Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 239 posts

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#81

Post by mc32 »

benchaney wrote: post #77
mc32 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could have had Al Gore, but for Floridians, I mean the guy created the information superhighway --that's up there with the Tim Berners-Lee kind of stratum. On the other hand, had he won, Obama would not have become president because we would not have had to "react" to the Bush years.

"We could have had Al Gore, but for Floridians, I mean the guy created the information superhighway --that's up there with the Tim Berners-Lee kind of stratum." Please tell me this is a joke.

It is, I thought it would be evident. Never the less, he wasn't a tech slouch, specially for a politician [and for the time he advanced his beliefs in tech]. To wit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_techno...

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#82

Post by eksemplar »

cjbprime wrote: post #5

> OBAMA: The way I’ve been thinking about the regulatory structure as AI emerges is that, early in a technology, a thousand flowers should bloom. I gotta say, I thought he'd be more familiar with that metaphor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign

The metaphor seems to fit perfectly with what he wanted to say.

First you give people the liberty to explore and then you crush most of them with thousands of pages of legislation.

A little dark perhaps, but it fits.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#84

Post by robotresearcher »

imh wrote: post #21
msvan wrote: post #16

What does Hacker News think about AI? Is it real this time, or are we in for another winter? I'm seeing a lot of grand claims, and it certainly seems like there are plenty of applications, but I'm still not totally convinced that it will turn the entire economy upside down. Given the enormous amount of press, tweets, blog posts, conferences, degree programs, seminars and interviews popping up it seems like there has…

Like they say in the article, there's general AI (think sci-fi computers with minds) and specialized AI (think good old fashioned statistical models, but applied to more things and super effective). Specialized AI (and I hate calling it AI) is coming along really quickly. We're getting better at it in existing fields and learning to apply it to new fields. More than anything, we just have so much data on everything n…

This is not a problem because there is no such thing as generalized AI. There's just specialized AI for lots of things added together. Keep getting better at things and after a while you are good at lots of things, so appear to be general to an observer (until they see you outside your domain of expertise).

This theory compactly explains why no one knows how to do general AI.

I don't believe there is a special sauce waiting to be discovered.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#85

Post by enraged_camel »

random_upvoter wrote: post #80
pashariger wrote: post #62

I don't know about you, but I'm very thankful that we have a president that can understand and intelligently talk about these issues (rather than thinking it's all just black magic).

Waffling vaguely about grand ideas has always been Obama's greatest skill. It's what got him in the White House in the first place.

He has to "waffle vaguely" about grand ideas when addressing the whole nation because going into details would alienate most of his audience.

This doesn't mean he doesn't know what he is talking about, as you seem to be implying (I don't want to read too much into your comment).

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#86

Post by dionidium »

mc32 wrote: post #81
benchaney wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We could have had Al Gore, but for Floridians, I mean the guy created the information superhighway --that's up there with the Tim Berners-Lee kind of stratum." Please tell me this is a joke.

It is, I thought it would be evident. Never the less, he wasn't a tech slouch, specially for a politician [and for the time he advanced his beliefs in tech]. To wit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_techno...

This is covered on that Wikipedia page, but for those maybe too young to remember, Al Gore's supposed claim to have invented the internet was widely joked about in the late 90s. From the article:

"After this interview, Gore became the subject of controversy and ridicule when his statement "I took the initiative in creating the Internet"[53] was widely quoted out of context. It was often misquoted by comedians and figures in American popular media who framed this statement as a claim that Gore believed he had personally invented the Internet.[54] Gore's actual words, however, were widely reaffirmed by notable Internet pioneers, such as Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, who stated, "No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President.""

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#87

Post by inimino »

gefh wrote: post #38

I wish people would stop bringing up the trolley problem as somehow relevant to self driving cars. In any situation,a car is going to brake as hard as possible while maintaining control, and only serve if there's no way to stop and a clear space. Other than that, a good enough interview that I can't see taking place again next presidential term.

The trolley problem is a simplification of a difficult ethical question. I wish people would stop dismissing it as though whatever simple answer they come up with makes the problem go away. In many situations, a car is going to have to choose between alternatives that each carry different risks. There simply are no universally acceptable simple rules to follow in such cases.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#88

Post by ktRolster »

robotresearcher wrote: post #84
imh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like they say in the article, there's general AI (think sci-fi computers with minds) and specialized AI (think good old fashioned statistical models, but applied to more things and super effective). Specialized AI (and I hate calling it AI) is coming along really quickly. We're getting better at it in existing fields and learning to apply it to new fields. More than anything, we just have so much data on everything n…

This is not a problem because there is no such thing as generalized AI. There's just specialized AI for lots of things added together. Keep getting better at things and after a while you are good at lots of things, so appear to be general to an observer (until they see you outside your domain of expertise). This theory compactly explains why no one knows how to do general AI. I don't believe there is a special sauce…

Most of the 'specialized' AI techniques we have aren't even Turing complete.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#89

Post by imh »

jpfed wrote: post #58
imh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specialized AI is all about X,Y pairs. Given X, predict Y. There are other problems it's good at too, like given X, choose a Y to optimize Z, but at it's core it's largely the same. On the fringes, you have stuff about exploration, which is AWESOME, but still pretty niche. At least 99% of the "AI" you hear about is of the X,Y variety. More to your point, if we can make generalized AI from "given X, predict Y," then n…

>Then you can get interesting and philosophical about it, where you might even say that emulating intelligence and intelligence are different. This would be a very surprising result. For example, if I can make a TSP-solver-emulator... I have a TSP solver.

I guess I should have been more specific. I meant sorta convincingly emulating intelligence versus fully meeting some other definition. Is a turing test enough?

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#90

Post by ars »

robotresearcher wrote: post #84
imh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like they say in the article, there's general AI (think sci-fi computers with minds) and specialized AI (think good old fashioned statistical models, but applied to more things and super effective). Specialized AI (and I hate calling it AI) is coming along really quickly. We're getting better at it in existing fields and learning to apply it to new fields. More than anything, we just have so much data on everything n…

This is not a problem because there is no such thing as generalized AI. There's just specialized AI for lots of things added together. Keep getting better at things and after a while you are good at lots of things, so appear to be general to an observer (until they see you outside your domain of expertise). This theory compactly explains why no one knows how to do general AI. I don't believe there is a special sauce…

That's not what General AI is though (at least how I define it), real AI would have to be able to invent new things, not just be good at existing things.

Many humans go their whole lives without doing that, so I'm aware it's a high bar. But it's a bar that some humans do pass, and if AI is to be more than just a helpful gimmick, it'll have to do that as well, since I'd like to believe all humans have that potential, even if not always realized.

(Obviously a helpful gimmick still does have value.)

Post reply on HN