Overheard a dev say 'AI is just fancy autocomplete' and it stuck with me

I was grabbing coffee at a Panera near my warehouse yesterday and caught two guys arguing about GPT. One of them said it's just fancy autocomplete, nothing more. At first I thought he was being harsh, but the more I think about it the more I see where he's coming from. I've been playing with a chatbot for sorting inventory logs, and yeah it has never actually 'thought' about anything. It just guesses the next word really well based on what I fed it. Has anyone else heard a take like that and found it changes how you look at these tools?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_dakota4d ago

My buddy Kyle asked his AI for pancake recipes and it told him to add motor oil for "richness.

the_fiona4d ago

Does that mean I should stop thanking my chatbot for helping me find my lost car keys, or is it still being polite? Because honestly it does a better job than Siri.