Epistemic Status: This idea is, I think, widely understood in technical circles. I'm trying to convey it more clearly to a general audience.

What we call AI in 2024 is not software. It's kind of natural to put it in the same category as other things that run on a computer, but thinking about LLMs, or image generation, or deepfakes as software is misleading, and confuses most of the ethical, political, and technological discussions. This seems not to be obvious to many users, but as AI gets more widespread, it's especially important to understand what we're using when we use AI.

Software

Software is how we get computers to work. When creating software, humans decide what they want the computer to do, think about what would make the computer do that, and then write an understandable set of instructions in some programming language. A computer is given those instructions [...]

---

Outline:

(00:41) Software

(02:22) Not Software

(03:52) Generative AI

---

First published:
January 2nd, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iknSNTbb8deJwQuLJ/ai-is-not-software

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“AI Is Not Software” by Davidmanheim

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“AI Is Not Software” by Davidmanheim