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by glassounds 588 days ago
That's not the usage I'm familiar with, e.g. sci-fi novels will frequently use AI for actually intelligent and possibly sentient beings that just aren't biological (see Skippy in Expeditionary Force), the intelligence isn't usually a party trick or something that just looks like intelligence. While it's true that people use "AI" to describe e.g. enemy behavior in games, I don't think people fundamentally mean the same thing when they discuss AI in the context of AGI, which some people fully believe LLMs will become.

The term is fuzzy though and people mean different things by it.

Although your analogy does make sense, but I've never run into "synthetic intelligence" used as a term.
2 comments
AnimalMuppet 588 days ago
In Schlock Mercenary, an AI is truly sapient, and therefore has rights. A "synthetic intelligence" is below that threshold ("synthetic intelligence means 'kinda stupid'" is one line), and therefore can be used as guidance for missiles and such, where their survival is not expected.

That's how one sci-fi universe draws the distinction. I'm not sure that that's binding on anyone else, but it was an interesting distinction.

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yarg 588 days ago
Yes, because our society rampantly abuses language ignoring the actual meanings of words.

As far as science fiction goes, it's irrelevant - we live in the real world and have had AI for a long time now (e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertie_the_Brain).

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glassounds 588 days ago
My point is that when people say AGI they don't mean a super sophisticated version of a game engine's enemy behavioral mechanics.

Sci-fi is many times a speculative guess about the possible future of technology, IMO its not completely irrelevant as an insight into what people mean or expect when they say certain things about future tech.

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robertlagrant 588 days ago
No, the meanings are just different. 60 years ago AI was a clever imperfect search of an array. There are multiple meanings. Yours is not the only one.
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AnimalMuppet 588 days ago
Yeah, I think you're the one that's abusing the meaning of words, if you're calling that an AI. AI does not mean "a very simple program that responds to human input in some way".
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