AI: The Bright Shiny Object at the Crossroads of the Future

I received a bunch of very interesting responses to yesterday’s post about the technology platforms that are force-feeding AI into the mainstream market. I learned a lot from your responses, which included both direct personal experiences and expert perspectives on different dimensions of the topic. What’s important to me about this moment is distinguishing two or three different, very real things happening at the same time.

The first is a real critical mass in the development of machine learning based on LLM. This is a much better description than “AI” in my opinion, since the latter contains a vast range of meanings from simple and precise to triumphalist and grandiose. But machine learning is real, and in recent years it has developed real capabilities that are at least transformative in various fields of work and technology. I’m skeptical that we’ve developed beyond that at this point, but I really don’t know. It could be a lot. And it will increase. I think this is currently the best way to understand the technology itself.