4 ms·

Ask HN: Does the term artificial-intelligence drive you up the wall?

14 points by Fsp2WFuH 8y ago

This might be unpopular. There is no such thing as AI, there's only machine learning. Can intelligence even be artificial? So much misuse of this term.

mindcrime 8y ago
There is no such thing as AI, there's only machine learning That's a pretty bold assertion given that the field of AI has a history[1][2][3] stretching back 60 some odd years. What's your basis for making the claim that there is "no such thing as AI"? And for that matter, why would you make a bright-line distinction between "machine learning" and AI in the first place? Most people consider ML a subset of the broader AI rubric, meaning ML is AI. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_workshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_workshop [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intellig... [3]: https://aitopics.org/misc/brief-history https://aitopics.org/misc/brief-history
- meiraleal 8y ago
  > What's your basis for making the claim that there is "no such thing as AI"? Intelligence created by the man (or a group of) is not artificial intelligence, is human intelligence in a canvas. It might be books, paintings or code.
sp332 8y ago
> Can intelligence even be artificial? Why don't I just answer "yes" and then you can stop worrying about it?
- meiraleal 8y ago
  You could create a bot to answer this kind of question. /s
IpV8 8y ago
Yea! And while we're at it, I'm livid that we're still calling them REfrigerators! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
- joejerryronnie 8y ago
  Whhhoooaaa, like, mind blown man! I'm fully woke now and will never look at that silver box in my kitchen the same!
agitator 8y ago
It's the same thing as saying "reverse racism". Intelligence is all the same, irrelevant of where it comes from or who has it. It's just another example of humans elevating themselves above the, so far, non-sentient, intelligences in the world. Yeah currently nothing we have encountered is as intelligence as us, so I'd say yeah we haven't created anything that mimics human level intelligence or sentience yet, so yeah everything thus far has been an artificial attempt at some aspect of human intelligence, but eventually we will create something intelligent, and it won't be "artificial" or mimicking intelligence, but it will be an independent source of sentience and intelligence.
ttsda 8y ago
Artificial as opposed to natural, doesn't mean it would not be as real as ours.
iTooAmAkid 8y ago
Wrong crowd to ask. This crowd only rewards sycophants.
Isamu 8y ago
Well ... if you're going there ... there's no machine "learning" either. It's just a clever kind of numeric optimization. It's nothing like human learning, which is incredibly adaptable. No comparison.
laurentl 8y ago
The way you write "artificial-intelligence" with an hyphen drives me up the wall, if that helps.
unwaba 8y ago
> Can intelligence even be artificial? Well, yes. "Artificial" first and foremost means "man-made". The point of terming intelligence as artificial is to explicitly differentiate between the intelligence/cognitive modules developed over millennia of natural evolution and, well, man-made attempts at mimicking this. Moreover, as another comment mentions, ML is a subset of AI. The term "Artificial intelligence" is not what drives people up a wall. It's actually the fact that it is _sold_ as capable of more than reality is what angers people.
jryan49 8y ago
We have "natural" intelligence, intelligence that arose from natural processes. Artificial intelligence is intelligence we produced. What is so confusing?
rurban 8y ago
Every AI engineer is well aware of the bad taste of the name. AI is just advanced technology. Either search, dynamic problems, advanced algorithms or linear algebra used on generic problems. As soon as a formerly AI field becomes main stream it is not under the AI umbrella anymore. Such as search, backtracking, game strategy, planning, bignum arithmetic, symbolic interpretation, ... Verbatim interpretation of AI has nothing to do with the field of AI, only with science fiction.

14 points by Fsp2WFuH 8y ago

This might be unpopular. There is no such thing as AI, there's only machine learning. Can intelligence even be artificial? So much misuse of this term.

mindcrime 8y ago

There is no such thing as AI, there's only machine learning That's a pretty bold assertion given that the field of AI has a history[1][2][3] stretching back 60 some odd years. What's your basis for making the claim that there is "no such thing as AI"? And for that matter, why would you make a bright-line distinction between "machine learning" and AI in the first place? Most people consider ML a subset of the broader AI rubric, meaning ML is AI. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_workshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_workshop [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intellig... [3]: https://aitopics.org/misc/brief-history https://aitopics.org/misc/brief-history

meiraleal 8y ago
> What's your basis for making the claim that there is "no such thing as AI"? Intelligence created by the man (or a group of) is not artificial intelligence, is human intelligence in a canvas. It might be books, paintings or code.

sp332 8y ago

> Can intelligence even be artificial? Why don't I just answer "yes" and then you can stop worrying about it?

meiraleal 8y ago
You could create a bot to answer this kind of question. /s

IpV8 8y ago

Yea! And while we're at it, I'm livid that we're still calling them REfrigerators! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

joejerryronnie 8y ago
Whhhoooaaa, like, mind blown man! I'm fully woke now and will never look at that silver box in my kitchen the same!

agitator 8y ago

It's the same thing as saying "reverse racism". Intelligence is all the same, irrelevant of where it comes from or who has it. It's just another example of humans elevating themselves above the, so far, non-sentient, intelligences in the world. Yeah currently nothing we have encountered is as intelligence as us, so I'd say yeah we haven't created anything that mimics human level intelligence or sentience yet, so yeah everything thus far has been an artificial attempt at some aspect of human intelligence, but eventually we will create something intelligent, and it won't be "artificial" or mimicking intelligence, but it will be an independent source of sentience and intelligence.

ttsda 8y ago

Artificial as opposed to natural, doesn't mean it would not be as real as ours.

iTooAmAkid 8y ago

Wrong crowd to ask. This crowd only rewards sycophants.

Isamu 8y ago

Well ... if you're going there ... there's no machine "learning" either. It's just a clever kind of numeric optimization. It's nothing like human learning, which is incredibly adaptable. No comparison.

laurentl 8y ago

The way you write "artificial-intelligence" with an hyphen drives me up the wall, if that helps.

unwaba 8y ago

> Can intelligence even be artificial? Well, yes. "Artificial" first and foremost means "man-made". The point of terming intelligence as artificial is to explicitly differentiate between the intelligence/cognitive modules developed over millennia of natural evolution and, well, man-made attempts at mimicking this. Moreover, as another comment mentions, ML is a subset of AI. The term "Artificial intelligence" is not what drives people up a wall. It's actually the fact that it is _sold_ as capable of more than reality is what angers people.

jryan49 8y ago

We have "natural" intelligence, intelligence that arose from natural processes. Artificial intelligence is intelligence we produced. What is so confusing?

rurban 8y ago

Every AI engineer is well aware of the bad taste of the name. AI is just advanced technology. Either search, dynamic problems, advanced algorithms or linear algebra used on generic problems. As soon as a formerly AI field becomes main stream it is not under the AI umbrella anymore. Such as search, backtracking, game strategy, planning, bignum arithmetic, symbolic interpretation, ... Verbatim interpretation of AI has nothing to do with the field of AI, only with science fiction.