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"Computers have not become intelligent per se, but they have provided capabilities that augment human intelligence, he writes. Moreover, they have excelled at l

by jmfldn 6y ago

"Computers have not become intelligent per se, but they have provided capabilities that augment human intelligence, he writes. Moreover, they have excelled at low-level pattern-recognition capabilities that could be performed in principle by humans but at great cost. " It's odd how under-appreciated this is. There is no "intelligence" here as we know it, not even a hint. There are algorithms operating on data for very prescribed use cases. When you break it down its pretty primitive stuff really. Clever sure, but don't think we're building a mind here, that language just confuses things. So much of the public conversation around this stuff is polluted with this sort of sci fi nonsense claiming all sorts of properties for AI and implying some sort of singularity is around the corner. Pure fantasy.

Sebb767 6y ago
> There is no "intelligence" here as we know it, not even a hint. There are algorithms operating on data for very prescribed use cases. I agree with your general point, but if you break it down, our brains a nothing "intelligent" either. It's just a network of neurons searching for patterns in the sensor input. Sure, it can reconfigure itself, but from a really abstract perspective it's nothing more than a ultra-scaled neural network as we currently use them. So this really boils down to the definition of intelligence, which is by no means easy.
- omnicognate 6y ago
  > it's nothing more than a ultra-scaled neural network as we currently use them You state this as if it is an undisputed/obvious fact, but it isn't.
  - Sebb767 6y ago
    It does not matter for my point. Even if our NNs miss some part of neuron function, it would look comparable to a simple if/a multiplication on the smallest level. My point is that the complexity/intelligence comes from size; just because our algorithms adapt minimally or accept pre-defined scenarios, does not mean that they are fundamentally unintelligent because we're able to fully understand them.
- jmfldn 6y ago
  Maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure if it's just a matter of scale or of the fundamental nature of the thing. It might be that the computer / neural network metaphor, whilst isomorphic to certain brain procesees, may ultimately not tell us very much about the larger system and what it actually is. I tend to think that because computers are the current peak of civilisation / engineering, and in some ways, "alive", we think we might be like a computer. In the Victorian machine age they talked of humans as machines. Maybe some, hitherto unthinkable invention is around the corner, and we will say humans / brains are like that too.
- dublin 6y ago
  No, the difference is we can understand and apply knowledge in different contexts. I'm not saying machines will never mimic that (GPT3 is getting kinda close at times), but as my good friend Dewayne Perry (co-author of the most cited paper in SW engineering and Motorola Regent Chair at UTexas) says, "Artificial intelligence has a long way to go just to catch up to natural stupidity!" Try getting Alexa (famously trained daily by millions) to do anything in anything other than the predefined prescribed way. I'd wait, but I've got a life to live...
bobthechef 6y ago
You can blame a lack of metaphysical sophistication for this and a lack of self-awareness around how "intelligence" is being projected or read into things. One obvious feature of intelligence is that it can abstract from particulars. We form and reason about universal concepts. I know the concept of "squarishness" which means something definite without being some specific square (of which there is an infinite number). I can imagine a square, but those are always particular squares, whereas the concept is universal. But material things are only ever particular. Can you show me a material thing that is "squarishness"? No. Computers are physical objects, right? So how can the universal "squarishness" exist in a physical object without being a particular square? Even here we often fool our selves when we fails to recognize that computer programs, like the text in a book, need humans to grant them their identity and make sense of them because their meaning and identity are assigned by the observer and not intrinsic to them like mind-independent things. A "Square" class, defined as record with two fields corresponding to width and length, is not the concept of a square. Instances of that class are not squares. Even "class" and "instance" are mental models which do not exist "out there" like real entities or phenomena. What we call computers just have affordances that allow us to configure them to correspond and cooperate with the models in our minds. But strictly speaking, computers don't really have an objective reality and neither does the computation within them. The machine is real in the sense that we have arranged a bunch of stuff to be a certain causal ensemble, but this causal ensemble is not objectively a computer nor is it computing. Rather, we are using it to compute. But if you erased all human beings from the planet, and left a bunch of computers running, objectively, they would only be arrays of things with magnetic and electrical components changing physical state. You need someone to interpret what computers do to make them useful. Just like three beads on an abacus doesn't mean "3" and pushing a bead toward those three doesn't mean "adding 1". You need a person to assign those meanings to it. Computers don't magically break free of that reality.
256lie 6y ago
Is DNA intelligent? What about virus? Ants? Dolphins? A corporation?

by jmfldn 6y ago

Sebb767 6y ago

> There is no "intelligence" here as we know it, not even a hint. There are algorithms operating on data for very prescribed use cases. I agree with your general point, but if you break it down, our brains a nothing "intelligent" either. It's just a network of neurons searching for patterns in the sensor input. Sure, it can reconfigure itself, but from a really abstract perspective it's nothing more than a ultra-scaled neural network as we currently use them. So this really boils down to the definition of intelligence, which is by no means easy.

omnicognate 6y ago
> it's nothing more than a ultra-scaled neural network as we currently use them You state this as if it is an undisputed/obvious fact, but it isn't.
- Sebb767 6y ago
  It does not matter for my point. Even if our NNs miss some part of neuron function, it would look comparable to a simple if/a multiplication on the smallest level. My point is that the complexity/intelligence comes from size; just because our algorithms adapt minimally or accept pre-defined scenarios, does not mean that they are fundamentally unintelligent because we're able to fully understand them.
jmfldn 6y ago
Maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure if it's just a matter of scale or of the fundamental nature of the thing. It might be that the computer / neural network metaphor, whilst isomorphic to certain brain procesees, may ultimately not tell us very much about the larger system and what it actually is. I tend to think that because computers are the current peak of civilisation / engineering, and in some ways, "alive", we think we might be like a computer. In the Victorian machine age they talked of humans as machines. Maybe some, hitherto unthinkable invention is around the corner, and we will say humans / brains are like that too.
dublin 6y ago
No, the difference is we can understand and apply knowledge in different contexts. I'm not saying machines will never mimic that (GPT3 is getting kinda close at times), but as my good friend Dewayne Perry (co-author of the most cited paper in SW engineering and Motorola Regent Chair at UTexas) says, "Artificial intelligence has a long way to go just to catch up to natural stupidity!" Try getting Alexa (famously trained daily by millions) to do anything in anything other than the predefined prescribed way. I'd wait, but I've got a life to live...

bobthechef 6y ago

You can blame a lack of metaphysical sophistication for this and a lack of self-awareness around how "intelligence" is being projected or read into things. One obvious feature of intelligence is that it can abstract from particulars. We form and reason about universal concepts. I know the concept of "squarishness" which means something definite without being some specific square (of which there is an infinite number). I can imagine a square, but those are always particular squares, whereas the concept is universal. But material things are only ever particular. Can you show me a material thing that is "squarishness"? No. Computers are physical objects, right? So how can the universal "squarishness" exist in a physical object without being a particular square? Even here we often fool our selves when we fails to recognize that computer programs, like the text in a book, need humans to grant them their identity and make sense of them because their meaning and identity are assigned by the observer and not intrinsic to them like mind-independent things. A "Square" class, defined as record with two fields corresponding to width and length, is not the concept of a square. Instances of that class are not squares. Even "class" and "instance" are mental models which do not exist "out there" like real entities or phenomena. What we call computers just have affordances that allow us to configure them to correspond and cooperate with the models in our minds. But strictly speaking, computers don't really have an objective reality and neither does the computation within them. The machine is real in the sense that we have arranged a bunch of stuff to be a certain causal ensemble, but this causal ensemble is not objectively a computer nor is it computing. Rather, we are using it to compute. But if you erased all human beings from the planet, and left a bunch of computers running, objectively, they would only be arrays of things with magnetic and electrical components changing physical state. You need someone to interpret what computers do to make them useful. Just like three beads on an abacus doesn't mean "3" and pushing a bead toward those three doesn't mean "adding 1". You need a person to assign those meanings to it. Computers don't magically break free of that reality.

256lie 6y ago

Is DNA intelligent? What about virus? Ants? Dolphins? A corporation?