that once would have been a high-level human task? How about factory robots, which have not only replaced humans but in many instances surpassed us in their ability to perform complex and delicate tasks?

While spreadsheets and robots can indeed do things that were once the domain of humans, they do so by following an algorithm – a process or set of rules for approaching a task and working through it.

One thing we can say is that there is no such thing as “an AI” in the sense of a system that can perform a range of intelligent actions in the way a human would. Rather, there are many different AI technologies that can do quite different things.

Perhaps the most important distinction is between “discriminative AI” and “generative AI”.

Discriminative AI helps with making decisions, such as whether a bank should give a loan to a small business, or whether a doctor diagnoses a patient with disease X or disease Y. AI technologies of this kind have existed