Neal Stephenson coined the term pseudo-intelligence (PI) in his novel "The Diamond Age" back in 1995 to draw a clear distinction between genuinely artificially intelligent machines (which don't exist) vs computer systems that are good at mimicking various aspects of intelligence but which don't possess actual consciousness, self-awareness, qualia, intentionality, etc.

#ChatGPT, #stablediffusion, and other nifty text and image generation applications and technologies are sterling examples of PI.

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@chriscaple

I remember distinctly reading the "Diamond Age"; at the time I was myself involved in a biological nano-engineering startup. And of all the technology that Stephenson described, all of it, I thought: well - natural language discourse with a computer, that's too far of a stretch. Not going to happen in my lifetime.

Yet here we are.

🙂

@boris_steipe It's surreal to be living in constantly mutating overlapping iterations of the dystopias of the scifi novels I gorged on as a kid & teen in the 80s & early 90s.

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