Isaac Asimov describes how AI will liberate humans and their creativity (1992)

What we are labeling as AI today is different than was thought to be in the 90s, or when Asimov wrote most of his stories about robots and other ways of AI.

Saying that, a variant of Susan Calvin role could prove to be useful today.

Not sure that I agree with that. People have been imagining human-like AI since before computers were even a thing. The Star Trek computer from TNG is basically an LLM, really.

AI _researchers_ had a different idea of what AI would be like, as they were working on symbolic AI, but in the popular imagination, "AI" was a computer that acted and thought like a human.

AI is far closer to Asimov's vision of AI than anyone else's. The "Positronic Brain" is very close to what we ended up with.

The three laws of robotics seemed ridiculous until 2021, when it became clear that you could just give AI general firm guidelines and let them work out the details (and ways to evade the rules) from there.

> The Star Trek computer from TNG is basically an LLM, really.

The Star Trek computer is not like LLMs: a) it provides reliable answers, b) it is capable of reasoning, c) it is capable of actually interacting with its environment in a rational manner, d) it is infallible unless someone messes with it. Each one of these points is far in the future of LLMs.

Yet when you ask it to dim the lights, it dims either way too little or way too much. Poor Geordi.

Their point is that it seems to function like an LLM even if it's more advanced. The points raised in this comment don't refute that, per the assertion that each of them is in the future of LLMs.

> The Star Trek computer from TNG is basically an LLM, really.

Watched all seasons recently for the first time. While some things are "just" vector search with a voice interface, there are also goodies like "Computer, extrapolate from theoretical database!", or "Create dance partner, female!" :D

For anyone curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CDhEwhOm44

> Their point is that it seems to function like an LLM even if it's more advanced.

So did ELIZA. So did SmarterChild. Chatbots are not exactly a new technology. LLMs are at best a new cog in that same old functionality—but nothing has fundamentally made them more reliable or useful. The last 90% of any chatbot will involve heavy usage of heuristics with both approaches. The main difference is some of the heuristics are (hopefully) moved into training.

> What we are labeling as AI today is different than was thought to be in the 90s, or when Asimov wrote most of his stories about robots and other ways of AI.

Multivac in "the last question"?

Stating that LLMs are not more reliable or useful than ELIZA or SmarterChild is so incredibly off-base I have to wonder if you've ever actually used a LLM. Please run the same query past ELIZA and Gemini 2.5 (https://aistudio.google.com/prompts/new_chat) and report back.

> Please run the same query past ELIZA and Gemini 2.5 (https://aistudio.google.com/prompts/new_chat) and report back.

I don't see much difference—you still have to take any output skeptically. I can't claim to have ever used gemini, but last I checked it still can't cite sources, which would at least assist with validation.

I'm just saying this didn't introduce any fundamentally new capabilities—we've always been able to GIGO-excuse all chatbots. The "soft" applications of LLMs have always been approximated by heuristics (e.g. generation of content of unknown use or quality). Even the summarization tech LLMs seem to offer don't seem to substantially improve over the NLP-heuristic-driven predecessors.

But yea, if you really want to generate content of unknown quality, this is a massive leap. I just don't see this as very interesting.

> I can't claim to have ever used gemini, but last I checked it still can't cite sources, which would at least assist with validation.

Yes, it can cite sources, just like any other major LLM service out there. Gemini, Claude, Deepseek, and ChatGPT are the ones I personally validated this with, but I bet other major LLM services can do so as well.

Just tested this using Gemini with “Is fluoride good for teeth? Cite sources for any of the claims” prompt, and it listed every claim as a bullet point accompanied by the corresponding source. The sources were links to specific pages addressing the claims from CDC, Cleveland Clinic, John Hopkins, and NIDCR. I clicked on each of the links to verify that they were corroborating what Gemini response was saying, and they were.

In fact, it would more often than not include sources even without me explicitly asking for sources.

> The Star Trek computer from TNG is basically an LLM, really.

No. The Star Trek computer is a fictional character, really. It's not a technology any more than Jean-Luc Picard is. It's does whatever the writers needed it to do to further the plot.

It reminds me: J. Michael Straczynski (of Babylon 5 fame) was once asked "How fast do Starfuries travel?" and he replied "At the speed of plot."

For what it's worth, I was referring to the episode when he set up a romantic dinner for the scientist lady. Computer couldn't get the lighting right.

They don't make up the sources or include sources that don't include the citation anymore?

I get that sometimes, but you click the link and very easily determine whether the source exists or not.

> Yes, it can cite sources, just like any other major LLM service out there.

Let's see an example:

Ask if america was ever a democracy and tell us what it uses as sources to evaluate its ability to function. Language really shows its true colors when you commit to floating signifiers.

I asked gemini "was america ever a democracy"? And it confidently responded "While the ideal of democracy has always been a guiding principle in the United States", which is a blatant lie, and provided no sources. The next prompt, "was america every a democracy? Please cite sources" gives a mealy-mouthed reply hedging on the definition of democracy... which it refuses to cite. If I ask it "will america ever be democratic" it just vomits up excuses about democracy being a principal and not measurable. With no sources. Etc. this is not a useful tool for things humans already do well. This is a PR megaphone with little utility outside of shitty copy editing.