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Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

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

#101
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. Apparently my phone has "AI" because it recognises a flower as a flower and applies a colour filter and background blur when I use my camera. This is not AI. By the same extension of logic, any program that recognises input data and performs some form of pre-programmed logic is AI. ie. any computer program?

Recognizing a flower is absolutely AI. https://xkcd.com/1425/ ok - or a bird.

If that is intelligent behavior then literally any physical process is "intelligence" embodied, though the magnitude or intensity of this intelligence obviously varies based on what strictly is happening.

This is because anything that happens in reality is computable, and you have described a straightforward computation as "intelligence".

I actually happen to sincerely adhere to this perspective, as a particular flavor of panpsychism.

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

#103
I periodically re-read the following to keep my perspective on AI:

"ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MEETS NATURAL STUPIDITY" by Drew McDermott

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234784524_Artificia...

(click on "Read Full Text" and then scroll down a half page.)

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

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." - Edsger Dijkstra Something about that quote always bothers me. I'm not sure what, but if I were to try to express the same fundamental idea, I would probably phrase it as "whether a bicycle can walk".

I think you are missing the point. A submarine "swims" in the same way an airplane "flies." But for some reason, in English anyway, we seem to define "swim" such that, by definition, only an animal can do it. Or at least, it must behave similarly to a swimming animal...such as by flapping fins and the like. Meanwhile we don't think an airplane doesn't fly simply because it doesn't flap its wings. The point is that se…

I don't know how useful/meaningful any of this is? It's just language quirks, and different languages have different quirks. In Hindi for example the verb 'to walk' is the same as ~'to operate' - so you can 'walk', and 'walk a bicycle', etc.

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

#106
post #101
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recognizing a flower is absolutely AI. https://xkcd.com/1425/ ok - or a bird.

If that is intelligent behavior then literally any physical process is "intelligence" embodied, though the magnitude or intensity of this intelligence obviously varies based on what strictly is happening. This is because anything that happens in reality is computable, and you have described a straightforward computation as "intelligence". I actually happen to sincerely adhere to this perspective, as a particular flav…

A battery discharging does not recognise flowers. The sun does not recognise flowers. I do not create an excess of energy by splitting atoms, these things are not equivalent at all levels of abstraction.

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

#107
post #106
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that is intelligent behavior then literally any physical process is "intelligence" embodied, though the magnitude or intensity of this intelligence obviously varies based on what strictly is happening. This is because anything that happens in reality is computable, and you have described a straightforward computation as "intelligence". I actually happen to sincerely adhere to this perspective, as a particular flav…

A battery discharging does not recognise flowers. The sun does not recognise flowers. I do not create an excess of energy by splitting atoms, these things are not equivalent at all levels of abstraction.

Of course not, and it is silly to try to paint my argument as trying to claim that. A battery discharging is not very intelligent, but the GGP implies that this exists as a gradient down to the lowest levels of physical dynamics.

Put another way, the complexity of the computation determines the complexity of the result. The sun+flower+ground system "recognizes" a flower by means of striking the flower and the surrounding area with photons and "recording" the result as the shadow.

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

#108
This is pissing into the wind. There's nothing any "machine learning pioneer" can do about marketing, and this is marketing. And it's all right. People are beginning to catch on that we won't have "thinking robots" or "self driving cars" in the foreseeable future. Doesn't mean that it's not intelligence or that it's not useful. It's also most definitely "atificial". What we call it is a matter of tertiary importance at best.

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

#109

My background is in automation and robotics; I studied system identification: a discipline where you would use mathematical means to identify a dynamic system model by observing input/output. You treat the system as a black box and estimate a set of parameters that can describe it (e.g., Kalman filter). I struggle to understand what's the fundamental difference between system identification and ML/AI. Anyone? You ult…

As someone with a similar background, I believe some of the confusion is because there is a lot of overlap. System identification is very similar to supervised learning, however there are other learning "methods" that still fall under the umbrella of ML/AI. For example, unsupervised learning doesn't really have a good controls analog (as far as I know). Reinforcement learning on the other hand is somewhat analogous to model predictive control.

A better way of phrasing your point is that ML/AI is "just" optimization.

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

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. Apparently my phone has "AI" because it recognises a flower as a flower and applies a colour filter and background blur when I use my camera. This is not AI. By the same extension of logic, any program that recognises input data and performs some form of pre-programmed logic is AI. ie. any computer program?

When young children start recognizing shapes, animals, colors, etc, you don’t consider that a sign of intelligence? What is it a sign of then?

A three year old child is already generally far beyond what any software can do.
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