At Least Vocal's Position on AI Generated Content Actually Exists

As technological buzzwords go there is none more confused and misleading than artificial intelligence. I may as well get to the punchline quickly as it will no doubt result in the loss of a large portion of readership who probably have much better things to do in any case. There is no such thing as artificial intelligence. Let me repeat that one more time in case you skimmed it, or perhaps thought you misread it. There is no such thing as artifical intelligence. Let me put it yet another way so I can be crystal clear. There is no currently existing thing (machine, computer, android, or otherwise) anywhere on, above, or below the surface of the earth that can be though of as "intelligent" by (almost) any reasonable defintion of the word. Unforunately the pervayors of so called "artificial intelligence", mostly silicon valley types looking to charge more money for sotware/hardware that is nothing more than upgraded versions of previous versions of the same thing, have so diluted the definition of intelligence that just about anything (up to and including a rock) might be considered to have some (form of) intelligence.

These new "intelligent" machines /computers operate exactly as regular (non-intelligent) computers operate, using exactly the same principles of all previous version of computers. They differ only in processing power and the cleverness of the mathematics and statistics that comprise the algorithms with which these machines are programmed using any number of programming languages, some of which are also used to program non intelligent computers. That is it, that is the only difference. You still have to plug them in to a power source like any other computer, you have to program them like any other computer, albeit in different ways and with more clever algorithms as I already mentioned. They still have human interfaces (keyboards and mouses and microphones and such) and they still are not intelligent. In fact they are no more or less intelligent than the Commodore 64 or the Lenovo laptop on which I am currently composing this article. They are not intelligent, and the algorithms which comprise the heart of the heart of the programming upon which they run, are not intelligent either. How anyone could believe an algorithm, which is a mathematical entitiy/system, could be intelligent blows my (albeit only weakly intelligent) mind, however a quick gooodle search will reveal article after article extolling the virtues of intelligent algorithms. One might as well call 2+2 intelligent. 2+2 is an algorithm after all. Of course I am being facetious with that example. Purveyors of "artifical intelligence" and "intelligent algorithms" do not claim that all algorithms are intelligent, only the ones they can charge a shit ton of money for. An algorithm is, at base, a system of rules, a system of rules cannot be intelligent, because the laws of logic, the laws of our language both of which are a part of the laws of the universe, forbid it.

So if artifical intelligence does not exist, what are these marvelous machines and even more marvelous software making art and generating content for Vocal, and defeating humans at all manner of games? If not intelligent what are they? They are what I like to call modern computers. They are computers exactly like computers of yesteryear, but newer. Faster, yes, able to accomplish many more tasks yes, but intelligent, I'm afraid not. They still do the same thing computers have always done, they compute, and that is it, that is all they do, they compute, that is why they are still called computers. Of course I am taking a very wide view of the definition of computation, but it is no wider than the definition of intelligence the AI crowd likes to parrot. Essentially computers take input data (ultimately that data is described by a series of 1's and 0' or imaginary, also non currently existent Q-bits in the case of a hypothetical quantum computer) run/process it through a given program or programs, exactly and innerantly as dictated by their programming, and output something, typically a result of some sort. That result is often fed into another program or process and that continues over and over and over again until the program comes to its end. And there you have it, computing. Wow, it doesnt get any more intelligent than that.

But many things get less intelligent than that, including Vocal's policy on AI generated content. A policy based on a thing which does not exist is going to be hard to get right but still I will cut them the same slack I cut everyone else who has been snowballed by this whole AI thing. Yes, it annoys the hell out of me but I lost this debate by a country mile years ago and AI as a term in use is going nowhere anytime soon. Ironically, neither is actual AI arriving anytime soon, but that is the topic of an entirely different discussion. Having said all that, Vocal's policy on AI generated content, does in fact, exist. It is a real thing which one can find online and read and discuss and share and think about. While AI is also a thing which one can read and discuss and think about, it contrast to Vocal's policy on it, it does not actually exist. Great job Vocal! You have outsmarted AI again.

In case you were wondering, thhis content was not generated by AI.