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> NNs are just very complex math equations So is the equation modeling your brain. > This internal language, if I'm not mistaken, is exactly what the encoder

> NNs are just very complex math equations So is the equation modeling your brain. > This internal language, if I'm not mistaken, is exactly what the encoder and decoder parts of the neural networks do. The entire ANN is also a model for a language, with the “higher” parts defining what terms are legal and the “lower” defining how terms are constructed. Roughly. > I'm in awe of what the latest neural networks can produce, but I'm wary to call it “reasoning” or “deciding”. What do you believe you do, besides develop an internal language in response to data in which you then make decisions? The process of ANN evaluation is the same as fitting terms in a type theory and producing an outcome based on that term. We call that “reasoning” in most cases. I don’t care if submarines “swim”; I care they propel themselves through the water. > calling this intelligence is, in my opinion, muddying the waters of how far away we are from actual AI Goldfish show mild intelligence because they can learn mazes; ants farm; bees communicate the location of food via dance; etc. I think you’re the one muddying the waters by placing some special status on human like intelligence without recognizing the spectrum of natural intelligence and that neural networks legitimately fit on that spectrum.

V__ 4y ago
> by placing some special status on human like intelligence without recognizing the spectrum of natural intelligence You're right, yes, if you see it as the whole spectrum, sure. I was more thinking about the colloquial meaning of an AI of human-like intelligence. My view was therefore from a different perspective: > So is the equation modeling your brain. I would argue that is still open to debate. Sure, if the universe is deterministic, then everything is just one big math problem. If there is some natural underlying randomness (quanta phenomena etc.) then maybe there is more than deterministic math to it. > We call that “reasoning” in most cases. Is a complex if-else-structure reasoning? Reasoning, to my, implies some sort of consciousness, and being able to "think". If a neural network doesn't know the answer, more thinking won't result in one. A human can (in some cases) reason about inputs and figure out an answer after some time, even if they didn't know it in the beginning.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  > I was more thinking about the colloquial meaning of an AI of human-like intelligence. Then it sounds like we’re violently agreeing — I appreciate you clarifying. I try to avoid that mindset, because it’s possible that AI will become intelligent in a way unlike our own psychology, which is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history. My own view is that AI aren’t human-like, but are “intelligent” somewhere between insects and dogs. (At present.) > If a neural network doesn't know the answer, more thinking won't result in one. I think reinforcement learning contradicts that, but current AIs don’t use that ability dynamically. But GAN cycles and adversarial training for, eg, go suggest that AIs given time to contemplate a problem can self-improve. (That is, we haven’t implemented it… but there’s also no fundamental roadblock.)
tdehnel 4y ago
But the spectrum is an illusion. It’s not like humans are just chimpanzees (or ants or cats) with more compute. Put differently, if you took an ant or cat or chimpanzee and made it compute more data infinitely faster, you wouldn’t get AGI. Humans can do something fundamentally unique. They are universal explainers. They can take on board any explanation and use it for creative thought instantly. They do not need to be trained in the sense that neural nets do. Creating new ideas, making and using explanations, and critiquing our own thoughts is what makes humans special. You can’t explain something to a goldfish and have it change its behavior. A goldfish isn’t thinking “what if I go right after the third left in the maze”. Credit to David Deutsch for these ideas.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  > Put differently, if you took an ant or cat or chimpanzee and made it compute more data infinitely faster, you wouldn’t get AGI. Citation needed. > They can take on board any explanation and use it for creative thought instantly. They do not need to be trained in the sense that neural nets do. This is patently false: I can explain a math topic people can’t immediately apply — and require substantial training (ie, repeated exposure to examples of that data) to get it correct… if they ever learn it at all. Anyone with a background in tutoring has experienced this claim being false. > Creating new ideas, making and using explanations, and critiquing our own thoughts is what makes humans special. Current AI has approaches for all of these.
  - tdehnel 4y ago
    >Citation needed. That's a lazy critique. With a lack of concrete evidence either way, we can only rely on the best explanation (theory). What's your explanation for how an AGI is just an ant with more compute? I've given my explanation for why it's not: an AGI would need to have the ability to create new explanatory knowledge (i.e. not just synthesize something that it's been trained to do). As an example, you can currently tell almost any person (but certainly no other animal or current AI) "break into this room without destroying anything and steal the most valuable object in it". Go ahead and try that with a faster ant. On your tutoring example, just because a given person doesn't use their special capabilities doesn't mean they don't have them. Your example could just as easily be interpreted to mean that tutors just haven't figured out how to tutor effectively. As a counter example, would you say your phone doesn't have the ability to run an app which is not installed on it? >Current AI has approaches for all these. But has it solved them? Or is there an explanation as to why it hasn't solved them yet? What new knowledge has AI created? I know as a member of a ML research group you really want current approaches to be the solution to AGI. We are making progress I admit. But until we can explain how general intelligence works, we will not be able to program it.
TaupeRanger 4y ago
Variations of this exact argument happen in every single comment thread relating to AI. It's almost comical. "The NN [decides/thinks/understands]..." "NNs are just programs doing statistical computations, they don't [decide/think/understand/" "Your brain is doing the same thing." "Human thought is not the same as a Python program doing linear algebra on a static set of numbers." And really, I can't agree or disagree with either premise because I have two very strong but very conflicting intuitions: 1) human thought and consciousness is qualitatively different from a Python program doing statistics. 2) the current picture of physics leaves no room for such a qualitative difference to exist - the character of the thoughts (qualia) must be illusory or epiphenomenal in some sense
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  I don’t think those are in conflict: scale has a quality all its own. I’m not claiming AI have anything similar to human psychology, just that the insistence they have zero “intelligence” is in conflict with how we use that word to describe animals: they’re clearly somewhere between bees/ants and dogs.
  - TaupeRanger 4y ago
    The conflict is that, at one point (the Python program) there are no qualities - just behaviors, but at some point the qualities (which are distinct phenomena) somehow enter in, when all that has been added in physical terms is more matter and energy.
    - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
      we are what we do: qualities are just a characterization of known behavior
      - TaupeRanger 4y ago
        That's quite handwave-y. What special magic does a human mind use to obtain qualities that a Python program doing linear algebra can't access? Both have "characterizations of known behavior".

V__ 4y ago

> by placing some special status on human like intelligence without recognizing the spectrum of natural intelligence You're right, yes, if you see it as the whole spectrum, sure. I was more thinking about the colloquial meaning of an AI of human-like intelligence. My view was therefore from a different perspective: > So is the equation modeling your brain. I would argue that is still open to debate. Sure, if the universe is deterministic, then everything is just one big math problem. If there is some natural underlying randomness (quanta phenomena etc.) then maybe there is more than deterministic math to it. > We call that “reasoning” in most cases. Is a complex if-else-structure reasoning? Reasoning, to my, implies some sort of consciousness, and being able to "think". If a neural network doesn't know the answer, more thinking won't result in one. A human can (in some cases) reason about inputs and figure out an answer after some time, even if they didn't know it in the beginning.

zmgsabst 4y ago
> I was more thinking about the colloquial meaning of an AI of human-like intelligence. Then it sounds like we’re violently agreeing — I appreciate you clarifying. I try to avoid that mindset, because it’s possible that AI will become intelligent in a way unlike our own psychology, which is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history. My own view is that AI aren’t human-like, but are “intelligent” somewhere between insects and dogs. (At present.) > If a neural network doesn't know the answer, more thinking won't result in one. I think reinforcement learning contradicts that, but current AIs don’t use that ability dynamically. But GAN cycles and adversarial training for, eg, go suggest that AIs given time to contemplate a problem can self-improve. (That is, we haven’t implemented it… but there’s also no fundamental roadblock.)

tdehnel 4y ago

But the spectrum is an illusion. It’s not like humans are just chimpanzees (or ants or cats) with more compute. Put differently, if you took an ant or cat or chimpanzee and made it compute more data infinitely faster, you wouldn’t get AGI. Humans can do something fundamentally unique. They are universal explainers. They can take on board any explanation and use it for creative thought instantly. They do not need to be trained in the sense that neural nets do. Creating new ideas, making and using explanations, and critiquing our own thoughts is what makes humans special. You can’t explain something to a goldfish and have it change its behavior. A goldfish isn’t thinking “what if I go right after the third left in the maze”. Credit to David Deutsch for these ideas.

zmgsabst 4y ago
> Put differently, if you took an ant or cat or chimpanzee and made it compute more data infinitely faster, you wouldn’t get AGI. Citation needed. > They can take on board any explanation and use it for creative thought instantly. They do not need to be trained in the sense that neural nets do. This is patently false: I can explain a math topic people can’t immediately apply — and require substantial training (ie, repeated exposure to examples of that data) to get it correct… if they ever learn it at all. Anyone with a background in tutoring has experienced this claim being false. > Creating new ideas, making and using explanations, and critiquing our own thoughts is what makes humans special. Current AI has approaches for all of these.
- tdehnel 4y ago
  >Citation needed. That's a lazy critique. With a lack of concrete evidence either way, we can only rely on the best explanation (theory). What's your explanation for how an AGI is just an ant with more compute? I've given my explanation for why it's not: an AGI would need to have the ability to create new explanatory knowledge (i.e. not just synthesize something that it's been trained to do). As an example, you can currently tell almost any person (but certainly no other animal or current AI) "break into this room without destroying anything and steal the most valuable object in it". Go ahead and try that with a faster ant. On your tutoring example, just because a given person doesn't use their special capabilities doesn't mean they don't have them. Your example could just as easily be interpreted to mean that tutors just haven't figured out how to tutor effectively. As a counter example, would you say your phone doesn't have the ability to run an app which is not installed on it? >Current AI has approaches for all these. But has it solved them? Or is there an explanation as to why it hasn't solved them yet? What new knowledge has AI created? I know as a member of a ML research group you really want current approaches to be the solution to AGI. We are making progress I admit. But until we can explain how general intelligence works, we will not be able to program it.

TaupeRanger 4y ago

Variations of this exact argument happen in every single comment thread relating to AI. It's almost comical. "The NN [decides/thinks/understands]..." "NNs are just programs doing statistical computations, they don't [decide/think/understand/" "Your brain is doing the same thing." "Human thought is not the same as a Python program doing linear algebra on a static set of numbers." And really, I can't agree or disagree with either premise because I have two very strong but very conflicting intuitions: 1) human thought and consciousness is qualitatively different from a Python program doing statistics. 2) the current picture of physics leaves no room for such a qualitative difference to exist - the character of the thoughts (qualia) must be illusory or epiphenomenal in some sense

zmgsabst 4y ago
I don’t think those are in conflict: scale has a quality all its own. I’m not claiming AI have anything similar to human psychology, just that the insistence they have zero “intelligence” is in conflict with how we use that word to describe animals: they’re clearly somewhere between bees/ants and dogs.
- TaupeRanger 4y ago
  The conflict is that, at one point (the Python program) there are no qualities - just behaviors, but at some point the qualities (which are distinct phenomena) somehow enter in, when all that has been added in physical terms is more matter and energy.
  - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
    we are what we do: qualities are just a characterization of known behavior
    - TaupeRanger 4y ago
      That's quite handwave-y. What special magic does a human mind use to obtain qualities that a Python program doing linear algebra can't access? Both have "characterizations of known behavior".