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No, machines can’t read better than humans

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Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#21
post #16

One overhyping bullshitting magazine complaining about overhyping bullshitting magazines. The pot is calling the kettle black.

Even at the height of the 2000 bubble the Industry Standard, Business 2.0, Wired, etc., had some semblance to journalism.

At most I could call them optimistic, but, at least, I fail to recall, them engaging in hedging, that is on the one hand have a writer extol some company or tech as virtue, then, the next page deride the same thing for being obviously of extremely dubious value, of not outright liability.

This thing gets tedious and doesn't do journalism any favors.

It's like they have no compass and simply blindly go for the most clicks no matter what.

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#22
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps once a computer can understand context to the point of the human and produce a worthy set of opinions, we could automate the Hacker News comments section and save us all some time.

And automate the readers and save the rest of the time Seriously: if bots can produce 'worthy set of opinions' we would be totally useless

    if bots can produce 'worthy set of opinions' we would be totally useless
Are you useless because other people write comments? What is the difference between it being a biological human and an artificial human - should we ever get that far?

Apart from quality and relevance considerations I'm reminded of the situation where people open businesses that already exist, or people try to get jobs despite other people existing that are actually better. For example, why doesn't BMW stop producing cars, after all, there's Mercedes-Benz (and very close too), or vice versa. Or why is there yet another bakery. Or why do I try to get that programming job and don't even mind to admit that I'm probably not even among the best 1% of people for that particular job. Because none of that matters. My advantage in the last case is I'm here (interviewing) while those other people are not. Same with the bakery and the car makers. The existence of something else isn't a reason unless there is a direct impact.

Even if we ever make something that is far more intelligent than us. Still no reason to expect that that new thing is going to murder each and everyone. We don't murder each and every creature that is orders of magnitude less intelligent than us (the extinction event that we started notwithstanding, that's a side effect because of limited space on the planet). We don't murder our own less intelligent members of society either.

To extend on the last point, the real human intelligence is not as much in the individual members of this society - but in the network that we present. Place any human being alone in a remote region and see what they accomplish. They will actually die, most likely. The power of humanity is not the individuals, it's a huge invisible "cloud" of stuff: The knowledge, the "magic items" that were created by this "human cloud" over time (like a computer, or just a can of Coke [1]).

Even if we created something that is an order of magnitude more intelligent than any human being, or even two - it's power (and intelligence!) pales compared to the combined network power of humanity.

Don't look at "humanity" as a bunch of individual hairless mutated apes (i.e. the physical, biological beings), "humanity" is much, MUCH more, most of it invisible to the eye. Knowledge/culture, the way we interact in a gigantic network (like a brain - think of humans as neurons!), the tools and items we have.

In this network there is plenty of room for new "nodes", and if they are truly intelligent they will value the network and - unlike most humans - recognize that their own individual abilities are tiny compared to being part of the whole thing.

Another things is, when/if we can create things that are "better" than us we can also change ourselves. We can improve our bodies, our brains. We will integrate computers and brains, not have them (only) externally. So the humans that "compete" with some super-intelligent AI won't be the humans of today either.

Also check out:

[0] "Joseph Henrich: "The Secret of Our Success" | Talks at Google" https://youtu.be/jaoQh6BoH3c

> Humans are a puzzling species. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals? Joseph Henrich's shows that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains—on the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations.

[1] "What Coke contains" https://medium.com/@kevin_ashton/what-coke-contains-221d4499... (it is not actually about Coke)

> The number of individuals who know how to make a can of Coke is zero. The number of individual nations that could produce a can of Coke is zero... Invention and creation is something we are all in together. Modern tool chains are so long and complex that they bind us into one people and one planet. They are not only chains of tools, they are also chains of minds: local and foreign, ancient and modern, living and dead — the result of disparate invention and intelligence distributed over time and space. ...every can of Coke contains humanity’s choir.

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#23
post #16

One overhyping bullshitting magazine complaining about overhyping bullshitting magazines. The pot is calling the kettle black.

> I'm pretty sure no one is seriously remotely claiming that machines understand text better than humans. Just some of the headlines: - http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/15/technology/reading-robot-ali... "Computers are getting better than humans at reading" - http://fortune.com/2018/01/15/artificial-intelligence-ai-chi... "Computer AI Can Now Read Better Than You Do" - https://gizmodo.com/ai-used-to-sell-you-more-stuff-c…

I meant the scientists, not the tech journalists. Clearly tech "journalists" is a very loose term nowadays

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#24
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm pretty sure no one is seriously remotely claiming that machines understand text better than humans. Just some of the headlines: - http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/15/technology/reading-robot-ali... "Computers are getting better than humans at reading" - http://fortune.com/2018/01/15/artificial-intelligence-ai-chi... "Computer AI Can Now Read Better Than You Do" - https://gizmodo.com/ai-used-to-sell-you-more-stuff-c…

I meant the scientists, not the tech journalists. Clearly tech "journalists" is a very loose term nowadays

Yes, but the source article is clearly addressing the general public, not scientists. And it's doing a much better job of representing the state of technology than other sources that are addressed to the general public. So not sure what your complaint is.

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#25

Hmm, yes computers can’t outpace (highly literate) humans in reading comprehension today, but give it a couple of years and we will have a very different situation.

Do you have any research evidence to back this up? I just haven't seen (any?) research on the advanced capabilities they're discussing in the article - open-ended interpretation, being able to answer "why" questions, being able to synthesize information from multiple sources, etc. I think we're still kind of a long way from these systems, maybe a decade or so, barring major leaps in hardware.

>being able to synthesize information from multiple sources, etc.

I think we can say that unsupervised language translation models do this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15610594

Edit: Not to suggest that they are on par with human performance at synthesis of data.

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#26
post #13
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much like Fusion energy, AI that is able to pass the Turing test is 30 years away and has been so for 50 years.

Fusion has gotten a lot closer over time, we simply don't fund it very much. ITER will have net positive fusion thermal energy production capacity in 2019. We are not going to fuel it with tritium for years after completion. It could have generated electricity and put it on the grid, but we kept scaling it back to save money in large part because that electricity would have not been worth the investment. Unfortunatel…

We might have a path to cheap fusion power. Advances in superconductors stemming from MRI research have really shrunk the minimum size of a fusion reactor and one group at least is trying to take advantage of that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_fusion_reactor

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#27
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been waiting a couple of years since 1955 when McCarthy said he'd be done in a couple of months. This isn't just snark either, it's a justifiable exaggeration to say that since then all General AI projects have failed for exactly the same reason; failure to generalise from a specialised solution.

The current round is probably that deep learning can do some impressive things through some combination of CPU/GPU/TPU computing advances, the ability to collect and process a lot of data, and algorithmic/neural net architectural improvements in more or less that order. However, even some of the leading researchers are effectively cautioning that deep learning can probably only take you so far. [1] And we've arguably…

For all the advances in AI (and in specialized AI we can do some incredible things, now) - when it comes to generalized AI, it seems that we're still, ultimately, playing the same game of feeding the machine as much information as possible and then waiting for "something" to happen.

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#28
post #20
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fusion has gotten a lot closer over time, we simply don't fund it very much. ITER will have net positive fusion thermal energy production capacity in 2019. We are not going to fuel it with tritium for years after completion. It could have generated electricity and put it on the grid, but we kept scaling it back to save money in large part because that electricity would have not been worth the investment. Unfortunatel…

"It could have generated electricity and put it on the grid" I don't think so. It may be approaching net positive energy production, but ITER was not designed to have that energy converted to electricity, it is lost. There is no way ITER was EVER going to generate electricity. (REF https://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines )

Initial designs as in going back to the late 80's included much larger net energy generation and a steam loop for actually generating power.

The ITER that was being conceived in 1988 was a much bigger machine than the one that is being built today and its nominal fusion power was expected at 1000 MW, as opposed to 500 today. https://www.iter.org/newsline/239/1328

The reason for this was you would then have a larger cushion if estimates for power generation where off and an actual test of extracting useful heat past the super conducting loops vs simply cooling the device.

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#29
post #21
post #16

One overhyping bullshitting magazine complaining about overhyping bullshitting magazines. The pot is calling the kettle black.

Even at the height of the 2000 bubble the Industry Standard, Business 2.0, Wired, etc., had some semblance to journalism. At most I could call them optimistic, but, at least, I fail to recall, them engaging in hedging, that is on the one hand have a writer extol some company or tech as virtue, then, the next page deride the same thing for being obviously of extremely dubious value, of not outright liability. This thi…

Back then people were more willing to pay for news (newspapers and magazines), no one blocked ads, and people visited real websites where ads paid for the original content (rather than just skimming headlines on Reddit, Facebook, etc).

What we're seeing today is journalism outfits that went out of business a long time ago and the remnants of the companies were acquired by a very different organization with very different goals. The problem is, this was done silently and no one ever acknowledged the transfer.

It's partly the fault of the journalism outfits for buying into the clickbait stuff. It's partly the fault of aggregators (even including Hacker News). It's partly the fault of the readers/users for consuming their information in the laziest way possible. Everyone is to blame and the problem is surprisingly hard to solve, but what we can't do is point to articles like this and say "this is bad journalism", because it's not. It never was.

Journalism went out of business a long time ago because no one will buy it.

Re: No, machines can’t read better than humans

#30
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at the height of the 2000 bubble the Industry Standard, Business 2.0, Wired, etc., had some semblance to journalism. At most I could call them optimistic, but, at least, I fail to recall, them engaging in hedging, that is on the one hand have a writer extol some company or tech as virtue, then, the next page deride the same thing for being obviously of extremely dubious value, of not outright liability. This thi…

Back then people were more willing to pay for news (newspapers and magazines), no one blocked ads, and people visited real websites where ads paid for the original content (rather than just skimming headlines on Reddit, Facebook, etc). What we're seeing today is journalism outfits that went out of business a long time ago and the remnants of the companies were acquired by a very different organization with very diffe…

>> Journalism went out of business a long time ago because no one will buy it.

And the unfortunate outcome of that is infotainment and advertorials pretending to be news. Even worse is that more and more people take that stuff at face value.

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