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

Noam Chomsky v. IBM’s Watson Computer

framingbusiness.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 49 posts

Re: Noam Chomsky v. IBM’s Watson Computer

#31

Post by grandalf »

asknemo wrote: post #9

Calling a system "bigger steamroller" is easy and may make one sound cool, but actually designing and making one that is as good as Watson is hard, much harder than non-engineers will believe, and such attempts often give more insights than mere paper-logic and debates IMHO. Ability to entertain drastically different ideas is a feature of great minds.

It is definitely a hard engineering problem, but a fundamentally different one than engineering something that thinks, since the goal in this case is simply to answer jeopardy questions correctly.

As Eliza demonstrates, simply doing something that seems "smart" is often nearly trivial.

Re: Noam Chomsky v. IBM’s Watson Computer

#32

Post by grandalf »

chubot wrote: post #7

You have to respect Chomsky, but he certainly comes off like a curmudgeon here. He can't even be bothered to clearly explain his lack of interest in Watson. It seems less like lack of interest than anger at what he sees as a misguided approach. I think he thinks that Watson and Deep Blue are "brute force" solutions (hence the steamroller metaphor), while his work on the relation of computation and grammar (and the vi…

How is deep blue playing Jeopardy anything more than eliza + google search?

The steamroller metaphor is intended to illustrate the brute force aspect of the approach. Google + deep blue burns many many orders of magnitude more calories than a human.

Re: Noam Chomsky v. IBM’s Watson Computer

#33

Post by grandalf »

fefzero wrote: post #6

I liked Kurzweil's response best: "As long as AI has any flaws or limitations, people will jump on these. By the time that the set of these limitations is nil, AI will have long since surpassed unaided human intelligence." Watson isn't the end, it's a building block. It's true that it's been largely hyped to some degree, but I think that opens doors that wouldn't have been opened otherwise. Chomsky's dismissal seems…

Chomsky's point is that he doesn't think brute force AI really accomplishes much toward a theory of mind. He may be right or wrong about this, but it's an empirically testable point (over time).

He indicates that his inclination is toward a different research approach which is not brute force oriented (meaning it's more algorithmically/conceptually sophisticated but not fundamentally different).

This is why he trivializes the notion of "intelligence"... b/c he probably has a hard time calling the approach he favors intelligence, much less a far less intelligent brute force approach.

In Chomsky's world, intelligence essentially refers to "innate knowlege systems". If it's brute force than it's totally non-innate.

Re: Noam Chomsky v. IBM’s Watson Computer

#34

Post by psykotic »

icandoitbetter wrote: post #27

Yeah, and the brain is nothing more than a bunch of atoms. Nobody is aware that you can make every single thing sound unimpressive by brutally reducing it to its components, and nobody has used that trick before! Way to go, Chomsky. Insightful as a twelve year old.

> Way to go, Chomsky. Insightful as a twelve year old.

What an immature response. You're the one acting like a twelve year-old here. Unless you've read a good portion of his writings on language and cognition published through the last half century, you might not want to dismiss his life's work based on an off-the-cuff response to a random email prodding him for sound bites.

There are solid reasons to believe that purely empiricist approaches to learning have fundamental limitations that seem incompatible with what we know about human cognition. Those reasons (e.g. the poverty of the stimulus argument) may be less convincing now than they were in the 60s but they are still not easily dismissable. Keep in mind that Chomsky's goal is not to build useful software but to uncover the roots and mechanisms of human language and cognition.

Re: Noam Chomsky v. IBM’s Watson Computer

#35

Post by icandoitbetter »

psykotic wrote: post #34
icandoitbetter wrote: post #27

Yeah, and the brain is nothing more than a bunch of atoms. Nobody is aware that you can make every single thing sound unimpressive by brutally reducing it to its components, and nobody has used that trick before! Way to go, Chomsky. Insightful as a twelve year old.

> Way to go, Chomsky. Insightful as a twelve year old. What an immature response. You're the one acting like a twelve year-old here. Unless you've read a good portion of his writings on language and cognition published through the last half century, you might not want to dismiss his life's work based on an off-the-cuff response to a random email prodding him for sound bites. There are solid reasons to believe that pu…

Sorry, I'm not going respect silly one-line remark because he's a celebrity in the field. This is exactly what he seems to be counting on, his 'authority': he can say whatever stubbornly contrarian thing he wants and be considered seriously because he's so established. If he didn't have time for an actual response, he should have not responded in the first place. He did, and he will be criticized for it.

Re: Noam Chomsky v. IBM’s Watson Computer

#36

Post by psykotic »

icandoitbetter wrote: post #35
psykotic wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Way to go, Chomsky. Insightful as a twelve year old. What an immature response. You're the one acting like a twelve year-old here. Unless you've read a good portion of his writings on language and cognition published through the last half century, you might not want to dismiss his life's work based on an off-the-cuff response to a random email prodding him for sound bites. There are solid reasons to believe that pu…

Sorry, I'm not going respect silly one-line remark because he's a celebrity in the field. This is exactly what he seems to be counting on, his 'authority': he can say whatever stubbornly contrarian thing he wants and be considered seriously because he's so established. If he didn't have time for an actual response, he should have not responded in the first place. He did, and he will be criticized for it.

Just before you replied I added an extra paragraph with some background that explains where he's coming from. If the standard critique of empiricism I mention there is not familiar to you, you might want to study more before passing judgement.

Re: Noam Chomsky v. IBM’s Watson Computer

#38

Post by tensor »

chubot wrote: post #7

You have to respect Chomsky, but he certainly comes off like a curmudgeon here. He can't even be bothered to clearly explain his lack of interest in Watson. It seems less like lack of interest than anger at what he sees as a misguided approach. I think he thinks that Watson and Deep Blue are "brute force" solutions (hence the steamroller metaphor), while his work on the relation of computation and grammar (and the vi…

I find it curious why so many people think that there is a small and elegant machine in the brain. In terms of brute force computation, the brain is still far, far in the lead. It has so many neural connections that we are not even close to simulating it yet.

Given that, assuming that it implements some small and elegant algorithm is a very strange assumption to make.

Re: Noam Chomsky v. IBM’s Watson Computer

#39

Post by cma »

tensor wrote: post #38
chubot wrote: post #7

You have to respect Chomsky, but he certainly comes off like a curmudgeon here. He can't even be bothered to clearly explain his lack of interest in Watson. It seems less like lack of interest than anger at what he sees as a misguided approach. I think he thinks that Watson and Deep Blue are "brute force" solutions (hence the steamroller metaphor), while his work on the relation of computation and grammar (and the vi…

I find it curious why so many people think that there is a small and elegant machine in the brain. In terms of brute force computation, the brain is still far, far in the lead. It has so many neural connections that we are not even close to simulating it yet. Given that, assuming that it implements some small and elegant algorithm is a very strange assumption to make.

Chomsky's work again and again focuses on how language develops given the paucity of data (linguistic examples) the child is exposed to--Watson and Google Translate (according to Norvig's NY Post article) both rely on orders of magnitude more data.

Brute force is a good approach given our current technology and understanding, but it isn't necessarily similar to the brain.

Post reply on HN