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Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

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Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#61
No one is claiming that alphaGo is close to AGI. At least not anyone that understands the methods it uses. What alphaGo is, is an example of AI progress. There has been a rapid increase in progress in the field of AI. We are still a ways away from AGI, but it's now in sight. Just outside the edge of our vision. Almost surely within our lifetime, at this rate.

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#62

I wish the term "true AI" were replaced with "strong AI" or "artificial general intelligence" or some such term. We already have true AI - it's a vast, thriving industry. AlphaGo is obviously a true, legitimate, actual, real, nonfictional example of artificial intelligence, as are Google Search, the Facebook Newsfeed, Siri, the Amazon Echo, etc.

"Useful AI"?

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#63
post #58
post #3

I'm surprised he'd make such an optimistic statement. I think a better analogy would be: We figured out how to make icing, but we still don't really know what a cake is.

We can describe Solomonoff-based agents like AIXI. None of them are fully sufficient for true general AI, but you could probably accomplish quite a bit with an AIXI-like agent.

I thought full AIXI wasn't computable though?

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#64

I wish the term "true AI" were replaced with "strong AI" or "artificial general intelligence" or some such term. We already have true AI - it's a vast, thriving industry. AlphaGo is obviously a true, legitimate, actual, real, nonfictional example of artificial intelligence, as are Google Search, the Facebook Newsfeed, Siri, the Amazon Echo, etc.

I guess it boils down to a difference in opinion as to what it means to be intelligent.

IMO, AlphaGo isn't "intelligent" because all it can do is play Go. For example, it can't be taught to play chess without completely reprogramming it.

Surely it's using a lot of clever algorithms, but where's the intelligence?

TBH, there's not much point to this post, because the intelligence in AI has been twisted more towards your usage almost since the beginning.

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#65
post #29
post #5

I think we need more advances in neuroscience and, I know this will be controversial, psychology before we really know what the cake even is. Edit: I actually think the major AI breakthrough will come from either of those two fields, not computer science.

Just like ornithologists invented the first airplane, and horse vets built the first automobile, etc.

While they weren't card-carrying ornithologists, the Wright brothers studied bird flight extensively and explicitly used it for their designs.

But they concluded that the flapping motion wasn't essential for propulsion, and could more easily be achieved by a propeller.

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#66
post #58
post #3

I'm surprised he'd make such an optimistic statement. I think a better analogy would be: We figured out how to make icing, but we still don't really know what a cake is.

We can describe Solomonoff-based agents like AIXI. None of them are fully sufficient for true general AI, but you could probably accomplish quite a bit with an AIXI-like agent.

As fas as I know, the only thing existing AIXI implementations have demonstrated, is to learn to play Pac-man at a somewhat reasonable, but not in any way stellar level.

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#67
post #56

Preface: AlphaGo is an amazing achievement and does show an interesting advancement in the field. Yet ... it really doesn't mean almost anything that people are predicting it to mean. Slashdot went so far as to say that "We know now that we don't need any big new breakthroughs to get to true AI". The field of ML/AI is in a fight where people want more science fiction than scientific reality. Science fiction is sexy,…

> The hardware requirements were stunning (280 GPUs and 1920 CPUs for the largest variant) and were an integral part to how well AlphaGo performed

Is that really true? Demis stated that the distributed version of AlphaGo beats a single machine version only 75% of the time. That's still stronger than virtually all human players, and probably would still beat Lee Sedol at least once.

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#68

I wish the term "true AI" were replaced with "strong AI" or "artificial general intelligence" or some such term. We already have true AI - it's a vast, thriving industry. AlphaGo is obviously a true, legitimate, actual, real, nonfictional example of artificial intelligence, as are Google Search, the Facebook Newsfeed, Siri, the Amazon Echo, etc.

I prefer computational intelligence to AI, so maybe CI?

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#69

I wish the term "true AI" were replaced with "strong AI" or "artificial general intelligence" or some such term. We already have true AI - it's a vast, thriving industry. AlphaGo is obviously a true, legitimate, actual, real, nonfictional example of artificial intelligence, as are Google Search, the Facebook Newsfeed, Siri, the Amazon Echo, etc.

This seems like semantic quibbling. All those terms seem synonymous to me.

Re: Yann LeCun's comment on AlphaGo and true AI

#70

No one is claiming that alphaGo is close to AGI. At least not anyone that understands the methods it uses. What alphaGo is, is an example of AI progress. There has been a rapid increase in progress in the field of AI. We are still a ways away from AGI, but it's now in sight. Just outside the edge of our vision. Almost surely within our lifetime, at this rate.

There has been a lot of progress in AI research, and AlphaGo does represent some of that. But AlphaGo is not any kind of progress from the AI before it towards AGI. It's progress, but progress mostly perpendicular to the goal of "true" or "general" intelligence. It's similar to the same kind of AI that was built for chess, just for a much more difficult problem in that same class of problems. No problems useful to general intelligence were solved in making AlphaGo, just harder problems in the field of special intelligence. It's still a tremendous accomplishment, just not one that puts AGI happening within any of our lifetimes.
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