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We don't need to fully understand a processus in order to reproduce it. We can proceed by imitation, trial and error. As we mostly did for airplanes, for inst

We don't need to fully understand a processus in order to reproduce it. We can proceed by imitation, trial and error. As we mostly did for airplanes, for instance. At some point we may create a machine exhibiting human-level intelligent behavior, and then the question of whether or not it has consciousness will not be answered but that will not matter much. Kind of in 2001: "Well he acts as if he has genuine emotions. Of course he's programmed that way. That makes it easier for us to talk to him. But as to whether or not he has real feelings, it's something I don't think anyone can truthfully answer."

ythl 10y ago
> We don't need to fully understand a processes in order to reproduce it. That's true, but you still need to understand it enough > We can proceed by imitation, trial and error. As we mostly did for airplanes, for instance. Yes, but again, I would argue that initial attempts to create airplanes were cargo cult science, and that's why they failed. It's something you want to avoid, yet I see it all the time when the subject of AI comes up. "In a cargo cult, you reproduce the appearance of the machine without understanding the principles behind the machine. You build radio stations out of straw. The cargo cult approach to aeronautics—for actually building airplanes—would be to copy birds very, very closely; feathers, flapping wings, and all the rest. And people did this back in the 19th century, but with very limited success." (LeCun [1]) [1] 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 10y ago
  When Yan LeCun started playing with artificial neural networks, did he know why they worked? Aren't artificial neural networks very much inspired from nature anyway, not unlike early airplane wings? I mean between a cargo cult and a very reasonable attempt at mimicking nature, there is whole continuum and being quick at using the extreme label (that is, "cargo cult") to dismiss an approach just because you don't agree with it, seems quite dishonest to me.
shostack 10y ago
This was essentially the plot of Ex Machina. Absolutely stellar movie.

ythl 10y ago

> We don't need to fully understand a processes in order to reproduce it. That's true, but you still need to understand it enough > We can proceed by imitation, trial and error. As we mostly did for airplanes, for instance. Yes, but again, I would argue that initial attempts to create airplanes were cargo cult science, and that's why they failed. It's something you want to avoid, yet I see it all the time when the subject of AI comes up. "In a cargo cult, you reproduce the appearance of the machine without understanding the principles behind the machine. You build radio stations out of straw. The cargo cult approach to aeronautics—for actually building airplanes—would be to copy birds very, very closely; feathers, flapping wings, and all the rest. And people did this back in the 19th century, but with very limited success." (LeCun [1]) [1] 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 10y ago
When Yan LeCun started playing with artificial neural networks, did he know why they worked? Aren't artificial neural networks very much inspired from nature anyway, not unlike early airplane wings? I mean between a cargo cult and a very reasonable attempt at mimicking nature, there is whole continuum and being quick at using the extreme label (that is, "cargo cult") to dismiss an approach just because you don't agree with it, seems quite dishonest to me.

shostack 10y ago

This was essentially the plot of Ex Machina. Absolutely stellar movie.