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Scientists Increasingly Can’t Explain How AI Works

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Re: Scientists Increasingly Can’t Explain How AI Works

#221
post #87

Now for a small elephant which entered the room: the article recites that it would be > worth mentioning that the white-box / black-box terminology is in itself part of a long history of racially coded terms in science; researchers have pushed to change "blacklist" to "blocklist," for example Very plainly, the idea of "black-box" comes from the clear, basic and original, notion and experience that "in the dark, you c…

Black box was actually a literal non-reflective black box inside an airplane that housed secret tech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_recorder#:~:text=The%20... .

> actually

Of course it was, but the expression stands because of the opacity implied by 'black'. The [original] box contains secrets - it may even be rigged -, or anyway very complex technology, state of the art, just developed or evolved, especially difficult to understand - you do not know how it works. It is black, and that "black" is significant in many ways.

(And of course, a "flight recorder" is not the same thing: it is a specific function - not of the most esoteric - of the original pack of potential embedded technologies, which inherited the name. The radar, for example, becomes "mainstream", while the recorder remains "boxed" because you want it protected for "emergential witnessing".)

Re: Scientists Increasingly Can’t Explain How AI Works

#222

Who would have guessed that having a highly complex black box means you can't explain what's going on inside that black box... My pet theory is that this is the reason why Siri, Alexa and co. still are shit and haven't moved an inch forward since their inception. I like to play "sleep music" through Alexa when I bring my kid to bed. For his mid day nap it all works perfectly. But in the evening when I say the same ph…

Siri has gotten better in at least one measurable way: since it first came out, I've repeatedly cited this phrase as a problem: "Hey Siri, text this photo to " For years Siri would respond with "I'm sorry, I don't have the ability to send photos." Specifically I would point out that Siri understood what I wanted , it just couldn't do it. Each time there is an OS update, I check that to see if it's been addressed, and…

That's too bad about the interview. Funny story though. If that was the only reason you failed the interview then I'd say it was an unfair interview.

Re: Scientists Increasingly Can’t Explain How AI Works

#223

> The people who develop AI are increasingly having problems explaining how it works and determining why it has the outputs it has. I don't think this is anything new. This was already the case 20+ years ago with chess-playing computers. In the mid-90s, Deep Blue was evaluating 200 million chess positions per second. How do you explain the resulting moves? Obviously we know they were the result of a deep minimax-styl…

Side question, what's better at chess today - neutral network approach or deep blue approach?

Re: Scientists Increasingly Can’t Explain How AI Works

#224
post #70
post #40

I don't see a problem with not being able to explain how something works as long as it's not failing empirically. Scientists also cannot explain how humans work in detail and yet humans are "allowed" to do many things and make many decisions that cannot be fully explained. The question for me is...if I have an AI system that outperforms humans empirically, why do I need to understand how it works to use it? In fact i…

I'm mostly in agreement.[1] The thing that humans have an edge in that machines currently do not is story telling. Compelling stories presented with skill, beat even the most talented of people; let alone a machine. We want to know that if we fail or if we allow someone else to fail on our behalf, that we can still convince the rest of society to give us another chance. So we get very good at telling stories that do…

Not everyone is adept at storytelling I'm afraid.

Re: Scientists Increasingly Can’t Explain How AI Works

#225
post #13

It's quite easy to explain. You take a bunch of tensors and multiply them by a bunch of tensors. Humans can't wrap their heads around multiple tensors being multiplied together and never will. It's not a problem with AI. It's a problem with humans. It's not AIs fault that we can understand F=ma but can't understand 50 tensors being stacked.

That's like saying you can explain how some code works by saying you take a bunch of transistors and turn them off and on.

Re: Scientists Increasingly Can’t Explain How AI Works

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the concern is not that the word _is_ racist in origin, but that people whose lives have been irrevocably altered by racism and slavery may _perceive_ them as such. An idea doesn't have to be true to cause someone suffering.

While of course one will do every reasonable attempt not to offend another part gratuitously, and also noting that the problem of misperception should call for a correction in the perception itself (and more contextually, if "«alter[ation]»" has been caused there should be investments in treatments), if you allowed events to affect innocent structures you would arrive at absurdities such as "avoid that formerly commo…

I largely agree with you, and would refer those with the concern I described to an idea I met in Brené Brown's writing:

"To make the world safe for feet, one might try to cover it entirely in leather, which is an insurmountable task. However, if you put the leather on your own feet..."

My goal wasn't to argue the concern was objectively correct, just to point out that it was different from what was being critiqued.

Re: Scientists Increasingly Can’t Explain How AI Works

#227
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri has gotten better in at least one measurable way: since it first came out, I've repeatedly cited this phrase as a problem: "Hey Siri, text this photo to " For years Siri would respond with "I'm sorry, I don't have the ability to send photos." Specifically I would point out that Siri understood what I wanted , it just couldn't do it. Each time there is an OS update, I check that to see if it's been addressed, and…

That's too bad about the interview. Funny story though. If that was the only reason you failed the interview then I'd say it was an unfair interview.

They gave me no feedback why they failed me. I did recover when Siri betrayed me by succeeding where I said it would fail, but poorly. It took time to say "Well, I guess at some point Apple released an update and I had given up checking at that point. That's one of the problems with voice: generally you only get one chance to demonstrate capabilities." It redirected the course of the interview.

Re: Scientists Increasingly Can’t Explain How AI Works

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must be in the minority but I really dislike voice commands. Every time I try it I feel stupid talking to appliances. But even if I didn't mind talking to lightbulbs and thermostats it would still bother me for several reasons: I don't like being listened to by these corporations, I don't like exposing my electronics to the internet, and I still don't see how any of this stuff is better than flicking a switch.

> I don't like exposing my electronics to the internet, and I still don't see how any of this stuff is better than flicking a switch. That assumes you are close to the switch, that you have switches for all the things you want to do and that you are even free to operate said switches. I do agree if all you are doing is turning a device on and off, it isn't that helpful(it can still be as it allows you to do something…

Several of my friends live in these so-called smart homes. They have lots of intermittent problems. Meanwhile I'm not having any of their issues living in my dumb house. If my router is down or my ISP is having problems - it doesn't affect how I run my household. Ironically these tools were intended to reduce one's mental load but what I've observed is they actually increase it.

Re: Scientists Increasingly Can’t Explain How AI Works

#229
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how many people have messed around with the Character.ai beta but personally I'm awed that it does some of the things it does. It predictably fails at times and makes some odd mistakes, but at other times it insightfully points things out that I hadn't considered and explains itself quite eloquently when prompted. It's a lot better discussing literature and philosophy than science, though... and a compul…

We're also providing the input to train character ai on good quality results

I didn't fully grasp this comment of yours at the time, but you weren't kidding.

Re: Scientists Increasingly Can’t Explain How AI Works

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your deflection about the media is entirely unrelated to AI, but it only backs up my argument. If giant media corporations are biased, why can't AI researchers be? Every institution has biases, and blindly trusting a dataset from e.g. a police department is just as bad as blindly trusting data from CNN or Fox News. The collection, aggregation, and sharing of data is a biased operation. If a political or for-profit en…

I don’t think it’s unrelated: I often see that argument made in bad faith, eg when someone who believes conclusions from biased data encounters AIs making data driven conclusions, more than I do when the AI is genuinely biased. I also have trouble taking it seriously, since that same standard isn’t applied to existing information services (eg, “media ethics” posts condemning their open racism) — only to new informati…

AI is a developing technology that stands to be used by powerful businesses and governments for all manner of purposes that will likely drastically impact our lives. It's important to criticize what could become the next industrial revolution, and make sure we can get rid of as many systemic issues as possible before they become too big to fix.

And many people do criticise the biases of legacy media groups on both sides. But this is an article about AI on a site that is generally more concerned with technical innovations than societal issues, so AI is being criticized.

Besides, bad things existing now isn't really a good argument for why we shouldn't prevent bad things from happening in the future.

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