philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

How to talk about AI (even if you don’t know much about AI)

Here are seven things to pay attention to when talking about AI. 

1. Don’t worry about sounding dumb ... And “prompt engineers” are just people who know how to talk to the AI to get what they want. ...

2. Be specific about what kind of AI you’re talking about ... are you talking about natural-language processing and language models, or computer vision? Or different applications, such as chatbots or cancer detection? If you aren’t sure, here are some good definitions of various practical applications of artificial intelligence. 

3. Keep it real ... discussions about AI are usually better served by being pragmatic and focusing on the actual, not the what-ifs, Vincent adds.  ...

4. Adjust your expectations ...It’s important to remember that language models aren’t search engines that are built to find and give the “right” answers, and they don’t have infinite knowledge.  ...

5. Don’t anthropomorphize ... “Don’t give it a [gendered] pronoun, [or] say that it can feel, think, believe, et cetera.” Doing this helps feed into the misconception that AI systems are more capable and sentient than they are. ...

6. It’s all about power ... key to understanding who can afford to get an advanced degree in computer science and who is in the room during the AI model design process,” Johnson says. ... “Sometimes the conversation around AI is less about the technology and more about the people.” ...

7. Please, for the love of God, no robots ... “Remember that AI is basically computer programming by humans—combining big data sets with lots of compute power and intelligent algorithms,” says Sharon Goldman, a senior writer at VentureBeat. ...

See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/30/1073680/how-to-talk-about-ai-even-if-you-dont-know-much-about-ai/