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The Artificial Intelligentsia

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Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#71

Post by pron »

beefield wrote: post #64
pron wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He doesn't present an honest understanding of his own field, or the field of neuroscience, or the ongoing developments in the technology surrounding his own business, or its implications. Yes, but I don't think you are, either. The fact is that chess and Go abilities aside, we are probably not even close to insect-level intelligence, and we don't have a clear path of getting there soon -- let-alone anything human-l…

> we are probably not even close to insect-level intelligence I think the problem is that we do not have a slightest clue what is (even insect-level) intelligence (or consciousness, which is often mixed up in the discussion).

That's right. Some have tried describing intelligence as a general problem-solving skills, but this is clearly false. Humans are terrible at finding even approximate solutions to NP-hard problems, which are certainly general and very common. It seems like intelligence is an ability to solve many problems that humans and animals face, but no one has characterized it more precisely, AFIK.

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#72

Post by ghostcluster »

sgt101 wrote: post #18
dtornabene wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the tone is pretty standard baffler style. its meant precisely as a provocation, thats their whole thing. Its also an openly leftwing publication fwiw. Personally I find it way more refreshing and honest, then, say, the NYT op ed pages, in terms of being honest about why they take the subjects they do and why they present them in the way they do.

I enjoyed it and I think that it is helpful in the sense of calling "naked man" at the emperor. It doesn't do any harm at all for the AI community or startup community to look at itself and think hard about what it's doing and saying. This time round there will be no million fold increase in compute power to bail everyone out!

If you want to rise to an 'empereor has no clothes' caliber piece, it would help to demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the fields you're criticizing, and not arrogantly cite bad science essays, and not ignore the actual state of the art techniques in that domain.

You need to present the best arguments from the side you want to critique and then prssent a case why you think they are wrong. Calling people names and avoiding difficult challenges to your thesis is not the way to do it.

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#73

Post by ghostcluster »

sgt101 wrote: post #51
skybrian wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not computable" is itself a strong claim that's never been proven. What is true is that nobody has done it yet. The process is a mystery in the sense that it's not understood, which means that we don't know if it's computable or not.

The argument at the moment seems to be "define a problem that a computer can't do that a human brain can"... "I can't because expressing that problem is beyond the machinery I have developed for cognition, and it may always be". What is certain is that there are uncomputable problems, but are any of the problems that humans solve in order to speak, act, socialise uncomputable? Some people think that because they are…

> Some people think that because they are solved within the physical universe then they must be computable but that implies that the physical universe can be simulated

If you believe the brain exists in the physical universe, that means you can build a physical system that also solves the same problems.

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#74

Post by not_a_moth »

This startup's existence and failure and is yet another symptom of how we grossly overestimate what AI can do. If the task isn't simple, repetitive, or clearly defined, unlike the real world, it's probably not going to succeed. Are there any AI startups that are an anti pattern here?

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#75

Post by rdiddly »

The point being made is: Technology without vision is dehumanizing. This is widely known and is, for example, the reason good schools make undergrad engineering students take at least a few humanities classes before they leave.

Technology without vision is dehumanizing - it happened with Penn Station, where narrow quantitative and engineering goals displaced the broader human ones and led to the widely-hated station that's there now, which was excavated by people who were called hogs, and which makes passengers feel like rats. The loss is especially acute there, since everybody knows what the old station was like ( https://duckduckgo.com/?q=old+penn+station&kp=-2&iax=images&... ). It was an edifice comparable to the great gares and bahnhöfe of Europe (or to Grand Central which for some reason we decided to keep), a monument to national power, industrial wealth, and the technologies of the time, but also a space that evoked something a little more noble in the human spirit somehow.

The writer is also drawing a parallel with the dehumanizing effect of the particular startup he worked for. The analysts are the hogs, he's the rat, his own perceived loss of creativity (probably a bit exaggerated... aahhh youth) is the dehumanization part, and the absentee CEO is the lack of vision. (If a CEO has one function, it's to provide vision. And in second place, not far behind, is to establish company culture.)

Arguably, placing technical/quantitative goals above more humanistic ones is what an organization like Nazi Germany was all about. But obviously it's way more complicated than that, and I don't intend to address it further.

I would point you toward Dmitri Orlov's concept of a Technosphere. Analogous to the "biosphere" it models human technology as a quasi-intelligent entity that is global in scope.

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Shrinking-Technosphere-Technologies-A...

Excerpt (not much exposition but you'll get the point): https://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-technospheratu-hy...

Everybody here are the ones who most need to hear this message. Some will doubtless resist the criticism of ML/datasci with the fervor of someone whose long-held religious belief is challenged for the first time. But you needed that. Feel free to prove the critiques wrong, by the way... that's kind of the whole point. Prove them wrong with broad projects that actually benefit humanity instead of being a mess of unintended consequences and unimpressive bullshit.

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#76

Post by ilkan »

yourapostasy wrote: post #16
ghostcluster wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't present an honest understanding of his own field, or the field of neuroscience, or the ongoing developments in the technology surrounding his own business, or its implications. Even without extrapolating from the pattern recognition tools we have today, whole classes and ranges of jobs can be fully or partially eliminated. Here is what he says about the state of AI: > Even the most eye-catching successes c…

Where is the AI that can fold laundry (clothes, linen, towels)? Do laundry (sort, pre-treat, load, unload, clean lint filter)? Do dishes (clear table, scrape food into compost or trash as appropriate, separate to recycling as appropriate, load, unload, put up)? Keep a lawn (mow, edge, trim hedges, move trimmings to compost, trim trees)? Put up Legos after a 5 year old? Pick up around the house and tell you where it p…

We don't create factories around people. Reinvent fashion, kitchens and house plans to fit the machine. That's very doable. Restrict the solution space to find the answer. (Let Marketing handle the user acceptance issues)

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#77

Post by sgt101 »

ghostcluster wrote: post #73
sgt101 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument at the moment seems to be "define a problem that a computer can't do that a human brain can"... "I can't because expressing that problem is beyond the machinery I have developed for cognition, and it may always be". What is certain is that there are uncomputable problems, but are any of the problems that humans solve in order to speak, act, socialise uncomputable? Some people think that because they are…

> Some people think that because they are solved within the physical universe then they must be computable but that implies that the physical universe can be simulated If you believe the brain exists in the physical universe, that means you can build a physical system that also solves the same problems.

Yes : but...

- "It" wouldn't be a "computer"

- you / someone would have to be able to understand it, which might be impossible (for a human)

- you would have to be able to construct it, which might be very very technically hard

but yes (ish)

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#78

Post by graycat »

untangle wrote: post #66
graycat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From all I've been able to see, that statement "... judge the merit of a new idea in AI according to the perceived intelligence of its developers." about information technology VCs and AI is just totally wrong: I don't believe VCs do that. Why? Generally, from 50,000 feet up, it's too far from the norms of the accounting, banking, and investing communities respected by the limited partners of the VCs. Uh, the limited…

I think that you are over-generalizing. VCs use a number of disparate investment theses, including gut feel and betting-the-team in a "hot" (trendy?) space. Another dynamic is funding a team that previously produced a big win for the VC firm (as appears to be the case here). And do you have a reference for the "fantastically high batting average" of US DoD research? Are you familiar with the SBIR program, for example…

> VCs use a number of disparate investment theses

To be more clear, I believe that such other issues, often mentioned, some on the Web sites of VCs, are nearly all just smoke to hide what I listed as the main issues. In particular, of course, I was pushing back against the statement I quoted from the OP -- their statement was much worse than mine!

But here on HN, I warn entrepreneurs who have already sent 100+ e-mail pitch decks to VCs: I gave my best guess on really how VCs select deals.

Batting average reference? I'm not considering the SBIR program at all. E.g., GPS, coding theory, e.g., as part of radar, lots more in high end radar, e.g., phased arrays, Keyhole (a Hubble, before Hubble, but aimed at the earth), the SR-71, the F-117 stealth, the SOSUS nets and adaptive beam forming sonar, some of ABMs, a huge range of parts of the SSBNs, high bypass turbo fan engines, the nuclear power reactors on the submarines and air craft carriers of the US Navy, and much more were not SBIR projects. I am drawing from early in my career in applied math and computing for problems of US national security within 100 miles of the Washington Monument and comparing with what I've seen in VC work.

The Navy's work on rail guns looks darned promising.

For DARPA, yes, they flop a lot, on their batting average, much more than the rest of DoD, but DARPA also has some spectacular wins. E.g., of course, TCP/IP. And they fooled me on their autonomous vehicle "challenge": While I believe that autonomous vehicles are a long way from being ready for real roads with real traffic, I can believe that so far already the DoD has gotten some good progress for some cases of logistics. E.g., one of the issues in Gulf War I was truck drivers. There an issue was that a lot of the drivers for the US were women, and the Saudis didn't like women driving vehicles. So, there was a trick, a deal: The US and the Saudis agreed that when the women were in uniform and driving US military vehicles, they were "soliders" and not women. Otherwise they were still women and could not drive!!!

Uh, the robots of Boston Dynamics are impressive, maybe still less good on legs than a cockroach, but already or well on the way to being useful for the US Army.

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#79

Post by sgt101 »

ghostcluster wrote: post #72
sgt101 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoyed it and I think that it is helpful in the sense of calling "naked man" at the emperor. It doesn't do any harm at all for the AI community or startup community to look at itself and think hard about what it's doing and saying. This time round there will be no million fold increase in compute power to bail everyone out!

If you want to rise to an 'empereor has no clothes' caliber piece, it would help to demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the fields you're criticizing, and not arrogantly cite bad science essays, and not ignore the actual state of the art techniques in that domain. You need to present the best arguments from the side you want to critique and then prssent a case why you think they are wrong. Calling people nam…

Well - I'm not so sure, you're setting a very high bar which makes it difficult for people with a different background to make points (badly in your view, but pretty well in mine) which the community needs to hear.

This isn't a Ph.D. exam, this isn't a thesis - it's an outsider calling BS. I'm not impressed by the counter arguments advanced so far. Let's be honest, Alpha Go and Alpha Go Zero are surprises in that they have shown that Go isn't as astonishingly difficult for approximate search - which everyone thought it was - but until we see the real world applications it's all of intellectual interest.. which is the point of the article.

There are a lot of folks who I respect making claims similar to the company that is featured in the piece, I'm really disappointed by that because everthing that we know about learnability is ignored with the cry "we've got deep networks now". We've don't know why dnn's generalise as well as they do but shouldn't, but it's no excuse to just abandon our sanity and go out and bet large amounts of other people's money on them doing things that they can't.

This money, btw, should be spent on hospitals and roads, not on providing near 7 figures for these people.

Re: The Artificial Intelligentsia

#80

Post by JacobiX »

pron wrote: post #70
JacobiX wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hardware progress is slowing down quickly) I would be interested to know more about this. I haven't heard yet that the progress of GPUs cores for example is declining quickly ...

The problem is Amdahl's law. You can only parallelize so much. While the brain is certainly extremely parallelized, neural nets do not employ the same algorithms as the brain, and so, unless we find algorithms that are more amenable to parallelization, Amdahl's law is going to get us.

Most modern neural networks implementations are parallelized. And that is why we can run them extremely well on the GPU. For example Volta GPUs delivers 5X increase in deep learning training compared to prior generation NVIDIA Pascal architecture. This is why I was asking for clarification about the hardware claims.
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