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Do you call this Artificial Intelligence? I dont call this AI, I call this automation. I know AI is a buzzword, but unless something is trying to think, its n

Do you call this Artificial Intelligence? I dont call this AI, I call this automation. I know AI is a buzzword, but unless something is trying to think, its not AI to me. What they are talking about seems to be automation through lots of code. But hey, I havent been keeping up with this field, not sure what people are calling this.

deelowe 8y ago
> additional course work in AI-related subjects such as statistics and probability, computational modeling, machine learning, and symbolic computation How is this automation and not AI?
- levesque 8y ago
  I probably wouldn't call it automation, but you could regroup all these under the term machine learning or data science and IMHO it would be valid. I think OP refers to AI as the autonomous agent type of AI. Conversation, understanding the world, moving & acting, planning & decision making, multi-agent collaboration, this type of stuff. Some of these might fall under machine learning, but I would say most are outside of the scope of machine learning -- and do not seem to be targeted by the so-called AI degrees. However, I think it's fine to call those degrees AI, because they are AI -- machine learning is AI. The question is should we name this after the smallest denominator (machine learning) or the biggest one (AI). Also, in the short term future, more and more real AI (i.e., not machine learning) will probably be integrated in those classes, so why not skip one painful rebranding step.
- ItsMe000001 8y ago
  To me "AI" means it learns by itself. Including the decision what to learn, and how. Having done quite a bit of statistics courses over the last few years (albeit with a focus on medicine/biology) and some of free the basic machine learning courses, AFAICS that is not the case, what and how something is learned is all decided and done by the human(s) in front of the computer, no? So, I don't see much "intelligence" - in the machine. Lots of it in those humans, of course.
  - deelowe 8y ago
    But with the application of those diciplines you can build machines that "learn." The "by themselves" bit is agi which is a specific subset of ai and would be more on the research side of things, not a bs. I think the real issue appears that the media has confused people as to what "ai" practically means from a compsci perspective.
  - asdsa5325 8y ago
    > To me "AI" means it learns by itself Your definition doesn't match the real definition. Technically, a hard coded rule-based decision algorithm is a form of very basic AI. You seem to be confusing ML and AI- ML is a subset of AI that focuses on training a complex model.
    - ItsMe000001 8y ago
      No I'm not confused, as I said, I took the courses. I know what is. I'm just saying that I don't see this as "AI" at all and why. I don't really care that someone decided to define what is possible now as "AI" for whatever reason because I don't agree and don't see that as reasonable. It's not like those "definitions" are laws either, ask around, even among professionals, and you get as many different definitions as you want. Therefore I prefer to use a "common sense expectation/interpretation" approach, and "common sense" here to me means coming from above (where we want to go), not from below (what we have thus far achieved).
colomon 8y ago
I dunno what it should be called (including the possibility that "AI" is exactly right). I do know that I focused on AI in my electives for UMich's CS degree circa 1990, and from the sounds of it the AI I studied will have literally nothing in common with what is described as AI for CMU's new degree.
zitterbewegung 8y ago
AI's curse is that once it becomes mundane people call it "automation". I think that having a focused degree in AI makes sense. I think that AI has reached the level of maturity that a separate curriculum should be made for it. Just as we had no distinction between computer scientists and software engineers we now face a world where AI and or Data Science require a different focus on education.
- autokad 8y ago
  My only thought on that idea is that it feels like an undergrad in AI is less useful in the sense that most AI positions prefer PHD over masters, let alone undergrad.
  - komali2 8y ago
    On the other hand, I've got a friend with a film degree pulling in decent money in Houston as a solo consultant (hiring contractors as needed (like me)), going from oldschool oil EPC to oldschool healthcare data analysis firms pitching "Big Data analysis" and "AI trained data modeling." Mostly it's plugging .CSVs into google's cloud platform tools, but sometimes I get to peek at some homebrew R or python modeling stuff. He (nor any of us that he pulls in for big projects) will never do research for MIT or OpenAI, but money is already being made in "AI." If his business ever explodes into a full blown company, these undergrads are exactly the kind of people he'd hire.
    - mkirklions 8y ago
      But this isnt AI. This is automation. I have done automation in python and I never thought it was AI.
      - cpburns2009 8y ago
        Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magi... AI.
      - deleted 8y ago
Ar-Curunir 8y ago
See the curriculum here: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/bs-in-artificial-intelligence/curriculum https://www.cs.cmu.edu/bs-in-artificial-intelligence/curricu... These are all standard ML/AI courses
RobertoG 8y ago
Have you considered the possibility that what we call 'human intelligence' could result being only advanced automation?
jimbokun 8y ago
Ok, so now define "think".

deelowe 8y ago

> additional course work in AI-related subjects such as statistics and probability, computational modeling, machine learning, and symbolic computation How is this automation and not AI?

levesque 8y ago
I probably wouldn't call it automation, but you could regroup all these under the term machine learning or data science and IMHO it would be valid. I think OP refers to AI as the autonomous agent type of AI. Conversation, understanding the world, moving & acting, planning & decision making, multi-agent collaboration, this type of stuff. Some of these might fall under machine learning, but I would say most are outside of the scope of machine learning -- and do not seem to be targeted by the so-called AI degrees. However, I think it's fine to call those degrees AI, because they are AI -- machine learning is AI. The question is should we name this after the smallest denominator (machine learning) or the biggest one (AI). Also, in the short term future, more and more real AI (i.e., not machine learning) will probably be integrated in those classes, so why not skip one painful rebranding step.
ItsMe000001 8y ago
To me "AI" means it learns by itself. Including the decision what to learn, and how. Having done quite a bit of statistics courses over the last few years (albeit with a focus on medicine/biology) and some of free the basic machine learning courses, AFAICS that is not the case, what and how something is learned is all decided and done by the human(s) in front of the computer, no? So, I don't see much "intelligence" - in the machine. Lots of it in those humans, of course.
- deelowe 8y ago
  But with the application of those diciplines you can build machines that "learn." The "by themselves" bit is agi which is a specific subset of ai and would be more on the research side of things, not a bs. I think the real issue appears that the media has confused people as to what "ai" practically means from a compsci perspective.
- asdsa5325 8y ago
  > To me "AI" means it learns by itself Your definition doesn't match the real definition. Technically, a hard coded rule-based decision algorithm is a form of very basic AI. You seem to be confusing ML and AI- ML is a subset of AI that focuses on training a complex model.
  - ItsMe000001 8y ago
    No I'm not confused, as I said, I took the courses. I know what is. I'm just saying that I don't see this as "AI" at all and why. I don't really care that someone decided to define what is possible now as "AI" for whatever reason because I don't agree and don't see that as reasonable. It's not like those "definitions" are laws either, ask around, even among professionals, and you get as many different definitions as you want. Therefore I prefer to use a "common sense expectation/interpretation" approach, and "common sense" here to me means coming from above (where we want to go), not from below (what we have thus far achieved).

colomon 8y ago

I dunno what it should be called (including the possibility that "AI" is exactly right). I do know that I focused on AI in my electives for UMich's CS degree circa 1990, and from the sounds of it the AI I studied will have literally nothing in common with what is described as AI for CMU's new degree.

zitterbewegung 8y ago

AI's curse is that once it becomes mundane people call it "automation". I think that having a focused degree in AI makes sense. I think that AI has reached the level of maturity that a separate curriculum should be made for it. Just as we had no distinction between computer scientists and software engineers we now face a world where AI and or Data Science require a different focus on education.

autokad 8y ago
My only thought on that idea is that it feels like an undergrad in AI is less useful in the sense that most AI positions prefer PHD over masters, let alone undergrad.
- komali2 8y ago
  On the other hand, I've got a friend with a film degree pulling in decent money in Houston as a solo consultant (hiring contractors as needed (like me)), going from oldschool oil EPC to oldschool healthcare data analysis firms pitching "Big Data analysis" and "AI trained data modeling." Mostly it's plugging .CSVs into google's cloud platform tools, but sometimes I get to peek at some homebrew R or python modeling stuff. He (nor any of us that he pulls in for big projects) will never do research for MIT or OpenAI, but money is already being made in "AI." If his business ever explodes into a full blown company, these undergrads are exactly the kind of people he'd hire.
  - mkirklions 8y ago
    But this isnt AI. This is automation. I have done automation in python and I never thought it was AI.
    - cpburns2009 8y ago
      Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magi... AI.
    - deleted 8y ago

Ar-Curunir 8y ago

See the curriculum here: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/bs-in-artificial-intelligence/curriculum https://www.cs.cmu.edu/bs-in-artificial-intelligence/curricu... These are all standard ML/AI courses

RobertoG 8y ago

Have you considered the possibility that what we call 'human intelligence' could result being only advanced automation?

jimbokun 8y ago

Ok, so now define "think".