It's an ad for their company posed as an opinion piece.
It's an ad for their company
I guess I'm not in their target market then because it reads like a hit piece - so much so that I was sure that all the names were changed!
The Artificial Intelligentsia
11–20 of 95 posts
Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
He doesn't present an honest understanding of his own field, or the field of neuroscience, or the ongoing developments in the technology surrounding his own business, or its implications. Even without extrapolating from the pattern recognition tools we have today, whole classes and ranges of jobs can be fully or partially eliminated. Here is what he says about the state of AI: > Even the most eye-catching successes c…
AlphaGo is impressive, but it is an impressive parlor trick not impressive as 'artificial intelligence' Playing a game with fixed rules and a finite set of potential states is something a computer can do. Designing the computer that does that is intelligent. There is no connection between the two and one does not lead to the other. The fact that some of the people developing 'artificial intelligence' have such a limi…
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Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia
#13I found the author to be slightly irritating on several occasions, dropping veiled references to Valleywag-style anti Silicon Valley memes, and then I got to the part where he regurgitates that idiotic article about the brain not processing information, and there being something magical about human brains that cannot be simulated [0]. He is right about his claim of having no right to be called a “director of research…
the tone is pretty standard baffler style. its meant precisely as a provocation, thats their whole thing. Its also an openly leftwing publication fwiw. Personally I find it way more refreshing and honest, then, say, the NYT op ed pages, in terms of being honest about why they take the subjects they do and why they present them in the way they do.
Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
He doesn't present an honest understanding of his own field, or the field of neuroscience, or the ongoing developments in the technology surrounding his own business, or its implications. Even without extrapolating from the pattern recognition tools we have today, whole classes and ranges of jobs can be fully or partially eliminated. Here is what he says about the state of AI: > Even the most eye-catching successes c…
AlphaGo is impressive, but it is an impressive parlor trick not impressive as 'artificial intelligence' Playing a game with fixed rules and a finite set of potential states is something a computer can do. Designing the computer that does that is intelligent. There is no connection between the two and one does not lead to the other. The fact that some of the people developing 'artificial intelligence' have such a limi…
[deleted]
Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
He doesn't present an honest understanding of his own field, or the field of neuroscience, or the ongoing developments in the technology surrounding his own business, or its implications. Even without extrapolating from the pattern recognition tools we have today, whole classes and ranges of jobs can be fully or partially eliminated. Here is what he says about the state of AI: > Even the most eye-catching successes c…
AlphaGo is impressive, but it is an impressive parlor trick not impressive as 'artificial intelligence' Playing a game with fixed rules and a finite set of potential states is something a computer can do. Designing the computer that does that is intelligent. There is no connection between the two and one does not lead to the other. The fact that some of the people developing 'artificial intelligence' have such a limi…
Typical for "Hacker" "News" that this is downvoted.
It's a gigantic boring and occasionally amusing echo and marketing chamber.
Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dunno. The article seemed like a pretty good riff on the Great Gatsby and the dark side of Silicon Valley culture. The writing is promising.
He doesn't present an honest understanding of his own field, or the field of neuroscience, or the ongoing developments in the technology surrounding his own business, or its implications. Even without extrapolating from the pattern recognition tools we have today, whole classes and ranges of jobs can be fully or partially eliminated. Here is what he says about the state of AI: > Even the most eye-catching successes c…
Where is the AI that can fold laundry (clothes, linen, towels)? Do laundry (sort, pre-treat, load, unload, clean lint filter)? Do dishes (clear table, scrape food into compost or trash as appropriate, separate to recycling as appropriate, load, unload, put up)? Keep a lawn (mow, edge, trim hedges, move trimmings to compost, trim trees)? Put up Legos after a 5 year old? Pick up around the house and tell you where it placed or last saw an object when queried?
And where is the AI in a humaniform that does all of the above?
There are tentative steps towards some of those activities, but we’re still in the early years with imbuing our machine intelligence models with the equivalent of our kinesthetic sense, object recognition and classification, and natural language interaction. And it is far from clear that we can get there with purely current statistical heuristic-oriented technology. We can only try, but the amount of effort required just for folding clothes to date reminds me of the elaborate Ptolemaic models, or as if we’re trying to build Excel by poking ones and zeroes into memory.
More tinkering required, be back later.
Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia
#17Offtopic, but I have a really difficult time reading articles like this. I don’t know if this reflects a problem with the style or my ability to focus, but I find it really annoying:
> “SANDHOGS,” THEY CALLED THE LABORERS who built the tunnels leading into New York’s Penn Station at the beginning of the last century. Work distorted their humanity, sometimes literally. Resurfacing at the end of each day from their burrows beneath the Hudson and East Rivers, caked in the mud of battle against glacial rock and riprap, many sandhogs succumbed to the bends. Passengers arriving at the modern Penn Station—the luminous Beaux-Arts hangar of old long since razed, its passenger halls squashed underground—might sympathize. Vincent Scully once compared the experience to scuttling into the city like a rat. Zoomorphized, we are joined to the earlier generations.
This goes on for about seven paragraphs before I have any idea what the article about. I understand “setting the scene” but I can’t tell whether or not to care about an article if it meanders about with this flowing exposition before indicating what its central thesis is.
It seems like a popular style in thinkpieces and some areas of journalism. The author makes a semi-relevant title, provacative subtitle, and five - ten paragraphs of “introduction” that throw you right into the thick of a story whose purpose doesn’t seem clear unless you know what the article is about. Rather than capturing my attention with engaging exposition, I find it takes me out of it. But it must work if it’s so uniquitous; presumably their analytics have confirmed this style is engaging.
Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia
#18I found the author to be slightly irritating on several occasions, dropping veiled references to Valleywag-style anti Silicon Valley memes, and then I got to the part where he regurgitates that idiotic article about the brain not processing information, and there being something magical about human brains that cannot be simulated [0]. He is right about his claim of having no right to be called a “director of research…
the tone is pretty standard baffler style. its meant precisely as a provocation, thats their whole thing. Its also an openly leftwing publication fwiw. Personally I find it way more refreshing and honest, then, say, the NYT op ed pages, in terms of being honest about why they take the subjects they do and why they present them in the way they do.
I enjoyed it and I think that it is helpful in the sense of calling "naked man" at the emperor. It doesn't do any harm at all for the AI community or startup community to look at itself and think hard about what it's doing and saying.
This time round there will be no million fold increase in compute power to bail everyone out!
Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
He doesn't present an honest understanding of his own field, or the field of neuroscience, or the ongoing developments in the technology surrounding his own business, or its implications. Even without extrapolating from the pattern recognition tools we have today, whole classes and ranges of jobs can be fully or partially eliminated. Here is what he says about the state of AI: > Even the most eye-catching successes c…
Where is the AI that can fold laundry (clothes, linen, towels)? Do laundry (sort, pre-treat, load, unload, clean lint filter)? Do dishes (clear table, scrape food into compost or trash as appropriate, separate to recycling as appropriate, load, unload, put up)? Keep a lawn (mow, edge, trim hedges, move trimmings to compost, trim trees)? Put up Legos after a 5 year old? Pick up around the house and tell you where it p…
Laundry folding robot with actual smarts to it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DzK38ylMTXk
Inferior to a human, sure. But a start.
Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia
#20Offtopic, but I have a really difficult time reading articles like this. I don’t know if this reflects a problem with the style or my ability to focus, but I find it really annoying: > “SANDHOGS,” THEY CALLED THE LABORERS who built the tunnels leading into New York’s Penn Station at the beginning of the last century. Work distorted their humanity, sometimes literally. Resurfacing at the end of each day from their bur…
I actually like the baffler, but I 100% agree. The New Yorker and LRB are similar with the new yorker being far far worse. Its distracting and takes away from the story for me as well, and I love long form journalism.