As someone who spent 25 years in AI, I take strong exception to this characterization by the Times. This is unequivocally false.
The whiz bang AI chatbots and art generators we see now are not creative. They are not creating or synthesizing new information. They are elaborate statistical models that are averaging all the existing art/words currently in the world. They’re more like the median of all previous creativity, rather than creating it.
We may never get to the point of AI being truly creative, and characterizations like this serve to mislead the public about the state of AI technology and research. It’s doing some neat tricks, but it is not on a road to simulated human intelligence. Let me restate that to be super clear- current AI algorithms can not lead to general intelligence. They are not even on a road that might lead to that ballpark.
I wish major news outlets like the Times understood this so they would stop misleading people about what this stuff is and the role it may or may not play in out future. Misleading the general public about technology always ends up in very bad places.
