this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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Actual AI, learning models, not large language models hallucinating things.
Indeed this was probably Convolutional Neural Network
This is the prize https://scrollprize.org/
Exactly. The fact that "AI" has now been almost completely associated with LLMs is incredibly frustrating.
LLM is "actual AI". I think the term you may be looking for is "generative AI".
Correct, but it’s semantics. Most people just think all AI is generative these days, and so I’m trying to differentiate.
Well there is what people think and then there is reality
Yes, but people are reading Lemmy and responding in this thread.
In the old sense of the word, we don't have an actual AI yet, but it's true that LLM and AI have become interchangeable.
All AI is actual AI. It doesn't need to be real intelligence to be artificial, should be obvious. Are you telling me artificial grass shouldn't be called that because a goat can't eat it?
No, he's questioning the intelligence part and not if it's artificial or not.
Do you question the grass part of artificial grass? It's obviously not grass.
Except it is a fairly good artifice of grass. "AI" is not a good artifice of intelligence. GAI would be, but not LLMs or anything else we have today. They aren't trying to mimic intelligence. They're trying to mimic the output of intelligence. They don't think; they reproduce.
Good for what? Looking at? It's not gonna satisfy a goat.
We only care for the look ("the output"), and we don't expect more of it, or sell it for more than it is. That's why it's not a controversial term for astroturf. It wasn't controversial for AI either until very recently. In 60 years of AI nobody has split hairs over output of intelligence. It's justified but weirdly misdirected anger.
AI is a perfectly cromulent word for the thing.
I'd even argue that generative AI is machine learning, except the learning stops when the training does so it's not learning continuously like ML in the classical sense.
Inference and training are separate in every ML architecture, what are you on about? And yes LLMs are ML, by definition, no need to argue.
So this is more of machine learning than AI?
AI is the larger umbrella term. LLMs, Machine Learning, CNNs, DNNs, RNNs, etc. all fall under that umbrella "AI" term.
Yeah, even pathfinding is "AI" but people associate it only with slop these days.
Like some Dunning Kruger effect sweeping the world.
Well when they said the Pentagon was using AI to help coordinate the attacks on Iran, I simply assumed it was some expert system with a machine learning component. But no, it turns out they were using Grok, an actual LLM chatbot. Which is fucking crazy.
So sometimes the assumption goes the other way as well.
I'd imagine they measured metrics of other automated systems and compared with LLM and found out LLM works best.
It's not like traditional machine learning models are suddenly perfect and work in all cases.
Looking at the results of the war in Iran, I'd suggest your assumptions are incorrect.
The results of the war do not depend solely on the quality of a single tool or weapon.
The US has better weapons overall and is not winning, thus it is not a way to discriminate whether this technology is useful or not.
Well, having the tools and knowing how best to use them are two different things. The fact they used an LLM to determine how to use the tools is indicative of them not being overly adept at using them. Also, the fact they got a worse outcome than relying on experts, which they should have easy access to, is typical of situations where LLMs have been used to replace experts. So you're correct in that this single instance of LLMs doing poorly isn't a good way to determine if it is useful (in this field), but it follows a common trend of trying to shoehorn LLMs into adjacent fields and failing spectacularly.
On a broader note, the results of a war tend to follow the better leaders. America spent 20 years at war in a large zone with very difficult goals, and easily held their own, even if they couldn't reach the overall conditions for ultimate success. Now they are in a war with a much smaller field of activity and fairly narrowly defined goals, so should have no trouble building siege conditions to wear the opponent down, yet did it so poorly and somehow attached it to neighboring wars in such a way as to make both the goals harder to achieve and the risks to do so greater. This isn't the fault of LLMs, but it doesn't surprise me that someone who would do that would also turn to LLMs to help draft their battle plans after weeding out their more experienced generals.
This is the most vibe-coded democratic administration in history. They measured nothing, and fired anyone suggesting otherwise.
I doubt the government directly manages military decisions. I'd imagine the people taking these decisions are in that position regardless of which party is at the government.
That used to be the case, but they are trying to fire anyone who says anything they don't want to hear.
Sorry, I'm not from the US. Does that include generals and army technicians? In most countries the government does not have direct power over the internal organization of the army, I don't know how it works in the US.
The President is the Commander in Chief of the United States military. His toady is the Sectary of Defense. And generals are being put into positions where they must violate their oaths or resign. (Presumably. We've had several prominent resignations — often just before apparently illegal military operations that would've been under their control.) SecDef refuses to promote females and people of color into high ranks. It's a long process because the system is designed to make this difficult, so the job isn't complete, but he had made significant progress.
To be fair, there are things he doesn't have direct control over, but those things are largely under the control of his lackeys because trump nominates them and they serve temporarily until the Senate confirms them. But Republicans control the Senate and only the absolute worst people or those with some sense of shame aren't confirmed.
Trump is the chief executive, so any government function that isn't directed by the judiciary or Congress is under his leadership. Every federal enforcement branch: armed forces, fbi, CIA, regulatory bodies, education, environment, is all under his control directly or indirectly.
im not an american too and may be wrong but the POTUS is the highest commander of the military.
No there's an unfortunate thing where AI now means you need a transformer model in some capacity. It's so bullshit now. I hate these idiotic researchers sometimes.