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Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

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31–40 of 123 posts

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

#31

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

Me too, but I am afraid the human end needs to think critically as well. You don't need ML/AI to have people do stupid shit because "computer told them to do so". A good example would be validators bundled with the web OpenStreetMap editor iD, which are good from far, far from good.

https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2021-July/086...

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

#32
People often bring up the quip that "as soon as something is AI, people stop calling it AI" but I think pretty much the opposite has happened, the term has been expanded so much that almost any stochastic computation that solves some computational problem is now shoved under that umbrella.

However unlike jordan in the article who takes that as an opportunity to focus even more on engineering and practical applications I think it's well worth going back to the original dream of the 1950s. I'd be happy if people return to the drawing board to figure out how to build real, artificial life and how to create a mind.

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

#33
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…

As a materialist in matters of the mind, I regard proposition 2 to be an unverifiable belief of those who hold it, but I also regard proposition 1 as being simply a statement of how things currently are: at this point, we do not, in fact, know what intelligence is.

To say that it is "just" highly tuned patterned IO with the environment would be so broad as to be meaningless; all the explanation is being brushed away by that "just", and in the current state of research, no-one has either demonstrated AI or explained intelligence with sufficient specificity for this to be a clearly true synopsis of our knowledge.

You are not quite, however, asserting that to be so, you simply posed the question of whether it is so. In so doing, you are shifting the burden of proof, and proposition 1 stands until someone settles the issue by presenting a testable - and tested - theory of intelligence (note that I wrote of intelligence, not about intelligence; we have plenty of the latter that do not rise to the level of being the former.)

My attitude to the current crop of models is that they demonstrate something interesting about the predictability of everyday human language, but not enough to assume that simply more of the same (or something like it) will amount to AI - we seem to be missing some important parts of the puzzle. If a language model can come up with a response coherently explaining why I am mistaken in so thinking, then I will agree that AI has been achieved.

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

#35
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 :-)

I look forward to rereading this comment repeatedly over the next decades. What pointless definition chasing.

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

#37

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

There are lots of creatures that can swim. Most of them swim better than a human. That’s why it’s not very interesting when we discover a new one.

In contrast, humans are arguably the only creatures in the universe that can think. Certainly we have never discovered a creature that can think better than a human. Thus it would be highly exciting if we discovered or created one.

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

#38
People were calling everything agent-like AI since forever. Video games had AI. Heck, Pacman's ghosts had AI. Nobody cared. They understood what it was referring to.

I only started hearing how it would ‘dilute the language’ or the term was ‘disingenuous’ or whatever once AI started actually doing intellectually impressive feats, and the naysayers started trying to redefine language to suit their prefered worldview.

The fact is the term has always been used loosely. Even if it hadn't been, several of the undisputed top machine learning corporations (eg. DeepMind) has the explicit goal of reaching general intelligence, which remains true even if you are sure they will fail. Its use as a term is more appropriate than ever.

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

#39
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…

Does it even matter "what intelligence is"? Much like "life" [0], the difficulty seems to be coming from being unable to define it, rather than "finding" it. There are multiple ways it can be defined, based on a bunch of different properties, and each definition delivers different outlooks.

Similar to "life", we use "intelligence" in everyday speech without specifying which definition we mean. I don't think that's going to change – it's just as unproductive to limit "life" to a single definiton (what about viruses? unconsciousness? ecosystems?) as it would be with "intelligence" (pets? ants? being able to converse with a human? showing reasoning? creativity?).

But that also means that the popular term "AI" will never be precise.

[0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-life-its-vast-diversi...

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