Are AI Chatbots intelligent?

 

"A chatbot as a mouth on the screen of a mobile phone"

Will chatbots based on the large language model lead to advancd general artificial intelligence?

Or are we heading towards another AI winter?

In his latest post, What if Generative AI turned out to be a Dud? Gary Marus questions the very high levels of investment in the latest developments and he suggests that the possible return on investment has been over-hyped. He quotes an article from Fortune:

Perhaps we should go back to first principles and look at the foundations of human intelligence. and see how ChatGPT relates to them. by considering the flow of cultural information.

The Experiences of a Human Chatbot (Cooper Technical Bureau. 1962-1965)

In my first job I was employed as graduate level clerk providing what could be considered to be a human "chatbot" service to technical management in a research organization (The Cooper Technical Bureau) of an international company (Cooper. MacDougal & Robertson, later part of the Wellcome Foundation). The information department acted as a combined library and mail room for technical correspondence and my job, as a member of a small team, was to ensure that management (both in the UK and overseas) were fully informed of issues which could affect the development of the veterinary and insecticidal products that we sold worldwide. As such I was taking information from manually indexed text documents and providing summary repost and answers to question. I was also involved in integrating new information into the existing paper archives.

Draw an office with the far wall being a large window through which can clearly be seen two or three ostriches in an African savannah landscape. In the office a man is sitting at a desk writing, with a small pile of papers beside him. On the other side of the office there is a four-draw filing cabinet and books in a bookcase.

Transparency, CODIL, and the Horizon "black box" Software

 

One of the biggest difficulties faced by chatbots and other AI packages based on large language models is that they are black box systems which lack transparency. The same difficulty can also apply to large conventionally programmed commercial applications where the lack of transparency can have serious consequences. This problem has been spectacularly demonstrated by the problems caused by the General Post Office's Horizon software where innocent postmasters ended in prison because of errors in the "black box" software. Part of the problem was that the courts were prepared to accept as reliable "evidence" from a complex "black box" system which was unable to answer questions about the origins or reliability of the evidence it was being provided.

The Hype associated with early AI research

‘Did the Hype Associated with Early AI Research Lead to Alternative Routes Towards Intelligent Interactive Computer Systems Being Overlooked?’

By Chris Reynolds, chris@codil.co.uk 

Introductory statements for panel  session "AI – Future Realities" chaired by John Handby at "Archives of IT Forum on the Histories of the Internet,"  London, 9 January 2024

Artificial Intelligence research has involved chasing one heavily funded and overhyped  paradigm after another, with intervening AI winters. A study of the commercially unsuccessful projects can tell you a lot about the economic and political environment that decided which projects should get funded and which would be abandoned,