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I'm still not comfortable calling the thing that is booming "artificial intelligence". It is mostly pattern recognition and classification. Intelligence is some

I'm still not comfortable calling the thing that is booming "artificial intelligence". It is mostly pattern recognition and classification. Intelligence is something else.

jessaustin 10y ago
ISTM you may have found the answer to TFA's question. In the early days of AI, they were looking for actual intelligence. Eventually everyone realized that won't be found soon. Today's success is mostly a successful refocusing on attainable heuristics, rather than solving many problems related to actual intelligence.
- eternalban 10y ago
  Love it. So we today have "A.I." and hopefully someday we may finally get A.A.I. So what happened to Machine Learning and Computational Intelligence? Not sexy enough?
  - telotortium 10y ago
    The original goal of AI is now called AGI, for "artificial general intelligence".
Retra 10y ago
Intelligence is not mostly pattern recognition and classification? I can't imagine what you'd think it could be that wouldn't ultimately be called both of these things.
- glial 10y ago
  Output - the optimization of behavior. Though we're doing pretty well in that regard too...
nkozyra 10y ago
Intelligence is the ability for and speed of processing new information, at least as it's measured by metrics like IQ. Sometimes AI/ML is directly modeled after human/animal thinking (decision trees, neural networks, reinforcement learning) and sometimes it's not (Bayes' theorem, regression, general stats). What constitutes intelligence still boils down to being able to correctly and quickly process new incoming information based on prior information. I believe it definitely qualifies.
eternalban 10y ago
Yes, "signs of intelligence" include creativity, pedagogy, ..., and of course, getting bitten by the bug of existential angst. Accept no subsititute.
- intrasight 10y ago
  I will not accept any substitute. If there is no existential angst, I'll not accept referring to it as intelligence.
- mbrock 10y ago
  It seems pretty likely that we will start to see "General AI" discovering problematic things like the unsolvable nature of ethics questions, the ungroundedness of truth claims, the immense silliness of religions and ideologies, etc. Which might be a good thing. Terrifying visions of AI are all about certainty and the authoritarianism it creates. If existential depression is a mental friction from the lack of certainty about what to do, then some measure of it is probably necessary...
  - eternalban 10y ago
    The encounter with doubt need not be a terminal state. If it is indeed "intelligent", it may proceed to enlightenment.
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    >Which might be a good thing. Terrifying visions of AI are all about certainty and the authoritarianism it creates. Indeed, may the gods protect us all from some things actually being true and other things actually being false. That would be terrible!
    - eternalban 10y ago
      (I sense/assume a missing /s in your post, Eli.) The objection here would be that entertaining that we can assert T/F of all propositions, given results of halting problem [computation], incompleteness [formalism], and uncertainty [physics], is unreasonable.
saosebastiao 10y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect
- tnecniv 10y ago
  There's a similar saying I like (don't know where it's from, if anywhere) "Artificial intelligence is a group of problems that we don't know how to solve. As soon as we know how to solve one, it gets a name and is no longer AI."
  - MichaelBurge 10y ago
    People say the same thing about philosophy. That once something is well-understood, it becomes a science rather than philosophy. I suppose this could be the same thing.
    - ianai 10y ago
      I always thought it was more once it got big enough.
  - dasboth 10y ago
    > it gets a name and is no longer AI And that name is typically "weak AI". I wonder if we'll ever have AI that we marvel at even after we figure out how it works.
pinouchon 10y ago
The term AI has been used too much and has lost its meaning. When you mean "real AI", you have to refer to it as AGI.
tdb7893 10y ago
To be fair most of human "intelligence" seems to be pattern recognition and extrapolating data from those patterns. My guess is that if you made a robot that is really, really good at recognizing and extrapolating from arbitrary patterns and then gave it some intrinsic goals then you are pretty much at "true" AI.

I'm still not comfortable calling the thing that is booming "artificial intelligence". It is mostly pattern recognition and classification. Intelligence is something else.

jessaustin 10y ago

ISTM you may have found the answer to TFA's question. In the early days of AI, they were looking for actual intelligence. Eventually everyone realized that won't be found soon. Today's success is mostly a successful refocusing on attainable heuristics, rather than solving many problems related to actual intelligence.

eternalban 10y ago
Love it. So we today have "A.I." and hopefully someday we may finally get A.A.I. So what happened to Machine Learning and Computational Intelligence? Not sexy enough?
- telotortium 10y ago
  The original goal of AI is now called AGI, for "artificial general intelligence".

Retra 10y ago

Intelligence is not mostly pattern recognition and classification? I can't imagine what you'd think it could be that wouldn't ultimately be called both of these things.

glial 10y ago
Output - the optimization of behavior. Though we're doing pretty well in that regard too...

nkozyra 10y ago

Intelligence is the ability for and speed of processing new information, at least as it's measured by metrics like IQ. Sometimes AI/ML is directly modeled after human/animal thinking (decision trees, neural networks, reinforcement learning) and sometimes it's not (Bayes' theorem, regression, general stats). What constitutes intelligence still boils down to being able to correctly and quickly process new incoming information based on prior information. I believe it definitely qualifies.

eternalban 10y ago

Yes, "signs of intelligence" include creativity, pedagogy, ..., and of course, getting bitten by the bug of existential angst. Accept no subsititute.

intrasight 10y ago
I will not accept any substitute. If there is no existential angst, I'll not accept referring to it as intelligence.
mbrock 10y ago
It seems pretty likely that we will start to see "General AI" discovering problematic things like the unsolvable nature of ethics questions, the ungroundedness of truth claims, the immense silliness of religions and ideologies, etc. Which might be a good thing. Terrifying visions of AI are all about certainty and the authoritarianism it creates. If existential depression is a mental friction from the lack of certainty about what to do, then some measure of it is probably necessary...
- eternalban 10y ago
  The encounter with doubt need not be a terminal state. If it is indeed "intelligent", it may proceed to enlightenment.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >Which might be a good thing. Terrifying visions of AI are all about certainty and the authoritarianism it creates. Indeed, may the gods protect us all from some things actually being true and other things actually being false. That would be terrible!
  - eternalban 10y ago
    (I sense/assume a missing /s in your post, Eli.) The objection here would be that entertaining that we can assert T/F of all propositions, given results of halting problem [computation], incompleteness [formalism], and uncertainty [physics], is unreasonable.

saosebastiao 10y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect

tnecniv 10y ago
There's a similar saying I like (don't know where it's from, if anywhere) "Artificial intelligence is a group of problems that we don't know how to solve. As soon as we know how to solve one, it gets a name and is no longer AI."
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  People say the same thing about philosophy. That once something is well-understood, it becomes a science rather than philosophy. I suppose this could be the same thing.
  - ianai 10y ago
    I always thought it was more once it got big enough.
- dasboth 10y ago
  > it gets a name and is no longer AI And that name is typically "weak AI". I wonder if we'll ever have AI that we marvel at even after we figure out how it works.

pinouchon 10y ago

The term AI has been used too much and has lost its meaning. When you mean "real AI", you have to refer to it as AGI.

tdb7893 10y ago

To be fair most of human "intelligence" seems to be pattern recognition and extrapolating data from those patterns. My guess is that if you made a robot that is really, really good at recognizing and extrapolating from arbitrary patterns and then gave it some intrinsic goals then you are pretty much at "true" AI.