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Speaking of "cheap marketing," did you notice how researchers have become willing to continually mislead the public by calling everything they do "Artificial In

Speaking of "cheap marketing," did you notice how researchers have become willing to continually mislead the public by calling everything they do "Artificial Intelligence"? When I was in grad school less than 10 years ago, there was an explicit effort to be specific. Call it machine learning, deep learning, adaptive, etc. The field can be called AI and we can publish in AI journals, but you don't make the mistake of thinking that there is such a "thing" as AI. All that changed after the dump trucks full of money arrived.

gillesjacobs 5y ago
Artificial Intelligence is simply a broad term meaning 'the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines'. The term accurately applies to any subtask no matter how small that involves the automation of human intelligence, even if it is just recognizing dogs vs. cat images. Colloquially there is a false equivalence between A.I. and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), 'full' or 'strong' AI. AGI specifically denotes a system that can learn any intellectual task a human could learn. And such integrated intelligence is purely hypothetical as of now. I am active in NLP research and I have not encountered an instance of any academic claiming that their work is AGI. And terms and descriptions are usually domain- and task-specific, so not much has changed since your grad school time. Only those that work on grounding and multi-modality make the claim that their work is a step towards AGI. Which is true, as these researchers usually only claim that it is an exploration, an increment towards AGI. What you are seeing is commercial entities marketing their solutions as AGI. Mass media has given more exposure to that idea because it sounds scifi. Also often journalists let their imagination run a little when describing papers. I agree that is misleading but academics still have the same rigor.
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  I like the definition you provide: "the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines" It would, of course, allow AI to exist that predates the invention of computers. Such as autopilot (1914) or the steam governor (1788), etc.
  - gillesjacobs 5y ago
    What is considered AI is definitely on a constantly changing continuum. Take for instance the calculator, when introduced it eliminated the need for a team of human calculators who for difficult computations manually cross-checked each step. Some attributed the first commercially available mechanical calculator with human-like intelligence. Over time, such tools become so wide-spread that it is considered an affront to compare it to human intelligence. So now, we don't see calculators and autopilots as AI.
    - dr_dshiv 5y ago
      In your definition (which I like), AI is based on intent to simulate rather than perception. I agree that what is popularly considered AI is a moving goal-post — many don't see machine learning as AI either — e.g., it's just statistics. The term AI is very vague and misleading. It implicitly suggests a kind of magic. A lot of people believe in the magic, intended or not. I don't think this paper would be an issue at all if it was referring to a new foundation for GANs or transformers or deep learning — or anything more specific.
  - teddyh 5y ago
    One could also quite reasonably ask what qualifies as a machine. Does an abacus count? Does pen and paper count?
    - sgt101 5y ago
      I think that's a foundational question! Does the sun count or the earth? Or people?
- TomSwirly 5y ago
  > Artificial Intelligence is simply a broad term meaning 'the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines'. Sure, but if so, Machine Learning is not AI, because the way a model "learns" is nothing like how humans learn, and gets radically different results.
- omegalulw 5y ago
  > the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines Because of this the term doesn't really apply to the uses you mentioned. We have no way to know if models are simulating anything or not. And most models, even big ones, fail when they have to adapt on new unseen data. It's completely fair to say that AI should have been used to mean AGI.
ptero 5y ago
This is not new or limited to AI. From synthetic biology to big data, grant seekers know that just referencing the current fads in the proposal can increase the probability of getting funded.
DonHopkins 5y ago
At least those researchers know they're bullshitting. Game developers earnestly throw around the term "AI" as if what they were doing was actually AI, and not just meticulously hand-scripted spaghetti code.
- gillesjacobs 5y ago
  To be clear: The researchers of the Foundation Models paper never claim anything related to AGI. They actually put out a decent survey and research avenues for transfer-learning with large-scale pretraining. AGI is only referred to once in the context of AI safety to make an entirely unrelated point. The only gripe with the original paper is with the attempt to coopt the field under their term(s). It is the journalist in the OP article that jumps the shark towards AGI. Besides, there is definitely statistics and an engineering art towards 'hand-scripting' game AI. I wouldn't be so dismissive of video game AI.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean those particular researchers were bullshitting, or that some games don't use legitimate "AI" techniques, but those are orthogonal to the commonly understood meaning of the term "AI" in the game industry, which is "whatever code controls the non-player characters" (regardless of what programming techniques it uses), as opposed to making the grass wave, rendering triangles, vibrating the speaker, networking, user interface, etc. Games can certainly use legitimate AI programming techniques, like GPUs with "AI Upscaling", but that's not considered "Game AI" (as seen in job descriptions) since it has nothing to do with controlling NPC behavior. For example, Civilization AI: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/AI https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/AI My point is: if you're worried about the term "AI" being hijacked, that ship sailed a long time ago!
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Game AI is a perfectly ok name to describe a very specific software application. It doesn't really matter how the AI is implemented (the famous lots of "ifs"), just what it does. The only quality metric for it is a subjective one about how fun the AI is to interact with.
dunefox 5y ago
'Publish or perish' combined with the need for funding. Academia has become distanced from what it's supposed to be, at least in this area.

gillesjacobs 5y ago

Artificial Intelligence is simply a broad term meaning 'the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines'. The term accurately applies to any subtask no matter how small that involves the automation of human intelligence, even if it is just recognizing dogs vs. cat images. Colloquially there is a false equivalence between A.I. and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), 'full' or 'strong' AI. AGI specifically denotes a system that can learn any intellectual task a human could learn. And such integrated intelligence is purely hypothetical as of now. I am active in NLP research and I have not encountered an instance of any academic claiming that their work is AGI. And terms and descriptions are usually domain- and task-specific, so not much has changed since your grad school time. Only those that work on grounding and multi-modality make the claim that their work is a step towards AGI. Which is true, as these researchers usually only claim that it is an exploration, an increment towards AGI. What you are seeing is commercial entities marketing their solutions as AGI. Mass media has given more exposure to that idea because it sounds scifi. Also often journalists let their imagination run a little when describing papers. I agree that is misleading but academics still have the same rigor.

dr_dshiv 5y ago
I like the definition you provide: "the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines" It would, of course, allow AI to exist that predates the invention of computers. Such as autopilot (1914) or the steam governor (1788), etc.
- gillesjacobs 5y ago
  What is considered AI is definitely on a constantly changing continuum. Take for instance the calculator, when introduced it eliminated the need for a team of human calculators who for difficult computations manually cross-checked each step. Some attributed the first commercially available mechanical calculator with human-like intelligence. Over time, such tools become so wide-spread that it is considered an affront to compare it to human intelligence. So now, we don't see calculators and autopilots as AI.
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    In your definition (which I like), AI is based on intent to simulate rather than perception. I agree that what is popularly considered AI is a moving goal-post — many don't see machine learning as AI either — e.g., it's just statistics. The term AI is very vague and misleading. It implicitly suggests a kind of magic. A lot of people believe in the magic, intended or not. I don't think this paper would be an issue at all if it was referring to a new foundation for GANs or transformers or deep learning — or anything more specific.
- teddyh 5y ago
  One could also quite reasonably ask what qualifies as a machine. Does an abacus count? Does pen and paper count?
  - sgt101 5y ago
    I think that's a foundational question! Does the sun count or the earth? Or people?
TomSwirly 5y ago
> Artificial Intelligence is simply a broad term meaning 'the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines'. Sure, but if so, Machine Learning is not AI, because the way a model "learns" is nothing like how humans learn, and gets radically different results.
omegalulw 5y ago
> the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines Because of this the term doesn't really apply to the uses you mentioned. We have no way to know if models are simulating anything or not. And most models, even big ones, fail when they have to adapt on new unseen data. It's completely fair to say that AI should have been used to mean AGI.

ptero 5y ago

This is not new or limited to AI. From synthetic biology to big data, grant seekers know that just referencing the current fads in the proposal can increase the probability of getting funded.

DonHopkins 5y ago

At least those researchers know they're bullshitting. Game developers earnestly throw around the term "AI" as if what they were doing was actually AI, and not just meticulously hand-scripted spaghetti code.

gillesjacobs 5y ago
To be clear: The researchers of the Foundation Models paper never claim anything related to AGI. They actually put out a decent survey and research avenues for transfer-learning with large-scale pretraining. AGI is only referred to once in the context of AI safety to make an entirely unrelated point. The only gripe with the original paper is with the attempt to coopt the field under their term(s). It is the journalist in the OP article that jumps the shark towards AGI. Besides, there is definitely statistics and an engineering art towards 'hand-scripting' game AI. I wouldn't be so dismissive of video game AI.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  Sorry, I didn't mean those particular researchers were bullshitting, or that some games don't use legitimate "AI" techniques, but those are orthogonal to the commonly understood meaning of the term "AI" in the game industry, which is "whatever code controls the non-player characters" (regardless of what programming techniques it uses), as opposed to making the grass wave, rendering triangles, vibrating the speaker, networking, user interface, etc. Games can certainly use legitimate AI programming techniques, like GPUs with "AI Upscaling", but that's not considered "Game AI" (as seen in job descriptions) since it has nothing to do with controlling NPC behavior. For example, Civilization AI: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/AI https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/AI My point is: if you're worried about the term "AI" being hijacked, that ship sailed a long time ago!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
marcosdumay 5y ago
Game AI is a perfectly ok name to describe a very specific software application. It doesn't really matter how the AI is implemented (the famous lots of "ifs"), just what it does. The only quality metric for it is a subjective one about how fun the AI is to interact with.

dunefox 5y ago

'Publish or perish' combined with the need for funding. Academia has become distanced from what it's supposed to be, at least in this area.