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

The AI Misinformation Epidemic

approximatelycorrect.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 286 posts

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#171

Post by iwintermute »

notahacker wrote: post #126
FabHK wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great book on this is James Kwak's "Economism" - the abuse of purported economic insight for political purposes. As just one simple example, good old Hekscher-Olin trade theory (a neat general equilibrium model with 2 countries, 2 goods, and 2 factors of production, capital and labor) "shows" that free trade is a good thing, leading to a Pareto improvement. But of course, that's predicated on a whole host of assumpti…

Popular economics and popular "AI" as described in the article both seem like situations where everybody with an idea to push cites popularisation of research conclusions without understanding the limitations to the models and people with actual expertise in the field are often happy to play along with these hyperbolic, caveat-free popularisations because it helps their end goals. Sure, the economics profession and i…

Wasn't it the case with the first AI winter? When the field was overhyped, oversold and then imploded?

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#172

Post by akyu »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #19
charles-salvia wrote: post #8

Yeah, terms like "machine learning" and "AI" have basically become buzz words which, to most laymen, probably encourage the idea that we're on the cusp of creating Data from Star Trek. Unfortunately, the reality is that.... sorry... it's mostly just statistical algorithms based around regression and intermediate calculus. State-of-the-art "deep" neural networks are not really anything like the absurdly parallel, asyn…

> It's still very unclear what, if anything, this algorithm has in common with how a human brain actually operates. Not very much at all. Most psychological evidence shows that human beings seem to operate off composable, hierarchical generative models and probabilistic inference. Deep neural networks are basically just huge continuous circuit approximators.

>composable, hierarchical generative models and probabilistic inference. Deep neural networks are basically just huge continuous circuit approximators.

These two things are not mutually exclusive.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#173

Post by zild3d »

wiz21c wrote: post #40
Banthum wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True that. 1880-1950 (70 years) took us from train-and-telegraph to jet-and-atom bomb. Horse and carriage was the top-tier tech for personal transportation in 1880, and they were just starting to understand that diseases are often caused by these little blobby creatures called germs. 1950-2020 (70 years) will take us much less distance. Almost everything we're developing seems to be about information processing. If y…

Yep. But... What could be better than a car, I mean the concept of "mechanized individual transportation". Same question with train "mechanized mass transportation". Sewer ? What could be better ? While any of these is "not perfect", it's tough (at least for me) to come with something conceptually better right now. And also, I think we have to rememeber that many of these were possible because of oil. So, I think tha…

Better than a car? Mechanized individual transportation that isn't bounded in the 2d plane.

I think Elon also asked the question of what could be better than a train and threw out one possible answer: Hyperloop

Sewer? It doesn't take a lot of creativity to see how a sewer could be better. How about micro waste treatment directly inline with the sewer so now it is not carrying waste, but clean water, and just pipe it directly back in.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#174

Post by sddfd »

akyu wrote: post #166

I'm not sure which I find more annoying; the AI hypers, or the who people who insist that machine learning is "basically just matrix multiplication". As a researcher none of it makes a difference to me either way.

I think part of the excitement is justified: computers can translate between speech and text, and text of different languages.

On the other hand neural networks are most likely just one tool in a larger toolset that will be needed for general AI.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#175

Post by colmvp »

devdoomari wrote: post #162
unityByFreedom wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's ridiculous. Everyone has a personal computer in their pocket and can communicate with anyone in seconds across the world. The world's libraries are at your fingertips by mail order or on your screen. We may not be on the cusp of a singularity, but that's nothing to be ashamed of. We should be proud we haven't seen a major world war in 70 years.

culturally/politically, yes we should be proud... but 'everyone can communicate with anyone' also meant everyone has access to FB, snapchat, worthless videos, and so on for distraction :(

I'm in the camp that abstains from social media, but people are almost always going to find distractions, be it social media, movies, shows, games, novels, or consumables. In moderation, that's perfectly fine. Not everyone wants to work a crazy amount of hours or considers what they are doing from 9-5 fulfilling.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#177

Post by 1_2__3 »

sddfd wrote: post #174
akyu wrote: post #166

I'm not sure which I find more annoying; the AI hypers, or the who people who insist that machine learning is "basically just matrix multiplication". As a researcher none of it makes a difference to me either way.

I think part of the excitement is justified: computers can translate between speech and text, and text of different languages. On the other hand neural networks are most likely just one tool in a larger toolset that will be needed for general AI.

That's basically like saying that horses and buggies will just be tools in a larger toolset needed for space travel. What generalized AI will look like bears little or no resemblance to what we're doing today.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#178

Post by Retric »

sddfd wrote: post #174
akyu wrote: post #166

I'm not sure which I find more annoying; the AI hypers, or the who people who insist that machine learning is "basically just matrix multiplication". As a researcher none of it makes a difference to me either way.

I think part of the excitement is justified: computers can translate between speech and text, and text of different languages. On the other hand neural networks are most likely just one tool in a larger toolset that will be needed for general AI.

Computers don't really translate languages. They take language sample from A into something close to B, and people translate something close to B into language B.

I don't mean this in some abstract philosophical argument, rather as an outgrowth of how they operate. Modern methods are much better than this, but even the most simple mechanical translation of each word in language A into one and only one word in language B allows people to get some value. But, improving without understanding has some inherent limitations. Humans run into similar problems when they try and translate complex source material they don't understand.

Generally this is not a major problem, but it can be.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#179

Post by paganel »

uwiiuvvwu wrote: post #101
ExactoKnight wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peter Thiel has made some other interesting observations: - that our language about the ‘developed' vs ‘developing' world is excessively bullish about globalization while implicitly pessimistic about technology. - that government has changed from thinking that progress can be achieved via planning, into thinking that it's more just there to watch random forces & statistics evolve the world. This change in mindset awa…

interesting points in this podcast http://www.talkhouse.com/comedian-tim-heidecker-talks-with-a... Adam Curtis argues that we no longer subscribe to grand visions and as a result we're floundering as our internet-induced bubbles send us into every more fragmented echo-chambers We're never going to achieve anything great again...it's the beginning of the heat-death of human progress! I think that the recent idolatry o…

Once you cut down all the trees you've got yourself a big ass problem, doesn't matter if a world without trees is more "natural" or not.

Case in point, all the CEOs and big-money managers who benefit from the mining and extracting businesses buy their (big) residences in pretty "natural" places, surrounded by water and lots of greenery. I'm pretty sure they and their kids don't live in the areas affected by their companies' non-natural dealings.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#180

Post by iwintermute »

VHRanger wrote: post #168
iwintermute wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Certainly not, or else climate science would still be in thorough disagreement Looking at Europe - I see the decisions, policies and agreement. Looking at USA I see conscious decision to ignore the science predictions when it suits some political goals in short term and not to ignore when it's vital - like when planning military strategy in Middle East. So I think my point still stands.

How many coal mines or tar sands fields are there in europe?

You can take a look at Germany[1]. And see the results of “Energiewende”[2]

[1] http://euracoal2.org/download/Public-Archive/Library/Charts-... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-16/germany-j...

Your point being?

Post reply on HN