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What Hinton’s Google Move Says About the Future of Machine Learning

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Re: What Hinton’s Google Move Says About the Future of Machine Learning

#21

Post by [deleted] »

igravious wrote: post #6
auggierose wrote: post #2

Machine brains are already much "smarter" than human brains. For certain tasks, that is, like calculation. With increased computing power, these tasks will grow more and more. But will machines ever be REALLY smarter than humans? I will only believe that when I see it. This question might be (but does not necessarily have to be) related to the question of all questions: Can machines have consciousness, like we do?

There is a growing realization that cognition is fundamentally _embodied_ cognition. If you think of the mind as an ethereal entity removed of its physicality (or at the very least made out of a different substance from the body - that is to say, substance dualism) then it is easy to imagine the following scenarios. Containers are unimportant, so minds can be uploaded and downloaded, whether machine or human the hous…

[deleted]

Re: What Hinton’s Google Move Says About the Future of Machine Learning

#22

Post by auggierose »

igravious wrote: post #6
auggierose wrote: post #2

Machine brains are already much "smarter" than human brains. For certain tasks, that is, like calculation. With increased computing power, these tasks will grow more and more. But will machines ever be REALLY smarter than humans? I will only believe that when I see it. This question might be (but does not necessarily have to be) related to the question of all questions: Can machines have consciousness, like we do?

There is a growing realization that cognition is fundamentally _embodied_ cognition. If you think of the mind as an ethereal entity removed of its physicality (or at the very least made out of a different substance from the body - that is to say, substance dualism) then it is easy to imagine the following scenarios. Containers are unimportant, so minds can be uploaded and downloaded, whether machine or human the hous…

I understand your point of view, which is basically the one shared by many people in CS. But personally, I don't think that machines will ever develop consciousness as we have it. Because I understand how current technology works, and there is no consciousness there. I would have no qualms shutting down a machine, even if it begged me to keep it running.

Re: What Hinton’s Google Move Says About the Future of Machine Learning

#23

Post by nonsequ »

I know HN thinks Google is much cooler than IBM, but is it weird that I like IBM's chances in ML progressing to AI? For one thing, Watson was a very impressive demonstration. For another, it has the old materials science know-how to create neuron-inspired chip architecture. And here's an important one: Fortune 500 companies with lots of valuable data trust IBM to solve their problems. Anybody here with other thoughts, caveats? Other companies with good shots at commercializing ML/AI technology?

Re: What Hinton’s Google Move Says About the Future of Machine Learning

#24

Post by rdtsc »

auggierose wrote: post #22
igravious wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a growing realization that cognition is fundamentally _embodied_ cognition. If you think of the mind as an ethereal entity removed of its physicality (or at the very least made out of a different substance from the body - that is to say, substance dualism) then it is easy to imagine the following scenarios. Containers are unimportant, so minds can be uploaded and downloaded, whether machine or human the hous…

I understand your point of view, which is basically the one shared by many people in CS. But personally, I don't think that machines will ever develop consciousness as we have it. Because I understand how current technology works, and there is no consciousness there. I would have no qualms shutting down a machine, even if it begged me to keep it running.

Just like a computer science freshman I imbued computer systems with magic. Oh look I feed this machine numbers and it spits out words (text to speech). Or I search for something and a magic algorithm find me the result. As I learned more about algorithms and data-structures, that magic disappeared. Now I had the same feeling about hardware. This magic black square on the motherboard that can execute a set of couple of hundred or so assembly instructions many billions of times per second. Then I took a hardware architecture class and poof! magic disappeared. We started with transistors and build to designing our own CPU chip.

I am guessing something similar is going on with our understanding of the brain and mind. I think we just haven't figured out a good way to model and represent knowledge. There was terrible optimism at the end of 50s that super human AI will take over in just a decades. But it didn't happen. We have sort of been stomping our feet (I personally don't consider playing chess an AI achievement). I think there will be a breakthrough -- maybe it will be a simple organization of existing ML and knowledge representation methods (neural networks, mixed with evolutionary algorithms) or some new framework - OR - enough of very specific applications (chess playing, image recognition and speech recognition) advanced will slowly chip away at this "magic" AI core until maybe nothing will be left. And we'll look back at that and at our brains and say "ah, it wasn't that complicated after all, it is just all these specific subsystems working together"...

Re: What Hinton’s Google Move Says About the Future of Machine Learning

#25

Post by akiselev »

auggierose wrote: post #22
igravious wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a growing realization that cognition is fundamentally _embodied_ cognition. If you think of the mind as an ethereal entity removed of its physicality (or at the very least made out of a different substance from the body - that is to say, substance dualism) then it is easy to imagine the following scenarios. Containers are unimportant, so minds can be uploaded and downloaded, whether machine or human the hous…

I understand your point of view, which is basically the one shared by many people in CS. But personally, I don't think that machines will ever develop consciousness as we have it. Because I understand how current technology works, and there is no consciousness there. I would have no qualms shutting down a machine, even if it begged me to keep it running.

Current technology != future technology. Sorry, induction doesn't work that way.

Re: What Hinton’s Google Move Says About the Future of Machine Learning

#26

Post by bennyg »

auggierose wrote: post #2

Machine brains are already much "smarter" than human brains. For certain tasks, that is, like calculation. With increased computing power, these tasks will grow more and more. But will machines ever be REALLY smarter than humans? I will only believe that when I see it. This question might be (but does not necessarily have to be) related to the question of all questions: Can machines have consciousness, like we do?

I'm more interested in teaching computers lateral thinking, and thus the beginning of creativity - what I believe to be the real hallmark of human thought.

Can a computer be "processing" water pipes, analyzing the construction of pipes for the best flow, then jump to half-pipes and building a new half-pipe so skateboarders can flow better and produce better tricks, get more air, etc. Albeit a kind of lame example, but that jump is crucial, and something we do flawlessly. There's no hard guideline to what triggers our brains to jump. It could be audible, visual, or tangentially related to the task at hand. It could be body language of someone talking to us, that reminds us of somebody else, that reminds us of... Logical thought isn't that beautiful to me. It's predictable. Lateral thinking is though, and that's where all of the good inventions/discoveries begin anyways.

Re: What Hinton’s Google Move Says About the Future of Machine Learning

#27

Post by MaysonL »

paganel wrote: post #7
ilaksh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, people only wonder about this if they assume that consciousness has some kind if supernatural aspect to it.

I'm not the OP, and most certainly I do not believe there is any "supernatural" aspect behind the human mind, but what will really, really convince me that the Singularity would have arrived will be the moment when robots/machines will have understood humor. Them, the machines, being able to actually make new jokes will be the decisive proof that we, humans, are not the only "intelligent" entities on this planet. And…

Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Read it.

Re: What Hinton’s Google Move Says About the Future of Machine Learning

#28

Post by dude_abides »

nonsequ wrote: post #23

I know HN thinks Google is much cooler than IBM, but is it weird that I like IBM's chances in ML progressing to AI? For one thing, Watson was a very impressive demonstration. For another, it has the old materials science know-how to create neuron-inspired chip architecture. And here's an important one: Fortune 500 companies with lots of valuable data trust IBM to solve their problems. Anybody here with other thoughts…

Great point. As per the author's thesis, we are in phase 2, and phase 3 is going to be initiated by a startup, and not before another 20 years.

But IBM is currently doing (and making good progress at) exactly what the author describes as phase 3.

Re: What Hinton’s Google Move Says About the Future of Machine Learning

#29

Post by deadairspace »

bennyg wrote: post #26
auggierose wrote: post #2

Machine brains are already much "smarter" than human brains. For certain tasks, that is, like calculation. With increased computing power, these tasks will grow more and more. But will machines ever be REALLY smarter than humans? I will only believe that when I see it. This question might be (but does not necessarily have to be) related to the question of all questions: Can machines have consciousness, like we do?

I'm more interested in teaching computers lateral thinking, and thus the beginning of creativity - what I believe to be the real hallmark of human thought. Can a computer be "processing" water pipes, analyzing the construction of pipes for the best flow, then jump to half-pipes and building a new half-pipe so skateboarders can flow better and produce better tricks, get more air, etc. Albeit a kind of lame example, bu…

Analogy-making is an important part of perception.

Re: What Hinton’s Google Move Says About the Future of Machine Learning

#30

Post by jpadkins »

jfoutz wrote: post #10

I'd wager human brains to a lot of stuff unrelated to solving problems at hand, like keeping the heart beating. Given that the machines don't need to do all of the underlying biological stuff, you can probably get away with fewer connections.

might be the same amount of overhead needed for an OS to keep tabs on it's hardware, cluster, etc. Just like brains need to translate to the physical world via the nervous system, pure software needs to translate to the physical world via an OS.
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