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We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

calpaterson.com

331–340 of 427 posts

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that this criticism is offered in good faith, and that you're in need of good, solid Wiki articles about the tens of millions of victims of Communist regimes--well, I'm happy to get you started! Here's an article about the Soviet terror-famine (known as the Holodomor) which killed 4 million Ukranians. No worrisome notifications on this article, so I assume it meets your rigorous standards: https://en.wikiped…

I'm not denying or excusing that historical atrocities occurred under socialist governments , but for perspective one should also look at the myriad atrocities that were and continue to be committed under capitalist governments. That doesn't excuse such actions, but neither side is innocent. I suggest reading The Wretched of the Earth* Chapter 1, "On Violence". Here are a few examples off the top of my head: https://…

Holocaust is not due to capitalism. It's actually due to socialism. "The National Socialists German Workers Party"

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery is not a function of capitalism, though. Capitalism is being able to 1) firstly, own yourself and your body 2) thus sell your labour however you wish. It's the alternatives economic systems that prevent you from being free.

And yet capitalists imposed slavery upon multiple places around the world, often for decades or centuries.

Putting emotions aside for a second, slavery is very inefficient in a free market. It is not a coincidence free countries are all capitalist (and vice versa).

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#334
post #323
post #251

The misunderstanding that leads to belief in strong AI is that meaning is somehow embedded in the symbols used to communicate it. Meaning is a natural process that occurs inside each of us, speech is just a symbol of that meaning, text is a symbol of that speech. Further, meaning is an ever-evolving, ever-mutating process much like the universe. Training on symbols cannot arrive at meaning, since the meaning isn’t co…

...what? How is this different than saying you can't learn from reading a book because its just symbols. The best I can decipher is that your argument begs the question, ie you're saying machine learning can't derive meaning from symbols because machine learning doesn't derive meaning from symbols.

You can't learn from "just" reading books. You need to experience the real world to know what "The girl jumped into the stream and wet her shoes, her mum was not amused" means.

Your brain probably made a simulation of girl wearing shoes, jumping, water splashing, wet shoes. You need to know water makes things wet, people can jump, there is gravity. The motivation behind jumping was fun. Humans like to have fun. Wet shoes is not healthy. A mum is the mother and care taker for a girl.

When we're comprehending reading, we're building 3d simulations in our mind and deducing a ton of other info. AIs can't really do that just yet. They don't understand the world like we do.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet capitalists imposed slavery upon multiple places around the world, often for decades or centuries.

Putting emotions aside for a second, slavery is very inefficient in a free market. It is not a coincidence free countries are all capitalist (and vice versa).

So are famines, but that didn't stop the market from starving millions of people, either.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We know that paid advertising works" [citation needed] I mean, the ad business of course likes to throw various metrics around. But as far as I'm aware there are no proper randomized controlled trials that show statistically significant positive ROI of online advertising versus no online advertising. I mean, it would be really simple to do, right? To provide conclusive proof of the efficiency of ads? Pick a populous…

There are two significant complications: 1) Google is running many parallel ad campaigns, which may target the same individuals. This in some ways gives opportunities, because one can run 'natural experiments' on the effeciveness of advertising for X by simply selecting the people who never saw the ad for X. But there is also probably some legal peril; Google has to be careful about what promises it makes to people p…

They have every incentive to release the results - if they showed that the market was undervaluing advertising.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#337
post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of dating sites at least in Scandinavia/central europe, where men pay per message (or usually buy message packs, it ends up being around 1€ a message IIRC). The (mostly) men answering these messages, pretending to be women, get paid around 0.15€ per reply. And obviously writing messages where they try to prolong the conversation and turn down real life meetings or changing to other (free) messaging sy…

Why does the system charge men and pay women to message, instead of just charging everyone to message? I would have thought that of all places Scandinavia would not price-discriminate users based on their gender ...

Because if you made women pay, the pool of women would shrink considerably and there would not be enough women for men to message to. Ideologies of gender equality aside, simple observation shows that dating is a women's market. Not even just with humans as biologically, women have a lot more to risk (risk of pregnancy, risks associated with being physically weaker etc.) so they choose while men present themselves and try to "woo" them. Of course not always, but it is a very stable base to build up on. If they made both sexes pay, I bet platform owners would earn a lot less as fewer messages would get exchanged overall.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not denying or excusing that historical atrocities occurred under socialist governments , but for perspective one should also look at the myriad atrocities that were and continue to be committed under capitalist governments. That doesn't excuse such actions, but neither side is innocent. I suggest reading The Wretched of the Earth* Chapter 1, "On Violence". Here are a few examples off the top of my head: https://…

Holocaust is not due to capitalism. It's actually due to socialism. "The National Socialists German Workers Party"

That is the same thing as saying North Korea's failures are actually due to democracy. "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea"

Obviously the name of an organization doesn't mean jack compared to their actually implemented and enforced policies. The first things the Nazi's did when they gained power was kill all the socialists, communists, and unionists. They are anything but socialist.

Re: We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis

#339
post #221
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Month-to-month is just as bad. The ideal business model for a dating site, from the users' perspective, is a one-time advance payment. This puts the business into the situation where they have an incentive to get you satisfied as quickly as possible, so that they can spend as little time/money on you as possible, so that your value to them doesn't go negative from allowing you to spend too much of their time/money. T…

> This puts the business into the situation where they have an incentive If the payment is a one-time advance payment, I would imagine this disincentives the business to truly do their best, since they already have your money. I would think, idealistically, maybe the best model would be an advance payment but with a money-back guarantee of say half the payment if you don't find a match through them. Legally establish…

You don't need a refund. Just presume an efficient market of such companies, where the matchmakers who actually make matches have better reputations, and the ones who don't quickly go out of business. That's how most single-shot service-provider businesses work. (At least, the ones with clear success criteria. Psychics and the like never lose reputation, because there's no standard to measure their claims against.)

The one thing single-shot service-provider businesses (including professional human matchmakers) will do, though, is to calculate a quote for their service, corresponding to how much trouble they think your account is going to be for them. They don't usually bill more if it turns out to be even more of a challenge, but they do refine their quote process after each experience.

Though also, back to refunds: a refund guarantee doesn't need to be part of an explicit business-model, to be part of the effective business model. Dating sites charge people's credit cards. Large one-time charges from unknown companies you don't have an ongoing relationship with are exactly the type of thing that banks/credit-card companies are happy to do charge-backs for. Whether they offer refunds or not, the system will offer refunds for them — and kill their business by taking away its payment-processing if too many users ask for said refunds.

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