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Artificial intelligence: Our final invention?

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Re: Artificial intelligence: Our final invention?

#81

Post by wlievens »

mindcrime wrote: post #57
ar7hur wrote: post #22

I was reading, waiting for the mention to IBM Watson... and here it comes! I'm so tired of reading how Watson is a step toward Artificial General Intelligence, self-aware machines, etc. People must really understand that Watson is, like almost any successful AI (not AGI) product today, "just" a huge statistical pattern matching machine. Watson does not feel anything. Watson does not know what soccer is. Watson knows…

People must really understand that Watson is, like almost any successful AI (not AGI) product today, "just" a huge statistical pattern matching machine. Arguably, that's all a human brain is as well. I don't want to start some big debate here over symbolic reasoning versus statistical pattern matching, but there seems to be quite a bit of contemporary thought along the lines of our brains being largely based on "patt…

It can however only do one flavour of pattern matching whereas we combine our mental facilities dynamically. And to wnticipate your "well, that's nothing a computer can't do"... show me any work in the direction of serious AGI!

Re: Artificial intelligence: Our final invention?

#82

Post by wlievens »

api wrote: post #13

What if "runaway" isn't possible? It might be possible for an AI to be roughly as "intelligent" (depending on how one measures this) as the smartest humans, but that intelligence is the result of many millions or even billions of years of accumulated evolutionary learning. It might be -- for fundamental information and machine learning theory reasons -- fundamentally harder to go where there are no roads. Start looki…

One significant advantage q Strong AI has over any human brain though is that it never forgets anything. No fsc, process or hypothesis would slip by its mind.

Re: Artificial intelligence: Our final invention?

#83

Post by mindcrime »

wlievens wrote: post #81
mindcrime wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People must really understand that Watson is, like almost any successful AI (not AGI) product today, "just" a huge statistical pattern matching machine. Arguably, that's all a human brain is as well. I don't want to start some big debate here over symbolic reasoning versus statistical pattern matching, but there seems to be quite a bit of contemporary thought along the lines of our brains being largely based on "patt…

It can however only do one flavour of pattern matching whereas we combine our mental facilities dynamically. And to wnticipate your "well, that's nothing a computer can't do"... show me any work in the direction of serious AGI!

Without an agreed upon definition of "in the direction of" and "AGI", it's hard to have a good conversation about this. For my purposes, I do consider Watson a step in that direction. How big of a step is certainly open to question, but I do believe it's a step nonetheless.

Re: Artificial intelligence: Our final invention?

#84

Post by wlievens »

mindcrime wrote: post #83
wlievens wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can however only do one flavour of pattern matching whereas we combine our mental facilities dynamically. And to wnticipate your "well, that's nothing a computer can't do"... show me any work in the direction of serious AGI!

Without an agreed upon definition of "in the direction of" and "AGI", it's hard to have a good conversation about this. For my purposes, I do consider Watson a step in that direction. How big of a step is certainly open to question, but I do believe it's a step nonetheless.

I don't. It's just our decade's version of deep blue. A pretty damn good calculator, but zero steps in the direction of a mind. It lacks 'common sense', for want of a better term.

Re: Artificial intelligence: Our final invention?

#85

Post by mindcrime »

wlievens wrote: post #84
mindcrime wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without an agreed upon definition of "in the direction of" and "AGI", it's hard to have a good conversation about this. For my purposes, I do consider Watson a step in that direction. How big of a step is certainly open to question, but I do believe it's a step nonetheless.

I don't. It's just our decade's version of deep blue. A pretty damn good calculator, but zero steps in the direction of a mind. It lacks 'common sense', for want of a better term.

IF we take it as given that an AGI must think exactly like a human, then I might say I agree with you. We aren't necessarily close to emulating a human being in software, and I'm actually doubtful we will for a VERY long time.

BUT... if we only care about the outcome and the utility of the AGI, and don't expect it to be fully "human like" then I think that Watson (and Deep Blue, etc.) do represent steps on that road.

You can probably guess that I lean towards the latter viewpoint. I fall back on the oldchestnut that "We didn't build airplanes that fly by flapping their wings like birds, but they fly nonetheless" as an analogy. We may not build machines that think like humans, but they will still be intelligent, nonetheless.

Re: Artificial intelligence: Our final invention?

#87

Post by wlievens »

mindcrime wrote: post #85
wlievens wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't. It's just our decade's version of deep blue. A pretty damn good calculator, but zero steps in the direction of a mind. It lacks 'common sense', for want of a better term.

IF we take it as given that an AGI must think exactly like a human, then I might say I agree with you. We aren't necessarily close to emulating a human being in software, and I'm actually doubtful we will for a VERY long time. BUT... if we only care about the outcome and the utility of the AGI, and don't expect it to be fully "human like" then I think that Watson (and Deep Blue, etc.) do represent steps on that road.…

> if we only care about the outcome and the utility of the AGI, and don't expect it to be fully "human like"

I'm not even sure whether that's a meaningful distinction. Searle's Chinese Room et cetera.

I'm with you in the wing analogy, I fully agree. I just don't think Watson or Deep Blue is a significant approach even in that direction.

Human-like or not, we have certain expectations from our hypothetical AGI in terms of the kind of new problems it can solve without too much help. I guess what it mean is: I think it needs to be able to solve a problem it wasn't designed upfront to solve. No serious system I've ever seen attempts to do that.

Re: Artificial intelligence: Our final invention?

#88

Post by eloff »

mkingston wrote: post #67
eloff wrote: post #41

People like to laugh, but if we can invent real AI, and there's no reason to suspect that we cannot since nature did it blindly, then it's just a matter of time until the end of the human race. We will likely either become them or be destroyed by them (or maybe some of us kept in zoos or as pets.) You cannot firewall or imprison a god, especially with humans being so divided, short sighted and manipulable. Simply put…

Humans try to keep other more vulnerable species around for our own pleasure/benefit. We don't do a very good job of it; but we do try. What's to say an intelligence greater than us wouldn't?

Yeah, it may well. But it won't need 10 billion of us around, that's for sure.

And humans can be useful to, as expendable biological robots that are cheap to manufacture and run while also being intelligent and versatile. Although most of us probably wouldn't call that living.

Re: Artificial intelligence: Our final invention?

#89

Post by mindcrime »

wlievens wrote: post #87
mindcrime wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IF we take it as given that an AGI must think exactly like a human, then I might say I agree with you. We aren't necessarily close to emulating a human being in software, and I'm actually doubtful we will for a VERY long time. BUT... if we only care about the outcome and the utility of the AGI, and don't expect it to be fully "human like" then I think that Watson (and Deep Blue, etc.) do represent steps on that road.…

> if we only care about the outcome and the utility of the AGI, and don't expect it to be fully "human like" I'm not even sure whether that's a meaningful distinction. Searle's Chinese Room et cetera. I'm with you in the wing analogy, I fully agree. I just don't think Watson or Deep Blue is a significant approach even in that direction. Human-like or not, we have certain expectations from our hypothetical AGI in term…

I guess what it mean is: I think it needs to be able to solve a problem it wasn't designed upfront to solve. No serious system I've ever seen attempts to do that.

Fair enough. :-)

Re: Artificial intelligence: Our final invention?

#90

Post by eloff »

gjmulhol wrote: post #23

I am a big fan of what Joe Lonsdale calls human-computer symbiosis. He says that humans are good at certain things and computers are good at other things. For example, computers are good at looking at huge amounts of data. Humans are good at finding intuitive patterns in data. Though in time computers will undoubtedly start to be better at these things, I do not think that in my lifetime (or Matt's daughter's) we wil…

Maybe you're right about the timescale, maybe you're not. Don't lose sight of the fact that you are merely a biological computer, and a terribly inefficient one at that.

Whatever nature can build, we can build better given enough time and resources. We have more building blocks available to us, and we have intelligence. Nature merely had lots of time.

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