4 ms·

Well, an equally good question is why do programmers feel their jobs are immune from AI, etc.?

by sverige 10y ago

qz_ 10y ago
Interesting, I never thought about that. It seems like something very far off, though. Does anyone know about any research currently being done in this field?
- gaius 10y ago
  Heh, it's the oldest thing there is in the field, almost. FORTRAN and COBOL were invented in the 1950s so that scientists and business managers could write their own programs without having to employ those expensive "programmers" who could write machine code. Now it's 60+ years later, and there are still human programmers.
- mike_hearn 10y ago
  That's what (supervised) machine learning and neural networks do, isn't it. You specify the "what" and not the "how", they figure out the "how". Basically techniques for automating the task of computer programming given requirements. So any advance in AI/ML/NNs can be seen as advances in the field of automating computer programmers. We don't tend to think of it like that because these techniques have to be applied, currently, by computer programmers, and the software the techniques "write" was generally infeasible to write by hand anyway: it's been so far purely additive and solving problems that hand-written software either couldn't do at all or where it sucked and progress was very slow. But watch out. The tech is getting better scarily fast. Neural networks have been able to learn how to do basic algorithms like sorting given only examples. The primary limit is still the amount of data they need to work with, but R&D is driving that down too. I can see a time when many tasks that today automatically require skilled programmers are instead done by domain experts who simply shovel data into an advanced neural network and discover it gets results that are good enough. Perhaps hand-written software made by a skilled programmer would be better, but the machine is a lot cheaper ... http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-intelligence/7923-neural-turing-machines-learn-their-algorithms.html http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-intelligenc...
Tistel 10y ago
People are working on it. Search for: artificial general intelligence. There was a book out last year called: "the master algorithm" that talked about it (the book is not that great). We all know about how well certain AI are doing now (neural nets etc), and historically there were high hopes for logic based systems (prolog) that are not as popular at the moment. Anyway, the author speaks of 4-6 different AI camps that are all separate (depending on definitions) and he believes that combining them together could result in gerenral AI. The book is a half decent review of some the less well known AI (that might be worth exploring) but it has the problem that it's too much info for the novice and not enough for a non AI CS person. He actually has code etc, can't remember the name of the system.
user5994461 10y ago
Because we're needed to write and maintain the AI. well, until the day an AI will be good enough to write and improve itself, then we'll all be doomed equally.

Well, an equally good question is why do programmers feel their jobs are immune from AI, etc.?

by sverige 10y ago

Well, an equally good question is why do programmers feel their jobs are immune from AI, etc.?

qz_ 10y ago

Interesting, I never thought about that. It seems like something very far off, though. Does anyone know about any research currently being done in this field?

gaius 10y ago
Heh, it's the oldest thing there is in the field, almost. FORTRAN and COBOL were invented in the 1950s so that scientists and business managers could write their own programs without having to employ those expensive "programmers" who could write machine code. Now it's 60+ years later, and there are still human programmers.
mike_hearn 10y ago
That's what (supervised) machine learning and neural networks do, isn't it. You specify the "what" and not the "how", they figure out the "how". Basically techniques for automating the task of computer programming given requirements. So any advance in AI/ML/NNs can be seen as advances in the field of automating computer programmers. We don't tend to think of it like that because these techniques have to be applied, currently, by computer programmers, and the software the techniques "write" was generally infeasible to write by hand anyway: it's been so far purely additive and solving problems that hand-written software either couldn't do at all or where it sucked and progress was very slow. But watch out. The tech is getting better scarily fast. Neural networks have been able to learn how to do basic algorithms like sorting given only examples. The primary limit is still the amount of data they need to work with, but R&D is driving that down too. I can see a time when many tasks that today automatically require skilled programmers are instead done by domain experts who simply shovel data into an advanced neural network and discover it gets results that are good enough. Perhaps hand-written software made by a skilled programmer would be better, but the machine is a lot cheaper ... http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-intelligence/7923-neural-turing-machines-learn-their-algorithms.html http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-intelligenc...

Tistel 10y ago

People are working on it. Search for: artificial general intelligence. There was a book out last year called: "the master algorithm" that talked about it (the book is not that great). We all know about how well certain AI are doing now (neural nets etc), and historically there were high hopes for logic based systems (prolog) that are not as popular at the moment. Anyway, the author speaks of 4-6 different AI camps that are all separate (depending on definitions) and he believes that combining them together could result in gerenral AI. The book is a half decent review of some the less well known AI (that might be worth exploring) but it has the problem that it's too much info for the novice and not enough for a non AI CS person. He actually has code etc, can't remember the name of the system.

user5994461 10y ago

Because we're needed to write and maintain the AI. well, until the day an AI will be good enough to write and improve itself, then we'll all be doomed equally.