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That's partly because nobody has tried very hard to write one piece of software that's good at landing planes and being the president. Why not just write two pi

by tlb 11y ago

That's partly because nobody has tried very hard to write one piece of software that's good at landing planes and being the president. Why not just write two pieces of software? What business model would a combined piece of software enable? Specialization of software is mostly a virtue.

shawabawa3 11y ago
> Specialization of software is mostly a virtue And generalization of humans is mostly a virtue
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  Specialization of humans has its virtues as well. Interdependence and "networking" humans has huge multipliers.
uremog 11y ago
Isn't it somewhat the same with humans though?
- tlb 11y ago
  Yes. Because a specialized pilot or president will always be better than a generalist at that particular task. Part of the argument given for the virtues of generalization is about availability. Like, if you find yourself the only available person in a plane over the Amazon, you can improvise a landing. But as the network connects more things in more places, this becomes less and less important.
rtkwe 11y ago
I'm not arguing that writing 2 different software isn't a solution or against software specialization. I'm saying (in part) that comparing a domain specific program(s) to a generalist human and calling the strictly domain specific 'intelligence' better misses some very critical points in capability. Even a combined program that's able to fly a plane and run a factory (changed from being president because doing that job well would probably require a full strong AI which could do any other task) is still just as constrained except now to just 2 fields instead of 1. To me it's not about the exact number of tasks that a particular bit of software can perform but that to call it's intelligence better than human it has to be able to increase it's own capability over time in novel tasks and environments. I'm also extremely resistant to equating simple calculating and data look up speed with intelligence as the author does with the multiplication and random SSN look up examples.
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
But what we might want is a "code base" that has some percentage of those two activities lying latent in them so we can exploit them in less time. Then again, maybe not - it may be that from-scratch works better. We can't really tell until we do it. And the hard part is the analysis of the business model, anyway.

by tlb 11y ago

shawabawa3 11y ago

> Specialization of software is mostly a virtue And generalization of humans is mostly a virtue

ArkyBeagle 11y ago
Specialization of humans has its virtues as well. Interdependence and "networking" humans has huge multipliers.

uremog 11y ago

Isn't it somewhat the same with humans though?

tlb 11y ago
Yes. Because a specialized pilot or president will always be better than a generalist at that particular task. Part of the argument given for the virtues of generalization is about availability. Like, if you find yourself the only available person in a plane over the Amazon, you can improvise a landing. But as the network connects more things in more places, this becomes less and less important.

rtkwe 11y ago

I'm not arguing that writing 2 different software isn't a solution or against software specialization. I'm saying (in part) that comparing a domain specific program(s) to a generalist human and calling the strictly domain specific 'intelligence' better misses some very critical points in capability. Even a combined program that's able to fly a plane and run a factory (changed from being president because doing that job well would probably require a full strong AI which could do any other task) is still just as constrained except now to just 2 fields instead of 1. To me it's not about the exact number of tasks that a particular bit of software can perform but that to call it's intelligence better than human it has to be able to increase it's own capability over time in novel tasks and environments. I'm also extremely resistant to equating simple calculating and data look up speed with intelligence as the author does with the multiplication and random SSN look up examples.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago

But what we might want is a "code base" that has some percentage of those two activities lying latent in them so we can exploit them in less time. Then again, maybe not - it may be that from-scratch works better. We can't really tell until we do it. And the hard part is the analysis of the business model, anyway.