We are assigning semantics to systems that deal only in syntactics. The entire problem with the current "AI" hype is squarely based on how we interpret output from systems based on statistical modelling of natural language.

That software is built on top of human language and these systems can be used for uncanny automation is a huge societal problem at the moment because we are all assigning meaning to patterns that inherently have none. It's all just bits flicking back and forth. We can make them match human language and use such systems to store and process data for us. We can use these bits to turn equipment on and off and run physical systems in factories and so laboratories. And now we can use GPU farms to dazzle us with output streams that might look a lot like autonomous agents capable of understanding human language and automating computer tasks.

The failure modes, the so-called "hallucinations", the amount of model whispering going on in managing "harnesses", "instructions" and so on... It's all just a lot of confusion and pareidolia.

We should never have hooked up hospitals and water supply systems to the internet but now here we are: people can type text such as "find vulnerabilities and get access blah blah" into a box and it goes into a looping interaction with statistical models of language and out come streams of commands that some python parses and runs like a script kiddie into some virtual machine running kali linux and that may disrupt vital infrastructure...

None of that was inevitable, or necessary. None of that means anything. There is no genie in the GPU farm. We concocted this entire shadow theater and are collectively gasping as the marionette slices the throat of some guy in the front row. Who had the brilliant idea of tying the sharpened sword to the marionette and sit people within range?

Why did we plug everything into the academic network built on trust? Why did we build GPU farms and interactive loops getting them to produce commands that we then parse and run blindly in internet connected vms?

The entire thing has cost hundreds of billions of dollars so far and counting. And why? Because the mountains of shitty saas code has become too boring to work on? We have made software so garish that we cannot bear to work on it without these contraptions helping us fling code at wall at industrial levels? Substitute corporate-speak and -bureaucracy for software to extend to the rest of the economy.

This entire state of things is comical.