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Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious

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21–30 of 158 posts

Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious

#21
post #11

The AI winter is very much over, and we're back to the good old days of selling the future. I bet this team is very sharp, but there's still merit to "over-promise, under-deliver." "Phoenix, the co-founder, says Vicarious aims beyond image recognition. He said the next milestone will be creating a computer that can understand not just shapes and objects, but the textures associated with them. For example, a computer…

Funny to think that instead of curing diseases or making cheap renewable energy, we'd instead try to spend resources to invent a computer to do that for us...

So the question you should be asking is...if everyone agrees that cheap renewable energy and curing diseases is a good thing, why haven't we done it yet? I guess if you're cynical, you'd argue, because no one can make a profit from it (uh...right).

However, if you see it as a pragmatic problem, then maybe the answer to why not? is because we need better ways to process information -- and this kind of unsupervised machine learning is critical to doing that.

Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious

#22
post #11

The AI winter is very much over, and we're back to the good old days of selling the future. I bet this team is very sharp, but there's still merit to "over-promise, under-deliver." "Phoenix, the co-founder, says Vicarious aims beyond image recognition. He said the next milestone will be creating a computer that can understand not just shapes and objects, but the textures associated with them. For example, a computer…

Funny to think that instead of curing diseases or making cheap renewable energy, we'd instead try to spend resources to invent a computer to do that for us...

Higher order strategy.

We do that for ourselves when we learn first about something, plan ahead, and then do it. Thing is, we don't know how to cure diseases, we don't know how to make cheap renewable energy, and we certainly don't know how to turn Earth into Heaven. The direct approach might very well be harder than the AI one.

Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious

#24

"Phoenix hopes that, eventually, Vicarious’s computers will learn to how to cure diseases, create cheap, renewable energy, and perform the jobs that employ most human beings." This line made me laugh. Which of the three goals is the most likely and desired outcome? (I'll give you a hint, it isnt curing diseases or finding energy) That's like saying: 'my robots will cure cancer, bring world peace and replace most manu…

Agricultural technology already replaced most manual human jobs (from the era when most human jobs were agricultural). Humans found other things to do, and we found ways to use the surplus.

If it gets to the point where there isn't any unskilled labor left to do, we can always choose as a society to vastly expand the welfare state and divvy up at least part of the accumulated surplus to everyone. We have already moved in this direction a bit, and I expect to see more things along the lines of guaranteed minimum income in the future.

Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious

#25

Does anyone know why Dileep George left Numenta? Wasn't he a co-founder there with Jeff Hawkins? Is there much difference between the goals of Vicarious and Numenta?

I don't think their goals are considerably different; I'm curious about their approaches however. How divergent are they?

Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious

#27
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny to think that instead of curing diseases or making cheap renewable energy, we'd instead try to spend resources to invent a computer to do that for us...

So the question you should be asking is...if everyone agrees that cheap renewable energy and curing diseases is a good thing, why haven't we done it yet? I guess if you're cynical, you'd argue, because no one can make a profit from it (uh...right). However, if you see it as a pragmatic problem, then maybe the answer to why not? is because we need better ways to process information -- and this kind of unsupervised mac…

Yes, know, i just found the phrase funny.

Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious

#28

privatization of research is real and awesome!

Probably not. If Noam Chomsky is to be believed (I do), most research to date has been publicly funded. In the US, it has been mostly through military expenditures. (To take only one example, ARPANET itself was funded by the military.)

The actually awesome part is having huge investments on long term research. Private or public, it doesn't make any difference.

Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious

#29

"Phoenix hopes that, eventually, Vicarious’s computers will learn to how to cure diseases, create cheap, renewable energy, and perform the jobs that employ most human beings." This line made me laugh. Which of the three goals is the most likely and desired outcome? (I'll give you a hint, it isnt curing diseases or finding energy) That's like saying: 'my robots will cure cancer, bring world peace and replace most manu…

Neither is the third one. As usual, the first fit will go into military.

Re: Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company Vicarious

#30

"Phoenix hopes that, eventually, Vicarious’s computers will learn to how to cure diseases, create cheap, renewable energy, and perform the jobs that employ most human beings." This line made me laugh. Which of the three goals is the most likely and desired outcome? (I'll give you a hint, it isnt curing diseases or finding energy) That's like saying: 'my robots will cure cancer, bring world peace and replace most manu…

Curing (and treating) cancer currently employees quite a few people.
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