Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

facebook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 216 posts

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#71

Post by jamornh »

argonaut wrote: post #69
grumpy-buffalo wrote: post #48

I wish the term "true AI" were replaced with "strong AI" or "artificial general intelligence" or some such term. We already have true AI - it's a vast, thriving industry. AlphaGo is obviously a true, legitimate, actual, real, nonfictional example of artificial intelligence, as are Google Search, the Facebook Newsfeed, Siri, the Amazon Echo, etc.

This seems like semantic quibbling. All those terms seem synonymous to me.

I feel that there's a legitimate reasons to split them into those terms as there are some significant distinctions that could be made in terms of "level of intelligence" of the AI.

For a much more detailed exploration of this topic, I think Wait but Why's article did a pretty thorough job: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolu...

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#72

Post by sampo »

Houshalter wrote: post #61

No one is claiming that alphaGo is close to AGI. At least not anyone that understands the methods it uses. What alphaGo is, is an example of AI progress. There has been a rapid increase in progress in the field of AI. We are still a ways away from AGI, but it's now in sight. Just outside the edge of our vision. Almost surely within our lifetime, at this rate.

> We are still a ways away from AGI, but it's now in sight.

These people in 1956 also thought that AGI was in sight:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_Conferences

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#73

Post by Smerity »

dsharlet wrote: post #67
Smerity wrote: post #56

Preface: AlphaGo is an amazing achievement and does show an interesting advancement in the field. Yet ... it really doesn't mean almost anything that people are predicting it to mean. Slashdot went so far as to say that "We know now that we don't need any big new breakthroughs to get to true AI". The field of ML/AI is in a fight where people want more science fiction than scientific reality. Science fiction is sexy,…

> The hardware requirements were stunning (280 GPUs and 1920 CPUs for the largest variant) and were an integral part to how well AlphaGo performed Is that really true? Demis stated that the distributed version of AlphaGo beats a single machine version only 75% of the time. That's still stronger than virtually all human players, and probably would still beat Lee Sedol at least once.

The best discussion in terms of hardware adjusted algorithmic process I've seen is by Miles Brundage[1]. The additional hardware was the difference between amateur and pro level skills. It's also important to note that the non-distributed AlphaGo still had quite considerable compute power.

Now was a sweet spot in time. This algorithm ten years ago would likely have been pathetic and in ten years time will likely superhuman in the same manner that chess is.

None of these constitute a general advance in AI however.

[1]: http://www.milesbrundage.com/blog-posts/alphago-and-ai-progr...

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#74

Post by timClicks »

grumpy-buffalo wrote: post #48

I wish the term "true AI" were replaced with "strong AI" or "artificial general intelligence" or some such term. We already have true AI - it's a vast, thriving industry. AlphaGo is obviously a true, legitimate, actual, real, nonfictional example of artificial intelligence, as are Google Search, the Facebook Newsfeed, Siri, the Amazon Echo, etc.

I tried to argue once that the term "synthetic AI" would be better than AGI, as it removes any notion that artificial implies fake. [Note to surprised self: apparently there is a Wikipedia page describing this exact argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_intelligence]

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#75

Post by raldi »

grumpy-buffalo wrote: post #48

I wish the term "true AI" were replaced with "strong AI" or "artificial general intelligence" or some such term. We already have true AI - it's a vast, thriving industry. AlphaGo is obviously a true, legitimate, actual, real, nonfictional example of artificial intelligence, as are Google Search, the Facebook Newsfeed, Siri, the Amazon Echo, etc.

"Scotsman AI"

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#76

Post by SCAQTony »

jlarocco wrote: post #64
grumpy-buffalo wrote: post #48

I wish the term "true AI" were replaced with "strong AI" or "artificial general intelligence" or some such term. We already have true AI - it's a vast, thriving industry. AlphaGo is obviously a true, legitimate, actual, real, nonfictional example of artificial intelligence, as are Google Search, the Facebook Newsfeed, Siri, the Amazon Echo, etc.

I guess it boils down to a difference in opinion as to what it means to be intelligent. IMO, AlphaGo isn't "intelligent" because all it can do is play Go. For example, it can't be taught to play chess without completely reprogramming it. Surely it's using a lot of clever algorithms, but where's the intelligence? TBH, there's not much point to this post, because the intelligence in AI has been twisted more towards you…

I agree with you and would like to double down: Intelligence is defined as "...the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills."

Even if Alpha-Go could play chess, manage air traffic control, and play GO the same time, it would never know it was doing that. As you mentioned above, Alpha-Go's "intelligence"is specifically pre-programed algorithms and accurate numeric inputs. If it can't create it's own algorithms or translate abstract data into numbers it can crunch on it's own, then there is no intelligence there. It just "smells" like intelligence.

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#77

Post by chrisfosterelli »

markism wrote: post #22
chrisfosterelli wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an expert, but my understanding is that humans can learn many things through reinforcement learning, but most of our intelligent decisions are a result of unsupervised learning. For instance, if the stove element was red hot and you touched it, you'd receive a feeling of pain. Reinforcement learning would suggest that you shouldn't do this again, and you might learn to not touch stove elements when they are red h…

Interesting, so it's the ability to generalize attributes selectively? That sounds like it would make for the difference between the specialized deep learning we have and a more general intelligence. Could that be accomplished if NN problems are broken into features, and those features are individually tested against new information? Though you'd need a layer for feature selection, and it still lacks the ability to p…

> Interesting, so it's the ability to generalize attributes selectively?

In technical terms it is the ability to generate its own features and classifications for making decisions, where in supervised learning a human provides the features and classifications.

> Could that be accomplished if NN problems are broken into features, and those features are individually tested against new information?

If I understood your example correctly, that would be an example of supervised learning, as you pointed out it lacks the ability to pick features without being told what they are. There are types of unsupervised learning that exist and work quite well, for example cluster analysis [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#78

Post by ktRolster »

grumpy-buffalo wrote: post #48

I wish the term "true AI" were replaced with "strong AI" or "artificial general intelligence" or some such term. We already have true AI - it's a vast, thriving industry. AlphaGo is obviously a true, legitimate, actual, real, nonfictional example of artificial intelligence, as are Google Search, the Facebook Newsfeed, Siri, the Amazon Echo, etc.

We already have true AI - it's a vast, thriving industry.

Or how about calling that vast, thriving industry "weak AI," or "clever algorithms," which is what they really are. The original definition of AI was what we now call strong AI, but after some lesser problems were solved without actually creating strong AI, we had to come up with some name for those.

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#79

Post by javajosh »

wpietri wrote: post #19
javajosh wrote: post #14

Is anyone working on an embodied AI? Even a simulated body might help. Ultimately intelligence is only useful insofar as it guides the body's motion. We often tend to minimize the physical act of say, writing down a theorem or actually applying paint to the canvas, but there are certain actions like playing a musical instrument that certainly blur the distinction between "physical" and "mental". Indeed, even 'purely…

You might look at the work of Rodney Brooks. There was a wonderful documentary called "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control", and I'm pretty sure it was in there that he explains his notion that true intelligence is embodied. That was years ago and I haven't kept up with the field, but perhaps it's a useful starting point for you.

Cool, thanks. I think the idea is also important to Zoltan Torey, who believed that "consciousness" is essentially a simulation of a kind of arm in our mind. ("The Conscious Mind"). But I've never heard of anyone attempting to train an AI within a simulated world. The nice thing about doing that is that aren't limited by physics of robotics. I suspect that for basic intelligence stuff, relatively lo-fidelity simulation would be sufficient. (Although there are some very important moral issues presented by such a program!)

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#80

Post by ktRolster »

hacknat wrote: post #18
quonn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it just seems unlikely that psychology will produce significant insights here, because it mostly just looks at how the brain behaves. While this can be insightful, I doubt that it will explain intelligence in the end, because this happens a layer below. That's precisely what neuroscience covers. The other approach (just thinking about the problem and trying to to build a AI from first principles) is CS. So I wo…

I think someone needs to come up with a good theory of what intelligence even is, then we can try to discover its mechanism(s).

Here are three potential definitions:

1) Acting like a human (this is the Turing test approach)

2) Thinking like a human (this is cognitive science, and for now is focused on figuring out how humans think)

3) Thinking rationally, ie, following formal logic (the difficulty here is encoding all the information in the world as formal logic)

4) Acting rationally. That is, entities that react rationally to their goals (this one is notable because it allows fairly stupid entities).

These are all explained in more detail in Artificial Intelligence, a Modern Approach by Russell and Norvig

Post reply on HN