This is a great quote:
> When AI can’t determine what ‘it’ refers to in a sentence, it’s hard to believe that it will take over the world.
What Does It Mean for AI to Understand?
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Re: What Does It Mean for AI to Understand?
#32Highly recommend A a thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins if you’re interested in this https://numenta.com/blog/2019/01/16/the-thousand-brains-theo... He basically argues we all have 1000s of little, but interacting models of all sorts of things going on in our brain all at the same time. He calls them reference frames and it’s those that create intelligence. ‘Understanding’ would come naturally out of having those. Fasci…
I've not read the book, but from your description it maybe has some similarity to Marvin Minsky’s "Society of Mind". Mind and intelligence as the emergent behaviour of many cooperating/competing systems.
Re: What Does It Mean for AI to Understand?
#33I've come to believe that the answer will be provided by the "free market". When AIs start to replace humans for tasks that require "intelligence" (how we currently define it for humans), then AI will have achieved "understanding". Sure there will be hype driven companies that replace humans with AI for PR purposes, but eventually those will flatten out. Once I start receiving phone calls from AI telemarketers, have a decent conversation with them and can't tell that I just talked to an AI, then AI will have achieved understanding. And so on for other domains in every day life.
Re: What Does It Mean for AI to Understand?
#34Anyone who has kids and teaches them things will know AI learns and ‘understands’ very differently. I can say something like ‘a tiger is just a lion with stripes’ to a 3 year old and they now ‘understand’ what a tiger is almost as well as if they saw a picture of one. They could definitely identify one from a picture now. This kind of understanding won’t work with an AI because we don’t understand what characteristic…
> I can say something like ‘a tiger is just a lion with stripes’ to a 3 year old and they now ‘understand’ what a tiger is almost as well as if they saw a picture of one. They could definitely identify one from a picture now.
Assuming the 3 year old already knew what a lion looks like, and point at 'things with stripes' and 'things without stripes'.
I think that a model that can already recognize separately lions and stripes should be able to tag a tiger's picture as a 'Lion with stripes', no?
Re: What Does It Mean for AI to Understand?
#35As an AI professor, I've always held that machines are NOT intelligent (I am prepared to change my position on the day my computer asks me anything surprising that I didn't program it to). But this does not mean we cannot produce operational models of understanding, for example we have models of propositional/logical semantics and discourse such as Lambda Discourse Representation Theory and others, which can compute…
> How do consciousness and intention emerge from materials that are not alive and that have neither consciousness nor intention?
I think the question shoud first be not about "how", but rather - "does consciousness emerge from the materials".
Most cultures in the past have maintained ideas about the duality between spirit and matter. Nowadays we are so adept at manipulating matter we always explicitly assume that everything must be material in one way or another.
But here is this consciousness thing that does not give in. And there is no angle to it where it can ever give in. If somebody creates a machine and claims it to be conscious nobody can test if that is so. And further - nobody can even test wheather the inventor is conscious himself.
Re: What Does It Mean for AI to Understand?
#36Machines don't learn. Living things learn. Machines don't understand. Living things understand. Machines 'do' algorithms. Living things 'do' use-cases.
Algorithm Definition:
A sequence of actions that yields a result.
Use-case Definition:
A sequence of actions that yields a result of value to a user.
The difference between the two is 'of value to a user'. To me, the line between algorithm and use-case is the line between unconsciousness and consciousness. That line pivots around the ability to 'value' something. I doubt we will ever see the I in AI until we build something that can value a result in the same way that you and I do.
We need new words to describe what machines do. Using 'learn' or 'understand' seems like anthropomorphism. It's weird that we glibly anthropomorphise when talking about machines but prohibit it when talking about living things. Almost all of our qualities have been inherited from other living things. It seems to me that we should always anthropomorphise when talking about living things and never anthropomorphise when talking about machines. And yet, we always seem to do the opposite.
Until we can explain how a machine can 'value' something in the same sense that humans do (or chimps or ducks or caterpillars do), we should avoid anthropomorphic words like 'learn' and 'understand' as it misdirects our efforts. However, I have no idea what else to suggest other than to try to explain how a machine can 'value' something.
> IBM’s Watson was found to propose “multiple examples of unsafe and incorrect treatment recommendations.”
That won't stop until Watson has the ability to 'value' the result of what it is doing. Watson 'does' algorithms. Watson needs to 'do' use-cases. Once it can 'value' a result in the same way we do, it will correct its mistakes.
Re: What Does It Mean for AI to Understand?
#37As an AI professor, I've always held that machines are NOT intelligent (I am prepared to change my position on the day my computer asks me anything surprising that I didn't program it to). But this does not mean we cannot produce operational models of understanding, for example we have models of propositional/logical semantics and discourse such as Lambda Discourse Representation Theory and others, which can compute…
Thank you. This all seems very simple to me: So-called AI is mostly not different from books, movies, videogames etc. No, they don't "think" and they are not "intelligent."
But that in no way precludes that it an instance of it being mind-blowing and world-changing. Books, etc. do that, too.
Re: What Does It Mean for AI to Understand?
#38Machines don't learn. Living things learn. Machines don't understand. Living things understand. Machines 'do' algorithms. Living things 'do' use-cases. Algorithm Definition: A sequence of actions that yields a result. Use-case Definition: A sequence of actions that yields a result of value to a user. The difference between the two is 'of value to a user'. To me, the line between algorithm and use-case is the line bet…
Sounds like a bunch of unsubstantiated claims? So if something does learn, then its a living thing? My AI can learn (see a pattern and repeat it); now its a living thing? Not sure what to do with that.
Re: What Does It Mean for AI to Understand?
#39Anyone who has kids and teaches them things will know AI learns and ‘understands’ very differently. I can say something like ‘a tiger is just a lion with stripes’ to a 3 year old and they now ‘understand’ what a tiger is almost as well as if they saw a picture of one. They could definitely identify one from a picture now. This kind of understanding won’t work with an AI because we don’t understand what characteristic…
> I can say something like ‘a tiger is just a lion with stripes’ to a 3 year old and they now ‘understand’ what a tiger is almost as well as if they saw a picture of one. They could definitely identify one from a picture now. Assuming the 3 year old already knew what a lion looks like, and point at 'things with stripes' and 'things without stripes'. I think that a model that can already recognize separately lions and…
Not necessarily, if the stripes prevent tigers from scoring highly on the lion measure.
Generalizing from what is formally insufficient information is something that humans are quite good at (though obviously not infallibly.)
Re: What Does It Mean for AI to Understand?
#40What does it mean for a human to understand ?
And to extend your question: write something sarcastic on the internet and you'll quickly find out there are multiple layers of "understanding" something.