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There's an entire genre of articles which argue that computers can never do X, because X is ill defined. Thing is, half of the time X is only ill defined becaus
by yk 5y ago
There's an entire genre of articles which argue that computers can never do X, because X is ill defined. Thing is, half of the time X is only ill defined because the writer neglects to define X well, and for the other half, that the writer can't define X well is no proof that it is impossible to define X well.
Here however, if the take the argument of representations in a technical sense, then since a neural network topology is just data we can fit along with the rest of the network, it's just wrong.
Or if we take a slightly more charitable interpretation, observing robots, from time to time they can get to really surprising solutions, so at least one would need to distinguish between a numerical algorithm finds a surprising solution and 'insight.'
Now, I actually don't want to be too hard on the article, I think it is genuinely interesting hodgepodge of facts about human cognition, I just think it should be rewritten without the computers will never do X thesis.
- glenstein 5y agoCompletely agree. The history of this dates back to philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, who, observing the halting progress of text recognition research at the time, and made open ended declarations that computers can't do X. He said computers couldn't compete at human levels in chess because chess required "insight." This claim did not age well. I find these to be confused, hodgepodgey, not clearly centered on any coherent argument, and often just plain shallow and wrong while masquerading as deep insights. I am glad that, at least, the recent advances in AI are repudiating this genre, or at least forcing articles to add new caveats as to why recent advances don't count.
- betenoire 5y agoI don't disagree necessarily, but humans seems capable of solving problems even when when they are poorly defined by understanding the some implicit context. Sure if we encode all the context, the computer can solve it too, but isn't that fundamentally what the article is trying to convey? That we haven't really taught computers to read between the lines yet?
- LdSGSgvupDV 5y agoIn my experience of developing Custom ChatBOT, X = business model or internal process which contain logic or work flow. For short, X = logic.