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That's why it's called Artificial Intelligence, as opposed to just intelligence. It doesn't actually know what it's doing. I'm sure AI people will downvote this

That's why it's called Artificial Intelligence, as opposed to just intelligence. It doesn't actually know what it's doing. I'm sure AI people will downvote this because it doesn't fit their narrative.

c7DJTLrn 5y ago
It's artificial but not intelligent. AI doesn't exist. Alexa is a glorified text-to-speech and NLP engine.
- qayxc 5y ago
  > Alexa is a glorified text-to-speech and NLP engine. Where do you draw the line between NLP and intelligence, though? This all sounds like a "No true Scotsman" to me. At some point in the near future AI will be indistinguishable from human-level intelligence in terms of NLP (i.e. be on-par with the average human in relevant benchmarks). Maybe the problem is that we need a clear definition of what "intelligence" is and recognise that it's a spectrum, not a binary qualifier.
  - c7DJTLrn 5y ago
    Personally I draw the line at the Winograd Schema Challenge. When that's passed I will be truly convinced.
    - qayxc 5y ago
      According to Wikipedia, GPT-3 is almost there (88% vs ~92%) and a finetuned BERT even achieves >90%. So it stands to reason that a finetuned GPT-x would pass the test with flying colours albeit arguably not being very capable at "common sense reasoning" (whatever that should be, as "common sense" is often enough wrong). I am sceptical of such tests, as all they do is provide yet another way to game the system instead of demonstrating whatever arbitrary construct scientists use to weasel around the fact that they don't actually know what they even mean by "intelligence". IMHO we'd be better off defining characteristics for various levels/types of intelligence and trying to categorise our machines and fellow creatures accordingly.
notyourwork 5y ago
AI people understand this, downvoting it means they aren't AI people.
- TedShiller 5y ago
  Good point. I meant more like people who think they're AI people, i.e. Tesla fans who get angry when someone points out flaws with their car.
  - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    Is Tesla actively marketing FSD as AI?
    - Barrin92 5y ago
      no idea but I would be glad if they stopped marketing their 'FSD' as FSD because it deserves that label about as much as Alexa deserves to be called intelligent (of whatever kind)
    - notyourwork 5y ago
      They market it as self-driving and I think average non-tech people equate that with some form of AI.
    - alphabettsy 5y ago
      Yea. https://www.tesla.com/AI https://www.tesla.com/AI https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1429903213726093315?s=20 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1429903213726093315?s=20
    - JohnWhigham 5y ago
      Yes, they have. Go look at the Tesla Autopilot page from 2018, and compare it to what it says now. Wonder why they changed it...
  - notyourwork 5y ago
    That's fair. Perhaps I jumped to assume this audience is very much tech literate but there are "AI" people out there all the same.
dilyevsky 5y ago
Nothing in that reply suggests to me it doesn’t know what it’s doing
comex 5y ago
It doesn’t know what it’s doing, but I wouldn’t say that’s related to the terminology. Today’s AI is infinitely more capable than what was called AI in the 1960s, and if hypothetically we manage to create a true general intelligence someday, there’s no reason to think that won’t also be called AI.
cortesoft 5y ago
I mean, regular old intelligence was used to create the original message that this artificial intelligence then repeated. Also, if people are worried that a person would fall for this challenge, then clearly intelligence doesn't always catch this misinformation. So since both regular intelligence and artificial intelligence can be fooled by this, I don't see how you can determine that artificial intelligence doesn't know what it is doing any more than regular intelligence also doesn't know what it is doing.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > if people are worried that a person would fall for this challenge The person who asked Alexa the question was 10 years old. That's why people are worried.
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    Sure, but a 10 year old has real intelligence... they have an idea of what is going on, no one is arguing they don't have the same kind of intelligence as adults, just that they have things they still need to learn.... so why couldn't you say the same of the AI that is learning how to give challenge recommendations? Just because it isn't perfect doesn't give evidence for or against artificial intelligence being a real thing.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  >then clearly intelligence doesn't always catch this misinformation. It's not misinformation as it is an actual challenge, albeit a potentially harmful one.
DSMan195276 5y ago
That seems like an odd definition of intelligence - I'm sure you could find people who would fall for this due to a lack of understanding of electronics. We're already making an assumption here that a child might fall for this, and I'm sure we can agree children still qualify as intelligent, just at a diminished capacity and lacking knowledge of the world.
- kortilla 5y ago
  The lack of intelligence isn’t falling for the challenge, it’s finding the challenge and suggesting it to a child.
  - DSMan195276 5y ago
    If that's the case then we're largely just talking about reading comprehension - being bad at English doesn't make someone not intelligent (and this is also getting dangerously close to the 'Chinese room' thought experiment :D). And FWIW a child could have simply Googled the same thing and came to the same conclusion Alexa did ("this looks like a challenge to try") - people ignore good or bad advice on the internet all the time, that doesn't mean they are not still intelligent beings to some degree. Basically the problem with this kind of argument is that there's a lot of dumb humans out there (including children) who fall for all sorts of stupid things because they lack knowledge, but every human still possesses some level of intelligence. Beyond that, this particular question requires knowledge of what a wall plug and electricity are, along with enough comprehension of English to pick up that this is a bad idea, which not every human has. And as long as one human is capable of making this mistake, then we have to agree that an intelligent being could do this by accident and thus it is not any kind of indicator of intelligence.
baby 5y ago
You made a pun, not an actual contribution.
xwolfi 5y ago
What's the conspiratory narrative "AI people" would be pushing ? That Alexa is self-aware ? And are we on reddit where we count who downvoted who and then fight back ? Like everything, you included, AI transforms input into outputs according to predefined constraints. I dont see you revolutionazing mathematics or building a farm but I d still call you intelligent, within your constraints (what you learned, what you can memorize, how fast you adapt etc). But you must appear as a complete moron who doesnt actually know what he's doing given the right context. TL;DR you're as stupid growing a potato in front of a farmer than Alexa teaching children in front of adults. Why is Alexa talking to children, all it's learned is how to be a directory of keywords, and I sure wouldnt let my kid in front of an internet directory without control, supervision and filtering.
Debug_Overload 5y ago
> I'm sure AI people will downvote this So? Why would you care about the downvotes? Your online experience will improve if you stop getting worked up about fake internet points.
C19is20 5y ago
Your last sentence was unnecessary and really detracted from a good point.

c7DJTLrn 5y ago

It's artificial but not intelligent. AI doesn't exist. Alexa is a glorified text-to-speech and NLP engine.

qayxc 5y ago
> Alexa is a glorified text-to-speech and NLP engine. Where do you draw the line between NLP and intelligence, though? This all sounds like a "No true Scotsman" to me. At some point in the near future AI will be indistinguishable from human-level intelligence in terms of NLP (i.e. be on-par with the average human in relevant benchmarks). Maybe the problem is that we need a clear definition of what "intelligence" is and recognise that it's a spectrum, not a binary qualifier.
- c7DJTLrn 5y ago
  Personally I draw the line at the Winograd Schema Challenge. When that's passed I will be truly convinced.
  - qayxc 5y ago
    According to Wikipedia, GPT-3 is almost there (88% vs ~92%) and a finetuned BERT even achieves >90%. So it stands to reason that a finetuned GPT-x would pass the test with flying colours albeit arguably not being very capable at "common sense reasoning" (whatever that should be, as "common sense" is often enough wrong). I am sceptical of such tests, as all they do is provide yet another way to game the system instead of demonstrating whatever arbitrary construct scientists use to weasel around the fact that they don't actually know what they even mean by "intelligence". IMHO we'd be better off defining characteristics for various levels/types of intelligence and trying to categorise our machines and fellow creatures accordingly.

notyourwork 5y ago

AI people understand this, downvoting it means they aren't AI people.

TedShiller 5y ago
Good point. I meant more like people who think they're AI people, i.e. Tesla fans who get angry when someone points out flaws with their car.
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  Is Tesla actively marketing FSD as AI?
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    no idea but I would be glad if they stopped marketing their 'FSD' as FSD because it deserves that label about as much as Alexa deserves to be called intelligent (of whatever kind)
  - notyourwork 5y ago
    They market it as self-driving and I think average non-tech people equate that with some form of AI.
  - alphabettsy 5y ago
    Yea. https://www.tesla.com/AI https://www.tesla.com/AI https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1429903213726093315?s=20 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1429903213726093315?s=20
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    Yes, they have. Go look at the Tesla Autopilot page from 2018, and compare it to what it says now. Wonder why they changed it...
- notyourwork 5y ago
  That's fair. Perhaps I jumped to assume this audience is very much tech literate but there are "AI" people out there all the same.

dilyevsky 5y ago

Nothing in that reply suggests to me it doesn’t know what it’s doing

comex 5y ago

It doesn’t know what it’s doing, but I wouldn’t say that’s related to the terminology. Today’s AI is infinitely more capable than what was called AI in the 1960s, and if hypothetically we manage to create a true general intelligence someday, there’s no reason to think that won’t also be called AI.

cortesoft 5y ago

I mean, regular old intelligence was used to create the original message that this artificial intelligence then repeated. Also, if people are worried that a person would fall for this challenge, then clearly intelligence doesn't always catch this misinformation. So since both regular intelligence and artificial intelligence can be fooled by this, I don't see how you can determine that artificial intelligence doesn't know what it is doing any more than regular intelligence also doesn't know what it is doing.

pdonis 5y ago
> if people are worried that a person would fall for this challenge The person who asked Alexa the question was 10 years old. That's why people are worried.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  Sure, but a 10 year old has real intelligence... they have an idea of what is going on, no one is arguing they don't have the same kind of intelligence as adults, just that they have things they still need to learn.... so why couldn't you say the same of the AI that is learning how to give challenge recommendations? Just because it isn't perfect doesn't give evidence for or against artificial intelligence being a real thing.
charcircuit 5y ago
>then clearly intelligence doesn't always catch this misinformation. It's not misinformation as it is an actual challenge, albeit a potentially harmful one.

DSMan195276 5y ago

That seems like an odd definition of intelligence - I'm sure you could find people who would fall for this due to a lack of understanding of electronics. We're already making an assumption here that a child might fall for this, and I'm sure we can agree children still qualify as intelligent, just at a diminished capacity and lacking knowledge of the world.

kortilla 5y ago
The lack of intelligence isn’t falling for the challenge, it’s finding the challenge and suggesting it to a child.
- DSMan195276 5y ago
  If that's the case then we're largely just talking about reading comprehension - being bad at English doesn't make someone not intelligent (and this is also getting dangerously close to the 'Chinese room' thought experiment :D). And FWIW a child could have simply Googled the same thing and came to the same conclusion Alexa did ("this looks like a challenge to try") - people ignore good or bad advice on the internet all the time, that doesn't mean they are not still intelligent beings to some degree. Basically the problem with this kind of argument is that there's a lot of dumb humans out there (including children) who fall for all sorts of stupid things because they lack knowledge, but every human still possesses some level of intelligence. Beyond that, this particular question requires knowledge of what a wall plug and electricity are, along with enough comprehension of English to pick up that this is a bad idea, which not every human has. And as long as one human is capable of making this mistake, then we have to agree that an intelligent being could do this by accident and thus it is not any kind of indicator of intelligence.

baby 5y ago

You made a pun, not an actual contribution.

xwolfi 5y ago

What's the conspiratory narrative "AI people" would be pushing ? That Alexa is self-aware ? And are we on reddit where we count who downvoted who and then fight back ? Like everything, you included, AI transforms input into outputs according to predefined constraints. I dont see you revolutionazing mathematics or building a farm but I d still call you intelligent, within your constraints (what you learned, what you can memorize, how fast you adapt etc). But you must appear as a complete moron who doesnt actually know what he's doing given the right context. TL;DR you're as stupid growing a potato in front of a farmer than Alexa teaching children in front of adults. Why is Alexa talking to children, all it's learned is how to be a directory of keywords, and I sure wouldnt let my kid in front of an internet directory without control, supervision and filtering.

Debug_Overload 5y ago

> I'm sure AI people will downvote this So? Why would you care about the downvotes? Your online experience will improve if you stop getting worked up about fake internet points.

C19is20 5y ago

Your last sentence was unnecessary and really detracted from a good point.