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What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

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Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#11

Post by goatlover »

msla wrote: post #6
_xnmw wrote: post #4

I'm with John Searle on the Chinese room [1] opinion, i.e. that a machine cannot be said to "understand" language even if it is able to pass the Turing Test. That is because when we say "understand", we are referring to particular kind of human experience (qualia?) that a machine simply doesn't seem to have, but animals, for example, do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

I can say that you don't have qualia and you can't prove me wrong. Does that seem dangerous to anyone else? I also don't see any distinction between "qualia" and "soul" other than spelling, but perhaps it's because I don't have one. Finally, I have this question for Searle: Say you understand English. Does any specific neuron in your brain understand English? No, the larger system of neurons+neuronal connections does…

Do you have color, sound, taste experiences? Do you experience pain? Do you dream or imagine? Then you have quaila. If you don’t like the philosophical connotations of that term, then call it subjective experience.

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#12

Post by friendlybus »

msla wrote: post #6
_xnmw wrote: post #4

I'm with John Searle on the Chinese room [1] opinion, i.e. that a machine cannot be said to "understand" language even if it is able to pass the Turing Test. That is because when we say "understand", we are referring to particular kind of human experience (qualia?) that a machine simply doesn't seem to have, but animals, for example, do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

I can say that you don't have qualia and you can't prove me wrong. Does that seem dangerous to anyone else? I also don't see any distinction between "qualia" and "soul" other than spelling, but perhaps it's because I don't have one. Finally, I have this question for Searle: Say you understand English. Does any specific neuron in your brain understand English? No, the larger system of neurons+neuronal connections does…

Dangerous? Only as much as you want to swim in nihilism. Someone who claims you have qualia, a soul and a psychic commitment to astrology or whatever is more dangerous because that person has an affirmative commitment to maintaining that belief.

Qualia is generally argued by Sam Harris to be simple or reductionist elements of our human experience we can all agree humans share. Burning your finger on a hot stove and recoiling is a conscious experience every human shares.

The soul includes way more ideas and depends on who you talk to. The word has been overloaded a bunch, but generally can be said to include a higher spiritual aspect.

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#13

Post by js8 »

I have a straightforward definition of "understand". To understand means to be able to give a (representative) example of the (intensionally) given set. Though it is harder than it seems, as it usually means solving the constraint satisfaction problem.

For example, take the classical AI knowledgebase fragment, "bird is animal that flies". If I ask example of bird, it can say "eagle", and exhibit some understanding. We can then probe further and ask for a bird which is not an eagle. If it says "bat" or "balloon", it exhibits that it still doesn't understand birds quite right.

In particular, if the description is nonsensical and thus impossible to understand, we cannot give any examples.

This idea was really inspired by the study, where they asked people to recognize nonsensical and profound sentences, describing certain situation. The profound are the ones where you can create a concrete instance of the situation.

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#14

Post by baddox »

modeless wrote: post #2

> When I ask Google “Who did IBM’s Deep Blue system defeat?” and it gives me an infobox with the answer “Kasparov” in big letters, it has correctly understood my question. Of course this understanding is limited. If I follow up my question to Google with “When?”, it gives me the dictionary definition of “when” — it doesn’t interpret my question as part of a dialogue. Google Search doesn't, but Google Assistant does.…

That example seems pretty unrelated to what I would think of as “understanding.” That’s more just a feature request for Siri.

It’s like saying “my calculator lets me type ’1 + 2 =’ and gives me the answer ‘3,’ so it seems to understand that question, but when I look at the calculator I see there’s no ‘sqrt’ button that would show me the square root of 3.”

The fact that my basic calculator doesn’t have a “sqrt” button is pretty irrelevant to how well it “understands” how to add two numbers together.

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#18

Post by js8 »

_xnmw wrote: post #4

I'm with John Searle on the Chinese room [1] opinion, i.e. that a machine cannot be said to "understand" language even if it is able to pass the Turing Test. That is because when we say "understand", we are referring to particular kind of human experience (qualia?) that a machine simply doesn't seem to have, but animals, for example, do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

See my other comment in this discussion. What you experience as "understanding" is that a particular constraint satisfaction problem (roughly, the logical fragment that is supposed to be understood) has a solution and you are able to construct it.

I have also somewhat responded before to Chinese room argument with this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20864005

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#19

Post by yamrzou »

js8 wrote: post #13

I have a straightforward definition of "understand". To understand means to be able to give a (representative) example of the (intensionally) given set. Though it is harder than it seems, as it usually means solving the constraint satisfaction problem. For example, take the classical AI knowledgebase fragment, "bird is animal that flies". If I ask example of bird, it can say "eagle", and exhibit some understanding. W…

Do you have a link to the mentioned study?

Edit: nvm, I think I found it : http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.pdf

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#20

Post by visarga »

Does AlphaGo 'understand' go?

I think the key ingredient is 'being in the game', that means, having a body, being in an environment with a purpose. Humans are by default playing this game called 'life', we have to understand otherwise we perish, or our genes perish.

It's not about symbolic vs connectionist, or qualia, or self consciousness. It's about being in the world, acting and observing the effects of actions, and having something to win or lose as a consequence of acting. This doesn't happen when training a neural net to recognise objects in images or doing translation. It's just a static dataset, a 'dead' world.

AI until now has had a hard time simulating agents or creating real robotic bodies - it's expensive, and the system learns slowly, and it's unstable. But progress happens. Until our AI agents get real hands and feet and a purpose they can't be in the world and develop true understanding, they are more like subsystems of the brain than the whole brain. We need to close the loop with the environment for true understanding.

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