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Unpopular opinion: Early rule-based AI had a honesty we've lost
Everyone raves about how smart AI is now, but I think the old systems were more truthful. They worked on simple rules you could follow, like a flowchart. I remember helping folks with a basic chat bot that never made up facts, just stuck to its script. Today's models sound human, but they invent answers when they don't know. For example, a new assistant once told a user to restart a router by unplugging it for a week, which is silly. We got fancy talk, but we let go of knowing why the AI says what it does. Sometimes I feel that shift wasn't all good.
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henry_campbell157mo ago
You're onto something there. The old bots might have been limited, but at least you understood their limits. Now you get these fluent answers that sound right but can be completely made up. That trade for mystery over clarity feels like a loss sometimes.
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patsingh7mo ago
Reminds me of my dad's old car manual. It had clear steps for everything, unlike today's vague online forums where anyone can post wrong advice.
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emerychen7mo ago
Yeah, that "trade for mystery over clarity" hits hard. I've definitely given some forum advice that sounded super confident but was just me guessing. Who knows how many people I've sent down the wrong path trying to fix their sink?
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