Live data from Hacker News

Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

spectrum.ieee.org

11–20 of 123 posts

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#11

Unrelated to the article but I ran across an interesting result recently that is related to AI (and the hype surrounding it): Let A be an agent and let S be a Turing machine deductive system. If A correctly understands S, then A can correctly deduce that S does not have A’s capability for solving halting problems. [1] One way to interpret this is that all existing AI systems are obviously halting computations simply…

Your argument is wrong or miscommunicated. The AI itself can figure only some of the halting problem results, not all, plus it can make a mistake. It is not an oracle.

Recursive neural networks are not necessarily halting when executed in arbitrary precision arithmetic.

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#12
The George Carlin bit [1] about euphemisms comes to mind. While not quite in the lens of marketing hyperbole it captures really well what it means to dilute the language. The result is a loss of meaning and expressive power. If everything is something, nothing is.

1: https://youtu.be/vuEQixrBKCc

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#13
This ship has long sailed, today everything is AI. It has nothing to do with AI but the necessity of using the current buzzword dominating the market. Before it was the web, XML, Ajax, OO, cloud, whatever. Now it's "AI." It means absolutely nothing. People implement simplest algorithms with a couple of case statements and call it AI without a blink. Everyone else jumps the train as they don't want to be perceived as obsolete. All this happens along (sometimes totally independently of) some real, interesting developments in machine learning.

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#14
post #5

That's what pisses me the most about world these days, my pet peeve. Words seem to be losing their meaning. People just throw whatever words they want. Recently I've been shopping for a steam station and I've seen that the top of the line Philips Stream&Go has a camera "with AI" that recognizes the fabric. The sales guy was persistent that that claim was true. Oh please. If it was, it was only in the simplest, most t…

My pet peeve is "it will blow your mind." Hasn't happened to me ever. Also "exciting." Yes, I was excited when I first saw C-128 with its dual C-64 and CP/M modes. When I saw Linux for the first time on a 386. When I created my first app for the iPhone 3GS. But for marketing folks everything (they do) seems exciting. No, your revolutionary project is not revolutionary and your innovation means gluing together many ideas of others (who also borrowed it from other people tbh).

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#15
post #7
post #4

Michael I. Jordan is spot on. We have NO artificial intelligent systems, for any sensible definition of "intelligent". None. ZERO. We have "big data". We have (brittle and rather poor) "pattern recognition". We have (very limited) "simulate a conversation". But we do not even know what "intelligence" really means! We (the industry) should recognise "AI" as term that has become essentially meaningless. "AI" is now not…

I've been having "AI" debates like this for about 10 years now, and I think they usually go in 1 of 2 directions: 1. We don't know what intelligence is 2. AI can never be intelligent because humans are special (in various ways) Of the two, I think that 1 is the more compelling to talk about. Let's look at state of the art Large Language Models (GPT, BERT, BART, T5, etc.) Everyone claims that they can't be intelligent…

Well, it will be interesting to see how this develops in the future. At some point we will have systems powerful enough to process and learn in real time, also using sensors that are equivalent of human senses (or even more powerful). At this point, if we can successfully model and mimic a typical human, why should it matter if it's not a human?

As for the hallucinating point, I remember a funny story. I once tripped on the curb and fell down; my foot ached for a week. My then 4-year-old daughter took her first-aid set for dolls and tried to "cure" my foot. My mother heard the story and found it cute, so she asked my daughter: "Will you cure me like that, too?" My daughter seemed stupefied and answered: "Are you going to trip and fall, grandma?"

My feeling is that the missing links will be found one day and the AI of the future will be able to apply more adult-like "reasoning."

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#16
post #5

That's what pisses me the most about world these days, my pet peeve. Words seem to be losing their meaning. People just throw whatever words they want. Recently I've been shopping for a steam station and I've seen that the top of the line Philips Stream&Go has a camera "with AI" that recognizes the fabric. The sales guy was persistent that that claim was true. Oh please. If it was, it was only in the simplest, most t…

Agreed, just because some words are catchy and appear intellectual does not mean they should be used everywhere; it is very misleading and sometimes unprofessional.

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#17
post #4

Michael I. Jordan is spot on. We have NO artificial intelligent systems, for any sensible definition of "intelligent". None. ZERO. We have "big data". We have (brittle and rather poor) "pattern recognition". We have (very limited) "simulate a conversation". But we do not even know what "intelligence" really means! We (the industry) should recognise "AI" as term that has become essentially meaningless. "AI" is now not…

We have, they kinda suck so far. Look up DeepMind attempts at DDQN game attacks where said AI develops new strategies for an entirely new game. And attempts to solve Montezuma's Revenge and other Atari classics, both by DeepMind and OpenAI. Both of the systems are somewhat adaptable to new problems too. There also is Uber's Go-Explore and RMT's.

These are closest we came to intelligence. They deal with big unobservable state and novelty with few shot learning, few objectives and sparse reward. They haven't quite cracked automated symbolization. (The AIs do not quite create a complete symbolic representation of the game.)

I recommend following AAAI conferences for more details.

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#18
post #8

Interestingly as soon as a system works or we understand it's principles we stop using the term "artificial intelligence". It becomes image recognition, autonomous cars, or face detection. We mostly talk about artificial intelligence when we dont really know or understand what we are talking about :-)

Exactly, the same happens with the word "technology".

Are scissors technology? They used to be but now they are comparatively too well understood and simple. Just like with AI, we label things technology that are on the forefront and not yet well understood and ironed out.

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#19

Unrelated to the article but I ran across an interesting result recently that is related to AI (and the hype surrounding it): Let A be an agent and let S be a Turing machine deductive system. If A correctly understands S, then A can correctly deduce that S does not have A’s capability for solving halting problems. [1] One way to interpret this is that all existing AI systems are obviously halting computations simply…

Your argument is wrong or miscommunicated. The AI itself can figure only some of the halting problem results, not all, plus it can make a mistake. It is not an oracle. Recursive neural networks are not necessarily halting when executed in arbitrary precision arithmetic.

Have you read the referenced article?

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#20
I'm in the submarine AI camp[1]. I'd rather build tools that kinda help humans do thinking, rather than thinking machines. Like how submarines help humans swim but who cares if they are actually swimming.

1. "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." - Edsger Dijkstra

Post reply on HN