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If we can't ask the AI to explain how it came to its conclusion it is not really intelligent, is it? You would not believe a human is intelligent if he just te

If we can't ask the AI to explain how it came to its conclusion it is not really intelligent, is it? You would not believe a human is intelligent if he just tells you what to do without being able to explain why, would you?

dotancohen 5y ago
Pick ten random people that you know. How many of them can explain to you how their Facebook post gets to grandma?
- 444throwaway 5y ago
  True, but they did not decide how to do it and did not implement it. I would expect the facebook engineer who implemented it to be able to explain it to me, at least the part which he did.
euroderf 5y ago
This is the Fifth Law of Robotics: A robot shall be able to explain how it reached any decision. And there is the Fourth Law of Robotics: No robot shall have access to means of unlimited self-reproduction.
iainmerrick 5y ago
We do that all the time with humans! “Having a hunch”, “trusting years of experience”. Or think of the “uncanny valley” in 3D graphics -- most people can tell when a rendered image looks slightly off somehow, but most people can’t pinpoint the exact problems. “Something about the eyes just isn’t quite right”, etc.
- dagw 5y ago
  most people can tell when a rendered image looks slightly off somehow, but most people can’t pinpoint the exact problems. But experience people can. I've worked at a 3D animation studio and we had this 'old guy' who started his career as a classically trained artist and sculptor. He could look at a character model that we all agreed felt a bit 'off' and point out that the problem is how you'd modeled the muscles connecting the shoulders to the arm. Hell sometimes he'd look at a model that we all felt was fine and suggest tweaking the bridge of the nose and that made it much better.
khafra 5y ago
> If we can't ask the AI to explain how it came to its conclusion it is not really intelligent, is it? Will it matter whether the AI is "really" intelligent when companies that implement the black box to spec thrive, while the companies that insist on having a human understand everything fall behind and fail?

dotancohen 5y ago

Pick ten random people that you know. How many of them can explain to you how their Facebook post gets to grandma?

444throwaway 5y ago
True, but they did not decide how to do it and did not implement it. I would expect the facebook engineer who implemented it to be able to explain it to me, at least the part which he did.

euroderf 5y ago

This is the Fifth Law of Robotics: A robot shall be able to explain how it reached any decision. And there is the Fourth Law of Robotics: No robot shall have access to means of unlimited self-reproduction.

iainmerrick 5y ago

We do that all the time with humans! “Having a hunch”, “trusting years of experience”. Or think of the “uncanny valley” in 3D graphics -- most people can tell when a rendered image looks slightly off somehow, but most people can’t pinpoint the exact problems. “Something about the eyes just isn’t quite right”, etc.

dagw 5y ago
most people can tell when a rendered image looks slightly off somehow, but most people can’t pinpoint the exact problems. But experience people can. I've worked at a 3D animation studio and we had this 'old guy' who started his career as a classically trained artist and sculptor. He could look at a character model that we all agreed felt a bit 'off' and point out that the problem is how you'd modeled the muscles connecting the shoulders to the arm. Hell sometimes he'd look at a model that we all felt was fine and suggest tweaking the bridge of the nose and that made it much better.

khafra 5y ago

> If we can't ask the AI to explain how it came to its conclusion it is not really intelligent, is it? Will it matter whether the AI is "really" intelligent when companies that implement the black box to spec thrive, while the companies that insist on having a human understand everything fall behind and fail?