I'm not feeling disillusioned. I'm impressed with what's been accomplished and how fast things are moving.
I went through Stanford CS in the mid-1980s, just as the "AI Winter" was starting. The expert system guys were claiming Strong AI Real Soon Now, but expert systems didn't do much of anything. Now that was disillusioning. All those smart, famous people in AI going nowhere and in denial about it.
This time it works. Sure, LLMs aren't really that bright, but they've blown through the Turing test and can do most of the work of the chattering classes. If only they knew when they were totally wrong. Even more impressive to me is that machine learning now works for robot balance and coordination. Even automatic driving works now. That gives hope that "common sense" might emerge. We badly need that, because we can't trust current systems with anything important.
I went through Stanford CS in the mid-1980s, just as the "AI Winter" was starting. The expert system guys were claiming Strong AI Real Soon Now, but expert systems didn't do much of anything. Now that was disillusioning. All those smart, famous people in AI going nowhere and in denial about it.
This time it works. Sure, LLMs aren't really that bright, but they've blown through the Turing test and can do most of the work of the chattering classes. If only they knew when they were totally wrong. Even more impressive to me is that machine learning now works for robot balance and coordination. Even automatic driving works now. That gives hope that "common sense" might emerge. We badly need that, because we can't trust current systems with anything important.