6 ms·

nothing new here, AI has been "5 years away" since the 1950s

by andyxor 5y ago

bhk 5y ago
It was 20 years away for a while. And may be again.
profunctor 5y ago
AI currently does lots of useful things in all sorts of industries. It just can't do everything that humans can do.
paxys 5y ago
The world is already largely running on AI, just not the version of it that is in people's heads by watching sci-fi movies.
- thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
  The sci-fi version being as the term was defined by Alan Turing and the marketing version being as s/ML/AI
- romwell 5y ago
  The world is running on good old software. I don't know of anything important that's running on anything that can be reasonably called AI. I think we can get by without Siri. Of course, if you include the entirety of machine learning under the AI label, then whatever. But in my opinion, a principal component analysis does not an AI make. Statistical inference has been around since before computers were invented.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    I think there is some argument to be made that the Web is "running on" AI, since AI-driven ads businesses are the source of all money in the Web (essentially); and I do think that it's fair to call NNs "AI". I for one am highly skeptical that the kind of automatic personalized targeting that AI enables is actually worth the price, but the industry overwhelmingly believes it is. So, removing AI from the picture would be considered to greatly diminish the value of advertising on the web per industry pricing, and with the ad money, much of the web would dry off.
  - OkayPhysicist 5y ago
    That's the rub, isn't it? Your definition of AI is basically "things we can't do by computer yet", which will always be unobtainable, by definition. Meanwhile, you've got marketers that are also trying to use that definition, in order to sell you on some software solution, despite it being oxymoronic. Two better definitions of AI that I'm a fan of are "Algorithms that model intelligence" (where "intelligence" is the ability to use knowedge in inference), or the broader definition of "Second-order algorithms" or algorithms that, rather than encoding a process that finds a solution, encode a process for finding a process that presents a solution.
    - romwell 5y ago
      Why, I'm perfectly willing to take either definition of AI. My objection to the parent comment still stands; our world is not running on that. For example, Wolfram Alpha, or OpenAI's algorithms that can learn how to play Super Mario will fit the definitions you provided, but our present world does not depend on systems like that.
  - paxys 5y ago
    People have wildly different definitions for what "reasonable AI" is, especially people working in the field. Colloquially the last decade or so of advancements in machine learning and data mining is all considered AI.
    - romwell 5y ago
      Slap AI on sufficiently many things, and sure, the world is running on AI! For one, I think it's silly to apply that moniker to something that's not at least interactive. Machine Learning / Data Mining pipelines that I've touched were running nightly, and furthermore, the systems they powered could continue functioning even if the pipelines crashed / weren't running. Because with ML, both the input and output are data (information, at best). ML doesn't interact with commands. The whole point if "A" in AI is that it's contrasted with Human Intelligence. Nightly batch processes simply ain't it. Sure, people will still slap that label on anything, but it's boring to do so in the context of this discussion :)
qwertywert_ 5y ago
weak AI is here, AGI is a ways away..

nothing new here, AI has been "5 years away" since the 1950s

bhk 5y ago

It was 20 years away for a while. And may be again.

profunctor 5y ago

AI currently does lots of useful things in all sorts of industries. It just can't do everything that humans can do.

paxys 5y ago

The world is already largely running on AI, just not the version of it that is in people's heads by watching sci-fi movies.

thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
The sci-fi version being as the term was defined by Alan Turing and the marketing version being as s/ML/AI
romwell 5y ago
The world is running on good old software. I don't know of anything important that's running on anything that can be reasonably called AI. I think we can get by without Siri. Of course, if you include the entirety of machine learning under the AI label, then whatever. But in my opinion, a principal component analysis does not an AI make. Statistical inference has been around since before computers were invented.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  I think there is some argument to be made that the Web is "running on" AI, since AI-driven ads businesses are the source of all money in the Web (essentially); and I do think that it's fair to call NNs "AI". I for one am highly skeptical that the kind of automatic personalized targeting that AI enables is actually worth the price, but the industry overwhelmingly believes it is. So, removing AI from the picture would be considered to greatly diminish the value of advertising on the web per industry pricing, and with the ad money, much of the web would dry off.
- OkayPhysicist 5y ago
  That's the rub, isn't it? Your definition of AI is basically "things we can't do by computer yet", which will always be unobtainable, by definition. Meanwhile, you've got marketers that are also trying to use that definition, in order to sell you on some software solution, despite it being oxymoronic. Two better definitions of AI that I'm a fan of are "Algorithms that model intelligence" (where "intelligence" is the ability to use knowedge in inference), or the broader definition of "Second-order algorithms" or algorithms that, rather than encoding a process that finds a solution, encode a process for finding a process that presents a solution.
  - romwell 5y ago
    Why, I'm perfectly willing to take either definition of AI. My objection to the parent comment still stands; our world is not running on that. For example, Wolfram Alpha, or OpenAI's algorithms that can learn how to play Super Mario will fit the definitions you provided, but our present world does not depend on systems like that.
- paxys 5y ago
  People have wildly different definitions for what "reasonable AI" is, especially people working in the field. Colloquially the last decade or so of advancements in machine learning and data mining is all considered AI.
  - romwell 5y ago
    Slap AI on sufficiently many things, and sure, the world is running on AI! For one, I think it's silly to apply that moniker to something that's not at least interactive. Machine Learning / Data Mining pipelines that I've touched were running nightly, and furthermore, the systems they powered could continue functioning even if the pipelines crashed / weren't running. Because with ML, both the input and output are data (information, at best). ML doesn't interact with commands. The whole point if "A" in AI is that it's contrasted with Human Intelligence. Nightly batch processes simply ain't it. Sure, people will still slap that label on anything, but it's boring to do so in the context of this discussion :)

qwertywert_ 5y ago

weak AI is here, AGI is a ways away..