Live data from Hacker News

The Artificial Intelligentsia

thebaffler.com

21–30 of 95 posts

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#21
post #17

Offtopic, 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…

Just imagine ... that some day in the future journalism will be AI based, and will generate entire articles tailored to your viewing habits based on extensive psych profiling and AB testing to maximize clicks and screen time!

The content need not be true, but at least everyone will be happy with their preferred writing styles....

http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#22
post #17

Offtopic, 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…

Some people enjoy writing and some people enjoy reading. It need not be "to the point" all of the time.

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#23
post #17

Offtopic, 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…

Some people enjoy writing and some people enjoy reading. It need not be "to the point" all of the time.

I should clarify: I don't mind "unfocused" writing like this. I can definitely appreciate a creative take on exposition. But I think the introduction of an article is not the most appropriate place to do it. An upfront paragraph - even a few sentences - explaining what is happening would basically resolve this for me.

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ha and theres this: http://dalybulge.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/cyberpunk-sabpk.html

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#25
post #17

Offtopic, 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…

These convoluted forms of passive voice do make it harder to parse. It’s almost like the polar opposite of Hemingway’s journalistic style.

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#26
post #17

Offtopic, 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…

It’s a remnant from the time when we paid by the bundle for longform content and trusted the issuing brand not to waste our time.

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#27
Excellent Sunday morning long read!

Some of PreData's recent "insights":

"China Trade War Fears Still Running High"

"Mall Blaze Sparks Outrage Across Russia"

In short, nothing that couldn't be revealed from the briefest skim of headlines from tomorrow morning's WSJ.com. One can stay better informed leaving a Bloomberg TicToc (which is partially machine generated) tab open all day.

My takeaway is that the world of the Jim Shinns is rapidly approaching extinction. Deals done poolside at country club dinner dances. Name game shmoozing. And serendipitous encounters on private islands. What was considered the predominant pathway to immortality in Fitzgerald's day.

Viable alternatives exist now. And any business model solely differentiated by prestige will be subsumed by free or near-free competition.

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#28
post #17

Offtopic, 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…

The next sentence afterwards is a monstrosity:

"But, I explained to my work colleagues as the Princeton local pulled out from platform eight and late-arriving passengers swished up through the carriages in search of empty seats, both the original Penn Station and its unlovely modern spawn were seen at their creation as great feats of engineering."

I had to highlight between the commas to get through that one.

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#29
post #28
post #17

Offtopic, 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…

The next sentence afterwards is a monstrosity: "But, I explained to my work colleagues as the Princeton local pulled out from platform eight and late-arriving passengers swished up through the carriages in search of empty seats, both the original Penn Station and its unlovely modern spawn were seen at their creation as great feats of engineering." I had to highlight between the commas to get through that one.

These complaints about Penn station are also a well-worn cliché.

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#30

I 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…

> idiotic article about the brain not processing information How about the brain creates information from constant interaction with the world based on the kinds of bodies we have and our needs/wants? This information doesn't exist as information until the brain creates it. Information is the product of minds. It doesn't exist in the world on it's own to be processed. As such, the brain is something other than a compu…

"Not computable" is itself a strong claim that's never been proven.

What is true is that nobody has done it yet. The process is a mystery in the sense that it's not understood, which means that we don't know if it's computable or not.

Post reply on HN