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The BS-Industrial Complex of Phony A.I.

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Re: The BS-Industrial Complex of Phony A.I.

#11

Post by povertyworld »

mindgam3 wrote: post #8

> The technologists know it’s bullshit. Fed up with the fog that marketers have created, they’ve simply ditched A.I. and moved on to a new term called “artificial general intelligence.” Not to detract from an otherwise excellent BS takedown, but unfortunately the author fails to mention that there’s a non-zero possibility that AGI itself is merely taking the bullshit to the next level. It continues to astound me how…

While it's true the AI hype is getting a bit overboard, couldn't one make the argument that humans, and to a lesser extent other animals, are just a collection responses to pattern recognition like when I see a thing that looks like this I should eat it, but when I see a thing that sounds like that I should run away? After all, what is common sense but "believe it when I see it" type thinking which is most certainly pattern intuition? The overhype part is that there are armies of lowly paid Mechanical Turk tier workers tagging all these data sets, so that these pattern recognition algorithms have something to train on.

Re: The BS-Industrial Complex of Phony A.I.

#12

Post by solidasparagus »

The author seems confused about what artificial general intelligence is. People have not meaningfully moved towards AGI - it's still a distant pipe dream.

The closest we've gotten is probably a Dota bot that's pretty good as long as you give the bot a huge advantage. Which is an incredible piece of technology, but about as close to AGI as an ant is to a human.

Re: The BS-Industrial Complex of Phony A.I.

#13

Post by ethbro »

colechristensen wrote: post #10

Progress of civilization could be summarized in the slow march of BS elimination parallel with the creation of creative new forms of BS (people don't actually learn anything, they just form the same crazy opinions about something new) Strikeout "of Phony AI." The BS-Industrial Complex is huge and the rise of the Internet has made it worse by empowering the less-informed to share ideas. That is somewhat the price you…

I look at BS as an inevitable symptom of the Singularity.

As we approach the capacity of human reason, fewer people are able to keep up with the world, and are therefore more susceptible to it.

Re: The BS-Industrial Complex of Phony A.I.

#14

Post by Thorentis »

povertyworld wrote: post #11
mindgam3 wrote: post #8

> The technologists know it’s bullshit. Fed up with the fog that marketers have created, they’ve simply ditched A.I. and moved on to a new term called “artificial general intelligence.” Not to detract from an otherwise excellent BS takedown, but unfortunately the author fails to mention that there’s a non-zero possibility that AGI itself is merely taking the bullshit to the next level. It continues to astound me how…

While it's true the AI hype is getting a bit overboard, couldn't one make the argument that humans, and to a lesser extent other animals, are just a collection responses to pattern recognition like when I see a thing that looks like this I should eat it, but when I see a thing that sounds like that I should run away? After all, what is common sense but "believe it when I see it" type thinking which is most certainly…

Sure, one could make that argument. But suggesting that we are close to creating a general intelligence on-par with humans is entirely unfounded.

Even if we assume that the only thing differentiating humans from other forms of intelligence (including artificial neural networks) is more pattern to learn, then that still requires data sets millions if not billions the size of what we currently have. Plus, we know very little about the types of patterns we would need to train an AI on in order for them to reach the AGI level.

I think it's safe to say that "artificial general intelligence" is just another iteration of the BS Industrial Complex.

Re: The BS-Industrial Complex of Phony A.I.

#15

Post by tachyonbeam »

moneytide1 wrote: post #6

These types of AI promotion seem to be a sort of cop-out that suggest we all look forward to a hands-off future where computers will be able to do everything for us. Then human minds will be allocated away from thoughtful interaction with their environment and into an all-hands-on-deck scenario where neural net operations are given top priority so they can churn out some answers.

My main short-term fear is that increased automation will lead to an increasingly isolated society. I can already get almost everything delivered through amazon, order takeout through an app without speaking to anyone. Watch movies on Netflix without needing to go to a video store. What's the world going to be like when drone deliveries become a thing, and I don't even have to speak to a delivery driver? How will it affect kids if they do all their schooling online?

I think that, even before AGI happens, AI assistants will become placeholder friends for a lot of people. You'll be able to have a conversation with Siri or Alexa. Eventually, people might have pseudo relationships with robot boyfriend/girlfriends. Imagine having a friend who is anything you want them to be, does everything you want, and most importantly, never challenges you or tells you anything you don't want to hear. People will get used to that, and it will become difficult for them to have real human relationships.

In other words, technology is enabling everyone to function without directly interacting with others. People might choose not to interact with other humans out of convenience, insecurity, fear. Japan already has a population of "herbivores", people who choose not to get into relationships, and the rest of the world could become like that too. I hope we find a way to reverse this trend.

Short documentary on hikikomori in Japan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE1UIK85E3E

Re: The BS-Industrial Complex of Phony A.I.

#16

Post by baybal2 »

mindgam3 wrote: post #8

> The technologists know it’s bullshit. Fed up with the fog that marketers have created, they’ve simply ditched A.I. and moved on to a new term called “artificial general intelligence.” Not to detract from an otherwise excellent BS takedown, but unfortunately the author fails to mention that there’s a non-zero possibility that AGI itself is merely taking the bullshit to the next level. It continues to astound me how…

We have not yet invented "Artificial Intelligence," but are already making big leaps in "Artificial Ignorance"

Re: The BS-Industrial Complex of Phony A.I.

#17

Post by roenxi »

mindgam3 wrote: post #8

> The technologists know it’s bullshit. Fed up with the fog that marketers have created, they’ve simply ditched A.I. and moved on to a new term called “artificial general intelligence.” Not to detract from an otherwise excellent BS takedown, but unfortunately the author fails to mention that there’s a non-zero possibility that AGI itself is merely taking the bullshit to the next level. It continues to astound me how…

The real issue we are facing is that everything that we thought was not going to be pattern matching and tree search has turned out to be pattern matching and tree search. I remember my father telling me computers were never going to be able to play Chess, because it required creativity for example. Nowadays a neural network with tree search plays chess that looks remarkably human. A lot of problem domains have fallen to what is basically pattern match and tree search.

Extrapolating the trend of the last 30 years, there is evidence that computers will be able to solve every task a human can using pattern matching. If that isn't AGI, it might turn out to be better than intelligence.

The technological future is unknowable, so believing AGI is certain is too much. But believing it certainly isn't around the corner is also too little. If computers can do anything a human can intellectually, they have reached AGI. The list of discrete tasks (games, decision making once the parameters are defined) a computer can't do is a very short list.

If someone finds an objective function for deciding what decision parameters are important AGI could be upon us very quickly. As a postcript, I think people radically overestimate human intelligence.

Re: The BS-Industrial Complex of Phony A.I.

#18

Post by m0zg »

There is a lot of froth, as in any hot field. However, unlike before, there are many cases where AI actually works now. Some perceptual tasks work better than a human, in fact. We can quibble about the naming and whatnot, but that's not something you can say about the last AI winter. It's sort of like dotcom bust of 00, sure things imploded back then, but there's no sign whatsoever e-commerce will implode at any time in the future because unlike before it actually works this time.

Re: The BS-Industrial Complex of Phony A.I.

#19

Post by jbay808 »

roenxi wrote: post #17
mindgam3 wrote: post #8

> The technologists know it’s bullshit. Fed up with the fog that marketers have created, they’ve simply ditched A.I. and moved on to a new term called “artificial general intelligence.” Not to detract from an otherwise excellent BS takedown, but unfortunately the author fails to mention that there’s a non-zero possibility that AGI itself is merely taking the bullshit to the next level. It continues to astound me how…

The real issue we are facing is that everything that we thought was not going to be pattern matching and tree search has turned out to be pattern matching and tree search. I remember my father telling me computers were never going to be able to play Chess, because it required creativity for example. Nowadays a neural network with tree search plays chess that looks remarkably human. A lot of problem domains have falle…

I'd be interested in knowing what coungerarguments the people downvoting this comment might know of, which I apparently don't.

Re: The BS-Industrial Complex of Phony A.I.

#20

Post by ethbro »

m0zg wrote: post #18

There is a lot of froth, as in any hot field. However, unlike before, there are many cases where AI actually works now. Some perceptual tasks work better than a human, in fact. We can quibble about the naming and whatnot, but that's not something you can say about the last AI winter. It's sort of like dotcom bust of 00, sure things imploded back then, but there's no sign whatsoever e-commerce will implode at any time…

> Some perceptual tasks work better than a human, in fact. [...] that's not something you can say about the last AI winter

Eh. I'd say that's somewhat apples to oranges.

A) There were some useful and successful expert systems.

B) Things seemed to be going swimmingly, until they hit a fundamental wall.

C) We're working with a few orders of magnitude greater compute than they had access to.

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