What does it mean for a machine to “understand”? • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by goatlover » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 7:20 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #7

msla wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? No. To me it just seems to mean that “qualia” is not a particularly useful concept, particularly when discussing the capabilities of computer software.

The issue is that we’re using a word based on human mental activity and social agreement and then applying that to a computational process in a machine, which likely leaves out part of the human experience which makes up the word understand.

It’s more accurate to say the Chinese room computes results which humans recognize as successful translation from English to Chinese. The understanding is all on the side interpreting the output.

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

#22

Post by nutanc » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 7:26 AM UTC

This is a good balanced article that gets a lot of things right. We should take a forgiving approach when we talk about AI systems. And as the author points out the problem is not that AI systems dont have understanding yet. The problem is with the hype which leads many to believe that we are close to building systems which can understand us.

That said, I have a small problem with the examples presented to say that already machines understand us :)

The article says 'For example, when I tell Siri “Call Carol” and it dials the correct number, you will have a hard time convincing me that Siri did not understand my request"

Let me try to take a shot at trying to explain that Siri did not "understand" your request.

Siri was waiting for a command and executed the best command that matched. Which is, make a phone call.

It did not understand what you meant because it did not take the whole environment into consideration. What if Carol was just in the other room. A human would maybe just shout "hey Carol, Thomas is asking you to come", instead of making a phone call.

If listening to a request and executing a command is understanding, then computers have been understanding us for a long time. Even without the latest advances in AI.

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

#23

Post by js8 » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 7:26 AM UTC

yamrzou wrote: post #19

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

It was on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17764348

But perhaps I wasn't clear, the study doesn't say this, but it was rather my own experience with the BS sentences in that study that led me to the observation that they have an empty set of examples if we take them as a constraint satisfaction problem of sorts.

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

#24

Post by friendlybus » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 7:26 AM UTC

I don't think it's possible for machines to understand. Numbers are meaningless, our human actions give them a useful function. All of the meaning a computer appears to provide is the preassigned values of layers and layers of programming work done by humans. Even today AI has a lot of human tagging and categorization that makes it useful.

The idea that a new self- sustaining meaning generation can arise out of the interlocking mechanisms of a computer is an interesting one. As we see self driven car CEOs describe some of the most advanced systems we have, requiring to be run in controlled environments and balking at the infinite complexity of real life, are we really building computer systems that are anything more than an incredibly sophisticated loop?

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

#25

Post by goatlover » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 7:26 AM UTC

visarga wrote: post #20

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, a…

It certainly doesn’t understand Go as a board game humans invented as a stimulating mental exercise that became competitive enough to see whether human programmers could come up with a program that could beat any human. And whatever cultural history went along with playing Go. Certainly chess playing has been used as an analogy in the west for many activities involving strategy. This is something no computer currently understands.

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

#26

Post by tshaddox » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 7:28 AM UTC

goatlover wrote: post #21

baddox wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dangerous? No. To me it just seems to mean that “qualia” is not a particularly useful concept, particularly when discussing the capabilities of computer software.

The issue is that we’re using a word based on human mental activity and social agreement and then applying that to a computational process in a machine, which likely leaves out part of the human experience which makes up the word understand. It’s more accurate to say the Chinese room computes results which humans recognize as successful translation from English to Chinese. The understanding is all on the side interpr…

Then what is the point in asking if a machine “understands” English and Chinese? It sounds like the question would be either completely untestable, or the answer would just be “no” by definition because we’re defining “understanding” to be “based on human mental activity.” It just doesn’t seem like a useful question if the answer can not be determined by a test such as the Chinese room thought experiment.

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

#27

Post by prvnsmpth » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 7:35 AM UTC

friendlybus wrote: post #24

I don't think it's possible for machines to understand. Numbers are meaningless, our human actions give them a useful function. All of the meaning a computer appears to provide is the preassigned values of layers and layers of programming work done by humans. Even today AI has a lot of human tagging and categorization that makes it useful. The idea that a new self- sustaining meaning generation can arise out of the i…

Well, what does it mean for humans to "understand"? Don't humans understand things by altering the state and connections of neurons in the brain? You could make the argument that the brain is also an "incredibly sophisticated loop".

My point is that humans are also highly-sophisticated, biological machines, so if you say machines cannot "understand", you are making the same claim for humans as well.

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

#28

Post by netsharc » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 7:49 AM UTC

nutanc wrote: post #22

This is a good balanced article that gets a lot of things right. We should take a forgiving approach when we talk about AI systems. And as the author points out the problem is not that AI systems dont have understanding yet. The problem is with the hype which leads many to believe that we are close to building systems which can understand us. That said, I have a small problem with the examples presented to say that a…

So the next version of Siri can locate Carol's phone in the next room and will just beep her phone to tell her to see you. Of course that's still not understanding.

The classic analogue is of course the Chinese room argument: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

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

#29

Post by msla » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 7:50 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #7

msla wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? No. To me it just seems to mean that “qualia” is not a particularly useful concept, particularly when discussing the capabilities of computer software.

"Dangerous" as in "Oh, you know they don't have qualia, so we can do whatever we want to them. They don't really feel pain, they just act like they do."

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

#30

Post by taneq » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 7:51 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #14

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…

Your basic calculator still has a concept of context, though. If you go '1 + 2 =' then it will give you '3', and if you press '/ 2 =' then it will give you '1.5'. It 'remembers what you were talking about' within its very limited scope.

I think what they were trying to get at is that understanding is stateful.