As a staunch AI critic, my opinion is that if you're on the fence about it, and just want to bring some realism into the discussion, you can't if you're talking about the future. Because eventually AI might indeed gain quite a lot of the hyped features that some are talking about. You can look in the academic papers on Google Scholar to find some cautionary tales, but in general with academia, most researchers want to get on the hype train to inflate their CVs.

The only way to truly be critical of AI is to be against it for other reasons, such as its damaging effects on society and its ability to aggregate wealth to the top without much serious life improvement for the average person. I think AI is really one of those things that you're either for or against and there's no middle ground.

You anchor on what "AI" actually is. "Artificial Intelligence" is, IMO, useless phrase. Make them clearly define what they're talking about.

AI is a bunch of different technologies that have many uses—neural networks, natural language processing, OCR, speech recognition, machine learning, computer vision, image classification, upscaling models, and our favorite new friends "generative pre-trained transformers" (GPT) and "large language models" (LLM) that make up key parts of "generative AI."

Once you make them specify what they're talking about, you talk about the nature and inherent limitations in the technology.

I like to call GPT and LLM "statistical binary string predictors." IE: given a string of binary, predict the expected binary string based on the inputs. It's an amazing technology, don't get me wrong. We're starting to see the limits already though.

Limited context windows. Larger context/training == lower quality results. More input tokens = lower quality. In some respects, newer models are now regressing from earlier models because they're chasing benchmarks and not the real world use cases.

Start to dive into the details. Ask them to admit the problems with LLM and GPT. Ask them how they see these problems getting resolved. Most AI fanboys don't understand the technologies involved. Expose it.

What is the point in arguing against enthusiasts? Are you trying to spoil their fun? I think that's inappropriate behavior. Especially when you have to request advice from internet strangers on how to be a more effective contrarian and spoilsport.

I don't like smart phones, professional sports, pick up trucks, anime, or games with pixel art. Please advice on how I can argue against people who are enthusiastic about that kind of stuff.