five years from now, the term "artificial intelligence" will refer to an entirely different technology

we don't know what it is, but it will be something mostly unrelated to the stuff that has that name today

we say this with confidence because that has consistently been the case every few years since the term was coined in 1956

as soon as everyone understands the latest fad, it feels obvious that it has nothing to do with "intelligence", and we all stop calling it that

we sometimes feel like we're drawing an unreasonably hard line by saying "machine learning" (which is to say, the field that deals with statistical techniques done by computer) or "differentiable neural networks" or "large language models" or whatever other specific thing we actually mean

it often involves pushing back on our friends who find it obvious what "AI" refers to, and think being specific about it is just pointless obscurity

but like. it feels obvious today because we are all immersed in marketing material that pushes this one specific meaning

the moment the money dries up, the marketing will too, and when we all look back at stuff written during this period, it won't be at all clear what people were trying to say

we've been following this field since early childhood in the 1980s. yes, we were very avid readers of technical documentation at that age. yes, kids these days don't have the same opportunities to learn how this stuff actually works, and that makes us very sad.

anyway, that's by way of saying we've seen a lot of shifts in computing over the years, and we're speaking from experience about this