There's one challenging thought experiment for the future of "AI", in anything remotely like how we are currently approaching it.
Put yourself in the shoes of primitive man. Kind of a weird saying given we wouldn't have had shoes, but bear with me here! Not long ago we lacked any language whatsoever, and the state of our art in technology was bashing stones together to use the resultant pointy pieces as weapons. Somehow we moved from that to Shakespeare, putting a man on the moon, and discovering the secrets of the atom - and its great and awful applications. And we did it all extremely quickly.
Now imagine you, primitive man, somehow trained an LLM on all quantifiable knowledge of the times. It should be somewhat self evident that it's not really going to lead you to the atom, Shakespeare, or anywhere beyond bashing stones together. Current LLM models are basically just playing 'guess the next word.' When that next word has not yet been spoken by mankind (figuratively speaking, but perhaps also literally to some degree), the LLM will never guess it.
Natural language search is a really awesome tool that will be able to help in many different fields. But I feel like in many ways we're alchemists trying to turn lead into gold. And we've just discovered how to create gold colored paint. It would feel like a monumental leap, but in reality you'd be no closer to your goal than you were the year prior. That said, paint also has lots of really great uses - but it's not what you're trying to do.
Put yourself in the shoes of primitive man. Kind of a weird saying given we wouldn't have had shoes, but bear with me here! Not long ago we lacked any language whatsoever, and the state of our art in technology was bashing stones together to use the resultant pointy pieces as weapons. Somehow we moved from that to Shakespeare, putting a man on the moon, and discovering the secrets of the atom - and its great and awful applications. And we did it all extremely quickly.
Now imagine you, primitive man, somehow trained an LLM on all quantifiable knowledge of the times. It should be somewhat self evident that it's not really going to lead you to the atom, Shakespeare, or anywhere beyond bashing stones together. Current LLM models are basically just playing 'guess the next word.' When that next word has not yet been spoken by mankind (figuratively speaking, but perhaps also literally to some degree), the LLM will never guess it.
Natural language search is a really awesome tool that will be able to help in many different fields. But I feel like in many ways we're alchemists trying to turn lead into gold. And we've just discovered how to create gold colored paint. It would feel like a monumental leap, but in reality you'd be no closer to your goal than you were the year prior. That said, paint also has lots of really great uses - but it's not what you're trying to do.