4 ms·

Since Dartmouth AI looks like a story of naive visions, exaggerated promises, massive disappointment, recurrent divisionary tactics, rebranding and snak oil sal

Since Dartmouth AI looks like a story of naive visions, exaggerated promises, massive disappointment, recurrent divisionary tactics, rebranding and snak oil sale. Until finally a light on the horizon became visible and academically camouflaged wishful thinking could be materialized into usable products. A groping in the dark, nothing more. There are probably good reasons why the blind watchmaker needed billions of years and it is not clear wether the seeing watchmaker Humanity is not too short-sighted. At least one can hope, whatever he will give the name strong artificial intelligence, and he likes to give his imagined or real successes grand names, he will find faster.

ryanianian 6y ago
What?
- Borrible 6y ago
  To make a long story short, you may find it all here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intelligence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intell...
- erikpukinskis 6y ago
  Which part of it needs clarification? “Snake oil” is a product that is sold on false promises. The author suggested much of AI has been snake oil historically. They also suggest that the way intelligence was created (natural selection, AKA the “blind watchmaker”) may be the fastest way to do it. And that trying to do it again, in computers, might also take a billion years because the problem is just that hard. But hopefully it is faster than that.
  - Borrible 6y ago
    Not exactly. The not-teleological process of evolution needed billions of years to bring forth human intelligence. Human intelligence is likely to produce artificial intelligence much more quickly, if that is possible at all. Which is likely. Which is partly a matter of the semantics of the term. Whose fuzziness is the root of a smorgasbord of wishful thinking since 1956. Whenever AI came up against seemingly insurmountable difficulties, they just changed its definition. It is quite funny to read for example books from philosophers with some interest in artificial intelligence from the 80s/90s like say Paul Churchland. (The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain, MIT Press, 1995) The anecdotes are worth their weight in gold. Especially because they show what was considered artificial intelligence back than in contrast to today. What human intelligence produces as artificial intelligence will resemble human intelligence in function, but not necessarily in form. Just as nature has brought forth flying differently than man. Or as Prof.Dr. Katharina Morik, TU Dortmund, Germany once put it on a meetup I attended: "AI is when a machine does something that looks like only humans can do. Artificial intelligence is open as a terminology to accommodate the phenomenon of shifting capability." You may notice the strong, let me put it mildly, ironic component in her description. I am only a little more vicious in my judgment.
mistrial9 6y ago
The blind Watchmaker -> creator of the physical Universe The seeing Watchmaker -> human engineering "(We) wish the human some progress, obviously egotistical and delusional, on whatever the human makes next" I believe this slightly poetic word salad references certain theological problems about the capacity of man compared to a Creator. The conclusion is that the future is uncertain and the human is flawed, but an intelligent reader can supply "hope"
- Borrible 6y ago
  No creator, no teleology, no theology, no poetry, just Richard Dawkins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Watchmaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Watchmaker I thought it was common knowledge, but maybe I'm getting old.
wildermuthn 6y ago
As convoluted as this comment is, props for pointing out that evolution (and the formation of the solar system) took billions of years to produce intelligence. Can humanity do it in less time? Because biological evolution’s is oriented toward propagation of DNA rather than intelligence, we can ask what kind of evolutionary pressures lead to intelligence. Under what scenarios does higher intelligence lead to higher survival, and lower intelligence to lower survival? If the answer was “all the time”, then everything on earth would show signs of intelligence. An intelligent spider would have no significantly greater chance of survival. It merely needs to spin webs, eat, and reproduce in a tight loop, with deterministic responses to various scenarios — it needs instinct more than intelligence. By understanding what kind of evolutionary pressures lead to the necessity of intelligence, we can evolve (train) ML directly for intelligence, skipping straight to the answer rather than showing our work. The answer is found in the peculiar evolution of mammals, the only organisms that display consistent intelligence across all its species. Mammals are highly social, beginning from live birth to mammalian glands that feed its comparatively feeble spawn. Sociality is built into the bodies of mammals. And the most social animal on earth is Homo Sapiens. From here I’ll just recommend “Consciousness and the Social Brain.” I’ve been beating this dead horse on HN for some time.
- Borrible 6y ago
  "An intelligent spider would have no significantly greater chance of survival." Just for a moment, consider your spider as the embodyment of a special form of intelligence. And even dare to construct the term intelligence to include the web of the spider. And not just as a tool of the spider. As a problem-solving competence for a special problem category.
- shkkmo 6y ago
  I think that the role that human "instincts" play in the development of intelligence in our brain is very important. Social behavior is a key part of that. We do see high levels of intelligence in non-mammal species, like crows, but they tend to also be very social creatures. The main counter example I can think of would be the octopus. I think that even if we crack "general intelligence" and can make something that can problem-solve and learn on par with an Octopus, that approach will not get us to human level cognition. I personally do believe that you will need societies of AI agents to develop the culture software to achieve human level cognition. I think we greatly underestimate the value and complexity of the cultural OS's that allow humans to perform advanced cognition.

ryanianian 6y ago

What?

Borrible 6y ago
To make a long story short, you may find it all here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intelligence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intell...
erikpukinskis 6y ago
Which part of it needs clarification? “Snake oil” is a product that is sold on false promises. The author suggested much of AI has been snake oil historically. They also suggest that the way intelligence was created (natural selection, AKA the “blind watchmaker”) may be the fastest way to do it. And that trying to do it again, in computers, might also take a billion years because the problem is just that hard. But hopefully it is faster than that.
- Borrible 6y ago
  Not exactly. The not-teleological process of evolution needed billions of years to bring forth human intelligence. Human intelligence is likely to produce artificial intelligence much more quickly, if that is possible at all. Which is likely. Which is partly a matter of the semantics of the term. Whose fuzziness is the root of a smorgasbord of wishful thinking since 1956. Whenever AI came up against seemingly insurmountable difficulties, they just changed its definition. It is quite funny to read for example books from philosophers with some interest in artificial intelligence from the 80s/90s like say Paul Churchland. (The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain, MIT Press, 1995) The anecdotes are worth their weight in gold. Especially because they show what was considered artificial intelligence back than in contrast to today. What human intelligence produces as artificial intelligence will resemble human intelligence in function, but not necessarily in form. Just as nature has brought forth flying differently than man. Or as Prof.Dr. Katharina Morik, TU Dortmund, Germany once put it on a meetup I attended: "AI is when a machine does something that looks like only humans can do. Artificial intelligence is open as a terminology to accommodate the phenomenon of shifting capability." You may notice the strong, let me put it mildly, ironic component in her description. I am only a little more vicious in my judgment.

mistrial9 6y ago

The blind Watchmaker -> creator of the physical Universe The seeing Watchmaker -> human engineering "(We) wish the human some progress, obviously egotistical and delusional, on whatever the human makes next" I believe this slightly poetic word salad references certain theological problems about the capacity of man compared to a Creator. The conclusion is that the future is uncertain and the human is flawed, but an intelligent reader can supply "hope"

Borrible 6y ago
No creator, no teleology, no theology, no poetry, just Richard Dawkins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Watchmaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Watchmaker I thought it was common knowledge, but maybe I'm getting old.

wildermuthn 6y ago

As convoluted as this comment is, props for pointing out that evolution (and the formation of the solar system) took billions of years to produce intelligence. Can humanity do it in less time? Because biological evolution’s is oriented toward propagation of DNA rather than intelligence, we can ask what kind of evolutionary pressures lead to intelligence. Under what scenarios does higher intelligence lead to higher survival, and lower intelligence to lower survival? If the answer was “all the time”, then everything on earth would show signs of intelligence. An intelligent spider would have no significantly greater chance of survival. It merely needs to spin webs, eat, and reproduce in a tight loop, with deterministic responses to various scenarios — it needs instinct more than intelligence. By understanding what kind of evolutionary pressures lead to the necessity of intelligence, we can evolve (train) ML directly for intelligence, skipping straight to the answer rather than showing our work. The answer is found in the peculiar evolution of mammals, the only organisms that display consistent intelligence across all its species. Mammals are highly social, beginning from live birth to mammalian glands that feed its comparatively feeble spawn. Sociality is built into the bodies of mammals. And the most social animal on earth is Homo Sapiens. From here I’ll just recommend “Consciousness and the Social Brain.” I’ve been beating this dead horse on HN for some time.

Borrible 6y ago
"An intelligent spider would have no significantly greater chance of survival." Just for a moment, consider your spider as the embodyment of a special form of intelligence. And even dare to construct the term intelligence to include the web of the spider. And not just as a tool of the spider. As a problem-solving competence for a special problem category.
shkkmo 6y ago
I think that the role that human "instincts" play in the development of intelligence in our brain is very important. Social behavior is a key part of that. We do see high levels of intelligence in non-mammal species, like crows, but they tend to also be very social creatures. The main counter example I can think of would be the octopus. I think that even if we crack "general intelligence" and can make something that can problem-solve and learn on par with an Octopus, that approach will not get us to human level cognition. I personally do believe that you will need societies of AI agents to develop the culture software to achieve human level cognition. I think we greatly underestimate the value and complexity of the cultural OS's that allow humans to perform advanced cognition.