News - 2025/06/26 - The LCG AI
Author: Kevin Day
Description: News post on 2025/06/26.
Keywords: Featureless, FLL, Kevin Day, Kevux, Linux, Library, Distribution, Open-Source, News, 2025

# 2025 / 06 / 26 - The LCG AI

The Lossy Computer Generator (LCG) is a new term that I have created to classify the specific type of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that has currently become popular.

The word "Lossy" represents how parts of the original data is lost and reproduction of the original data is not likely to be identical.

The words "computer generation" plays on how data, as with Computer Graphics (CG), is generated by the computer.

LCG includes the currently popular forms of AI known as Large Language Models (LLMs), Small Language Models (SLMs), and Neural Networks.

A Neural Network is a form of AI that has been around as far back as the late 1700s. Types of Neural Networks used today are: LLMs and SLMs.

A LLM is what people are now casually calling AI. A very simplified description of how an LLM works is that it copies the data into memory and remaps it into a modified form. Restoring the mapped data requires re-creating the original data at run time, similar to how MP3 works. This process is therefore lossy.

A SLM is a simplified version of an LLM that attempts to use fewer parameters and should require far less power (wattage).

## Computers are AI

AI has been with us for numerous decades. The first computer ever created is AI. Even the Punch Card Computer is an AI. To put it simply, Artificial Intelligence is something that, when given a choice between two or more options, will make a decision. It seems to me that society, at large, has forgotten that Artificial Intelligence is both artificial and has been with us for hundreds of years.

## Computer Graphics Since 1800s

CG is a form of AI that today's society has seemingly spontaneously forgotten the existence of. There have been many software products over the years that provide some form of CG, such as Inkscape. In fact, CG has been with us for as far back as the late 1800s. Even movies have been utilizing this form of AI known as CG for a very long time. The Braun Tube (in 1897), later called the Cathode Ray Tube, is part of an earlier form of computer AI used for CG.

## Audio and Video Formats

Audio and Video formats operate in two primary different forms: lossy, and lossless. A lossy format loses some of the original data and can rarely reproduce the original data. A lossless format completely preserves the original data and can always reproduce the original data.

Software protocols, such as MP3, restructure the original audio into an alternate form in a lossy manner. Such lossy formats require the computer to recreate the original audio, dynamically, at run time. This is analogous to how an LLM might recreate information or video. There are other formats, such as Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), that store the original audio without losing data.

The popular Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an example of another lossy format that is used for video. The re-creation of an MPEG video at run time is a resource intensive process that often requires specialized dedicated hardware chips. This process can sometimes cause errors and glitches due, in part, to being a lossy format. These errors and glitches are often a reason why people might see ghosts or spirits in these videos. These errors and glitches are essentially an incorrect representation of the original data, similar to how LLMs produce incorrect data, commonly (and absurdly) called a "hallucination".

## What this All Means

AI is not new. LLMs are not new.

There already is software to perform many of the tasks that LCG is now being used to perform. Those existing forms are often simpler, faster, more correct, and more accurate.

A LCG is most useful when one doesn't know what to search for, doesn't know the commands, doesn't know the documentation, or lacks the appropriate skills (such as drawing). This technology should be used like gears on a bicycle, amplifying any work performed, and treated like a compass, providing a generalized direction without dictating the actual paths taken.

Understand what AI is as well as what it is not. If our society fails to do so, then we, as a society, are more likely to be worse off with this limited, misunderstood, and lossy technology.

Kevin Day