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Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

theatlantic.com

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Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#61

Post by xradionut »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #50
iandanforth wrote: post #10

Chomsky is right up there with Minsky in being part of the problem. His ideas about language being part of the genome are fanciful nonsense. Skinner produce reams of reproducible empirical observations of behavior which are, today, critical to the evaluation of the performance of AIs. Chomsky has produced interesting theories, but mostly derailed linguistics on the basis of the argument 'language is complicated, some…

I hope you're kidding about his contributions to political debate. Chomsky has the maximalist attitude that represents everything that is wrong with political debate today. His hatred of U.S. foreign policy is so extreme that he will defend absolutely everyone the U.S. opposes which means occasionally defending tyrants and denying genocide.

He's no saint, but is commonly dismissed due to committing the cardinal sin of pointing out truths make people uncomfortable.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#62

Post by calibraxis »

iandanforth wrote: post #46
calibraxis wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand your point correctly, Chomsky does explain this, even in the article. Like with his discussion of "linear order".

I'm surprised he brought that up, it's a weird point. Because a different part of the brain processes the constructed language it's no longer language? It's also untrue. We construct language patterns, poetry for example, where the positional number of a word or a syllable changes its meaning. That said his point about the brain being wired to take the less computationally intensive route is a very important insight…

Actually, his point is that our language organ takes the more computationally expensive route. Not the easier one. That's the puzzle.

I don't have his books on me, so I may misconvey this point, but IIRC, he also mentioned regular languages (you know, like with regexes) as another example of a computationally "easier" language family we don't pick up with our language organ. We don't speak arbitrary languages. The space of languages is filtered by genetics.

He delves into this point more deeply in many places and addresses the points you raise with a precision beyond what's found in interviews.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#63

Post by TheAudientVoid »

"The approach taken by Chomsky and Marr toward understanding how our minds achieve what they do is as different as can be from behaviorism. The emphasis here is on the internal structure of the system that enables it to perform a task, rather than on external association between past behavior of the system and the environment. The goal is to dig into the 'black box' that drives the system and describe its inner workings, much like how a computer scientist would explain how a cleverly designed piece of software works and how it can be executed on a desktop computer."

The article completely misunderstands what Behaviorism actually is. Once again, the misunderstanding comes from confusing the Methodological Behavoirism advocated by John Watson, Edward Thorndike and others, who did indeed try to model people as a "black box", with Skinner's Radical Behavoirism, which denies that there's even a box to be opened; rather, Skinner holds that there is only a locus where a series of environmental processes happen to converge and interact in interesting ways. Some of these processes are much older than the others, and are expressed in genes; others are relatively newer, and are learned. Skinner did not deny that genetics played a role in language acquisition, nor did he ever maintain people are born a blank slate. While Skinner found Chomsky's work regarding universal grammar unconvincing, he maintained that it was not, as Chomsky claimed, directly opposed to his own work -- the two theories were orthogonal, and would succeed or fail independently of each other.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#64

Post by andreasvc »

reso wrote: post #48
confluence wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's built into our genetics at a very fundamental level. I'm sorry - but when did Chomsky get a degree in biology or neuroscience.

Chomsky's work has been cited by many papers in both fields.

Being cited doesn't mean he has something specific to say about those fields. He's an influential scientist so people may cite him when they found something vaguely related to his theories, to make their findings seem more important.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#65

Post by sampo »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #36
mjn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me a bit of what scientists in other fields refer to as "empirical equations", which are equations fit from data without any particular theoretical backing or reason to believe that their components are a good model of reality. They're useful in that they may predict observations well, especially over a specific range of observables, but they don't necessarily give us an understanding of what's going on.…

Exactly. Well said, and clearly articulates the point here. What I don't get is, what Chomsky is saying is all together the standard, and yet people are insulting him for what is all together a very simple idea you expressed plainly. Yes, NLP systems are going to have many engineering uses, and Chomsky agrees. Are they going to help in the true scientific understanding of the systems? It's unlikely. It's likely to be…

Yes, NLP systems are going to have many engineering uses, and Chomsky agrees. Are they going to help in the true scientific understanding of the systems?

So, what we have is (1) the engineering / statistical modelling / machine learning approach, and (2) the deep theoretical "Chomsky approach".

Chomsky despises, maybe rightly so, the engineering approach because it only provides tools that work, approximately, in practice but don't provide any deep "scientific" understanding.

The deep theoretical approach has a vision of a comprehensive theory that really provides understanding. Once we manage to find the deep fundamental theory, practical applications will be a child's play.

But here's the catch: Has the Chomsky approach takes us any closer to that deep theoretical progress? Why has all the practical progress come from the engineers? What if the deep theoretical thinkers are completely lost, like the alchemists in dark medieval times, in their theories and as they despise the data-driven approach, they also refuse to let empirical observations guide them to a right direction.

I don't think looking down on the engineers and their modest practical success is any kind of merit, if your only merit is dreaming of a deep theory, but making no measurable success towards said theory.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#66

Post by calibraxis »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #50
iandanforth wrote: post #10

Chomsky is right up there with Minsky in being part of the problem. His ideas about language being part of the genome are fanciful nonsense. Skinner produce reams of reproducible empirical observations of behavior which are, today, critical to the evaluation of the performance of AIs. Chomsky has produced interesting theories, but mostly derailed linguistics on the basis of the argument 'language is complicated, some…

I hope you're kidding about his contributions to political debate. Chomsky has the maximalist attitude that represents everything that is wrong with political debate today. His hatred of U.S. foreign policy is so extreme that he will defend absolutely everyone the U.S. opposes which means occasionally defending tyrants and denying genocide.

"My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century."

— Noam Chomsky

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#67

Post by thwest »

iandanforth wrote: post #31
thwest wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not reference linguistics literature, but philosophy literature (a distinction worth making because they are approaching the problem at different levels). I've never been good at the 'language problem' elevator speech, but how is it possible that we can capture the full power of language while using language to describe it? Language is a technology that allows for the production of concepts like 'probability' o…

You're asking if I believe in qualia, and the answer is no. There are firing neurons and that's it. The great variety of ways in which neurons can fire, and the great variety of experiences that shape how neurons fire combine to form an exquisite set of possible firing patterns (this is literally what makes me me and you you) but ultimately, to mis-use Gertrude Stein's famous phrase, 'there is no there there.'

I don't believe I referenced qualia. The problem of language is an emergent phenomenon just as the utility of language is. I don't believe in subjective essentialism either.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#68

Post by andreasvc »

jvm wrote: post #60
reso wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chomsky revolutionized linguistics in the 1960s. Compiler theory incorporates a huge amount of his work. Calling his contributions negligible or detrimental is like saying Freud's contributions were the same.

CogSci PhD student here, I'm no fan of Chomsky but I'd still say his contributions were a lot more useful than Freud's. Freudian Psychology is mostly abandoned by practitioners at this point; the Chomsky hierarchy is still canon in CS.

The Chomsky hierarchy while being but a small part of his work is undoubtedly a useful technical contribution, but I don't see it as particularly relevant for cognition and linguistics. As an example, for cognition memory constraints seem to be much more fundamental than the type of formal rules. It is also rather arbitrary: many kinds of formal languages don't fit into his hierarchy, there are many other ways to carve up the space of possible languages/grammars.

I think that his general linguistic theories might share the same fate as Freud's theories: large, complex theories for which there is simply not much empirical support, making it difficult for people to continue to work on them without their originator imbuing them with his authority.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#70

Post by lcargill99 »

thwest wrote: post #12
iandanforth wrote: post #10

Chomsky is right up there with Minsky in being part of the problem. His ideas about language being part of the genome are fanciful nonsense. Skinner produce reams of reproducible empirical observations of behavior which are, today, critical to the evaluation of the performance of AIs. Chomsky has produced interesting theories, but mostly derailed linguistics on the basis of the argument 'language is complicated, some…

How do you approach Heidegger's or Derrida's arguments that 'language is complicated, something magical must be going on'? Will you allow for no qualitatively different meaning to language than probabilistic associations of sounds with objects?

It's skyhooking. Given enough time and enough compute power, we should be able to completely simulate it. It may not be economically feasible, and it may take a long time.
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