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I'm in the submarine AI camp[1]. I'd rather build tools that kinda help humans do thinking, rather than thinking machines. Like how submarines help humans swim

I'm in the submarine AI camp[1]. I'd rather build tools that kinda help humans do thinking, rather than thinking machines. Like how submarines help humans swim but who cares if they are actually swimming. 1. "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." - Edsger Dijkstra

billyjobob 5y ago
There are lots of creatures that can swim. Most of them swim better than a human. That’s why it’s not very interesting when we discover a new one. In contrast, humans are arguably the only creatures in the universe that can think. Certainly we have never discovered a creature that can think better than a human. Thus it would be highly exciting if we discovered or created one.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  >In contrast, humans are arguably the only creatures in the universe that can think. Citation very strongly required to back up this statement. I'm not aware of any evidence that this is the case, in fact its quite the opposite.
  - herlitzj 5y ago
    Second. Not sure how "think" is being defined here, but even for a spatial/temporal sense of self or mortality I'd say that's probably an incorrect statement. Let alone the general notion of thinking. E.g. dogs exhibit basic thinking like predetermination, delayed gratification, etc.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- jvanderbot 5y ago
  I can see that. Its just not something I'm particularly interested in. I'm not an expert in brains. After taking a few casual courses I saw recommended here, and reading some of the books, I'm suspicious that our story about our own intelligence is somewhat oversold, and we may find that our intelligence is 99% mundane, custom-built automation and 1% story telling. But that story telling is pretty magical. Buddhism and Modern Psychology Happiness Hypothesis (which is more about brains than happiness)
- ekianjo 5y ago
  The human mind is so flawed I am not sure its a good model to build thinking machines.
  - sgt101 5y ago
    no one has a good model of a human mind
    - smolder 5y ago
      Depends on what you mean by good, and what level of detail you expect. People certainly have developed accurate enough models to be able to exploit biases and predict & influence patterns of behavior in others.
- thesz 5y ago
  There are many humans that think better than, well, average human. If not in all areas of life, but in one or couple of them, at the very least. Frankly, one of reasons I visit HN is to find these. ;) Flattering aside, what fascinates me is the difference in thinking - a new approaches, not seen or thought by me.
- cronix 5y ago
  How does a creature proactively use tools to more easily prepare/gather foods without "thinking?" How does a young creature observe an elder doing something, and then copy it, without some form of thought occurring? It seems the elders are teaching the youth, and the youth are learning, but I'm not sure how that can happen without thinking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cp7_In7f88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cp7_In7f88
RicoElectrico 5y ago
Me too, but I am afraid the human end needs to think critically as well. You don't need ML/AI to have people do stupid shit because "computer told them to do so". A good example would be validators bundled with the web OpenStreetMap editor iD, which are good from far, far from good. https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2021-July/086868.html https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2021-July/086...
- jvanderbot 5y ago
  I mean, you can't make a hammer and expect it to be as useful to someone without hands or nails.
joconde 5y ago
> 1. "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." - Edsger Dijkstra Not sure what he meant by that, it doesn't really make sense to me: thinking yields information and deductions that can be very useful, while swimming by itself accomplishes nothing useful. Actually, I just can't make any sense of the sentence, because while I have a general idea of what a thinking machine could be, I have no clue what it means for a submarine to "swim", versus whatever the alternative is ("self-propelling"?).
- lkschubert8 5y ago
  The point is the goal of a submarine is to allow humans to traverse large distances underwater, the semantics of how it does so are unimportant. Similarly the ability of a computer to think is moot, its the results we get from that that matter.
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  Not a polymath physicist, but I take Djikstra to be saying "don't obsess so much over the differences you fail to see the similarities". The submarine doesn't swim, but it still gets somewhere in the water.
  - mirker 5y ago
    [And a program/computer may not think yet still does interesting computations]
- robbrown451 5y ago
  His point was that we might say "submarines aren't actually swimming" while saying "of course airplanes actually fly." What's the difference? The only difference is semantic, we seem to have defined "swimming" to be arbitrarily restrictive (as in, only applying to animals), while we haven't done so for flying. Meanwhile, we can say a magnet is attracted to metal, and no one says "wait, it can't ACTUALLY be attracted to it, since that takes a brain and sentience and preferences." And then, most of us don't bat an eye if someone says "my computer thinks the network is down" or "my phone doesn't recognize my face" or even "the heater blowing on the thermostat is making it think it is hotter than it is." It's not helpful to interject with, "well, thermostats don't really think." The point is, these are arbitrary choices of how we define words (which may vary in different languages), and they aren't saying meaningful things about reality.
bitwize 5y ago
The thing about that quote is I used to work on AUVs. And we would routinely say "The AUV swims out to a waypoint" or whatever. So, having established in my mind that a machine can, in some sense, swim, talking about a machine thinking made a whole lot more sense. Things like "The computer thinks I'm a different user than I actually am" or "The computer is thinking of a solution that satisfies the constraints" seemed less needlessly anthropomorphizing.
webmaven 5y ago
> "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." - Edsger Dijkstra Something about that quote always bothers me. I'm not sure what, but if I were to try to express the same fundamental idea, I would probably phrase it as "whether a bicycle can walk".
- robbrown451 5y ago
  I think you are missing the point. A submarine "swims" in the same way an airplane "flies." But for some reason, in English anyway, we seem to define "swim" such that, by definition, only an animal can do it. Or at least, it must behave similarly to a swimming animal...such as by flapping fins and the like. Meanwhile we don't think an airplane doesn't fly simply because it doesn't flap its wings. The point is that semantics tells you very little about reality. And debating semantics is not particularly interesting, or at least a good way of missing the point. Walking bicycles? Well, ok. That's much more of a stretch, partly because of the fact that there is a human much more directly involved in the propulsion of a bicycle compared to things with actual engines (airplanes and submarines)
  - OJFord 5y ago
    I don't know how useful/meaningful any of this is? It's just language quirks, and different languages have different quirks. In Hindi for example the verb 'to walk' is the same as ~'to operate' - so you can 'walk', and 'walk a bicycle', etc.
    - robbrown451 5y ago
      It's useful when someone asks things like "will machines ever be able to think?" And you might say "well, define 'think' ". In other words, that's not that interesting a question, since it is more about semantics than about reality. Or you say it as Djykstra did, which I think is pretty clever. And yes, your example about how words differ in different languages does a good job of explaining how this is just semantics. If a question becomes moot in a different language, it is a good indicator that the question is less about reality than it is about semantics.
rexreed 5y ago
That's called Augmented Intelligence, a well-trod field and a better ROI than aspects of autonomous and human-replacement intelligence.

billyjobob 5y ago

There are lots of creatures that can swim. Most of them swim better than a human. That’s why it’s not very interesting when we discover a new one. In contrast, humans are arguably the only creatures in the universe that can think. Certainly we have never discovered a creature that can think better than a human. Thus it would be highly exciting if we discovered or created one.

netizen-936824 5y ago
>In contrast, humans are arguably the only creatures in the universe that can think. Citation very strongly required to back up this statement. I'm not aware of any evidence that this is the case, in fact its quite the opposite.
- herlitzj 5y ago
  Second. Not sure how "think" is being defined here, but even for a spatial/temporal sense of self or mortality I'd say that's probably an incorrect statement. Let alone the general notion of thinking. E.g. dogs exhibit basic thinking like predetermination, delayed gratification, etc.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jvanderbot 5y ago
I can see that. Its just not something I'm particularly interested in. I'm not an expert in brains. After taking a few casual courses I saw recommended here, and reading some of the books, I'm suspicious that our story about our own intelligence is somewhat oversold, and we may find that our intelligence is 99% mundane, custom-built automation and 1% story telling. But that story telling is pretty magical. Buddhism and Modern Psychology Happiness Hypothesis (which is more about brains than happiness)
ekianjo 5y ago
The human mind is so flawed I am not sure its a good model to build thinking machines.
- sgt101 5y ago
  no one has a good model of a human mind
  - smolder 5y ago
    Depends on what you mean by good, and what level of detail you expect. People certainly have developed accurate enough models to be able to exploit biases and predict & influence patterns of behavior in others.
thesz 5y ago
There are many humans that think better than, well, average human. If not in all areas of life, but in one or couple of them, at the very least. Frankly, one of reasons I visit HN is to find these. ;) Flattering aside, what fascinates me is the difference in thinking - a new approaches, not seen or thought by me.
cronix 5y ago
How does a creature proactively use tools to more easily prepare/gather foods without "thinking?" How does a young creature observe an elder doing something, and then copy it, without some form of thought occurring? It seems the elders are teaching the youth, and the youth are learning, but I'm not sure how that can happen without thinking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cp7_In7f88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cp7_In7f88

RicoElectrico 5y ago

Me too, but I am afraid the human end needs to think critically as well. You don't need ML/AI to have people do stupid shit because "computer told them to do so". A good example would be validators bundled with the web OpenStreetMap editor iD, which are good from far, far from good. https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2021-July/086868.html https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2021-July/086...

jvanderbot 5y ago
I mean, you can't make a hammer and expect it to be as useful to someone without hands or nails.

joconde 5y ago

> 1. "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." - Edsger Dijkstra Not sure what he meant by that, it doesn't really make sense to me: thinking yields information and deductions that can be very useful, while swimming by itself accomplishes nothing useful. Actually, I just can't make any sense of the sentence, because while I have a general idea of what a thinking machine could be, I have no clue what it means for a submarine to "swim", versus whatever the alternative is ("self-propelling"?).

lkschubert8 5y ago
The point is the goal of a submarine is to allow humans to traverse large distances underwater, the semantics of how it does so are unimportant. Similarly the ability of a computer to think is moot, its the results we get from that that matter.
blacksmith_tb 5y ago
Not a polymath physicist, but I take Djikstra to be saying "don't obsess so much over the differences you fail to see the similarities". The submarine doesn't swim, but it still gets somewhere in the water.
- mirker 5y ago
  [And a program/computer may not think yet still does interesting computations]
robbrown451 5y ago
His point was that we might say "submarines aren't actually swimming" while saying "of course airplanes actually fly." What's the difference? The only difference is semantic, we seem to have defined "swimming" to be arbitrarily restrictive (as in, only applying to animals), while we haven't done so for flying. Meanwhile, we can say a magnet is attracted to metal, and no one says "wait, it can't ACTUALLY be attracted to it, since that takes a brain and sentience and preferences." And then, most of us don't bat an eye if someone says "my computer thinks the network is down" or "my phone doesn't recognize my face" or even "the heater blowing on the thermostat is making it think it is hotter than it is." It's not helpful to interject with, "well, thermostats don't really think." The point is, these are arbitrary choices of how we define words (which may vary in different languages), and they aren't saying meaningful things about reality.

bitwize 5y ago

The thing about that quote is I used to work on AUVs. And we would routinely say "The AUV swims out to a waypoint" or whatever. So, having established in my mind that a machine can, in some sense, swim, talking about a machine thinking made a whole lot more sense. Things like "The computer thinks I'm a different user than I actually am" or "The computer is thinking of a solution that satisfies the constraints" seemed less needlessly anthropomorphizing.

webmaven 5y ago

> "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." - Edsger Dijkstra Something about that quote always bothers me. I'm not sure what, but if I were to try to express the same fundamental idea, I would probably phrase it as "whether a bicycle can walk".

robbrown451 5y ago
I think you are missing the point. A submarine "swims" in the same way an airplane "flies." But for some reason, in English anyway, we seem to define "swim" such that, by definition, only an animal can do it. Or at least, it must behave similarly to a swimming animal...such as by flapping fins and the like. Meanwhile we don't think an airplane doesn't fly simply because it doesn't flap its wings. The point is that semantics tells you very little about reality. And debating semantics is not particularly interesting, or at least a good way of missing the point. Walking bicycles? Well, ok. That's much more of a stretch, partly because of the fact that there is a human much more directly involved in the propulsion of a bicycle compared to things with actual engines (airplanes and submarines)
- OJFord 5y ago
  I don't know how useful/meaningful any of this is? It's just language quirks, and different languages have different quirks. In Hindi for example the verb 'to walk' is the same as ~'to operate' - so you can 'walk', and 'walk a bicycle', etc.
  - robbrown451 5y ago
    It's useful when someone asks things like "will machines ever be able to think?" And you might say "well, define 'think' ". In other words, that's not that interesting a question, since it is more about semantics than about reality. Or you say it as Djykstra did, which I think is pretty clever. And yes, your example about how words differ in different languages does a good job of explaining how this is just semantics. If a question becomes moot in a different language, it is a good indicator that the question is less about reality than it is about semantics.

rexreed 5y ago

That's called Augmented Intelligence, a well-trod field and a better ROI than aspects of autonomous and human-replacement intelligence.