I may not know too much about AI, but I at least know enough that I can debunk some misconceptions people have about AI and what companies say about AI. There are many things people don’t know or have completely read wrong, which I mainly blame on advertising and companies.

AI doesn’t know anything, it’s just mimicry

Some people say that AI knows stuff, but it doesn’t know anything. I saw an article that said AI is like a child, the more it consumes, the more it learns and can think for itself, this is absolutely wrong, more wrong than saying water and oil mix together perfectly. AI doesn’t know anything, it just reads what is being fed to it, and mimics stuff that it says, usually by mixing it up with other data it was fed (This is how it can trick most people into thinking ChatGPT showed original content).

Bonus thing, AI doesn’t know the truth

People seem to think ChatGPT is a truth generator, NO IT IS NOT! All that ChatGPT is made to do is send text to look like a human sending text. I would go into a massive tirade over how ChatGPT isn’t a truth generator, but I need to cook more of these AI models by saying they don’t understand truth.

Again, all that AI is made to do is do what it is trained to do off of data it was fed. In the case of a Large Language Model, they are fed massive amounts of data, and they repeat it back to sound like a human saying this information. This is the same for all forms of AI, they don’t know things that are inate to humans, like what is true or not, which means the data it is fed can be completely false and the AI would use it as though it were true (To the end user at least). I could feed an LLM that water and oil mix together perfectly and no information that disproves it, then the AI will be trained on the data of water and oil mix together, then it would spit out that they mix together.

AI aren’t people

Yes, I know this is a stupid thing to answer, but some people do believe it. This misconception may as well be a conspiracy theory because of how wrong it is. Yes, I bashed on how someone said AI is like a child, but this is worse, this is like saying non-human animals aren’t living creatures. If AI had at least some human characteristics, mainly the ability to think completely original and new thoughts and know not to mimic other stuff, then AI would have replaced many more things a long time ago.

Honestly, if you think AI are people, then you shouldn’t even deserve a voice on the topic of AI, since you clearly have the intelligence of a chimpanzee. That is all I am gonna say about this stupid topic, since I shouldn’t even have to discuss it.

Yes, this will spark debate among many people, but hear me out, AI and the companies that make these models, they are the biggest copyright violators in the world. The main reason is that they took huge swaths of data, many of which is made by people under copyrighted licenses, and worst of all, they did it all without permission from the original creators. I know people that are in the creative industry, and they are pissed about how their work has a high possibility of being used by companies like OpenAI without their permission.

The worst part is that the companies would most likely say that they are using it for research purposes, just to get around it by abusing the fair use system. AI is just the most illegal “research” project in the world, and it isn’t even research, they just advance it without any consideration. Like, I bet I can prompt ChatGPT to make a novel like Richard Dawkins’ books and it would sound very similar to one of his books, or just mixing some of his books, which can tell me OpenAI made huge copyright violations.

That same person I bashed for in the AI doesn’t know anything also made huge blunders in how he talked about copyright. He basically said that copyright was able to be set by the user, not the creator. THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS! The way copyright works is that the creator sets the value of their work and if people wish to license it, that is how much they must pay, no exceptions (yes, I know about fair use, those are practically the only exceptions). Just imagine if some stranger walked into your house and lived their for a month and said, “Here is your ten cents, don’t think I came here without pay.” You would be pissed off, right? Yeah, if a stranger is to live in your house, you would at least demand some pay, not have them give you a tiny amount that you don’t agree to. The same goes with copyright, the user doesn’t set the price on your work, you set the price on the work, and demand that they pay it if not under fair use.