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This would be a very good paper if it were titled, "What makes general AI hard", and it didn't try to make any claims about uncomputability. Beyond the somewha

This would be a very good paper if it were titled, "What makes general AI hard", and it didn't try to make any claims about uncomputability. Beyond the somewhat useful collection of some of the prickly points of whatever it is that humans do that we call Intelligence, this particular discussion isn't bringing much to the table in support of its incredibly strong claims. It is functionally an extended application of Searle's Chinese Room argument to these hard points, usually built on question-begging premises (for example, regarding "biography" as a component of dialogue, quote, "Because machines lack an inner mental life – as we do not know how to engineer such a thing – they also lack those capabilities".) The paper addresses the traditional response to Searle thus: "How, then, do humans pass the Turing test? By using language, as humans do. Language is a unique human ability that evolved over millions of years of evolutionary selection pressure... machines cannot use language in this sense because they lack any framework of intentions". This is even blunter than Searle's actual counter, that there's something specific about biological machinery that makes it more capable in this regard than digital machinery. Instead, we're simply told that language is a special Human thing, Humans are not Turing-computable, and thus it's probably something computers can't do. I am a big proponent of anti-hype in AI technology and of the idea that language cannot be separated from the general human experience of Intelligence. I'm very frustrated when people assume we've solved a given problem in AI because we've been able to tackle some toy examples. And I'm a big fan of proving what can't be done. But this is not a particularly valuable exercise in any of those things, perhaps beyond prodding some of the hubris of the current cult of "we're almost there".

simonh 7y ago
Part 2 of the article is really good. It’s a shame if people are put off by the premise of the article. The authors have already pre-judged the outcome though. “Because machines lack an inner mental life...” Right, well that’s it then. Case closed. No point in researching general AI any more, might as well put all those researchers on unemployment benefits. The authors do say we don’t know how to engineer a machine with an inner mental life and consciousness, and this is true. It’s why like you (dmreedy) I’m a skeptic of claims that general AI is just round the corner. It isn’t and the Singularity is a good long way off. Our current efforts in AI are pitifully primitive, at best many orders of magnitude dumber than a fruit fly. That doesn’t lead me to believe therefore that we will never learn to solve this problem, or that this problem is in principle not solvable.
- roywiggins 7y ago
  For those skeptical that you even need an inner mental life to be intelligent, Peter Watt's novels "Blindsight"* and "Echopraxia" are a must-read. * https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    These are great novels, but they are just novels. To the best of our knowledge, all intelligent species in the universe have an "inner sight," or, the ability to observe at least some of their own mental machinery. Although the starfish of Blindsight seem possible, whether they are likely seems like another question entirely.

simonh 7y ago

Part 2 of the article is really good. It’s a shame if people are put off by the premise of the article. The authors have already pre-judged the outcome though. “Because machines lack an inner mental life...” Right, well that’s it then. Case closed. No point in researching general AI any more, might as well put all those researchers on unemployment benefits. The authors do say we don’t know how to engineer a machine with an inner mental life and consciousness, and this is true. It’s why like you (dmreedy) I’m a skeptic of claims that general AI is just round the corner. It isn’t and the Singularity is a good long way off. Our current efforts in AI are pitifully primitive, at best many orders of magnitude dumber than a fruit fly. That doesn’t lead me to believe therefore that we will never learn to solve this problem, or that this problem is in principle not solvable.

roywiggins 7y ago
For those skeptical that you even need an inner mental life to be intelligent, Peter Watt's novels "Blindsight"* and "Echopraxia" are a must-read. * https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  These are great novels, but they are just novels. To the best of our knowledge, all intelligent species in the universe have an "inner sight," or, the ability to observe at least some of their own mental machinery. Although the starfish of Blindsight seem possible, whether they are likely seems like another question entirely.