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I'm genuinely a little bored of hearing about how AI has any actual 'intelligence'. It doesn't. Its not akin to people. The better analogy, IMO, is how peopl

I'm genuinely a little bored of hearing about how AI has any actual 'intelligence'. It doesn't. Its not akin to people. The better analogy, IMO, is how people are being pushed into a computing model and adopting computing attributes as characteristics. We are becoming like "semi-autonomous computers". And worse, it is a client-server model, with corporations and governance taking the executive decisions! Rather than describing some software as intelligent, we would be better describing the change that this idea (and the idea of collectivisation - as opposed to individuation) has had on people. It is people that are changing, machines are still inanimate.

andreyk 5y ago
FYI, there are a ton of definitions of 'intelligence', some fit with what AI algorithms can do, some don't. I found reading 'A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence' quite interesting myself https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3639 https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3639
IshKebab 5y ago
I think it has some kind of intelligence. The word isn't well defined enough for you to just declare that it doesn't.
bobthechef 5y ago
Right. Every epoch shows a tendency to model intelligence in terms of some favored technology. It's a mistake to take these beyond very casual and loose metaphors. It's a very difficult habit of thought to break for some people because they've tacitly committed to a particular (sloppy and half-baked) metaphysical view of the world and haven't yet learned to examine those presuppositions and learned how they fail spectacularly. I would prefer we use "automation" instead of "AI". That way, we are forced to speak specifically ("automation of what?; it's always specific) and say things like "machine-automated aviation" because that's what this is. It's clear, faithful to the truth, and obvious what we're talking about and what's happening at a general level, and we aren't reifying some vague bullshit fantastical term like "artificial intelligence" which only leads to romanticized mystification and projection. There is no artificial intelligence. Machines doing so-called AI are the same kinds of machines we use to write email and make phone calls. We've just configured them in a way that makes them useful in different situations in different ways for specific ends, even if the applicability appears general; we've done the generalization which is then represented in concrete ways which are not themselves general. (N.b. central to intelligence is the ability to abstract (not the lambda calc/CS meaning) from particulars. I have the concept Circularity which is not just an image (there are potentially an infinite number of circular objects), but based on experience of particular circular things, my intellect has abstracted from this experience the universal concept of Circularity. I understand Circularity, apart from any given circle, and yet what is true of it is true of all circles. I can analyze the concept to infer that any circle's circumference is twice its radius times pi or that its area is the square of its radius times pi. Computers don't do this and cannot do this even in principle because all physical things are always concrete. There is no physical Circularity, only physical, concrete circles. And abstraction is not regression. Indeed, all the abstract values in your computer aren't really abstract except in the mind of the observer. Those in your computer are representations only, devoid of denotation except what's in the programmer's head.)

andreyk 5y ago

FYI, there are a ton of definitions of 'intelligence', some fit with what AI algorithms can do, some don't. I found reading 'A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence' quite interesting myself https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3639 https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3639

IshKebab 5y ago

I think it has some kind of intelligence. The word isn't well defined enough for you to just declare that it doesn't.

bobthechef 5y ago

Right. Every epoch shows a tendency to model intelligence in terms of some favored technology. It's a mistake to take these beyond very casual and loose metaphors. It's a very difficult habit of thought to break for some people because they've tacitly committed to a particular (sloppy and half-baked) metaphysical view of the world and haven't yet learned to examine those presuppositions and learned how they fail spectacularly. I would prefer we use "automation" instead of "AI". That way, we are forced to speak specifically ("automation of what?; it's always specific) and say things like "machine-automated aviation" because that's what this is. It's clear, faithful to the truth, and obvious what we're talking about and what's happening at a general level, and we aren't reifying some vague bullshit fantastical term like "artificial intelligence" which only leads to romanticized mystification and projection. There is no artificial intelligence. Machines doing so-called AI are the same kinds of machines we use to write email and make phone calls. We've just configured them in a way that makes them useful in different situations in different ways for specific ends, even if the applicability appears general; we've done the generalization which is then represented in concrete ways which are not themselves general. (N.b. central to intelligence is the ability to abstract (not the lambda calc/CS meaning) from particulars. I have the concept Circularity which is not just an image (there are potentially an infinite number of circular objects), but based on experience of particular circular things, my intellect has abstracted from this experience the universal concept of Circularity. I understand Circularity, apart from any given circle, and yet what is true of it is true of all circles. I can analyze the concept to infer that any circle's circumference is twice its radius times pi or that its area is the square of its radius times pi. Computers don't do this and cannot do this even in principle because all physical things are always concrete. There is no physical Circularity, only physical, concrete circles. And abstraction is not regression. Indeed, all the abstract values in your computer aren't really abstract except in the mind of the observer. Those in your computer are representations only, devoid of denotation except what's in the programmer's head.)