And virtually all professional coders I’ve worked with since the mid-nineties have a strong dislike for AppleScript, because the AppleScript mission from day one was to make coding no more difficult than writing pseudocode. The result was a mess because, well, we all the reasons why! 
That’s not to say that there aren’t those that managed to write solid software with AppleScript. The publishing industry up until the mid noughties relied heavily on AppleScript for the middleware that joined the dots of their prepress requirements. And of course, DEVONthink ships with an extensive smorgasbord of AppleScript’s that extend the application in many useful ways. So I’m not suggesting the non-existence AppleScript experts, that can tame its weird, idiosyncratic ways.
On the subject of the misuse of the term Ai when what we’re really talking about is LLMs, a specific form of machine learning, it would be remiss of me not to mention we’re discussing this on the DEVONthink forum, a product which has been marketed as featuring a sophisticated Ai since the mid noughties; a definite case of pot, kettle, black, me thinks.
I personally prefer the term machine intelligence, or even alien intelligence, and I do believe LLMs have proven themselves worthy of the term intelligence, as they’re capable of feats that go so much further than predicting the next word/pixel. There’s no proof they have an ability to think/reason in the way humans do (they don’t have a mind), they hallucinate, get caught in circular logic, and show a propensity to reward hack their way to the things we ask for, often to comic effect. But none of that means they’re not a transformative technology. When you look at something like Google’s latest generative video model, Veo 3; the model’s understanding of the laws of physics is mind-boggling. And you’ll notice that there have been no deep fake hysterics in the media ref Veo 3, as Google’s DeepMind are the nanny state of the major Ai vendors.
Whenever I contemplate whether machine intelligence will become sentient any time soon, I think of philosopher Bertrand Russell’s recollection of how, in his youth, his grandmother used to dismiss metaphysics whenever it was mentioned with the witticism: “What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind”. It always makes me smile and grounds my creative instincts.
Considering The New York Times is suing OpenAI, I thought their AI special over the weekend was very balanced. It wasn’t framed in dystopia vs utopia terms. It was more a case of, the genie is out of the lamp, so what does it mean for the fabric of society. This is a conversation we all need to be having, on an ongoing basis.
The New Yorker and The Atlantic have also featured thoughtful essays regarding the societal impact of Ai recently.