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AI is mostly about curve fitting (2018)

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Re: AI is mostly about curve fitting (2018)

#131

Post by yk »

joycian wrote: post #75
yk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is basically what Chalmers argues in "Facing up the problem of consciousness." Basically, by the general approximation theorem, it is possible to find a neural network that acts externally precisely as you would, up to an arbitrarily small epsilon. However, one wonders if such a thing would be consciousness and if so, where does the consciousness sit, in the matrix multiplication or the graphics card. So, you ca…

Why is it weird that simple programs have a sliver of consciousness? That seems like a nice practical, non-magic conclusion?

Actually I like that solution, but try to show it to any degree of scientific standard. You need to have a good working definition of consciousness, then you need some experimental procedure, etc. etc.

Re: AI is mostly about curve fitting (2018)

#133

Post by yk »

degyves wrote: post #85
yk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is basically what Chalmers argues in "Facing up the problem of consciousness." Basically, by the general approximation theorem, it is possible to find a neural network that acts externally precisely as you would, up to an arbitrarily small epsilon. However, one wonders if such a thing would be consciousness and if so, where does the consciousness sit, in the matrix multiplication or the graphics card. So, you ca…

That depends of which precise definition of consciouness you're talking about, which is a flame wars research field. But it is a consensus that consciouness is not equal to inteligence.

Yes, that is why I tried to contrast consciousness with computations.

Re: AI is mostly about curve fitting (2018)

#134

Post by mark_l_watson »

I use the term “AI” but couch it in the context that we are probably ten to a hundred years away from general artificial intelligence. I have a lower bar on my definition of general artificial intelligence as something that can be narrow but has a world view model for its activities and the environment and this model changes with experience, the AGI can explain what it is doing in its narrow field of expertise, and can creatively develop new techniques for solving problems in its narrow domain of expertise.

I have been paid to work in the field of AI since 1982 so I have experienced AI winters. I almost hope we have another to act sort-of like simulated annealing to get us out of the highly effective local minimum of deep learning. I have been paid to work with deep learning for about the last five years (except I retired six months ago) and I love it, a big fan, but it won’t get us to where I want to be. Perhaps hybrid symbolic AI and deep learning? I don’t know.

Re: AI is mostly about curve fitting (2018)

#136

Post by yk »

red75prime wrote: post #88
yk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is basically what Chalmers argues in "Facing up the problem of consciousness." Basically, by the general approximation theorem, it is possible to find a neural network that acts externally precisely as you would, up to an arbitrarily small epsilon. However, one wonders if such a thing would be consciousness and if so, where does the consciousness sit, in the matrix multiplication or the graphics card. So, you ca…

> hen you are probably forced to argue that consciousness is very closely related to computation, to the point were a coin flip, or a hello world program has some sliver of consciousness. Why not? Those things have zero-consciousness that is conscious only of itself and which correctly reflects their lack of self-model.

The argument is, if our brains are just a curve fitting machine, then we can dial in the complexity of the computation. Start with a single layer parameter, then two parameter, and so on until we are at the complexity of the brain. By that procedure, we can ask after each parameter, if the machine is now conscious, and I strongly doubt that there is a good answer.

Re: AI is mostly about curve fitting (2018)

#137

Post by anonu »

In the financial markets, multi linear regression is a very popular tool for predicting the markets. That tool has been around for over a century and used extensively to make sense of financial data for decades now.

Ive always eyed companies and startups the boast predictive AI for the financial markets with suspicion. I just always assumed whatever they were doing was a glorified regression model... But you have a lot of shameless people who will gladly slap some AI jargon in their business plan just to get eyeballs

Re: AI is mostly about curve fitting (2018)

#139

Post by lowracle »

darksaints wrote: post #117
Veedrac wrote: post #65

The article is less awful than the title. In short, the thesis is that ML seems only able to learn associations, rather than stronger, causal models. It should be fairly obvious that ‘curve fitting’ is a misleading category—these models are clearly learning highly meaningful latent spaces that no prior approaches ever did. But I would agree that the actual high-level ability to make causal inferences seems to be lack…

> But I would agree that the actual high-level ability to make causal inferences seems to be lacking. That should be expected. Humans also lack the ability to make causal inference. The vast majority of us have extremely primitive causal reasoning abilities and get even simple causality wrong. Reasoning about causality in complex systems still isn't a solved problem for humans, and we have entire fields within philos…

I am glad to read this, because it really sounds weird to me that so much people blame AI for not being able to do causal reasoning, while us human don't even do in my sense "strict" causal reasoning. I feel like we just learned a small subset of causal rules just like AI algorithms, by having experienced a lot of events that followed those rules.

Re: AI is mostly about curve fitting (2018)

#140

Post by ecorithm »

projektfu wrote: post #91
erikpukinskis wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s wrong with anthropomorphizing? I’ve noticed at least as many people under-anthropomorphize as over. People who seem obsessed with human exceptionalism and are personally offended at the idea that plants and animals (and computers!) might have subjective experiences like our own. But to me it seems obvious we are far more alike “lower” species than we are unlike them. I would say the cases of human exceptionali…

Anthropomorphizing is dangerous because it leads to metaphor that can both ascribe too much to the subject and create blind spots in the minds of researchers. Saying, for example, "Dogs want love," is fine for the owner but problematic for a researcher because love, as we understand it, is a human state. We'll never really understand what it means for a dog to feel loved. To the ethologist that is not to say that the…

You should go and read some stuff written by ethologists. Basically everything you said would be vehemently disagreed with by a large group of prominent ethologist. The term anthropodenial has even been coined to criticize your exact thinking and to describe the dangers of not anthropomorphizing enough. Not saying you can't over do it, but the GP's comment is much more in line with thinking by modern ethologist. Frans De Waal is a good place to start.
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