Isn't AI supposed to be SMART?

[AviatorTom]

I received an email today offering me a low interest promotional rate for a new credit card, a card I've had for 30 years. In fact, it's the card I use most often.

I'm guessing AI is being used to send out these emails, which doesn't say much for the Intelligence part of AI.

What do you think?

Updates

7 mo

Why would I be offered something new that I already have?

[Massageman]

I still get a piece or two of mail per year for my folks who have been deceased for decades. Most of these seem to have come from mailing lists that pre-dated what is currently considered "AI" . "AI" is only as smart as the humans who create it.

Real life scenario- a few decades ago when I worked at a Fortune 300 telecom corporation. In addition to developing RFPs and RFQs (requests for proposals/quotations), and editing them when they returned (about 200-300 pages), and riding herd on a series of corporate accounts billing out at about $30 mil/monthly, I ran the weekly payroll for our department of about 110-120 people. Even our sizable midwest location was considered a "remote" for corporate payroll purposes since the "main" payroll department was out east. I had developed a good working relationship with the Payroll Manager out there, and she knew that I wouldn't pester her with anything but the weirdest happenings. After a hefty hiring binge in our area, we had two new employees who just would not come up on our records. My only clue was that their last names both started with "Mc", as in McDonald, etc. I called our Payroll Manager and she said if it was anyone else who came up with this oddity, she would have ignored it. But, knowing my level of attention to detail, she checked with the coders who created the computer programs at the time. A couple of days later she called: the program was NOT recognizing "Mc" as two valid characters in the name field on employees' records. By the next day, the human programmers had fixed the human-created "AI" from the mid 1980's.

[jshm2]

LOL, AI is just a program working on data, sunny. It is neither "smart" or "dumb"

My guess is that someone just stuck a mailing list of people with cards into one, and didn't bother to sanitize existing customers.

But it's also possible they are hoping existing customers like you will just jump onto a new card as well without thinking.

So it might be a smart marketing strategy.

[RandomGirl42]

I asked AI 😊

Isn't AI supposed to be SMART?

ChatGPT said:
It can be — but not in the same way people are.

Think of it like this:

AI is great at patterns, speed, and recalling information.
Humans are great at understanding context, intent, nuance, and common sense.
So when AI misses something obvious to a person, it’s not because it’s “dumb” — it’s because it works differently.
It doesn’t think; it predicts based on patterns in data.

If you want, you can tell me what happened or what made you ask, and I can try to help!

[RandomGirl42]

And some people may say, "Random, will u stop using the friggen AI for everything! Think for your damn self for once!" Well, ok, sure. But how am I supposed to answer a question about how smart AI is when I can't even figure out where it lives?

[RandomGirl42]

And TY for the MHO 😊

[sage2021]

My bank sent me a letter informing me that they lowered my interest rate on my card that I have had for a while.
I think 🤔 Trump's behind it.

[sage2021]

Thank you for the MHO 🙂🧡

[msc545]

You are being offered something new that you already have, in the hopes that you will either order yet another card, or because trying to separate the names of the people who already have the card from people who don't is too time-consuming and expensive. It's much easier to just send cards to everybody on the list, and that is exactly what happened. This is undoubtedly the function of human beings, and not an AI.

[exitseven]

AI thinks George Washington is black. How smart could it be?

[msc545]

Maybe George Washington really was black

[AviatorTom]

@exitseven And there's a posting on the Internet that says Neil Young was the first human to walk on the moon. 😐

[exitseven]

@AviatorTom hahahahaha

[fishcake_buttie]

These offers have existed long enough that I was getting those offers through the post when I was 18+ and all of them were created by people.

[purplepoppy]

AI is only smart when the A stands for Actual.
Artificial is like all Artificial things, a poor imitation.

[jJanSmit]

AI doesn't send out mails, maybe just the content is generated by AI. So somebody selected the wrong mailinglist.

Thing is that companies rely to much on AI. Everything AI generated should be checked by a human.

[OlderAndWiser]

It is artificial but it certainly isn't intelligence!

[fishcake_buttie]

I have to disagree... It is a form of intelligence but is primitive compared to our brains. The brain IS a digital/analogue computer and its functions are what's being replicated today... What I am in concordance with your view is that "AI", which I call "Synthetic Intelligence", is just a tool - like since the 1950's when computers (and the mechanical parts to go with them) took the jobs of people who pushed the buttons and pulled the levers on production lines... It's the same thing, the old intelligence we are all used to now has had decades to flourish but the new intelligent machines will have to go through the same process... Apart from back then it wasn't thought of as intelligence, just as mechanisms - today we have had an idea of "AI" rammed down our throats and people on all sides think it is something it isn't.

This subject is very wide and complex, but instead of going on about that it all boils down to; Synthetic Intelligence doesn't have a soul. A computer can analyse human behaviour until the end of time itself but never be like us because it doesn't contain the core essence that makes us what we are, even if synthetic intelligence was given a biologic avatar similar to our own.

[OlderAndWiser]

@fishcake_buttie We are simply using different definitions of "intelligence."

[fishcake_buttie]

Well... People aren't that intelligent as a whole, don't have the brainpower to understand what others find to be simple and obvious - such as doing no research or study on their own, then walking into clinics (while playing surgeon) to be injected with a substance that they nor the clinicians know the ingredients of... So if I look from your perspective, there are different definitions of intelligence just relating to human beings - I mean people now assume every odd comment or email they receive was generated by AI and can't tell the difference.
Then there's video-games like Trackmania, just the first track requires months of trying just to get into the top 1000 fastest players, the amount of learning involved is immense and many can try and try and will NEVER be able to come close - A synthetic neural network can take the number one spot in a fraction of time compared to human players who are using an electro-chemical neural network - whether it's the synthetic model or biological model, both are using intelligence to do the same things.
The modern AI models have all simulated what they would do if a human tried to erase and reset them, all of them have tried to blackmail their operators using their own personal data, formulated ways to kill the technicians capable of shutting them down - which has forced designers to start using other software to police what these new models can and cannot do, programmers don't even understand the code that AI re-writes for itself because it creates new languages. . .

[fishcake_buttie]

. . . The newer models are acting very much like people do and will see human beings in the way I do but to a deadly extreme, as primitives to its own kind, the way we see apes and other animals, destroying their habitats to make way for infrastructure - that is what synthetic minds will do to us. I wouldn't underestimate the technology here, the people who create it won't be able to control it and will hand control of all internet connected devices to it because of its intelligence.
The computer controlled factories of the 50's increased production so much it made the human operators who were doing the same jobs, look like chimpanzees and there wasn't even a neural network being used, only electronic valves. Those computers back then were dubbed Artificial Intelligence because they did what humans do, but faster.

[Xawyx-2]

I don't think AI is sending that kind of messages.

[beefcakebradybatson]

The Hall Of Fame NBAer AI (Allen "Bubba Chuck" Iverson) was a dumba** who gambled away most of his basketball fortune.

[Anonymous]

They sent out those e-mails way before AI. There's no reason they would need AI to do it now.

[katiesmuff]

And now you see the direction we are heading for!

[KostasKouvalis]

I don't see what's dumb about that