I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means: Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Work & Scale

Abstract

Over the past decade, AI technologies have advanced by leaps and bounds. Progress has been so fast, voluminous, and varied that it can be a challenge even for experts to make sense of it all. In this essay, I propose a framework for thinking about AI systems, specifically the idea that they are ultimately tools developed by humans to help other humans perform an increasing breadth of their cognitive work. Our AI systems for assisting us with our cognitive work have become more capable and general over the past few years. This is in part due to a confluence of novel AI algorithms and the availability of massive amounts of data and compute. From this, researchers and engineers have been able to construct large, general models that serve as flexible and powerful building blocks that can be composed with other software to drive breakthroughs in the natural and physical sciences, to solve hard optimization and strategy problems, to perform perception tasks, and even to assist with complex cognitive tasks like coding.