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The piece really makes the only point worth making in the beginning: > What is AI and what is not AI is, to some extent, a matter of definition. It is by the

by 59nadir 10y ago

The piece really makes the only point worth making in the beginning: > What is AI and what is not AI is, to some extent, a matter of definition. It is by the general and widely used definition that AlphaGo is actually an AI. It just happens to solve one very specific problem very well, making it a weak AI. > Again, the rapid advances of deep learning and the recent success of this kind of AI at games like Go are very good news because they could lead to lots of really useful applications in medical research, industry, environmental preservation, and many other areas. But this is only one part of the problem, as I’ve tried to show here. I don’t believe deep learning is the silver bullet that will get us to true AI, in the sense of a machine that is able to learn to live in the world, interact naturally with us, understand deeply the complexity of our emotions and cultural biases, and ultimately help us to make a better world. The piece was written at a time when the world was much more interested in what AlphaGo was doing and once again people were perhaps getting too excited about AI, but it really doesn't hold much value today. It may have been good to extinguish some of the misguided enthusiasm people were exhibiting back then, but no one is even talking about AlphaGo at the moment and there is little to no value in discussing what it means for strong AI anymore.

platz 10y ago
When some people say "AI" what they really mean is "Strong AI"
- kowdermeister 10y ago
  I'm some people and what I mean by AI is artificial intelligence. If needed I can be more precise with Weak / Strong / AGI or ASI.
  - platz 10y ago
    So now you speak for everyone, and define their language usage independent of their intended connotations? Quite presumptuous.
  - kgwgk 10y ago
    You are some other people, then.
- fossuser 10y ago
  I think people think of it more along the lines of an artificial consciousness. Which since consciousness is likely an emerging property of our own biological neural net and training data/weights, would likely have similar issues that humans have when exposed to bad data while growing up.
  - platz 10y ago
    > our own biological neural net and training data/weights Well that shoots down my "minds are made of mechanical internal drives/pistons/levers" theory.
pron 10y ago
What's a "weak AI"? Does any algorithm that is able to adapt its behavior by learning qualify as "weak AI"? If so, why call it AI at all?
- habitue 10y ago
  Yeah, exactly. We call it AI because we need a name for this kind of adaptive algorithm, even if it isn't anything close to strong AI
  - pron 10y ago
    There are JIT compilers, and even sorting algorithms that are adaptive. Are they AI too? What's wrong with the name "statistical learning" (as that's the flavor du jour of so called AI anyway)?
    - legolas2412 10y ago
      I think the word "adaptive" is meant to mean "general" learning that can be applied to more behavior. AlphaGo was trained for blackgammon, could it be given chess and learn it just as well? The answer is no. If I had to personally define AI, I would give a machine input to limbs of robot, and output of cameras and microphones (eyes and ears). And I would see if given sufficient years, can it learn language and conversation and ability to use robotic body for sports.
- didibus 10y ago
  "the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior" That's what I would define as weak AI. So yes, even algorithms which do not adapt their behaviors by learning, but can imitate intelligent human behavior to some extent would be weak AI, such as AI in video games. Now strong AI would be: "the capability of a machine to originate intelligent human behavior" This means the intelligent behavior would originate from the machine itself. Some Machine Learning algorithms exhibit strong AI, in that they find ways to even outperform a human, by themselves, through the learning process. Sometimes, we can't even understand why it chose to do what it did, but it appeared to be even more intelligent than what most human would have chosen to do themselves. Now Artificial General Intelligence, or sometimes called strong AI also, but I think there needs to be a distinction as I explain before. This would be: "the capability of a machine to originate any intelligent human behavior" The reason a lot of people are talking about true AI, AGI, strong AI, etc. today, is because Machine Learning is seen as the be all, end all of AI. Yet practitioners and scientists know that it is not, at least in its current form. Currently, it can solve simple decision tasks, probably the kind of decisions a person makes in under a second or two, like driving. But it does not solve them generally, so a person must train different models for each tasks. At the same time, having a way to automate decision making of a single simple task is huge in terms of potential. There's so many things we can automate through this, and if we combine them, you can create even more complex autonomous machines. That's why people are excited. Though I understand that it is not as awesome as having found general AI, or AI which can make complex decisions. The dream of AI continues, but the practicality of it are closer then ever.
CJefferson 10y ago
Speaking as an AI researcher, almost nothing is "AI" research. In practice i feel most current AI research falls into two categories: * Fuzzy problems -- image, sound and free text recognition. Where there is no real "true answer". * Problems too hard to solve in a reasonable time without heuristics -- SAT, scheduling, etc. In practice NP-hard problems and further up the complexity heirachy -- AlphaGo goes here. Once we know how to do something reliably, it stops being AI and just becomes "an algorithm" :)
- chii 10y ago
  is there any research into making a "generic" AI that can solve any problem without the researcher first having to know what that problem is? i.e., human style learning.
  - CJefferson 10y ago
    Certainly some very clever people are trying it, and have been since the 60s at least, but as far as i am aware the progress is limited (but it is not my area of expertise). I think the main problem is you end up needing a language to describe the problem, and that ends up limiting the problems that can be solved, or you have to explain so carefully what the problem is it feels like cheating.
    - prance 10y ago
      As a researcher in multiagent systems, I know this problem very well. Which is, I believe, exactly the point the article makes. But it goes on to say that this might be possible to overcome by embodiment and developmental psychology. Not new arguments for sure, but valid ones, and brought at the right time (a year ago) of a new AI hype.
  - halflings 10y ago
    Machine learning algorithms can solve many problems without knowing what they really are, only given examples (sometimes even without labels when unsupervised learning applies). We are still quite far from anything we could call "human-style learning" though, but definitely getting there (just look at all the recent publications with reinforcement learning and elaborate ways to use memory in neural nets).
dkarl 10y ago
> It is by the general and widely used definition that AlphaGo is actually an AI. Only for a little while. AI is how we describe new technology that does something we think of as requiring human intelligence. AI, like the word "technology" itself, is a term we use during the lag between creating something and learning to take it for granted. I don't foresee an end to technological development, but I do think eventually there will be no AI, because our ability to intuitively appreciate intelligence doesn't much surpass our own. Beyond some point we will stop perceiving new technological capabilities as higher levels of intelligence. There will be people, computers, appliances, services not tied to individual machines, and genetically engineered rabbit tutors for our children, and nobody will be surprised to encounter intelligence anywhere, least of all in a computer.
rocqua 10y ago
No, that is totally ignoring the point of the article due to it's semantics. The point the article makes is that a general intelligence (or however you wanna call something that has intelligent function like a human) is not attained by AlphaGo. It might help but it is only part of the puzzle. There is work needed in other directions.

by 59nadir 10y ago

platz 10y ago

When some people say "AI" what they really mean is "Strong AI"

kowdermeister 10y ago
I'm some people and what I mean by AI is artificial intelligence. If needed I can be more precise with Weak / Strong / AGI or ASI.
- platz 10y ago
  So now you speak for everyone, and define their language usage independent of their intended connotations? Quite presumptuous.
- kgwgk 10y ago
  You are some other people, then.
fossuser 10y ago
I think people think of it more along the lines of an artificial consciousness. Which since consciousness is likely an emerging property of our own biological neural net and training data/weights, would likely have similar issues that humans have when exposed to bad data while growing up.
- platz 10y ago
  > our own biological neural net and training data/weights Well that shoots down my "minds are made of mechanical internal drives/pistons/levers" theory.

pron 10y ago

What's a "weak AI"? Does any algorithm that is able to adapt its behavior by learning qualify as "weak AI"? If so, why call it AI at all?

habitue 10y ago
Yeah, exactly. We call it AI because we need a name for this kind of adaptive algorithm, even if it isn't anything close to strong AI
- pron 10y ago
  There are JIT compilers, and even sorting algorithms that are adaptive. Are they AI too? What's wrong with the name "statistical learning" (as that's the flavor du jour of so called AI anyway)?
  - legolas2412 10y ago
    I think the word "adaptive" is meant to mean "general" learning that can be applied to more behavior. AlphaGo was trained for blackgammon, could it be given chess and learn it just as well? The answer is no. If I had to personally define AI, I would give a machine input to limbs of robot, and output of cameras and microphones (eyes and ears). And I would see if given sufficient years, can it learn language and conversation and ability to use robotic body for sports.
didibus 10y ago
"the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior" That's what I would define as weak AI. So yes, even algorithms which do not adapt their behaviors by learning, but can imitate intelligent human behavior to some extent would be weak AI, such as AI in video games. Now strong AI would be: "the capability of a machine to originate intelligent human behavior" This means the intelligent behavior would originate from the machine itself. Some Machine Learning algorithms exhibit strong AI, in that they find ways to even outperform a human, by themselves, through the learning process. Sometimes, we can't even understand why it chose to do what it did, but it appeared to be even more intelligent than what most human would have chosen to do themselves. Now Artificial General Intelligence, or sometimes called strong AI also, but I think there needs to be a distinction as I explain before. This would be: "the capability of a machine to originate any intelligent human behavior" The reason a lot of people are talking about true AI, AGI, strong AI, etc. today, is because Machine Learning is seen as the be all, end all of AI. Yet practitioners and scientists know that it is not, at least in its current form. Currently, it can solve simple decision tasks, probably the kind of decisions a person makes in under a second or two, like driving. But it does not solve them generally, so a person must train different models for each tasks. At the same time, having a way to automate decision making of a single simple task is huge in terms of potential. There's so many things we can automate through this, and if we combine them, you can create even more complex autonomous machines. That's why people are excited. Though I understand that it is not as awesome as having found general AI, or AI which can make complex decisions. The dream of AI continues, but the practicality of it are closer then ever.

CJefferson 10y ago

Speaking as an AI researcher, almost nothing is "AI" research. In practice i feel most current AI research falls into two categories: * Fuzzy problems -- image, sound and free text recognition. Where there is no real "true answer". * Problems too hard to solve in a reasonable time without heuristics -- SAT, scheduling, etc. In practice NP-hard problems and further up the complexity heirachy -- AlphaGo goes here. Once we know how to do something reliably, it stops being AI and just becomes "an algorithm" :)

chii 10y ago
is there any research into making a "generic" AI that can solve any problem without the researcher first having to know what that problem is? i.e., human style learning.
- CJefferson 10y ago
  Certainly some very clever people are trying it, and have been since the 60s at least, but as far as i am aware the progress is limited (but it is not my area of expertise). I think the main problem is you end up needing a language to describe the problem, and that ends up limiting the problems that can be solved, or you have to explain so carefully what the problem is it feels like cheating.
  - prance 10y ago
    As a researcher in multiagent systems, I know this problem very well. Which is, I believe, exactly the point the article makes. But it goes on to say that this might be possible to overcome by embodiment and developmental psychology. Not new arguments for sure, but valid ones, and brought at the right time (a year ago) of a new AI hype.
- halflings 10y ago
  Machine learning algorithms can solve many problems without knowing what they really are, only given examples (sometimes even without labels when unsupervised learning applies). We are still quite far from anything we could call "human-style learning" though, but definitely getting there (just look at all the recent publications with reinforcement learning and elaborate ways to use memory in neural nets).

dkarl 10y ago

> It is by the general and widely used definition that AlphaGo is actually an AI. Only for a little while. AI is how we describe new technology that does something we think of as requiring human intelligence. AI, like the word "technology" itself, is a term we use during the lag between creating something and learning to take it for granted. I don't foresee an end to technological development, but I do think eventually there will be no AI, because our ability to intuitively appreciate intelligence doesn't much surpass our own. Beyond some point we will stop perceiving new technological capabilities as higher levels of intelligence. There will be people, computers, appliances, services not tied to individual machines, and genetically engineered rabbit tutors for our children, and nobody will be surprised to encounter intelligence anywhere, least of all in a computer.

rocqua 10y ago

No, that is totally ignoring the point of the article due to it's semantics. The point the article makes is that a general intelligence (or however you wanna call something that has intelligent function like a human) is not attained by AlphaGo. It might help but it is only part of the puzzle. There is work needed in other directions.