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The A.I. Revolution Is On

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Re: The A.I. Revolution Is On

#21

Post by fendrak »

My Multiagent Systems class at UT Austin (taught by Peter Stone) discussed the Kiva system, along with many, many other topics pertaining to AI today.

A couple of videos about Kiva: http://www.raffaello.name/KivaSystems.html

A paper on Kiva: http://www.raffaello.name/Assets/Publications/CoordinatingHu...

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pstone/Courses/344Mfall10/assignme... has all of the readings for the class (with more on the 'resources' page). If you want to learn something about AI, it's certainly a good place to start!

If you're more into the algorithms side of AI, you should certainly read AI: A Modern Approach (http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approac...). It's a text book, don't get me wrong, but it clearly explains many relevant algorithms in AI today with accompanying pseudocode and theory. If you've got a CS background, it's a great reference/learning tool. I bought mine for a class, and won't be returning it!

Re: The A.I. Revolution Is On

#22

Post by hbt »

jacquesm wrote: post #11

Way to go wired, an article with a bunch of references to things that are definitely not AI, would not have been considered AI (even in the dark gray past) and that are not considered AI today even by those that would like to believe that an 'AI revolution' is on. According to this article AI is just another way of saying 'the leading edge in real world interaction', from inventory control to (apparently) crappy sear…

it's _Artificial_ !

Maybe their example sucked but Search engines fall into AI in my book.

I think the author is emphasizing the complexity behind very simple things. Obviously, it's not intelligent but it's doing way more than expected.

To me "intelligence" in software is about hiding complexity, making decisions and deducing things based on data, predicting and adapting based on input to deliver unforeseen results using a simple UI (where UI could be keywords in a search engine or a warehouse reorganizing itself to deliver and locate stuff faster based on new input/output).

The next generation of software is not about building actual intelligent systems. It's about accomplishing specific tasks and delivering more than expected.

Think of your IDE fixing your most common typos because it's constantly analyzing your input, or a file selection program that saves patterns/dependencies between your opened files and tries to guess which file you mean when you hit `gt` etc.

To me, this is smart behavior or _artificial_ intelligence. This is as far as software will ever get unless you start mixing it with biological stuff.

Re: The A.I. Revolution Is On

#23

Post by treeface »

lukev wrote: post #6
flatline wrote: post #3

"The computers are in control, and we just live in their world" No, we are ostensibly in control, or at least the humans who know how to program and control this type of system are. Like any machine or complex system, it may fly out of our control, but it is not in some other entity's control at that point, it's just out of control. We're not to the point of facing a true artificial intelligence, yet...

Agreed. The mystification of what computers do is a worrying trend. For now, at least, computers can't do anything at all interesting or remarkable. They can, however, do boring things really really fast . And lots of boring things, done really really fast, can yield some pretty impressive results. But it doesn't change the fact that what computers actually do is utterly trivial. Anything interesting they achieve is…

    The mystification of what computers do is a worrying trend.
Trend? When have the masses ever had a clear grasp on computation? Quoth Babbage:

On two occasions I have been asked,—"Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

Re: The A.I. Revolution Is On

#24

Post by carsongross »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #15
carsongross wrote: post #8

Has A.I. figured out how to simulate humility yet? It certainly has a lot to be humble about... -A Systems Guy

I've seen a chat bot that's indistinguishable from a real human being. It reaches that goal by acting like a stupid and rude 12 year old kid who think he's cool and l33t. hey man wtf u talking about lololol wtf man ur dumb thats shit whatever You can't tell whether he's really an annoying 12 years old or whether he's a bot.

Touche.

OTOH, this is wired we are talking about. Until the drones hunt me down and eliminate me with impossible, ruthless efficiency, I remain skeptical. And I'll die screaming "Yeah, but it was a SYSTEMS GUY who made you ACTUALLY work!"

Re: The A.I. Revolution Is On

#25

Post by Retric »

jacquesm wrote: post #11

Way to go wired, an article with a bunch of references to things that are definitely not AI, would not have been considered AI (even in the dark gray past) and that are not considered AI today even by those that would like to believe that an 'AI revolution' is on. According to this article AI is just another way of saying 'the leading edge in real world interaction', from inventory control to (apparently) crappy sear…

Diapers.com: Then, to fill an order, the first available robot simply finds the closest requested item. Google: "what is the color of grass" is equated to "define:color of grass"

Web definitions for color of grass a primary color between yellow and blue in the spectrum, like the color of grass encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/green.html - Definition in context

So yea it's stupid AI, but they are both still AI.

PS: Decoding a natural language queries structure is considered AI. "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" to a map location is more than just a search for web pages.

Re: The A.I. Revolution Is On

#26

Post by rateldajer »

lukev wrote: post #6
flatline wrote: post #3

"The computers are in control, and we just live in their world" No, we are ostensibly in control, or at least the humans who know how to program and control this type of system are. Like any machine or complex system, it may fly out of our control, but it is not in some other entity's control at that point, it's just out of control. We're not to the point of facing a true artificial intelligence, yet...

Agreed. The mystification of what computers do is a worrying trend. For now, at least, computers can't do anything at all interesting or remarkable. They can, however, do boring things really really fast . And lots of boring things, done really really fast, can yield some pretty impressive results. But it doesn't change the fact that what computers actually do is utterly trivial. Anything interesting they achieve is…

I agree mystification of computation is not something we should encourage, but I don't think that's really what is happening in this article. The things that computers do today are not utterly trivial, the algorithms are getting more complex every day and there is some evidence that some of the very complex probabilistic structures being built have corollaries in the human brain.

We have already passed the point where all computers are being directly programmed by a human being to perform an exact task. Things like google, and Wolfram Alpha and Netflix are following instructions designed by humans that describe complex behaviors and even reasoning, not the particular outcomes they yield. These instructions are far beyond listing steps for a robot to pick up a cup off a table.

Are the machines being creative? No. But, how would we know if they were, we don't even know what that means.

Are they 'in control'? No. No more than your bicycle is in control when you stop pedaling and take your hands off the handle bars. It has no will, it just keep going, just like google's servers. But, do we know enough about what intelligence (or sentience, which is what everyone is actually talking about here) is in order to answer that question if the answer ever changes?

How complex does something have to be in order for us to consider it 'intelligent' and what kind of complexity will it need to have?

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