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Maybe I'm being too contrarian but I still think this new AI thing (with Google et al. going down in the rabbit hole) is just the same as before: a dead-end. T

by gbog 11y ago

Maybe I'm being too contrarian but I still think this new AI thing (with Google et al. going down in the rabbit hole) is just the same as before: a dead-end. The good example is how we invented planes. Or, precisely, how we failed at making flying machines for very long. We did try very hard to mimic birds, and their flapping wings. Study birds did certainly help with problems of weight, for example, but the main blocker was the flapping wings. Plane do not ressemble birds, not at all. For a long time we tried to solve the wrong problem (how to flap wings) and lost sight of the real problem (a flying machine). I feel (but can't prove) that it will be the same with robots, and therefore AI. Trying to mimic human may help incidentally but it is going to fail repeatedly. What do we want? Make some scifi become real? No, we just want helpful machines. To be helpful, they need to react fast to orders, but do they need to understand our language? They need to see and hear and smell what we can't easily see, hear or smell, so a blind robot plugged to a network of cameras would be more helpful than a two-eyed face-shaped piece of plastique. They need to store and crunch huge datasets that our brains are not confortable with, but do they need to understand our emotions or "feel" them? To me, the robot and AI of the near future would look like a flying phone, or an implant in the ear, or a ring on the finger, it will not look like the poor google-bullied guybot that was on the memes recently.

dr_zoidberg 11y ago
While I'm reluctant to say these paths are a "dead end", this reminded me of an interview to Yann LeCun[0] from a while ago. I think you might want to read it, he sort of shared your view. However, deep neural networks are an extremely valuable and resourceful tool, when used against the real set of problems they solve. Basically, what I think is happening with the NY Times (and press in general) regarding AI is one of the first questions that he is asked. "Your editor is not gonna like that" -- press goes for flashy and shiny announcements that are really far from what is really happening. And because marketing and funding, some researchers back that kind of announcements and say "Yeah! We've built a robot that smiles!". I'm not saying androids and robotics are not valuable research, I'm saying that people missinterpret and mistake many things for AI and expect a poet robot that can talk like Shakespear, and mean and feel the emotional component of its words. Not gonna happen soon. [0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/facebook-ai-director-yann-lecun-on-deep-learning http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intel...
grondilu 11y ago
> What do we want? Make some scifi become real? No, we just want helpful machines. I think you underestimate the desire for mankind to create something that resembles itself. It's a very old myth, and IIRC some traces of it can be found as far away as in Greek mythology. And it can be found here and there towards modern times, from Frankenstein to Metropolis or Terminator. There's a reason why Science-Fiction is such a significant portion of modern literature and why this theme is a major part of it. It has a powerful appeal. You say we want helpful machines, but how many of the machines we create are more toys than tools? Even a machine that would be as smart as a dog would probably be extremely lucrative as it would be sold as a pet. Slightly more intelligent it would be used as a domestic helper or a companion. I would even go as far as saying that for some people, the ultimate goal of AI is to replace the human body, including the brain, by artificial counterparts that would free them from the pitfalls of a biological existence.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  > from Frankenstein to Metropolis or Terminator Rossum’s Universal Robots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.
  - adrianN 11y ago
    The earliest example I know are Golems from jewish folklore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem
    - pdkl95 11y ago
      The Golem certainly had an impact on culture. However, R.U.R. is especially interesting because it coined the word "robot". From the Wikipedia entry: In Czech, robota means forced labour of the kind that serfs had to perform on their masters' lands, and is derived from rab, meaning "slave." We aren't just creating in our own image; the creations are "slaves", intended to do work on our order. This is included in the Golem legend, which I suspect could be interpreted as an ancient desire for automation.
- 11y ago
rpgmaker 11y ago
> Maybe I'm being too contrarian but I still think this new AI thing (with Google et al. going down in the rabbit hole) is just the same as before: a dead-end. You may find this interesting: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-would-teach-machines-to-think/309529/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-...
gradys 11y ago
I'm very much with you on most of this, but to reply to this: > but do they need to understand our language? Natural language is the highest-bandwidth means of communication available to us. It's the easiest and most powerful method of conveying our intentions. That's important for any kind of technology that we want to be able to serve us. I agree that AI doesn't need to be embodied in humanoid robots to be useful, but I think a robust understanding of our language is the ultimate user interface.
- gbog 11y ago
  Written natural language is the best for human to human communication, but not for human to robot. The best we have now is computer language. For giving orders, spoken natural language is the best for humans to humans, but for human to machines i'd say the best is the plane cockpit, or your car's interface.
  - gradys 11y ago
    I guess I should walk back what I said a little bit. Natural language is the ultimate interface for many domains. For flying a plane or doing anything else that requires continuous high dimensional input, physical interfaces are probably best. For anything that requires a level of detail approaching a computer program, a technical written or visual language is probably best. Many of the tasks we want AIs to perform are things that humans do now. We're used to communicating about them in natural language.
chriswarbo 11y ago
> What do we want? Make some scifi become real? No, we just want helpful machines. It depends. It's common to split AI research into 4 types, by asking 2 questions: 1) Do you care about the end result or the mechanism/approach being taken? 2) Do you care about mimicking humans or "doing the right thing"? Hence the 4 categories are: A) Systems that think like humans (mimicking the approach taken by humans) B) Systems that think rationally (using the "right" approach) C) Systems that act like humans (mimicking human results) D) Systems that act rationally (achieving the "right" result) For example, this breakdown appears in section 1.1 "What is AI?" in "AI A Modern Approach", which I happen to have on my desk. Whilst not perfect, identifying which of these categories some approach/research fits into can avoid a lot of well-trodden philosophical debates which can easily derail any discussion about said approach/research. In this case, you seem to be in the "act rationally" camp. That's fine, but it's unfair to dismiss the goals of other researchers who fit into other categories. For example, those trying to find out how the human mind is structured; what assistance and interventions could help disabled people; etc. In those cases, a data-crunching ear implant might be a useful commodity to have, in the same way that AI researchers probably have mobile phones, but wouldn't offer any insight into the problem.
- sgt101 11y ago
  I think the friction is because of the different views of each camp about what is important for members of the other camps to do! Like, I would put myself in c & d but I think that D people often ignore important things like noise and robustness to starting conditions and frankly run their bloody deep network 100000 times and choose the best outcome for their paper. It's really striking when someone like Lake and Tenenbaum produce a paper where they stick big sharp pins in any mithering critique that's anyone would have. Hats off and all that! But it's striking and it shouldn't be, it should be the standard.
- gbog 11y ago
  "Like human" and "rationally" and "think" and even "act" are too human to describe robots. That's anthropomorphic. Robots will be like robots, act robotically, they will compute, operate, etc. Anthropomorphism is a childish mistake when studying animals, i'd say it's even more so when studying robots.
ph0rque 11y ago
I think a good intermediate solution is a robot that is a perfect 50's housewife (minus any sexual connotations): the robot cooks, cleans, gardens, etc. I agree with you that the robot probably won't look like Rosie from the Jetsons, but probably more like the Fetch and Freight robot duo (http://fetchrobotics.com/fetchandfreight/ http://fetchrobotics.com/fetchandfreight/).
- sgt101 11y ago
  Could be expensive keeping it in gin, mogadon and Freudian analysis though?
russdill 11y ago
I'm not aware of people trying to make flying machines that flapped their wings being a main blocker to powered flight. Gliders have been in development for hundreds of years and were functioning decades before powered flight. The main blockers as I understand it were weight of the engine and the implementation of control surfaces. In fact, the first powered flight was done with a plane that mimicked the way a bird's control surfaces work.
laxatives 11y ago
Hasn't statistical learning already surpassed human expertise in a number of areas, particularly in Computer Vision and loads of classification problems?
- jjn2009 11y ago
  Assuming you are making a case for the success of modern AI then this is just a difference in the scale of the failure to live up to its promises. The winged flapping flying machine never got off the ground, while the computer vision algorithms are useful in only a small subset of applications under specific conditions (not AI in my opinion). I don't think the usefulness of such examples is a strong case that those ideas will lead us to what we really mean when we say "AI". I personally don't think we can get electrons to move fast enough across our current computer architecture to achieve human level AI, which is what google is mostly to my knowledge building their stuff on.
  - laxatives 11y ago
    What? I don't know what you're referring to about Google, but I'm under the impression most of their stuff is based on optimization problems like power iteration, which have very little to do with human level AI. In fact, I'd argue human level AI is almost irrelevant except in journalism, media, and science fiction.

by gbog 11y ago

dr_zoidberg 11y ago

While I'm reluctant to say these paths are a "dead end", this reminded me of an interview to Yann LeCun[0] from a while ago. I think you might want to read it, he sort of shared your view. However, deep neural networks are an extremely valuable and resourceful tool, when used against the real set of problems they solve. Basically, what I think is happening with the NY Times (and press in general) regarding AI is one of the first questions that he is asked. "Your editor is not gonna like that" -- press goes for flashy and shiny announcements that are really far from what is really happening. And because marketing and funding, some researchers back that kind of announcements and say "Yeah! We've built a robot that smiles!". I'm not saying androids and robotics are not valuable research, I'm saying that people missinterpret and mistake many things for AI and expect a poet robot that can talk like Shakespear, and mean and feel the emotional component of its words. Not gonna happen soon. [0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/facebook-ai-director-yann-lecun-on-deep-learning http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intel...

grondilu 11y ago

> What do we want? Make some scifi become real? No, we just want helpful machines. I think you underestimate the desire for mankind to create something that resembles itself. It's a very old myth, and IIRC some traces of it can be found as far away as in Greek mythology. And it can be found here and there towards modern times, from Frankenstein to Metropolis or Terminator. There's a reason why Science-Fiction is such a significant portion of modern literature and why this theme is a major part of it. It has a powerful appeal. You say we want helpful machines, but how many of the machines we create are more toys than tools? Even a machine that would be as smart as a dog would probably be extremely lucrative as it would be sold as a pet. Slightly more intelligent it would be used as a domestic helper or a companion. I would even go as far as saying that for some people, the ultimate goal of AI is to replace the human body, including the brain, by artificial counterparts that would free them from the pitfalls of a biological existence.

pdkl95 11y ago
> from Frankenstein to Metropolis or Terminator Rossum’s Universal Robots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.
- adrianN 11y ago
  The earliest example I know are Golems from jewish folklore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    The Golem certainly had an impact on culture. However, R.U.R. is especially interesting because it coined the word "robot". From the Wikipedia entry: In Czech, robota means forced labour of the kind that serfs had to perform on their masters' lands, and is derived from rab, meaning "slave." We aren't just creating in our own image; the creations are "slaves", intended to do work on our order. This is included in the Golem legend, which I suspect could be interpreted as an ancient desire for automation.
11y ago

rpgmaker 11y ago

> Maybe I'm being too contrarian but I still think this new AI thing (with Google et al. going down in the rabbit hole) is just the same as before: a dead-end. You may find this interesting: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-would-teach-machines-to-think/309529/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-...

gradys 11y ago

I'm very much with you on most of this, but to reply to this: > but do they need to understand our language? Natural language is the highest-bandwidth means of communication available to us. It's the easiest and most powerful method of conveying our intentions. That's important for any kind of technology that we want to be able to serve us. I agree that AI doesn't need to be embodied in humanoid robots to be useful, but I think a robust understanding of our language is the ultimate user interface.

gbog 11y ago
Written natural language is the best for human to human communication, but not for human to robot. The best we have now is computer language. For giving orders, spoken natural language is the best for humans to humans, but for human to machines i'd say the best is the plane cockpit, or your car's interface.
- gradys 11y ago
  I guess I should walk back what I said a little bit. Natural language is the ultimate interface for many domains. For flying a plane or doing anything else that requires continuous high dimensional input, physical interfaces are probably best. For anything that requires a level of detail approaching a computer program, a technical written or visual language is probably best. Many of the tasks we want AIs to perform are things that humans do now. We're used to communicating about them in natural language.

chriswarbo 11y ago

> What do we want? Make some scifi become real? No, we just want helpful machines. It depends. It's common to split AI research into 4 types, by asking 2 questions: 1) Do you care about the end result or the mechanism/approach being taken? 2) Do you care about mimicking humans or "doing the right thing"? Hence the 4 categories are: A) Systems that think like humans (mimicking the approach taken by humans) B) Systems that think rationally (using the "right" approach) C) Systems that act like humans (mimicking human results) D) Systems that act rationally (achieving the "right" result) For example, this breakdown appears in section 1.1 "What is AI?" in "AI A Modern Approach", which I happen to have on my desk. Whilst not perfect, identifying which of these categories some approach/research fits into can avoid a lot of well-trodden philosophical debates which can easily derail any discussion about said approach/research. In this case, you seem to be in the "act rationally" camp. That's fine, but it's unfair to dismiss the goals of other researchers who fit into other categories. For example, those trying to find out how the human mind is structured; what assistance and interventions could help disabled people; etc. In those cases, a data-crunching ear implant might be a useful commodity to have, in the same way that AI researchers probably have mobile phones, but wouldn't offer any insight into the problem.

sgt101 11y ago
I think the friction is because of the different views of each camp about what is important for members of the other camps to do! Like, I would put myself in c & d but I think that D people often ignore important things like noise and robustness to starting conditions and frankly run their bloody deep network 100000 times and choose the best outcome for their paper. It's really striking when someone like Lake and Tenenbaum produce a paper where they stick big sharp pins in any mithering critique that's anyone would have. Hats off and all that! But it's striking and it shouldn't be, it should be the standard.
gbog 11y ago
"Like human" and "rationally" and "think" and even "act" are too human to describe robots. That's anthropomorphic. Robots will be like robots, act robotically, they will compute, operate, etc. Anthropomorphism is a childish mistake when studying animals, i'd say it's even more so when studying robots.

ph0rque 11y ago

I think a good intermediate solution is a robot that is a perfect 50's housewife (minus any sexual connotations): the robot cooks, cleans, gardens, etc. I agree with you that the robot probably won't look like Rosie from the Jetsons, but probably more like the Fetch and Freight robot duo (http://fetchrobotics.com/fetchandfreight/ http://fetchrobotics.com/fetchandfreight/).

sgt101 11y ago
Could be expensive keeping it in gin, mogadon and Freudian analysis though?

russdill 11y ago

I'm not aware of people trying to make flying machines that flapped their wings being a main blocker to powered flight. Gliders have been in development for hundreds of years and were functioning decades before powered flight. The main blockers as I understand it were weight of the engine and the implementation of control surfaces. In fact, the first powered flight was done with a plane that mimicked the way a bird's control surfaces work.

laxatives 11y ago

Hasn't statistical learning already surpassed human expertise in a number of areas, particularly in Computer Vision and loads of classification problems?

jjn2009 11y ago
Assuming you are making a case for the success of modern AI then this is just a difference in the scale of the failure to live up to its promises. The winged flapping flying machine never got off the ground, while the computer vision algorithms are useful in only a small subset of applications under specific conditions (not AI in my opinion). I don't think the usefulness of such examples is a strong case that those ideas will lead us to what we really mean when we say "AI". I personally don't think we can get electrons to move fast enough across our current computer architecture to achieve human level AI, which is what google is mostly to my knowledge building their stuff on.
- laxatives 11y ago
  What? I don't know what you're referring to about Google, but I'm under the impression most of their stuff is based on optimization problems like power iteration, which have very little to do with human level AI. In fact, I'd argue human level AI is almost irrelevant except in journalism, media, and science fiction.