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> What the fuck even is "AI" anyway? Indeed. For most lay people I've talked to -- family, friends, and acquiescence outside of tech -- the answer ultimately

by ke88y 3y ago

> What the fuck even is "AI" anyway? Indeed. For most lay people I've talked to -- family, friends, and acquiescence outside of tech -- the answer ultimately boils down to "automation that can do my job or can do the job of people I care about or can do the job of people who would then compete for my job". Sometimes also "algorithms" a la social media feeds and so on. Ie, the lay answer to "what is AI?" has recently morphed into roughly "computer programs that I am worried about or don't like". For most actual AI researchers I've talked to, you get the standard tounge-in-cheek response ("AI is whatever gets published at AI conferences and funded by AI investors") and then, when you press, it's roughly something like ML+CV+NLP+optimization and sometimes but not always other fields like automated reasoning or parts of robotics get added. Roughly, most of the parts of CS that aren't theory or systems or HCI or software engineering or already closed. For most techno-babblers in the podosphere who have OPINIONS on super-intelligence but couldn't pass an internship phone screen to save their lives, it's superintelligence and other stupid hollywood bullshit.

adamsmith143 3y ago
If you look at actual quotes from people like Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Demis Hassabis, etc. the AI, that is to say really the AGI, that they want to build is a godlike super intelligent being. To many researchers in the field this is their end goal.
- ke88y 3y ago
  And Minsky before them.
- hgsgm 3y ago
  And Elon Musk wants to die on Mars. It doesn't matter what their "goal" is.
wpietri 3y ago
For sure. AI is a marketing term. But in some sense, so it "tech". The paperclip is a highly evolved technology, for example, [1], but working on those doesn't mean you work "in tech". Tech meant something like, "the new stuff that is impacting our lives but we don't know how to handle". So a CTO's job generally doesn't include the paperclips, the copiers, or the company cars, however technological they are. And as with any shiny new marketing term, others will quickly rush in. There was the craze for radioactivity, which resulted in a bunch of radioactive patent medicines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_quackery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_quackery But even more interesting to me is the extent to which it was used as a pure marketing term, with no radioactivity expected. E.g.: https://lucyjanesantos.com/a-batschari-radium-cigarettes/ https://lucyjanesantos.com/a-batschari-radium-cigarettes/ So I'm sure we'll be seeing all sorts of things branded "AI" even when they don't use any of the technologies involved. With no trademark on the term or organization to defend it, it's open season for all the sketch marketers. [1] For those who doubt, Petroski's "The Evolution of Useful Things" will set you straight: https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Useful-Things-Artifacts-Zippers-Came/dp/0679740392 https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Useful-Things-Artifacts-Zip...
- School-Cotton 3y ago
  I think a good definition of AI might be things that can’t be done (or at least we don’t know how to do them) with traditional deterministic programming techniques (that is, humans write code that directly tells the computer what to do). Things like traditional chess programs (i.e., those that don't use neural networks/ML) are maybe a borderline case, as while they are just tree search with a bunch of human-tuned evaluation heuristics, the search depth is so huge that it's difficult for humans to explain why they take certain actions.
  - wpietri 3y ago
    I think that's a plausible start at a definition, but I think the ship has sailed on the term having a real definition at all. Once marketers get hold of a term, it doesn't really matter what people who like definitions or precision think. As an example, I was active in the Agile movement before that term was coined. When I've talked recently with the early-days people I keep in touch with, we're all kinda horrified by what the term has come to mean. And it's not like we didn't fight along the way for clarity. But most people just don't care about the precise use of a term when there's a profitable (mis)use of the term.
ilaksh 3y ago
Please read and study my comments in this thread carefully. Superintelligence is not Hollywood bullshit. AI doesn't need to be alive or animal-like to be superintelligent. We have many examples getting more and more general purpose. Look at AlphaGo, AlphaStar. Both are superintelligent in a somewhat narrow way (but trending towards less narrow). GPT-4 is superintelligent in some ways already such as it's breadth of knowledge. And we have to anticipate that it will continue to get smarter and better at reasoning and much, much faster. Over the last ten years AI performance has increased by 100000 to 1000000 depending on how you measure it. It will continue to accelerate. BTW, as far as internships etc., I started programming 38 years ago when I was 7. I've built a ton of software with numerous technologies, including recently some things like: a multilayer perceptron (from scratch). And a data analysis tool that uses GPT to write complex SQL and create charts on the fly to answer user requests. Also software to automatically create custom websites (including imagery) based on short descriptions, or automatically write, test and debug scripts on servers. And all of that outputs at superhuman speed already. And before that I worked on dozens of other complex projects. Point being, I understand technology and AI, and it is ludicrous to view superintelligence as "stupid bullshit".
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Consider this: There are people much much smarter than you RIGHT NOW that you do not listen to or refuse to agree with. There are clear statistics RIGHT NOW about things that you choose to disbelieve. If you don't think this is true, then it is even more the reality. The idea that a very smart "AI" can magically convince anyone of anything is completely unsubstantiated and made entirely up, by people basically inventing a new god and religion. Everything about the human brain is built around rationalizing what you already want into whatever system you pretend to believe in and use, and an AI could tell you something completely true, completely accurate, completely right from a magical objective morality and you STILL would not choose to believe it.
  - johngladtj 3y ago
    Given that we already have AI convincing people to kill themselves or that they are aware, I'd say the chance that a more advanced ai is capable of convincing humans to do certain actions that the human may not fully understand the totality of the consequences is pretty high.

by ke88y 3y ago

adamsmith143 3y ago

If you look at actual quotes from people like Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Demis Hassabis, etc. the AI, that is to say really the AGI, that they want to build is a godlike super intelligent being. To many researchers in the field this is their end goal.

ke88y 3y ago
And Minsky before them.
hgsgm 3y ago
And Elon Musk wants to die on Mars. It doesn't matter what their "goal" is.

wpietri 3y ago

For sure. AI is a marketing term. But in some sense, so it "tech". The paperclip is a highly evolved technology, for example, [1], but working on those doesn't mean you work "in tech". Tech meant something like, "the new stuff that is impacting our lives but we don't know how to handle". So a CTO's job generally doesn't include the paperclips, the copiers, or the company cars, however technological they are. And as with any shiny new marketing term, others will quickly rush in. There was the craze for radioactivity, which resulted in a bunch of radioactive patent medicines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_quackery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_quackery But even more interesting to me is the extent to which it was used as a pure marketing term, with no radioactivity expected. E.g.: https://lucyjanesantos.com/a-batschari-radium-cigarettes/ https://lucyjanesantos.com/a-batschari-radium-cigarettes/ So I'm sure we'll be seeing all sorts of things branded "AI" even when they don't use any of the technologies involved. With no trademark on the term or organization to defend it, it's open season for all the sketch marketers. [1] For those who doubt, Petroski's "The Evolution of Useful Things" will set you straight: https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Useful-Things-Artifacts-Zippers-Came/dp/0679740392 https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Useful-Things-Artifacts-Zip...

School-Cotton 3y ago
I think a good definition of AI might be things that can’t be done (or at least we don’t know how to do them) with traditional deterministic programming techniques (that is, humans write code that directly tells the computer what to do). Things like traditional chess programs (i.e., those that don't use neural networks/ML) are maybe a borderline case, as while they are just tree search with a bunch of human-tuned evaluation heuristics, the search depth is so huge that it's difficult for humans to explain why they take certain actions.
- wpietri 3y ago
  I think that's a plausible start at a definition, but I think the ship has sailed on the term having a real definition at all. Once marketers get hold of a term, it doesn't really matter what people who like definitions or precision think. As an example, I was active in the Agile movement before that term was coined. When I've talked recently with the early-days people I keep in touch with, we're all kinda horrified by what the term has come to mean. And it's not like we didn't fight along the way for clarity. But most people just don't care about the precise use of a term when there's a profitable (mis)use of the term.

ilaksh 3y ago

Please read and study my comments in this thread carefully. Superintelligence is not Hollywood bullshit. AI doesn't need to be alive or animal-like to be superintelligent. We have many examples getting more and more general purpose. Look at AlphaGo, AlphaStar. Both are superintelligent in a somewhat narrow way (but trending towards less narrow). GPT-4 is superintelligent in some ways already such as it's breadth of knowledge. And we have to anticipate that it will continue to get smarter and better at reasoning and much, much faster. Over the last ten years AI performance has increased by 100000 to 1000000 depending on how you measure it. It will continue to accelerate. BTW, as far as internships etc., I started programming 38 years ago when I was 7. I've built a ton of software with numerous technologies, including recently some things like: a multilayer perceptron (from scratch). And a data analysis tool that uses GPT to write complex SQL and create charts on the fly to answer user requests. Also software to automatically create custom websites (including imagery) based on short descriptions, or automatically write, test and debug scripts on servers. And all of that outputs at superhuman speed already. And before that I worked on dozens of other complex projects. Point being, I understand technology and AI, and it is ludicrous to view superintelligence as "stupid bullshit".

mrguyorama 3y ago
Consider this: There are people much much smarter than you RIGHT NOW that you do not listen to or refuse to agree with. There are clear statistics RIGHT NOW about things that you choose to disbelieve. If you don't think this is true, then it is even more the reality. The idea that a very smart "AI" can magically convince anyone of anything is completely unsubstantiated and made entirely up, by people basically inventing a new god and religion. Everything about the human brain is built around rationalizing what you already want into whatever system you pretend to believe in and use, and an AI could tell you something completely true, completely accurate, completely right from a magical objective morality and you STILL would not choose to believe it.
- johngladtj 3y ago
  Given that we already have AI convincing people to kill themselves or that they are aware, I'd say the chance that a more advanced ai is capable of convincing humans to do certain actions that the human may not fully understand the totality of the consequences is pretty high.