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AI Update, Late 2019

blog.piekniewski.info

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Re: AI Update, Late 2019

#2
Interesting read, I'm glad to see others are beginning to call the bluff on the AI hype machine. The summary is excellent:

> The whole field of AI resembles a giant collective of wizards of Oz. A lot of effort is put in to convincing gullible public that AI is magic, where in fact it is really just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. The wizards use certain magical language, avoiding carefully to say anything that would indicate their stuff is not magic. I bet many of these wizards in their narcissistic psyche do indeed believe wholeheartedly they have magical powers...

Re: AI Update, Late 2019

#4
post #2

Interesting read, I'm glad to see others are beginning to call the bluff on the AI hype machine. The summary is excellent: > The whole field of AI resembles a giant collective of wizards of Oz. A lot of effort is put in to convincing gullible public that AI is magic, where in fact it is really just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. The wizards use certain magical language, avoiding carefully to say anything that would in…

Agreed. I much prefer we would call it statistical intelligence.

Although artificial intelligence is actually spot on. We just understand the wrong side of the ambiguity. Its not really intelligence that we have reproduced artificially - since it isn’t intelligence - but a fake intelligence, the artificial kind. We’ve created the artifice of intelligence, through statistics, but not intelligence.

People knew long before newton that an apple would drop to the ground when released. Statistical experience has allowed us to have knowledge of this very early on. But it took newton to explain what was going on, so that instead of predicting through experience, he could predict by reason and logic. Thus saving him many lives of accumulating experience to make his next prediction ever more precise.

"Statistical intelligence" allow us to do a bunch of neat things though. Many problems are best approached statistically (because noise, lack of formal understanding etc), and these some of these methods achieve impressive results in a wide range of situations.

Re: AI Update, Late 2019

#5
post #2

Interesting read, I'm glad to see others are beginning to call the bluff on the AI hype machine. The summary is excellent: > The whole field of AI resembles a giant collective of wizards of Oz. A lot of effort is put in to convincing gullible public that AI is magic, where in fact it is really just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. The wizards use certain magical language, avoiding carefully to say anything that would in…

But then the guy says 'oh yeah but I'm using the stuff that works'

Re: AI Update, Late 2019

#6
>John Carmack is going to take a shot at AI. Whatever he accomplishes in that field I hope it will be equally as entertaining as Quake and equally as smart as the fast inverse square root algorithm.

John Carmack did not invent the fast inverse square root algorithm. (I'm still rooting for him, though!)

Re: AI Update, Late 2019

#7
post #4
post #2

Interesting read, I'm glad to see others are beginning to call the bluff on the AI hype machine. The summary is excellent: > The whole field of AI resembles a giant collective of wizards of Oz. A lot of effort is put in to convincing gullible public that AI is magic, where in fact it is really just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. The wizards use certain magical language, avoiding carefully to say anything that would in…

Agreed. I much prefer we would call it statistical intelligence. Although artificial intelligence is actually spot on. We just understand the wrong side of the ambiguity. Its not really intelligence that we have reproduced artificially - since it isn’t intelligence - but a fake intelligence, the artificial kind. We’ve created the artifice of intelligence, through statistics, but not intelligence. People knew long bef…

The use of the word "intelligence" overall is problematic. To most people, "intelligence" is human inductive reasoning. We see "intelligent" creatures in mass media and books--creatures that act just like humans except aren't biological. We think of Commander Data from Star Trek. Proponents of AI know most people interpret the term that way and gladly use the term as a way of implying the same magic we see in media.

Re: AI Update, Late 2019

#9
A refreshing view of AI, this excerpt I particulary enjoyed:

> I mentioned in my previous half-year update, Open AI came up with a transformer based language model called GPT-2 and refused to release the full version fearing horrible consequence that may have to the future of humanity. Well, it did not take long before some dude - Aaron Gokaslan - managed to replicate the full model and released it in the name of science. Obviously the world did not implode, as the model is just a yet another gibberish manufacturing machine that understands nothing of what it generates. Gary Marcus in his crusade against AI hubris came down on GPT-2 to show just how pathetic it is. Nevertheless all those events eventually forced Open AI to release their own original model, and much to nobody's surprise, the world did not implode on that day either.

Re: AI Update, Late 2019

#10
Sure there is a lot of hype in AI/ML right now, but this post reads like there is an axe to grind with all ML. it ignores true progress made in a lot of areas and denigrates the whole field.

to me it did not read like an objective post, but more like just a "all AI is bullshit" style blog post

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