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Why AI is harder than we think

arxiv.org

61–70 of 77 posts

Re: Why AI is harder than we think

#61
post #49
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why it's called "artificial intelligence". Once we've cracked general intelligence, which is seemingly just an emergent property of sufficiently complex information processing, it won't be "artificial" anymore. It'll just be intelligence.

I've heard this "just an emergent property" theory before, but I don't get it. What evidence of this do we have of this? It seems like we make complex information processing system all the time, and the more complex they are the more fragile they are. Even the tiniest thing going wrong sends the whole system into chaos or a dead stall. Thermodynamics teaches us that order, and intelligence is largely about imposing o…

I don't think humanity has ever made anything of complexity comparable to even a simple brain.

Re: Why AI is harder than we think

#62

As a student of philosophy and a former middle school teacher, my experience leads me to think that if we could make AI, it would only manifest in a "society" of AI that are all growing and adapting together. They would communicate with each other at speeds so fast that communication with them would be almost impossible. Also, they'd have language that would be changing so fast we couldn't learn it. I think the real…

I've had similar thoughts. We are the AI. Which implies that reproduction still produces the best computing available.

Re: Why AI is harder than we think

#63

As a student of philosophy and a former middle school teacher, my experience leads me to think that if we could make AI, it would only manifest in a "society" of AI that are all growing and adapting together. They would communicate with each other at speeds so fast that communication with them would be almost impossible. Also, they'd have language that would be changing so fast we couldn't learn it. I think the real…

Perhaps strong AI will require a real body, in real reality.

Re: Why AI is harder than we think

#64
post #61
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this "just an emergent property" theory before, but I don't get it. What evidence of this do we have of this? It seems like we make complex information processing system all the time, and the more complex they are the more fragile they are. Even the tiniest thing going wrong sends the whole system into chaos or a dead stall. Thermodynamics teaches us that order, and intelligence is largely about imposing o…

I don't think humanity has ever made anything of complexity comparable to even a simple brain.

Arguably not even a single cell.

Re: Why AI is harder than we think

#65
post #43

I think another common fallacy is to assume that humans have more general intelligence than we actually do. This is manifest in three ways: 1. Assuming that we can build an AI than can do what a human does, without being embedded in the physical world and in constant communication with other humans in the same way we are. I think this is covered by "Intelligence is all in the brain" in the article 2. Not considering…

I like this refutation of the paperclip maximizer scenario, which ties in to your observation: Let's say there's a runaway superintelligence equipped with an optimization function that says it should produce a maximal amount of paperclips. Then either its objective, "produce a maximal amount of paperclips" is defined literally or not. If it's defined literally, e.g. "make your sensors return this data consistent with…

The fear is the AI misunderstanding fuzzy instructions in an unpredictable way.

Re: Why AI is harder than we think

#66
post #59
post #43

I think another common fallacy is to assume that humans have more general intelligence than we actually do. This is manifest in three ways: 1. Assuming that we can build an AI than can do what a human does, without being embedded in the physical world and in constant communication with other humans in the same way we are. I think this is covered by "Intelligence is all in the brain" in the article 2. Not considering…

This is a good point which I think stems from wrongly equating human level intelligence to AGI in the popular literature. It’s not at all clear what a general intelligence should be and it’s much less clear that humans have general intelligence. In my view we have a set of very good innate priors (e.g. space/time continuity, intuitive physics) that have been optimized by evolution for thousands of years. These priors…

I call General Intelligence any system that wonders for no particular reason if others systems have General Intelligence.

Re: Why AI is harder than we think

#67

As a student of philosophy and a former middle school teacher, my experience leads me to think that if we could make AI, it would only manifest in a "society" of AI that are all growing and adapting together. They would communicate with each other at speeds so fast that communication with them would be almost impossible. Also, they'd have language that would be changing so fast we couldn't learn it. I think the real…

That sounds like a personification of AI. Humans form societies because we’re social animals who can leverage each other’s skills and time that way. We’re social animals because we’re animals. We get strange and feral alone because we’re evolved to not be alone.

None of that applies to an artificial or emergent intelligence that isn’t human. It doesn’t necessarily need others. Its version of a society might be cloning itself and then reabsorbing itself. Or not bothering with cloning and simply spending 100 billion years exploring solo. Why wouldn’t it? It’s not a mammal made of water, carbon and salt.

The idea is the Singularity isn’t just that AIs will be far beyond us. It’s that they’ll be like nothing we can guess at or use analogies for.

It’s safe to say there are some things in the universe that mammal brains simply can’t perceive, understand, predict, or accept.

Re: Why AI is harder than we think

#68

As a student of philosophy and a former middle school teacher, my experience leads me to think that if we could make AI, it would only manifest in a "society" of AI that are all growing and adapting together. They would communicate with each other at speeds so fast that communication with them would be almost impossible. Also, they'd have language that would be changing so fast we couldn't learn it. I think the real…

I agree. I think consciousness is also a social phenomenon (can you think of a single thought that doesn't have a social aspect?)

Re: Why AI is harder than we think

#69
Whatever AI is or will be it won't be written by us. Architectures designed by deep learning methods are often better and simpler than designed by humans. We just lack the tools to run the search.

I think that AI is a function. Give the person 2 similar inputs and the output will be often similar. I have situations when I am presented with the same problem one month apart and my answer is exactly the same.

Re: Why AI is harder than we think

#70
I just read this over lunch, good read.

Made me think of the AAAI conference in 1982 when we all went home with bumper stickers saying "AI: It's For Real".

I agree with most of Melanie's points. AI is so very much more than deep learning. We need better metrics for measuring progress towards real AI, common sense knowledge, etc.

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