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I'm especially wary of claims that AI will be the next big thing. This would be, what, the fifth time? The sixth? I think we're due for another AI winter, gi

I'm especially wary of claims that AI will be the next big thing. This would be, what, the fifth time? The sixth? I think we're due for another AI winter, given all the ill-informed hype around artificial neural networks.

bogomipz 11y ago
Is "AI winter" the semi-official term for the period receding of AI progress?I feel like I keep hearing this term. Do you think neural networks are just hype? I am curios, because Tensor Flow seems to be a real product but I can't speak to how much of that is Google's marketing.
- sevensor 11y ago
  "AI winter" is a pretty official term -- it even has a Wikipedia entry. I actually don't think neural networks are just hype, any more than previous AI technology was just hype. A lot of great things have come out of AI research -- logic programming, expert systems, even genetic algorithms -- but each in turn failed to deliver on the unrealistic expectations that were built up around it. We see pictures of ANNs hallucinating, and they seem to promise machines that can dream. But in reality an ANN is just a statistical model trained on a large corpus of inputs belonging to a particular domain. They're profoundly effective at what they're good at, and it's cool to see them pick apart a picture and tell you what's in it. However, I've been hearing crazy talk, especially in the popular press, about how strong AI is just around the corner, how AIs will soon replace people, what will we all do when machines can do everything for us, and so on. It's been repeated on a ten to fifteen year interval since the dawn of the computer age, it's no more true than it was the last time, and we should know better by now!
  - raincom 11y ago
    Very true. This has been the criticism of AI since 1990's. For instance, Berkeley philosopher Hubert Drefus wrote a book "A critique of Artificial reason". A great book to understand the limits of AI.
  - smaddox 10y ago
    I agree that we have a very long way to go before strong AI. That being said, I also think quite weak AI is sufficient to commandeer the vast majority of existing jobs, and it's not clear how our socio-economic systems will handle that.

bogomipz 11y ago

Is "AI winter" the semi-official term for the period receding of AI progress?I feel like I keep hearing this term. Do you think neural networks are just hype? I am curios, because Tensor Flow seems to be a real product but I can't speak to how much of that is Google's marketing.

sevensor 11y ago
"AI winter" is a pretty official term -- it even has a Wikipedia entry. I actually don't think neural networks are just hype, any more than previous AI technology was just hype. A lot of great things have come out of AI research -- logic programming, expert systems, even genetic algorithms -- but each in turn failed to deliver on the unrealistic expectations that were built up around it. We see pictures of ANNs hallucinating, and they seem to promise machines that can dream. But in reality an ANN is just a statistical model trained on a large corpus of inputs belonging to a particular domain. They're profoundly effective at what they're good at, and it's cool to see them pick apart a picture and tell you what's in it. However, I've been hearing crazy talk, especially in the popular press, about how strong AI is just around the corner, how AIs will soon replace people, what will we all do when machines can do everything for us, and so on. It's been repeated on a ten to fifteen year interval since the dawn of the computer age, it's no more true than it was the last time, and we should know better by now!
- raincom 11y ago
  Very true. This has been the criticism of AI since 1990's. For instance, Berkeley philosopher Hubert Drefus wrote a book "A critique of Artificial reason". A great book to understand the limits of AI.
- smaddox 10y ago
  I agree that we have a very long way to go before strong AI. That being said, I also think quite weak AI is sufficient to commandeer the vast majority of existing jobs, and it's not clear how our socio-economic systems will handle that.