Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#131

Post by ilaksh » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 9:21 AM UTC

sown wrote: post #124

ilaksh wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they are talking about is the idea of human-like general intelligence, and AI mostly doesn't try to do that anymore, although there are some people who are seriously trying and calling it AI and even a few who are sort of aware of what the AGI people are doing or have projects that are as sophisticated. But most of the researchers who are farthest along and most serious about it have been calling it AGI. Anyway,…

> and AI mostly doesn't try to do that anymore, I think part of the problem is that we don't even know what AGI really is. How do you define conscience in a rigourous way. Doesn't mean it can't be done without such work but it just seems soooo undefined right now that people are suspicious if someone comes along and claims to have a partial solution. Do we even know what we're looking for? When we do know or have an…

You mean 'consciousness' which is actually mainly a philosophical distraction in common usage.. anyway there are a lot of good starting definitions for what AGI is, including a bit in my comment and also in the descriptions of the projects that I referred to.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#132

Post by thewarrior » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 9:21 AM UTC

Cacti wrote: post #44

gavanwoolery wrote: post #39

While I respect (some of Chomsky's work) it is amazing to me that he thinks language is something more than mathematics/statistics. Language is math, it is basically an advanced form of discreet mathematics. We can reproduce virtually anything on a computer, and it is no more "shallow" than artificial light from a lightbulb is "artificial." There is no magic going on, we are biological computers, walking number crunc…

I completely agree. The fact that math = language, and that it's built into our DNA, is astounding. And from there that the Halting Problem is basically tied into our DNA, that is, how we think, how our brains work, our ability to conceive ideas, is just mind-blowing. What Chomsky has done in his academic career in on par with the greatest scientists in our history.

What do you mean ?

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#133

Post by naturalethic » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 9:33 AM UTC

Wake me when Chomsky finds some principals.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#134

Post by sampo » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 9:38 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #85

sampo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, NLP systems are going to have many engineering uses, and Chomsky agrees. Are they going to help in the true scientific understanding of the systems? So, what we have is (1) the engineering / statistical modelling / machine learning approach, and (2) the deep theoretical "Chomsky approach". Chomsky despises, maybe rightly so, the engineering approach because it only provides tools that work, approximately, in pra…

> Why has all the practical progress come from the engineers? I see what you are saying and actually it is a good point. Where are the robots built on Chomsky's theory? A very valid question. I don't know the answer to it, Chomsky doesn't either. But I think what you mean by practical progress isn't what he mean progress. That is his point. You have to see where he is coming from. He is an academic his ultimate goal…

Your point is also good. "Shallow engineering" will not give us deep theoretical understanding, and we need also deep theoretical understanding. But in our need for deep theory, we should not accept just any theory. The theory should be testable, and it should eventually yield some practical applications. Theoretical thinking can get quite lost if it's not guided by at least some connection to empirical data.

Early L. Ron Hubbard presented a theory (Dianetics) on the causes of mental illness. It's a theory alright, just not a very good one, and not very testable. We would still benefit from a better theoretical understanding of human mental health and illness, but we should not take just anybody, just because he is a deep thinker and has a theory.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#135

Post by adrianhoward » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 9:43 AM UTC

ilaksh wrote: post #83

The field is now called AGI. It isn't mentioned in this article. Everyone seems to be ignoring the whole field of AGI (artificial general intelligence). Or maybe they truly are ignorant of it. Anyway, suffice to say, AI and AGI didn't stop progressing, and Chomsky is no longer any sort of expert in those fields. Even Norvig isn't up to speed on the most advanced approaches to AGI, but at least he enters the same room…

The field is now called AGI

S'funny... when I was at The University of Sussex a few weeks back I met a lot of folk who seem to think they're still doing AI. There are still Journals on the topic http://www.journals.elsevier.com/artificial-intelligence/. There are still degress on the topic http://is.gd/5ii0Eu. I know folk doing postgrad work on the topic.

My degree was in Computing an AI and is, I admit, more than 20 years old now. But I still keep a weather eye on the field - and have many friends and acquaintances who work in it. There are certainly some who use the AGI name for a subset of the strong AI work, but it's not anywhere close to a universally used term. It certainly hasn't taken over from AI - a field that seems to be quite happy trundling along thank you very much ;-)

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#136

Post by krichman » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 9:50 AM UTC

sown wrote: post #121

krichman wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent post spent a lot of time to try and inform us, including multiple links. To post a dismissive comment in response, with no explanation whatsoever, is well beyond rude.

I think people are suspicious or dismissive of AGI, HTM, etc because...well...there doesn't seem to be anything really to it. People who know AI I've talked to in the know about HTM don't know anything about it or have mildly negative things to say. Ditto for AGI. It's a contentious topic and people just get defensive. Many of those links in grandparent post were from or about opencog. I can make long blog posts abou…

I'm totally fine with empiricism! Your post here is helpful. It's just rude and not helpful to respond to a post like that with nothing more than "no".

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#137

Post by adrianhoward » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 9:51 AM UTC

confluence wrote: post #117

corporalagumbo wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky_bibliography Chomsky's a pretty substantial walker.

I think you mean talker. Walker would be things that actually did stuff - you know like search, translation, locomotion or prediction. That's a lot of words and a lot of books in a bunch of the soft sciences (linguistics and politics) which are highly susceptible to class A bullshit. All of that doesn't mean anything - no different from Richard Dawkins who irritates me in a similar fashion - I ask once again - where'…

As somebody who used to do a bit of NLP work in the dim and distant past I can testify that Chomsky's work on context free grammars, etc. (certainly used to anyway - not been poking at it for about fifteen years now) got applied a fuck of a lot.

The model probably doesn't have a great deal of relation to what happens inside folks heads - but it was stupidly useful for making computers do stuff though. Might be better techniques now - I don't know. But saying that it wasn't applicable practical work is basically ignoring the NLP stuff that was happening in the 80's and 90's.

(let alone the more obvious useful stuff for us geeky folk - the formal grammar stuff we use and think about for compilers. Chomsky Hierarchy, etc.)

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#138

Post by koningrobot » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 10:09 AM UTC

sown wrote: post #124

ilaksh wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they are talking about is the idea of human-like general intelligence, and AI mostly doesn't try to do that anymore, although there are some people who are seriously trying and calling it AI and even a few who are sort of aware of what the AGI people are doing or have projects that are as sophisticated. But most of the researchers who are farthest along and most serious about it have been calling it AGI. Anyway,…

> and AI mostly doesn't try to do that anymore, I think part of the problem is that we don't even know what AGI really is. How do you define conscience in a rigourous way. Doesn't mean it can't be done without such work but it just seems soooo undefined right now that people are suspicious if someone comes along and claims to have a partial solution. Do we even know what we're looking for? When we do know or have an…

The point of AI is not conscious machines but machines that can do useful things. Consciousness is not useful except to the extent that it helps a machine do useful things.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#139

Post by adrianhoward » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 10:12 AM UTC

gavanwoolery wrote: post #39

While I respect (some of Chomsky's work) it is amazing to me that he thinks language is something more than mathematics/statistics. Language is math, it is basically an advanced form of discreet mathematics. We can reproduce virtually anything on a computer, and it is no more "shallow" than artificial light from a lightbulb is "artificial." There is no magic going on, we are biological computers, walking number crunc…

it is amazing to me that he thinks language is something more than mathematics/statistics

He doesn't think that. Look at his linguistics work - google Chomsky Hierarchy. He very much does not think that it's magic.

All he's saying is that some kinds of statistical modeling - while stupidly useful and practical - don't give us a lot of explanatory power.

He's, metaphorically, complaining about folk who are happy using Boyle's Law because "it works", when he'd like more folk figuring out what atoms are all about.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#140

Post by koningrobot » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 10:33 AM UTC

mikk0j wrote: post #120

iandanforth wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language is a set of behaviors Behavior for humans and other animals requires a brain and body (almost always) The organisation, growth, and function of the brain and body are influenced by genetics. So we can say first and formost that language is influenced by genetics. Having a tongue, vocal chords, hands, ears. These all help to acquire language. So now the question is to what degree does genetics influence langu…

For me, this perfectly sums up the futility of the Strong AI / AGI research project. So much of what we consider to be 'intelligence' or repercussions of intelligence are in fact language-based communications and culture - with an immense genetical legacy, bias, and quite frankly, burden. To create human-equivalent intelligence, most or indeed all of these evolutionary biases would have to be built in. Consider a dif…

I don't understand what bearing this should have on the probability of AGI succeeding. What we (should) care about is not whether the system is conscious or even human-like. What matters is that it performs well on the tasks it is assigned. I consider it highly likely that we can do better than evolution did, in less time than evolution took.