{"id":52065,"date":"2025-05-16T10:48:49","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T17:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=52065"},"modified":"2025-05-16T10:48:49","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T17:48:49","slug":"good-vs-bad-ai-or-ml-vs-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2025\/05\/16\/good-vs-bad-ai-or-ml-vs-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Good vs Bad AI (or ML vs AI)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:549,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/daisclasses.com\\\/?page_id=42&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20250521022238\\\/https:\\\/\\\/daisclasses.com\\\/?page_id=42&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-01 07:35:16&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-14 21:47:47&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-23 16:14:57&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 09:44:34&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 09:44:34&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:550,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/en.wikipedia.org\\\/wiki\\\/Truthiness&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260226023239\\\/https:\\\/\\\/en.wikipedia.org\\\/wiki\\\/Truthiness&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-01 07:35:17&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-14 21:47:47&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-23 16:15:01&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-23 16:15:01&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:551,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/phpc.social\\\/@andrewfeeney\\\/109466122845775778&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>The following is a (lightly edited) response I gave to a recent accessibility mailing list question from <a href=\"https:\/\/daisclasses.com\/?page_id=42\">Jane Jarrow<\/a>, coming out of a question around concerns around the use of various AI or AI-like tools for accessibility in higher education:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Folks responded by noting that they didn\u2019t consider things like spell check, screen readers, voice-to-text, text-to-voice, or grammar checkers to be AI \u2013 at least, not the AI that is raising eyebrows on campus.  That may be true\u2026 but do we have a clean way of sorting that out?  Here is my \u201cidentity crisis\u201d:<\/p>\n<p>  What is the difference between \u201cassistive technology\u201d and \u201cartificial intelligence\u201d (AI)?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is me speaking personally, not officially, and also as a long-time geek, but not an AI specialist.<\/p>\n<p>I think a big issue here is the genericization of the term \u201cAI\u201d and how it\u2019s now being applied to all sorts of technologies that may share some similarities, but also have some distinct differences.<\/p>\n<p>Broadly, I see two very different technologies at play: \u201ctraditional\u201d\/\u201citerative\u201d AI (in the past, and more accurately, termed \u201cmachine learning\u201d or \u201cML\u201d), and \u201cgenerative\u201d AI (what we\u2019re seeing now with ChatGPT, Claude, etc.).<\/p>\n<p>Spell check, grammar check, text-to-speech, and even speech-to-text (including automated captioning systems) are all great examples of the traditional iterative ML systems: they use sophisticated pattern matching to identify common patterns and translate them into another form. For simpler things like spelling and grammar, I\u2019d question whether that\u2019s really even ML (though modern systems may well be). Text-to-speech is kind of an \u201cin between\u201d state, where the computer is simply converting text strings into audio, though these days, the use of generative AI to produce more natural-sounding voices (even to the point of mimicking real people) is blurring the line a little bit.<\/p>\n<p>Speech-to-text (and automated captioning) is more advanced and is certainly benefitting from the use of large language models (LLM) on the backend, but it still falls more on the side of iterative ML, in much the same way that scientific systems are using these technologies to scan through things like medical or deep-space imagery to identify cancers and exoplanets far faster than human review can manage. They\u2019re using the models to analyze data, identify patterns that match existing patterns in their data set, and then producing output. For scientific fields, that output is then reviewed by researchers to verify it; for speech-to-text systems, the output is the text or captions (which are presented without human review\u2026hence the errors that creep in; manual review and correction of auto-generated captions before posting a video to a sharing site is the equivalent step to scientists reviewing the output of their systems before making decisions based on that output).<\/p>\n<p>Where we\u2019re struggling (both within education and far more broadly) is with the newer, generative \u201cAI\u201d. These systems are essentially souped-up, very fancy statistical modeling &#8212; there\u2019s no actual \u201cintelligence\u201d behind it at all, just (though I\u2019ll admit the word \u201cjust\u201d is doing a lot of heavy lifting here) a very complex set of algorithms deciding that given this input, when producing output, these words are more likely to go together. Because there\u2019s no real intelligence behind it, there\u2019s no way for these systems to know, judge, or understand when the statistically generated output is nonsensical (or, worse, makes sense but is simply wrong). Unfortunately, they\u2019re just so <em>good<\/em> at producing output that <em>sounds<\/em> right, especially when output as very professional\/academic-sounding writing (easy to do, as so many of the LLMs have been unethically and (possibly arguably, but I agree with this) illegally trained on professional and academic writing), that they immediately satisfy our need for \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Truthiness\">truthiness<\/a>\u201d. If it <em>sounds<\/em> true, and I got it from a computer, well then, it must be true, right?<\/p>\n<p>(The best and most amusing summary I\u2019ve seen of modern \u201cAI\u201d systems is from <a href=\"https:\/\/phpc.social\/@andrewfeeney\/109466122845775778\">Christine Lemmer-Webber by way of Andrew Feeney<\/a>, who described it as \u201cMansplaining as a Service: A service that instantly generates vaguely plausible sounding yet totally fabricated and baseless lectures in an instant with unflagging confidence in its own correctness on any topic, without concern, regard or even awareness of the level of expertise of its audience.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>Getting students (and, really, everyone, including faculty, staff, the public at large, etc.) to understand the distinction between the types of \u201cAI\u201d, when they work well, and when they prove problematic, is proving to be an incredibly difficult thing, of course.<\/p>\n<p>For myself, I\u2019m fine with using traditional\/iterative ML systems. I\u2019m generally pretty good with my spelling and grammar, but don\u2019t mind the hints (though I do sometimes ignore them when I find it appropriate to do so), and I find auto-captioning to be <em>incredibly<\/em> useful, both in situations like Zoom sessions and to quickly create a first pass at captioning a video (though I always do manual corrections before finalizing the captions on a video to be shared). But I draw the line at generative AI systems and steadfastly refuse to use ChatGPT, AI image generators, or other such tools. I have decades of experience in creating artisanally hand-crafted typos and errors and have no interest in statistically generating my mistakes!<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m afraid I don\u2019t have good suggestions on how to solve the issues. But there\u2019s one (rather long-winded) response to the question you posed about the difference between assistive technology and \u201cartificial intelligence\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have decades of experience in creating artisanally hand-crafted typos and errors and have no interest in statistically generating my mistakes!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2034,2038],"tags":[1764,6890,6894,6893,6891,6892],"class_list":["post-52065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekery","category-tech","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-assistive-technology","tag-chatgpt","tag-machine-learning","tag-ml"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52066,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52065\/revisions\/52066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}