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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.

#361

Post by solidasparagus »

neonate wrote: post #326
solidasparagus wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The details require a little knowledge of Dota, but essentially the bot only knows how to play a much simplified version of the game. They play with a reduced number of playable heroes (5 of the 100+). Each hero changes the dynamic of the game and many heroes have unique interactions with each other, so this is a very substantial simplification. Additionally, Dota is a game where mechanics (the ability to quickly and…

Thanks, that's interesting. I don't recall those caveats being explained very prominently when the "machines beat humans" articles came out about that.

The DotA bot is such an impressive accomplishment that the caveats aren't usually worth highlighting.

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

#362

Post by solidasparagus »

computerex wrote: post #195
solidasparagus wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are broadly two approaches to AGI. Behavior-driven or biology-driven. That's a cool biology-driven project, but for now, OpenAI Five is much closer to AGI than OpenWorm is.

Do you care to cite your assertions? The dichotomy you are referring to doesn't exist. Do you have a reliable source that says that there are two broad approaches to AGI, behavior driven and biology driven? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition There is widespread consensus that embodiment is significant for AGI. Modern approaches to AGI tend to be biologically inspired. OpenAI five is not even remotely…

I doubt I can find something to cite - it's an observation that I didn't think was particularly questionable. We have researchers like OpenAI trying to move towards AGI by advancing RL through specific applications. Others like OpenWorm are trying to mimic the building blocks of life. Of course biology inspires all AI, but given the nascent state of AGI, it seems like you have to choose between those two approaches.

And if we're being pedantic, can you cite your claim that there "is widespread consensus that embodiment is significant for AGI"? I find it hard to believe that there is widespread consensus about anything around AGI.

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

#363

Post by solidasparagus »

Wiretrip wrote: post #141
solidasparagus wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We might be headed for the trough of disillusionment, but in terms of technology and industry applications, we are still in the early phase of modern AI (big data + ML).

Exactly, we are in a very early phase. However, the hype wave is driving a dangerous level of premature deployment of half-baked parlour tricks or the over reliance on simple algorithms where there are real consequences. i.e. prison sentences and insurance eligibility and yes, autonomous vehicles.

Very good point. At least you can feel the pushback against that in the industry. It's a fraught time, but the AI community feels extremely proactive.

It is however an uphill battle when these 80% systems offer such immediate gains. We really need governments to be informed and active.

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

#364

Post by sgt101 »

pslam wrote: post #347
sgt101 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not serious : back-propogation is the origin point of modern AI. This is the algorithm that powers the deep network revoultion. It's not the end point, it's not a magic box, but it is fundamentally an AI algorithm. Just saying "no it isn't" is just not helpful or useful.

You are missing the entire point of the article if you continue to call these algorithms "AI". Inflating simple things like this to mean "AI" has led to the term being meaningless. You are the example it is making.

Ok : define Intelligence. Define Life.

There are no accepted definitions of these terms. Are they meaningless?

AI that does not include backpropagation or logical deduction or GA's or optimisation is... is... magical thinking. AI without the nuts and bolts from the last 50 years of work is meaningless. The article is heartfelt, and we all agree with the tenant that people pretending that they are using AI when they are really using a database isn't a good thing, but if you take any current system look right down inside it all you will find is a Shannon type implementation of church-turing.

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

#365

Post by dspillett »

goatlover wrote: post #269
ecmascript wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. It's the complex system that gives us an illusion of consciousness. At least, that is what I naively believe in since there is a lack of evidence for anything else.

So you think experience is itself an illusion? When you kick a rock and feel pain, you're not really experiencing pain? Is the rock also an illusion?

I can't speak for the other guy, but from my PoV something being an emergent behaviour doesn't necessarily mean that it is an illusion. Patterns can really exist without being explicitly optimised or programmed for.

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

#366

Post by raverbashing »

sjy wrote: post #187
bjourne wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first "AI winter" happened in the 60's. In 1949 Warren Weaver published a memorandum outlining his plan for universal machine translation. He likened the problem to cryptography, a field that had exploded due to WWII, and thought it would be solved in a few years. In hindsight, we know that his ideas were very naive but Weaver was an influential and charismatic person so they inspired lots researchers. They also…

It feels harsh to call him naïve because I'm sure I wouldn't have had any more insight, but it is surprising how little we knew about the science of language pre-Chomsky, considering that we have been learning languages for millions of years. Now that we have had several generations of computer technology fall short of the abilities of human translators, it seems obvious that you're probably not going to be able to w…

To be very honest you don't need Chomsky to realize how complicated languages are

People who think it's easy usually don't speak a 2nd language (amongst other problems in communicating with non-natives for example) so I'm going to bet on that.

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

#367

Post by Wiretrip »

sgt101 wrote: post #364
pslam wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the entire point of the article if you continue to call these algorithms "AI". Inflating simple things like this to mean "AI" has led to the term being meaningless. You are the example it is making.

Ok : define Intelligence. Define Life. There are no accepted definitions of these terms. Are they meaningless? AI that does not include backpropagation or logical deduction or GA's or optimisation is... is... magical thinking. AI without the nuts and bolts from the last 50 years of work is meaningless. The article is heartfelt, and we all agree with the tenant that people pretending that they are using AI when they a…

There are tonnes of other approaches to machine learning that don't involve backprop! There are also other approaches to neural netwroks that don't use backprop (have a look at Numenta's stuff for example). I suggest you watch Pat Winston's brilliant MIT AI lectures to see how huge the range of techniques is.

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

#368

Post by Wiretrip »

cr0sh wrote: post #264
Wiretrip wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, we are in a very early phase. However, the hype wave is driving a dangerous level of premature deployment of half-baked parlour tricks or the over reliance on simple algorithms where there are real consequences. i.e. prison sentences and insurance eligibility and yes, autonomous vehicles.

I don't know if this is against HN "rules" - but I'm going to give you an explanation anyhow. I downvoted one of your comments that was essentially a cut-and-paste of this comment here; I have noticed that you have done this more than once here within the comments. Please refrain from doing this; it seems to add nothing but noise to the conversation. If you believe your commentary has merit within the context of the…

OK, under most circumstances that is a fair point, and I personally hate astroturfers, but in this case I feel the comment was equally valid as an answer to two threads that were physically separate - and could have ended up in vastly different places. If there is a way to link to an existing comment then let me know and I'll use that method in future :-)

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

#369

Post by stoobs »

slavik81 wrote: post #132
ramraj07 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ant to human analogy is surprisingly apt in a way you might not consider though - evolutionarily speaking the ant and humans diverged relatively recently, if you count things from the beginning of life. In that way, we might also be closer to AGI than some might think..

Ants are from the other branch of creatures with bilateral symmetry. That fork would have occurred before the Cambrian explosion, so that's at least a half a billion years ago. That's a long time!

Which is relatively new compared to geological or cosmological time.

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

#370

Post by ecmascript »

goatlover wrote: post #269
ecmascript wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. It's the complex system that gives us an illusion of consciousness. At least, that is what I naively believe in since there is a lack of evidence for anything else.

So you think experience is itself an illusion? When you kick a rock and feel pain, you're not really experiencing pain? Is the rock also an illusion?

Well it depends on how you view it. You feel the pain from kicking the rock and remember it, so you won't kick the same rock against a few minutes after.

That is an experience to me. An experience is simply a memory of an event/feeling etc. Without any memories, you won't remember any events or feelings and will gladly kick the rock again since you won't have any memory of it hurting you.

Or how else would you define an experience? A memory isn't an illusion, there is definitely something physical in your brain that say that that specific event has happened. But you can also remember things that haven't happened, which is probably why a lot of people believe in ghosts, religion etc.

I don't know why, but it probably serves a biological purpose and people are probably more likely to survive if they are afraid of things and are careful.

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