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How is pattern matching ever inference when there is no reference to the underlying computational model of what the words mean in spacetime? How is it helpful

How is pattern matching ever inference when there is no reference to the underlying computational model of what the words mean in spacetime? How is it helpful to see what word might come next when the word sequence is just based on statistics with no reference at all to meaning?

ChefboyOG 5y ago
Have you ever used any sort of autocomplete?
- gibsonf1 5y ago
  Yes, and very much like it when quickly selecting from a scope of valid selections. This is not that. It is all A with no I.
  - ChefboyOG 5y ago
    I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Google's Smart Reply, along with most (I think all?) of Google autocomplete features, uses a neural network: https://research.google/pubs/pub45189/ https://research.google/pubs/pub45189/ Are you saying that in general statistical modeling is not the same thing as truly "understanding" a concept? Your original comment seemed to suggest that there wasn't utility in this kind of model--which I disagree with--but if you are more generally saying that this is not the same as human intelligence, I think that authors would probably agree with you.
drxzcl 5y ago
Humans assign a lot of, well, meaning to meaning. It turns out that you can get a really good score on tasks that superficially you would think require actual understanding without programming any of that in. Does this mean the neural network has learned about meaning? Does that mean that it has just gotten really good at faking it? Does is mean that meaning itself doesn't really exist, and it's just a shorthand for advanced pattern matching? Does it matter? Honestly, we don't know. But we've been thinking about it for a very long time. See for example the famous Chinese Room thought experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
- gibsonf1 5y ago
  Try driving a car around without both conceptual and causal systems understanding of the world - meaning matters for survival.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    Try flying in 3-dimensional space in real time without both a conceptual and causal systems understanding of the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster#Connectome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster#Connec...
    - gibsonf1 5y ago
      Thats easier than having to follow traffic rules in an ever changing environment of people cars and kids doing random things. This is why cats and dogs with their great perception skills would get themselves and others killed in traffic if they tried to drive. But for sure that animal has modeled a spacetime world of events with some memory of event patterns to anticipate and predict what might happen next. I live in SF and I have not yet seen one of the so many AV's here drive without a driver. Once that really starts happening with any scale, we will see what happens next for sure. But there is definitely a Theranos kind of promise to AV's at the moment, and so much money on the line that the tech works...
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      How many Gees can that pull? If a car could easily stop in the space of a meter then it would be so easy to make self-driving safe. Not that I think a car needs to understand anything more complex than momentum, but you're not offering a very strong argument on the matter of car navigation.
      - gibsonf1 5y ago
        The strong argument is that a car can't stop immediately, and we humans are always predicting and anticipating what may happen next and taking precautionary action. For example, if you are driving along and see kids playing in a yard with a ball, and that ball is thrown heading for the street, and some kid is in the lawn looking up running directly for the street, you would know to expect that kid to run right between parked cars and be in the street, and you would slow down. Our AV friend would kill him. We humans are constantly predicting what might happen next based on patterns of events by systems we understand the causality of without realizing it - it is a basic survival skill that current AV's entirely lack.

ChefboyOG 5y ago

Have you ever used any sort of autocomplete?

gibsonf1 5y ago
Yes, and very much like it when quickly selecting from a scope of valid selections. This is not that. It is all A with no I.
- ChefboyOG 5y ago
  I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Google's Smart Reply, along with most (I think all?) of Google autocomplete features, uses a neural network: https://research.google/pubs/pub45189/ https://research.google/pubs/pub45189/ Are you saying that in general statistical modeling is not the same thing as truly "understanding" a concept? Your original comment seemed to suggest that there wasn't utility in this kind of model--which I disagree with--but if you are more generally saying that this is not the same as human intelligence, I think that authors would probably agree with you.

drxzcl 5y ago

Humans assign a lot of, well, meaning to meaning. It turns out that you can get a really good score on tasks that superficially you would think require actual understanding without programming any of that in. Does this mean the neural network has learned about meaning? Does that mean that it has just gotten really good at faking it? Does is mean that meaning itself doesn't really exist, and it's just a shorthand for advanced pattern matching? Does it matter? Honestly, we don't know. But we've been thinking about it for a very long time. See for example the famous Chinese Room thought experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

gibsonf1 5y ago
Try driving a car around without both conceptual and causal systems understanding of the world - meaning matters for survival.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  Try flying in 3-dimensional space in real time without both a conceptual and causal systems understanding of the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster#Connectome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster#Connec...
  - gibsonf1 5y ago
    Thats easier than having to follow traffic rules in an ever changing environment of people cars and kids doing random things. This is why cats and dogs with their great perception skills would get themselves and others killed in traffic if they tried to drive. But for sure that animal has modeled a spacetime world of events with some memory of event patterns to anticipate and predict what might happen next. I live in SF and I have not yet seen one of the so many AV's here drive without a driver. Once that really starts happening with any scale, we will see what happens next for sure. But there is definitely a Theranos kind of promise to AV's at the moment, and so much money on the line that the tech works...
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    How many Gees can that pull? If a car could easily stop in the space of a meter then it would be so easy to make self-driving safe. Not that I think a car needs to understand anything more complex than momentum, but you're not offering a very strong argument on the matter of car navigation.
    - gibsonf1 5y ago
      The strong argument is that a car can't stop immediately, and we humans are always predicting and anticipating what may happen next and taking precautionary action. For example, if you are driving along and see kids playing in a yard with a ball, and that ball is thrown heading for the street, and some kid is in the lawn looking up running directly for the street, you would know to expect that kid to run right between parked cars and be in the street, and you would slow down. Our AV friend would kill him. We humans are constantly predicting what might happen next based on patterns of events by systems we understand the causality of without realizing it - it is a basic survival skill that current AV's entirely lack.