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

A.I. Is Solving the Wrong Problem

onezero.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 109 posts

Re: A.I. Is Solving the Wrong Problem

#11

Post by solipsism »

fungiblecog wrote: post #6
richk449 wrote: post #4

> After decades of investment, oversight, and standards development, we are not closer to total situational awareness through a computerized brain than we were in the 1970s. Hard to see how that could be true. In just about any field, computers today provide much better situational awareness than was possible in 1970. The article makes the usual complaints about self driving cars: > Despite $16 billion in investment…

Self-driving cars are much much better, but they are not "intelligent" in any sense of that word

For your personal, idiosyncratic definition of "intelligent".

Re: A.I. Is Solving the Wrong Problem

#12

Post by richk449 »

paulcole wrote: post #10
richk449 wrote: post #4

> After decades of investment, oversight, and standards development, we are not closer to total situational awareness through a computerized brain than we were in the 1970s. Hard to see how that could be true. In just about any field, computers today provide much better situational awareness than was possible in 1970. The article makes the usual complaints about self driving cars: > Despite $16 billion in investment…

Let’s say you and I were going to race each other by walking. You start on the east side of Los Angeles and I’m in Santa Monica. Does your lead mean you’re in a much better position than me? What if the finish line is in Amsterdam? That’s how I see AI (particularly self driving tech) today. Yes, technically there’s been advancements but we don’t even know whether it’s possible to get to the finish line today.

> Let’s say you and I were going to race each other by walking. You start on the east side of Los Angeles and I’m in Santa Monica. Does your lead mean you’re in a much better position than me? What if the finish line is in Amsterdam?

I can't figure out how to parse this. You refer to my starting location as a "lead", but they ask if it means I am in a better position - that is the definition of "lead". I think your point is that we are so far from what is needed that it is hard to know if we are even moving in the right direction.

Which is a weird argument. My brother drove me in his Nissan Rogue today, which does automatic lane following. You don't have to steer your car, or use the gas or brake for many driving conditions. That is unambiguously an improvement over full manual control.

Re: A.I. Is Solving the Wrong Problem

#14

Post by Robotbeat »

paulcole wrote: post #10
richk449 wrote: post #4

> After decades of investment, oversight, and standards development, we are not closer to total situational awareness through a computerized brain than we were in the 1970s. Hard to see how that could be true. In just about any field, computers today provide much better situational awareness than was possible in 1970. The article makes the usual complaints about self driving cars: > Despite $16 billion in investment…

Let’s say you and I were going to race each other by walking. You start on the east side of Los Angeles and I’m in Santa Monica. Does your lead mean you’re in a much better position than me? What if the finish line is in Amsterdam? That’s how I see AI (particularly self driving tech) today. Yes, technically there’s been advancements but we don’t even know whether it’s possible to get to the finish line today.

If by “finish line” you mean super-human cognition in every single sense, then sure (although it is possible). That might be a century away while AI has nonetheless been stupendously successful in several areas.

Re: A.I. Is Solving the Wrong Problem

#16

Post by abpavel »

> On a warm day in 2008, Silicon Valley’s titans-in-the-making found themselves packed around a bulky, blond-wood conference room table.

The author has read The New Yorker a lot. Some captivating details, made irrelevant at the end of the paragraph.

Re: A.I. Is Solving the Wrong Problem

#17

Post by icoder »

richk449 wrote: post #12
paulcole wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s say you and I were going to race each other by walking. You start on the east side of Los Angeles and I’m in Santa Monica. Does your lead mean you’re in a much better position than me? What if the finish line is in Amsterdam? That’s how I see AI (particularly self driving tech) today. Yes, technically there’s been advancements but we don’t even know whether it’s possible to get to the finish line today.

> Let’s say you and I were going to race each other by walking. You start on the east side of Los Angeles and I’m in Santa Monica. Does your lead mean you’re in a much better position than me? What if the finish line is in Amsterdam? I can't figure out how to parse this. You refer to my starting location as a "lead", but they ask if it means I am in a better position - that is the definition of "lead". I think your p…

It's an improvement in what it does now, but I think the point is it is not necessarily bringing the end goal closer. Like a side track that runs dead at some point.

No matter how much faster horses may have had become by selective breeding, that did not bring 100km/h travel closer.

Re: A.I. Is Solving the Wrong Problem

#18

Post by Scarblac »

fungiblecog wrote: post #6
richk449 wrote: post #4

> After decades of investment, oversight, and standards development, we are not closer to total situational awareness through a computerized brain than we were in the 1970s. Hard to see how that could be true. In just about any field, computers today provide much better situational awareness than was possible in 1970. The article makes the usual complaints about self driving cars: > Despite $16 billion in investment…

Self-driving cars are much much better, but they are not "intelligent" in any sense of that word

"Intelligence" is anything that humans can do but we don't know how to make computers do. Once computers can do it, it's "mere computation".

Re: A.I. Is Solving the Wrong Problem

#19

Post by fungiblecog »

solipsism wrote: post #11
fungiblecog wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-driving cars are much much better, but they are not "intelligent" in any sense of that word

For your personal, idiosyncratic definition of "intelligent".

In the sense that an intelligent thing can react sensibly to situations outside of those explicitly known about in advance

Re: A.I. Is Solving the Wrong Problem

#20

Post by wombatmobile »

andreyk wrote: post #7

Super confusing article. Title aside (which is silly since AI is a toolset for solving a variety of problems), it is just so poorly written that it's not until more than halfway through it that I think I see it's main points (that present day A.I. systems are too dependenct on 'clean' data, and some nebulous discussion of how AI contributes to decision making in organizations). And the main point wrt data quality is…

> Super confusing article.

Yeah I stopped reading at this point:

> Facebook’s moderation policies, for example, allow images of anuses to be photoshopped on celebrities but not a pic of the celebrity’s actual anus.

Post reply on HN