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Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

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Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#91

It annoyed me at first but I don't think it matters. The technical people involved have since moved on to using AGI as the term for "actual AI" for years now.

That presumes technical people believe in AGI. I would think more ML researchers don't so just avoid the term "AI".

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#92
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundamentally different I would say. I understand enough about the brain to say that talking about any kind of machine intelligence in relation to brains, is comparing apples and oranges. Its not computing things in any way analogous to how a computer works. Why would it be? Of course, computers might be able to imitate some things and far exceed some things that our brains do. That's different though.

I guess when we understand how the brain works, we can determine if your statements are true.

I get that you comment is tongue in cheek, but your brain doesn’t have a clock signal. Easily verifiable and we could easily detect it if it did. Thus, computers are fundamentally different than brains. Also, computers have nearly perfect recall and perform arithmetic much better than humans. So both statements of GP are true.

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#93

> “People are getting confused about the meaning of AI in discussions of technology trends—that there is some kind of intelligent thought in computers that is responsible for the progress and which is competing with humans,” he says. “We don’t have that, but people are talking as if we do.” How much more am I as a human really than the machine learning algorithms are?

How much more of a human are you than a radio? A computer?

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#94
post #15

"Computers have not become intelligent per se, but they have provided capabilities that augment human intelligence, he writes. Moreover, they have excelled at low-level pattern-recognition capabilities that could be performed in principle by humans but at great cost. " It's odd how under-appreciated this is. There is no "intelligence" here as we know it, not even a hint. There are algorithms operating on data for ver…

Is DNA intelligent? What about virus? Ants? Dolphins? A corporation?

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#95

What is considered "AI" changes over time. At any point in history, if a machine appears to do a task that only a human brain used to be able to do, then that's considered "AI". So in the mid 1900s a calculator that is able to do arithmetic was considered "AI", and in the late 1900s chess playing machines were considered "AI". Today those things are not considered "AI". What is considered "AI" today will not be consi…

>So in the mid 1900s a calculator that is able to do arithmetic was considered "AI"

Is this true? The citation you link doesn't seem to clearly state that.

I see the linked page says:

>A simple electronic calculator performs calculations much faster than the human brain, and almost never makes a mistake.[4] Is a calculator intelligent?

But I don't see where it says anyone in the mid 1900s thought a calculator was AI.

I am no historian, but I can think of numerous examples of AI in science fiction throughout the 1900s and perhaps earlier. Metropolis, Rossum's Universal Robots, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Heck, one could probably even draw the line all the way back to Frankenstein.

Maybe the lower bound for what gets called AI to sell stuff has changed over time, but it seems like there's been a pretty clear and consistent (if poorly defined) goal of human-like intelligence.

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#96
post #14

Reminds me when X-rays first were discovered, everyone claimed their product contained them, including X-ray headache tablets, golf balls, stove polish, razor blades. https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/full/10.1148/rg.242035157 for some fun pictures. I won't be surprised when AI toothbrushes come out.

It's the new "nano-."

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#97

When machine learning was a buzz word then companies started using it to describe almost everything they do. Recently I have also noticed that more companies (and PMs) are using AI in its place, at least in their marketing speak. Often the AI or machine learning that is being sold to their customers (or if it’s a startup, to their investors) is in fact a team or a group of teams creating static rules. If it is image…

I interviewed with one of these startup with these .ai domains. I was super impressed that somehow they could decode human speech over a phone into orders. Until I asked them about that and they had a call center farm that does all that. And a "prototype" of an AI that doesn't work at all lol

Sounds like they're building an annotated dataset, whilst at the same time claiming the space and testing market fit / appetance.

Sure, the risk is that they can't make it work in the medium term. But without knowing much about the complexity of the orders / domain, that doesn't sound like a huge risk, given the current SoTA

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#98
post #68
post #15

"Computers have not become intelligent per se, but they have provided capabilities that augment human intelligence, he writes. Moreover, they have excelled at low-level pattern-recognition capabilities that could be performed in principle by humans but at great cost. " It's odd how under-appreciated this is. There is no "intelligence" here as we know it, not even a hint. There are algorithms operating on data for ver…

> There is no "intelligence" here as we know it, not even a hint. There are algorithms operating on data for very prescribed use cases. I agree with your general point, but if you break it down, our brains a nothing "intelligent" either. It's just a network of neurons searching for patterns in the sensor input. Sure, it can reconfigure itself, but from a really abstract perspective it's nothing more than a ultra-scal…

> it's nothing more than a ultra-scaled neural network as we currently use them

You state this as if it is an undisputed/obvious fact, but it isn't.

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#99

I really liked the definition of AI (back in 2015) by Seth Godin - a marketer! > One common insightful definition of AI: Artificial Intelligence is everything a computer can't do yet. As soon as it can, we call it obvious. If the term is used like that it does make sense to me. https://seths.blog/2015/04/the-noise-in-our-head-and-artific...

> Seth Godin - a marketer!

Like most clever things marketers do, that quote is borrowed nearly verbatim from a much older quote without reference.

"AI is whatever hasn't been done yet."

From Douglas Hofstadter quoting Larry Tesler in 1980

Anyone who has studied AI and its history at all knows that similar quotes to Godin have been going on since the 70s an even that quote from Tesler.

There's an entire wikipedia article on the AI effect[0] if you want to dive deeper.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect

Re: Stop Calling Everything AI, Machine-Learning Pioneer Says

#100

> “People are getting confused about the meaning of AI in discussions of technology trends—that there is some kind of intelligent thought in computers that is responsible for the progress and which is competing with humans,” he says. “We don’t have that, but people are talking as if we do.” How much more am I as a human really than the machine learning algorithms are?

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