What does it mean for a machine to “understand”? • Hacker News Board

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#71

Post by mellosouls » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 1:07 PM UTC

sgt101 wrote: post #64

mellosouls wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is with the hype which leads many to believe that we are close to building systems which can understand us. The problem with the hype is that we are nowhere close to building systems that understand anything . All we've built are calculators on steroids so far.

Worse, we've build a conceptualisation of these phenomena that renders us as calculators on steroids! I don't think it's feasible to account for or describe anything more with the ideas we have so far.

Yes, and not helped by the optimistic appropriation of words like "intelligence" and "learning" to describe the main lines of research.

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#72

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 1:17 PM UTC

cjfd wrote: post #45

On the one hand the quote by Edsger Dijkstra comes to mind. "The question of whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim." We are hardwired to attribute great significance to what happens both in our own head and that of other people. On the other hand, machines still perform actions that one could call 'stupid'. When alphago was losing in the fourth match against Le…

> When alphago was losing in the fourth match against Lee Sedol it would play 'stupid' moves. These were, for instance, trivial threads that any somewhat accomplished amateur go player would recognize in an instant and answer correctly.

I think this behavior is less 'stupid' than it appears. When human beings play Go, the points matter even to the loser, and everyone goes home when it is over. There is life outside of Go. To Alpha Go, Go is it's entire universe. Part of the way it was trained was competing against other instances of itself, a sort of Thunderdome where the loser doesn't get to continue existing, and doesn't contribute to future generations. To Alpha Go, defeat is death. The behavior we observe when losing is nigh-certain has a human equivalent, we call it desperation. Alpha Go is trying moves that can only possibly work if the opponent makes a catastrophic blunder, which is incredibly unlikely, but it's the only shot it has.

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#73

Post by gus_massa » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 2:21 PM UTC

stared wrote: post #57

> Speaking as a psychologist, I’m flabbergasted by claims that the decisions of algorithms are opaque while the decisions of people are transparent. I’ve spent half my life at it and I still have limited success understanding human decisions. - Jean-François Bonnefon’s tweet (as quoted in https://p.migdal.pl/2019/07/15/human-machine-learning-motiva... )

The advantage of humans is that we have a building bullshit generator.

If someone ask why you like ice-cream, you can tell a nice story about the hot summers during your childhood, but the reality is that sugar and fat are very useful.

If a the autopilot of a Tesla hit someone, the error report is "Fatal error 0xDEADBEEF: coefficient 742 > 812".

If a person hit someone the explanation is "It was dark and near a curve. I was texting that is totally safe. I got distracted by reindeer nearby. And I snoozed and was thinking about reaching a handkerchief".

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#74

Post by goatlover » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 2:38 PM UTC

msla wrote: post #56

goatlover wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have color, sound, taste experiences? Do you experience pain? Do you dream or imagine? Then you have quaila. If you don’t like the philosophical connotations of that term, then call it subjective experience.

> Do you have color, sound, taste experiences? Do you experience pain? Do you dream or imagine? I can say I do, but what reason do you have to believe me?

It's a reasonable inference given your similar biology and behavior. Doubting your subjectivity is on the level of doubting that anything exists outside my experience, or doubting that the universe existed more than five minutes ago. I can't prove those things are true, but I have no good reason to have such doubts.

Still, it remains a philosophical problem, even more so for animals or robots like Data. That's what Ned Block called The Harder Problem of Consciousness. But here I think we just have to accept that our knowledge of others and the world lacks certainty. We trust our senses and inferences to form a reasonable view of the world, but we can never be sure.

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#75

Post by gus_massa » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 2:48 PM UTC

friendlybus wrote: post #69

russdill wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you equating machine here with "sequentially programmed computer?". Because computers and neural networks specifically have gone far beyond that.

I get how ML works. I don't mean loops as a for(int i) loop, but the concept of a loop itself, a circle. A self-driven car with ML decision making is still bounded by some rules we will be forced to compromise on. Some people at MIT are focusing on deaths per miles driven as a safety metric to determine whether we can replace humans with ai cars and when that might happen. But given the constraints of ML/ai you will…

> A self-driven car with ML decision making is still bounded by some rules we will be forced to compromise on.

The atom in the molecules in the neurons of your brain are bounded by the laws of Physics. They can't disobey them, they are as free as the coefficient of the ML tables.

> If all the humans left the planet, the car wouldn't be described as understanding the world, it'll be seen as a generic device sitting in a garage somewhere waiting for orders from a human.

Unless some car have setup an alarm to go to pick you from work at 5pm, you are not there but it goes anyway. After some time (1 hour?) it gives up and return home to get charged and wait for the next day. The waiting time depend on the weather (if it is cold or rainy) and the battery charge and perhaps the congestion of the roads.

Once per year they go to the robot-mechanic for the anual service. They also go when a tire or something get broken. They can call the autonomous crane in case it is needed. During the repairing time, they call a replacement and send all your info and schedule, so you would not miss your appointments (in case you were still there).

The car also negotiates automatically the insurance with the company web service, and pays the registration fees. Your autonomous house pays the electricity bills. Until your bank account is empty.

If you have some money in a good investment found this can last for a long time, until your car is too old and decides to retire and buys a replacement.

We are still very far from this scenario, but it is not so difficult to imagine that a bunch of small features compose nicely.

Somewhat related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachikō

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#76

Post by avmich » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

The proposal in the article is to define "understanding" and work towards testable satisfaction of the definition.

This sounds a bit like a studying for a test taking. What if we made a definition and then worked successfully to reach the state when, according to this definition, the system "understands". Can we expect to be satisfied with the result in general, outside of the definition?

The definition of understanding could be tricky, as history suggests. Other than "to understand is to translate into a form which is suitable for some use", there could be many definitions. Article itself brings examples of chess playing or truck driving which were considered good indicators, yet failed to satisfy us in some ways.

Maybe we should just keep redefining "understanding" as good as we can today, and changing it if needed, and work trying to create a system "good", not necessarily "passing the test"?

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#77

Post by mjburgess » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #51

mjburgess wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then animals do not understand. You've rigged this up to operationalize it for current digital machines. "Understanding", "Intelligence", etc. is a feature of animals in their environment. We need to begin there; and that is what we are talking about. We "understand" how to drive as a dog "understands" how to play fetch. Understanding is not ever going to be a trivial rule that some digital system may instantiate. It…

> Then animals do not understand. I am agnostic regarding that, as I don't think there is any evidence that they do not attempt to build models that are consistent representations of reality. I am assuming, based on my own experience, they also have this "internal lightbulb" going on when they think they have built the correct model. But whether they are actually cognizant of it (self-aware), I have no idea. (I guess…

I'm not even talking about self-awareness. I'd be happy to raise the bar to that level when (, if) we have mice-level AI.

However the bar is way below that at the moment, and masquerading as "intelligence".

Current machine learning (ie., mere statistical) approaches to AI, that do not explicitly aim to dynamically model environments/goals/behaviour/etc., aren't even meeting an extremely minimal notion of intelligence.

We have at the moment "smart rocks". Electrical current "tumbles down" a "digital mountain" and we all it's path "smart" because it has useful outcomes. Equally, a rock rolling down a hill finds an optimal path -- it aint "smart".

We should look at what the rock does when you start adpating its environment: eg., create a little dip in the mountain side; it gets trapped. A mouse doesnt get trapped in a dip, it continues to explore -- why?

Because animal behaviour is inherently exploratory of the enviornment. A mouse doesnt "solve" a maze, it intelligently navigates it -- so that when unexpected change occurs, it isn't "broken".

At the moment, all AI systems radically break when such changes occur -- because they are statistically trained on mere data. They arent dynamically model building. They aren't in an environment. They're just rocks rolling down a hill.

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#78

Post by goto11 » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

_xnmw wrote: post #42

goto11 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately you have no way of determining if a machine or animal have this particular experience qualia. You cant even determine of other people beside yourself have it, which gives rise to solipsism. It like saying that red-headed people doesn't have a soul - there is no way to disprove that assertion.

The point is not whether we can prove that machines have such an experience. The point is, most people will agree that it “seems” like machines don’t have feelings, which is itself interesting because it suggests that our intuitive definition of “understanding” is not limited to a logical set of inputs and outputs. It is a proof that when we say “he understands”, we are referring to something more than a logical answ…

In puppet theater good puppeteers make the figures look like they think and feel very convincingly, even though we know they are just made out of wood. I'm sure the same can be achieved with robots.

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#79

Post by visarga » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

goatlover wrote: post #25

visarga wrote: post #20

Does AlphaGo 'understand' go? I think the key ingredient is 'being in the game', that means, having a body, being in an environment with a purpose. Humans are by default playing this game called 'life', we have to understand otherwise we perish, or our genes perish. It's not about symbolic vs connectionist, or qualia, or self consciousness. It's about being in the world, acting and observing the effects of actions, a…

It certainly doesn’t understand Go as a board game humans invented as a stimulating mental exercise that became competitive enough to see whether human programmers could come up with a program that could beat any human. And whatever cultural history went along with playing Go. Certainly chess playing has been used as an analogy in the west for many activities involving strategy. This is something no computer currentl…

It might not understand the socio-cultural context of the game, but it understands strategy better than us.

Re: What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?

#80

Post by visarga » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

julvo wrote: post #33

visarga wrote: post #20

Does AlphaGo 'understand' go? I think the key ingredient is 'being in the game', that means, having a body, being in an environment with a purpose. Humans are by default playing this game called 'life', we have to understand otherwise we perish, or our genes perish. It's not about symbolic vs connectionist, or qualia, or self consciousness. It's about being in the world, acting and observing the effects of actions, a…

If the Agent would 'understand' Go, we'd expect it to adapt to a round board easily. Humans probably would. (argument from Gary Marcus)

Even a simple scaling down of the board from 19x19 to 9x9 has a huge effect on strategy. A circular board would probably produce something that doesn't look like Go and would confuse trained humans as well.