4 ms·
My main complaint with this line of thought is this. It is claimed that it is not fair due to energy usage comparisons, but if you asked people before AlphaGo
by Vraxx 11y ago
My main complaint with this line of thought is this. It is claimed that it is not fair due to energy usage comparisons, but if you asked people before AlphaGo if it was a "fair" competition to pit a Go AI versus a world class professional, the answer would be hilariously no, because the world class professional would destroy the AI. I imagine telling them that you'll use more energy than them wouldn't change the consensus either. But now that a computer using so much energy did beat a world class professional, now this same scenario is framed as unfair for the professional.
There's plenty of back and forth arguments that can be made as to whether the energy argument is a true test of fairness, but I don't think it matters if it's a good yardstick for fairness or not. It was an amazing feat to create an AI of any size that could beat a professional.
- mikeash 11y agoThe post starts with an analogy of a race between a runner and a race car. It says we'd call this unfair because the two are clearly not comparable. But I think it gets the reasons wrong. It says we'd call it unfair because the race car uses so much more energy. I think we'd call it unfair because the outcome is such a foregone conclusion. We know the race car is going to be way faster, so the race is pointless. It's a foregone conclusion, so why even bother unless you do something to make it more even? Go back to the very early days of automobiles, when they were so slow that a human runner would be faster. Then a new one comes along that can beat a human. The first car faster than a person! Would you be amazed that machine has beaten man? Or would you say that it somehow doesn't count, because machine used more fuel than man? I'm pretty sure most people would not go for the second one.