6 ms·

The AI Guru Behind Amazon, Uber, and Unity Explains What AI Really Is

67 points by wildduck_io 9y ago

pmarreck 9y ago
Or he could have just said "massive linear algebra"
- wildduck_io 9y ago
  lol reminds me of that xkcd about Douglas Hofstadter https://www.xkcd.com/917/ https://www.xkcd.com/917/
  - tw1010 9y ago
    Surely it must have also reminded you of this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1838/ https://xkcd.com/1838/
    - pmarreck 9y ago
      I hope these don't get downvoted due to merely being humorous, but having taken Andrew Ng's online Stanford class in ML, the takeaway for me was indeed "this is just linear algebra at a massive scale" (fortunately, I enjoy linear algebra!)
    - wildduck_io 9y ago
      ha! I hadn't seen that one
10-6 9y ago
"I understand that a machine could kill people. But will a machine want to kill people? That seems to go back to that philosophical notion of consciousness." This is exactly the issue with a lot of journalists and people talking about AI/ML. There is no WANT or DESIRES from the programs, there is no self-awareness where the programs ask themselves if what they are doing is right or wrong. They are doing exactly what they were programmed to do. With his example of adversarial networks, one network is learning to detect fake news and other other is generating fake news--they are working towards their reward functions and optimizing the weights to reach the goal. It's math, that's all it is. It's so silly to bring up consciousness, desires, awareness, fears, etc. in these AI programs.
- candiodari 9y ago
  Don't you think that > they are working towards their reward functions and optimizing the weights to reach the goal applies to the human mind too ? Consciousness, when you think about it, might simply be a layer of indirection that any sufficiently complex network is capable of, if you give it a notion of time and events. Certainly it's not super hard to make reinforcement learning "bots" that certainly appear as conscious as small animals are.
  - visarga 9y ago
    I agree! Especially if those agents are many and cooperate to solve tasks - that would require an ability to model the state of other agents, which in turn can be used to model its own state, gaining self awareness.
  - 10-6 9y ago
    that statement I made may apply to the human mind and our thoughts, but it also may not some would argue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_theory_of_mind#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_theory_of_mind#C... So if someone were to disagree with the view of CTOM, then they can argue that no, consciousness must be something else.
    - candiodari 9y ago
      CTOM's suffer from the Russel Teapot problem. All of them suppose magical stuff is there. Of course none of it can be found in any inspection of the actual brain ...
- ggg9990 9y ago
  "Doing what they were programmed to do" isn't really satisfying when nobody knows what the program is. When a Google self driving car stops suddenly, nobody can say "why." So nobody can know if and how a neural network has the "desire" to kill.
- visarga 9y ago
  It's not silly, if the AI agent is in the real world. The limit to RL currently is simulation. If an AI could use model based RL to do reasoning and planning, it would surely have motivation and be capable of doing harm. Its motivation could be programmed in by its creators, or it could just act to prolong its existence. After all, all human motivations stem from the same source - the will to live, which is the result of evolution, in our case. AI's trained with evolutionary techniques could have the same will to live. Evolution just means pruning those who are not competent enough or have enough will to live.
uberthrowaway12 9y ago
It's laughable that this guy is called AI Guru. Does anyone in the AI/ML community recognize him? What has he technically achieved in AI? Other than jumping ships and giving broad AI talks (Elon-Musk-broad) to PR?
- visarga 9y ago
  I checked him and there's nothing much to show in the latest 18 years.
  - uberthrowaway12 9y ago
    And his papers 18 years ago have nothing to do with AI. I briefly worked with his team at Amazon and know that he knew almost nothing about AI or ML.
- AndrewKemendo 9y ago
  Sorry but this disparagement is not called for and my guess is that this account was created to disparage him. He has been applying ML for the last decade+ at Microsoft, Amazon, Uber and now Unity so he is relevant.
  - erikbye 9y ago
    Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/theaipodcast/ai-games-gtc https://soundcloud.com/theaipodcast/ai-games-gtc
visarga 9y ago
Ok, I took the bait, who is this AI Guru? His name is Danny Lange, who has published his latest paper in 1999, which means ages ago in AI time. Keep it real! This kind of hype is not worth it.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Karnickel 9y ago
  Independent of knowing who he is and how "famous" he is, I'm only looking at the one thing I got from/about him: This interview. What I see is a very, very shallow article, both questions as well as the answers. Elevator music comes to my mind, not a symphony. That doesn't say anything about his abilities, but I'm not here to judge the person but the article. I think trying to find out "who he is" and his accomplishments is actually bad: Let's just concentrate on the article. It doesn't get better or worse if I were to know anything more about the guy. Everything that we are here to talk about is there - I really don't understand some of the comments where people try to discuss the person instead of the content. Neither attacking the person or elevating him are of any help.
- fahayekwasright 9y ago
  1999 seems fine to me. AI has barely changed since 1975.
yters 9y ago
General artificial intelligence is inherently impossible, so why discuss its ramifications? No algorithm can create more information than is put into it, yet the hallmark of human intelligence is the ability to create new information. The two are inherently different beasts.
- Danihan 9y ago
  >the hallmark of human intelligence is the ability to create new information. What's an example of this "new information" human intelligence creates?
  - yters 9y ago
    An example I gave to the other commentator is humans can derive principles of play in these games that AIs are currently dominating. AIs have a very different method of playing, which amounts to memorizing a near perfect tactical response table. It seems like from a limited number of examples of A implying B, humans can infer that A always implies B, and can from there figure out A' implies C which is more favorable.
    - Danihan 9y ago
      I'm not sure that's new information. It's utilizing inferences. Basically, humans are much better at stereotyping / categorizing objects than machines currently are. But that could change (and is changing). Watson, for instance, seems pretty good at making inferences.
      - yters 9y ago
        In general, inference requires the creation of new information, in a Kolmogorov complexity sense. I.e. perfect inference uses Solmonoff induction, and Solomonoff induction is only possible with the ability to enumerate all elegant programs. But infinite Kolmogorov complexity is necessary to enumerate all elegant programs.
- heartles 9y ago

67 points by wildduck_io 9y ago

pmarreck 9y ago

Or he could have just said "massive linear algebra"

wildduck_io 9y ago
lol reminds me of that xkcd about Douglas Hofstadter https://www.xkcd.com/917/ https://www.xkcd.com/917/
- tw1010 9y ago
  Surely it must have also reminded you of this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1838/ https://xkcd.com/1838/
  - pmarreck 9y ago
    I hope these don't get downvoted due to merely being humorous, but having taken Andrew Ng's online Stanford class in ML, the takeaway for me was indeed "this is just linear algebra at a massive scale" (fortunately, I enjoy linear algebra!)
  - wildduck_io 9y ago
    ha! I hadn't seen that one

10-6 9y ago

"I understand that a machine could kill people. But will a machine want to kill people? That seems to go back to that philosophical notion of consciousness." This is exactly the issue with a lot of journalists and people talking about AI/ML. There is no WANT or DESIRES from the programs, there is no self-awareness where the programs ask themselves if what they are doing is right or wrong. They are doing exactly what they were programmed to do. With his example of adversarial networks, one network is learning to detect fake news and other other is generating fake news--they are working towards their reward functions and optimizing the weights to reach the goal. It's math, that's all it is. It's so silly to bring up consciousness, desires, awareness, fears, etc. in these AI programs.

candiodari 9y ago
Don't you think that > they are working towards their reward functions and optimizing the weights to reach the goal applies to the human mind too ? Consciousness, when you think about it, might simply be a layer of indirection that any sufficiently complex network is capable of, if you give it a notion of time and events. Certainly it's not super hard to make reinforcement learning "bots" that certainly appear as conscious as small animals are.
- visarga 9y ago
  I agree! Especially if those agents are many and cooperate to solve tasks - that would require an ability to model the state of other agents, which in turn can be used to model its own state, gaining self awareness.
- 10-6 9y ago
  that statement I made may apply to the human mind and our thoughts, but it also may not some would argue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_theory_of_mind#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_theory_of_mind#C... So if someone were to disagree with the view of CTOM, then they can argue that no, consciousness must be something else.
  - candiodari 9y ago
    CTOM's suffer from the Russel Teapot problem. All of them suppose magical stuff is there. Of course none of it can be found in any inspection of the actual brain ...
ggg9990 9y ago
"Doing what they were programmed to do" isn't really satisfying when nobody knows what the program is. When a Google self driving car stops suddenly, nobody can say "why." So nobody can know if and how a neural network has the "desire" to kill.
visarga 9y ago
It's not silly, if the AI agent is in the real world. The limit to RL currently is simulation. If an AI could use model based RL to do reasoning and planning, it would surely have motivation and be capable of doing harm. Its motivation could be programmed in by its creators, or it could just act to prolong its existence. After all, all human motivations stem from the same source - the will to live, which is the result of evolution, in our case. AI's trained with evolutionary techniques could have the same will to live. Evolution just means pruning those who are not competent enough or have enough will to live.

uberthrowaway12 9y ago

It's laughable that this guy is called AI Guru. Does anyone in the AI/ML community recognize him? What has he technically achieved in AI? Other than jumping ships and giving broad AI talks (Elon-Musk-broad) to PR?

visarga 9y ago
I checked him and there's nothing much to show in the latest 18 years.
- uberthrowaway12 9y ago
  And his papers 18 years ago have nothing to do with AI. I briefly worked with his team at Amazon and know that he knew almost nothing about AI or ML.
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
Sorry but this disparagement is not called for and my guess is that this account was created to disparage him. He has been applying ML for the last decade+ at Microsoft, Amazon, Uber and now Unity so he is relevant.
- erikbye 9y ago
  Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/theaipodcast/ai-games-gtc https://soundcloud.com/theaipodcast/ai-games-gtc

visarga 9y ago

Ok, I took the bait, who is this AI Guru? His name is Danny Lange, who has published his latest paper in 1999, which means ages ago in AI time. Keep it real! This kind of hype is not worth it.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Karnickel 9y ago
Independent of knowing who he is and how "famous" he is, I'm only looking at the one thing I got from/about him: This interview. What I see is a very, very shallow article, both questions as well as the answers. Elevator music comes to my mind, not a symphony. That doesn't say anything about his abilities, but I'm not here to judge the person but the article. I think trying to find out "who he is" and his accomplishments is actually bad: Let's just concentrate on the article. It doesn't get better or worse if I were to know anything more about the guy. Everything that we are here to talk about is there - I really don't understand some of the comments where people try to discuss the person instead of the content. Neither attacking the person or elevating him are of any help.
fahayekwasright 9y ago
1999 seems fine to me. AI has barely changed since 1975.

yters 9y ago

General artificial intelligence is inherently impossible, so why discuss its ramifications? No algorithm can create more information than is put into it, yet the hallmark of human intelligence is the ability to create new information. The two are inherently different beasts.

Danihan 9y ago
>the hallmark of human intelligence is the ability to create new information. What's an example of this "new information" human intelligence creates?
- yters 9y ago
  An example I gave to the other commentator is humans can derive principles of play in these games that AIs are currently dominating. AIs have a very different method of playing, which amounts to memorizing a near perfect tactical response table. It seems like from a limited number of examples of A implying B, humans can infer that A always implies B, and can from there figure out A' implies C which is more favorable.
  - Danihan 9y ago
    I'm not sure that's new information. It's utilizing inferences. Basically, humans are much better at stereotyping / categorizing objects than machines currently are. But that could change (and is changing). Watson, for instance, seems pretty good at making inferences.
    - yters 9y ago
      In general, inference requires the creation of new information, in a Kolmogorov complexity sense. I.e. perfect inference uses Solmonoff induction, and Solomonoff induction is only possible with the ability to enumerate all elegant programs. But infinite Kolmogorov complexity is necessary to enumerate all elegant programs.
heartles 9y ago