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In this AI/machine learning is compared to the space race and the fight against cancer - I like the comparison considering I work in the field ;) Unfortunately

by Smerity 16y ago

In this AI/machine learning is compared to the space race and the fight against cancer - I like the comparison considering I work in the field ;) Unfortunately though I think AI and machine learning has the fundamental problem of rolling improvement... Think back a hundred years to a time before the internet, long distance telephones, common air travel and so on. To people from a hundred years ago we'd be the most outlandish science fiction story ever told. I consider the same thing whilst watching science fiction films - in reality they wouldn't be amazed that they can reach Mars in a half hour. They'd instead be complaining about the in-flight entertainment or the turbulence caused by navigating asteroid fields. AI has the same problem. People can now (naively) communicate with each other even though they share no common language. Texts and documents can be re-written in real time to be legible in another language. Credit card fraud and spam emails are handled transparently by systems trained on hundreds or thousands of hours of cumulative knowledge. No-one sees these things. No-one respects these things. Human kind judges itself from the position it currently stands, not from where it began. For this reason alone incremental improvements will never really be considered milestones of achievement.

zeteo 16y ago
"To people from a hundred years ago we'd be the most outlandish science fiction story ever told." You'd be surprised: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Twentieth_Century#Predictions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Twentieth_Century#...
- derleth 16y ago
  Technology is one thing; society is another: I doubt anyone from the 19th Century could possibly imagine a debate over gay marriage. A crazy promoting it getting beaten down by a righteous world, possibly, but not a debate.
Cushman 16y ago
I don't know if the comparison is that inapt; how many people do you think are really aware of the technology that goes into making that little box say "in five hundred yards, turn left"?
mattdeboard 16y ago
This is a great perspective. I would add that people are less impressed by Watson not just because it's an incremental step, but because they don't understand the principles and advances Watson is designed to showcase. From what I gather about the coverage of Watson in traditional media, this seems to be billed as, "Can a machine out-think a human? Tune in at 7:30pm to find out!" To most modern people, this is kind of a yawner. Of course a machine can "out-think" (read: think faster than) a human. It wouldn't be very exciting if the news came on and talked excitedly about a computer that could perform long division faster than a human, either. But that's not really what Watson represents, is it? The importance of Watson is something that doesn't register with most lay people: The processing of natural language into 'machine readable' data, then querying an enormous database to find relevant info, then choosing the best answer.... "Isn't that what Google does? Like, millions of times a day? What's the big deal?" (Disclaimer: Most people have better things to worry about than advancess in AI and ML, so I'm not saying it's a bad thing they don't understand what makes Watson special "under the hood." And to be fair, I was way more impressed by Word Lens than I am by Watson.) tl;dr: The concepts that make Watson so impressive aren't easily discernible from what already exists in the world, for most people.

by Smerity 16y ago

zeteo 16y ago

"To people from a hundred years ago we'd be the most outlandish science fiction story ever told." You'd be surprised: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Twentieth_Century#Predictions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Twentieth_Century#...

derleth 16y ago
Technology is one thing; society is another: I doubt anyone from the 19th Century could possibly imagine a debate over gay marriage. A crazy promoting it getting beaten down by a righteous world, possibly, but not a debate.

Cushman 16y ago

I don't know if the comparison is that inapt; how many people do you think are really aware of the technology that goes into making that little box say "in five hundred yards, turn left"?

mattdeboard 16y ago

This is a great perspective. I would add that people are less impressed by Watson not just because it's an incremental step, but because they don't understand the principles and advances Watson is designed to showcase. From what I gather about the coverage of Watson in traditional media, this seems to be billed as, "Can a machine out-think a human? Tune in at 7:30pm to find out!" To most modern people, this is kind of a yawner. Of course a machine can "out-think" (read: think faster than) a human. It wouldn't be very exciting if the news came on and talked excitedly about a computer that could perform long division faster than a human, either. But that's not really what Watson represents, is it? The importance of Watson is something that doesn't register with most lay people: The processing of natural language into 'machine readable' data, then querying an enormous database to find relevant info, then choosing the best answer.... "Isn't that what Google does? Like, millions of times a day? What's the big deal?" (Disclaimer: Most people have better things to worry about than advancess in AI and ML, so I'm not saying it's a bad thing they don't understand what makes Watson special "under the hood." And to be fair, I was way more impressed by Word Lens than I am by Watson.) tl;dr: The concepts that make Watson so impressive aren't easily discernible from what already exists in the world, for most people.