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Top physicist: chatbots ‘glorified tape recorders’, predicts revolution ahead
- momirlan 3y agohttps://archive.is/FrnY0 https://archive.is/FrnY0
- mnemonicsloth 3y agoMichio Kaku is a smart guy, but I wouldn't call him a "Top Physicist"
- mrguyorama 3y agoHe's a "futurist", who's explicit job is to make hand wavey, big, shocking claims. Historically, futurists have a less than random chance at being right about the future. Also I would not consider him an expert in anything ML, though he probably has enough of the underlying math to get some things.
- momirlan 3y agodo you have anything to say about the points he's making, or just here to judge the person ?
- mrguyorama 3y agoI'm saying explicitly that the words that come out of Mr Kaku's mouth are noise, not signal. If he is right about something, it is in the way a broken clock is occasionally right. I agree with most of what he is saying personally, but that's not relevant.
- algon33 3y agoKaku is a media sensationalist; that class of person has a terrible track record. Futurists, that is, people like Aasimov, have an ok track record at predicting the future. Interestingly, early futurist predictions about digital tech were pretty good. For "physical" goods? Not so much. A plausible explanation of this discrepancy is that they didn't predict the breakdown in the historial trend of increasing energy usage. See the Henry Adams curve.
- momirlan 3y agoa "co-founder of string field theory" (citation from Britannica) sounds like a top physicist. What are your contributions ?
- spott 3y agoHe might have been a “top physicist”, but it appears he has long since started phoning it in. See the link to Aaronsons blog elsewhere in the thread for an example of the kind of drivel Kaku puts out, and why he shouldn’t be taken seriously.
- dekhn 3y agostring field theory is a a "field" of physics which is entirely theoretical and has no experiment data to back it up.... hard to imagine how even the top person in that field would be a top physicist given the large number of top physicists who are doing useful stuff like LIGO, CERN, etc.
- Terr_ 3y agoAnd especially not in an article where he's presented as being against "media sensationalism"... Compare the feeling of: "Top financial advisor Elon Musk warns against cults of personality, stresses importance of finance fundamentals."
- jdkee 3y agoScott Aaronson agrees. See https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7321 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7321
- Terr_ 3y agoThat reminds me of giving your kids The Quantum Computing Talk... Which now that I look at it, Aaronson was involved in too: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3
- aport 3y agoI would describe Michio Kaku the same way.
- linster 3y agoI don’t know who you are or why you’d describe him this way, but your post doesn’t contribute to the discussion.
- aport 3y agoI dont think there's much to discuss about this article because Kaku's opinion on AI is worthless. He is less a physicist than a parrot that is paid to repeat far fetched claims about whatever pop science thing is in the news.
- metalloid 3y agoYour comment seems to have been written by an untrained chatbot!
- _8j50 3y agoComputers are glorified abacus.
- vannevar 3y agoExactly. Glorification can be pretty significant. Humans are glorified apes.
- whinvik 3y agoI don't know what is weirder. That Fortune is reduced to clickbait like this or that this was upvoted so much on HN.
- red-iron-pine 3y agotime to start thinking about who (and what) is upvoting things on HN.
- Terr_ 3y agoThe most-charitable interpretation I can think of is that some folks are reading the title, thinking "I agree, chatbots are overhyped", and voting before moving on. So they don't see the incoherence of the article because they never click, or else they don't have the historical context to see how it's bizarre to present Kaku as a voice against "media sensationalism".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- RetroTechie 3y agoJust dealt with a chatbot on DHL site the other day. It was just a glorified countdown-to-chat with human customer agent. It was fine for that, otherwise worthless.
- RigelKentaurus 3y agoWhat's the best way to find out all of his past predictions, with the date he made them, and the result? I guess this is a question on all experts and talking heads, not just Kaku. I generally agree that his prediction about ML/AI should be considered less-than-informed.