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This level of hype reminds me of the AI winter. Concerned that public interest hits a peak and then a few months later disillusion sets in and AI becomes a disc
by paulsutter 11y ago
This level of hype reminds me of the AI winter. Concerned that public interest hits a peak and then a few months later disillusion sets in and AI becomes a discredited failure in the public's eye, since even rapid progress moves slower than an election or typical news cycle.
- kordless 11y agoAt this point, I really don't think our government has any idea how to deal with what is coming.
- Aelinsaar 11y agoOur government doesn't know how to deal with what happened a couple of decades ago, technologically speaking; a couple of decades at least.
- themartorana 11y agoWell, except for those pesky NSA and DARPA agencies, to name just two of many, that have access to technology you haven't even dreamed of yet. Congress might be full of idiots or smart people trying to make you believe they're idiots, but don't for a moment think the federal government as a whole is technologically stunted.
- zitterbewegung 11y agoIt's much harder to write laws when the state of technology keeps changing day by day and also be technoliterate to the changes.
- bogomipz 11y agoCertainly not but consider the level of dysfunction and complete lack of interdepartment cooperation. We have the NSA actively hacking other nation-states and our own private sector and then we have an FBI that resets an icloud password preventing them from getting a backup of data they desperately needed.
- mirimir 11y agoThe NSA hacks anyone who seems interesting. But that, arguably, is their job. As they see it, anyway. The FBI isn't so high-tech, for sure. But they get help, eventually.
- Aelinsaar 11y agoYou're right, and I should have been clear that I meant the legislative branch in particular.
- AndrewKemendo 11y agoI used to work with these agencies and cool stuff almost never see's the light of day. Even within the well funded agencies, really breakthrough stuff almost never makes it to the people in the building - let alone to the public. So it doesn't really matter what they are doing.
- coderdude 11y agoIt is foolhardy to underestimate the abilities of the most powerful organization on the planet.
- Aelinsaar 11y agoA 7' tall simpleton with enormous strength is dangerous, and powerful. It would be unwise to underestimate them, but it would be always unwise to misinterpret the source and nature of that power.
- npx 11y agoFrankly, I don't think our government really has any idea how to deal with what is actually happening right now.
- eli_gottlieb 11y agoYes they do: shoot, jail, or coerce everyone capable of producing advanced AI. Problem solved, if you're assuming that advanced AI is sufficiently dangerous that not making any at all is a better idea than taking a risk. And governments will always want to avoid risks, especially risks that knock them out of their monopolies on force and economic power.
- hacker42 11y agoThat won't happen because the industry controls our governments too much. There is a lot of value to be produced before the algorithms become really dangerous. Moreover, controlling AI research is ever harder than nuclear research. Creating a technological disadvantage compared to rogue states without such regulations does not seem like a good idea.
- eva1984 11y agoI am optimistic, AI winter is no longer the case this time. We almost solved image/speech recognition in the past 5 years. Once those works went out of academia to real application, the amount of disruption to the current society is pretty hard to imagine.
- hellofunk 11y agoSiri mis-hears about every other sentence I send her, so I'd say speech recognition is far from solved. But we are getting closer.
- simonh 11y agoYou're saying it wrong.
- kabes 11y agoMaybe, but good chance that a human would still understand what he means. So there's still a long way to go for AI.
- hellofunk 11y agoI think he was being sarcastic.
- romaniv 11y agoIt's hard to tell these days. Many people today fully accept the idea that human should adapt themselves to the existing machines and technologies, rather than design/adapt those machines and technologies to human needs.
- simonh 11y agoI should have put it in quotes, but it's too late to edit it.
- mediumdeviation 11y ago
- studentrob 11y agoYes. Where was the White House tech group (OSTP) during the Apple & FBI encryption debate? Silent! I won't hold my breath for them to produce anything of value here.
- roel_v 11y agoIt's a self-fulfilling prophecy - we're now at the 6th season of hearing "winter is coming", it's bound to happen any time now.
- dfsegoat 11y agoGambler's fallacy.
- xerophyte12932 11y agoI haven't read that but I assume it goes along the lines of... Gambler: "I already got five 6's. I can't possibly get another one. That's a statistical improbability!" Wrong assumption: Past dice rolls affect future rolls where as dice rolls are independent. Its improbably to get six 6's in a row but GIVEN that you have 5 sixes, getting a sixth is just 1/6 Am I right?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- imh 11y agoThere's also a reverse version with the same mistaken assumption. Gambler: "I already got five 6's. I must be on a roll! I'll surely get another one."
- armitron 11y agoThe correct assumption to make in this case would be that the dice is loaded. Same decision, different reasoning.
- xerophyte12932 11y agoWell, getting five 6's in a row is 1/7776 , so I suppose it is debatable if one could establish the dice are loaded from such a small sample set.
- 11y ago
- nabla9 11y agoAI Winter was not the result of changing public interest. It was lost interest from investors and government. All that money poured into AI research produced little rewards. There were expert systems that worked well and they became profitable businesses, but othervice there was little to show. In retrospect I think it was good idea to adjust the money to match the results and wait until computer scientist come up with new ideas. Current Ai boom is result from 'Canadian mafia' diligently working and actually producing results and faster computing, especially GPCPU. Unless we get constant stream of new ideas that build up on the current ones, there should reduced interest and investments once most benefits have been materialized.
- romaniv 11y ago>There were expert systems that worked well and they became profitable businesses, but othervice there was little to show. One could similarly say about our time: "there were neural network applications that worked well, but otherwise there was little to show". What is the fundamental difference between what is going on now and what was happening before the previous AI winter? I feel that people constantly misrepresent how impressive expert systems seemed back in their heyday. They had a lot of practical applications and they could do some very cool tricks. Interestingly, the highly impressive accomplishments of SVMs, random forests and boosting went mostly unnoticed, precisely because of the AI Winter.