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I'd like you to view this demo from 1974 that showcases the then current state of research in AI. Then reflect that the research presented in the link is 50 yea

I'd like you to view this demo from 1974 that showcases the then current state of research in AI. Then reflect that the research presented in the link is 50 years later. https://youtu.be/03p2CADwGF8?t=1668 https://youtu.be/03p2CADwGF8?t=1668

neom 3y ago
I wasn't aware of this, but from wikip: "In 1973, professor Sir James Lighthill was asked by the UK Parliament to evaluate the state of AI research in the United Kingdom. His report, now called the Lighthill report, criticized the utter failure of AI to achieve its "grandiose objectives". He concluded that nothing being done in AI could not be done in other sciences. He specifically mentioned the problem of "combinatorial explosion" or "intractability", which implied that many of AI's most successful algorithms would grind to a halt on real world problems and were only suitable for solving "toy" versions. The report was contested in a debate broadcast in the BBC "Controversy" series in 1973. The debate "The general purpose robot is a mirage" from the Royal Institution was Lighthill versus the team of Donald Michie, John McCarthy and Richard Gregory. McCarthy later wrote that "the combinatorial explosion problem has been recognized in AI from the beginning". The report led to the complete dismantling of AI research in the UK. AI research continued in only a few universities (Edinburgh, Essex and Sussex). Research would not revive on a large scale until 1983, when Alvey (a research project of the British Government) began to fund AI again from a war chest of £350 million in response to the Japanese Fifth Generation Project (see below). Alvey had a number of UK-only requirements which did not sit well internationally, especially with US partners, and lost Phase 2 funding." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter Seems this is the report if anyone is curious to read it: https://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/events/lighthill1973/lighthill.pdf https://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/events/lighthill1973/lighthill.pdf
- huppeldepup 3y ago
  Thank you for taking the effort to look this up. The other commenters missed my intent but you picked it right out.
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
  That prancing moron, Lighthill, is the reason why the UK has no robotics industry to speak of today. And the instigator of the first AI winter to boot, as you have found out. Curse that bloody idiot.
T-A 3y ago
Pretty much the only "AI" in that demo is edge detection (against a uniform background) and pattern recognition (by direct comparison with a handful of simple geometric shapes). Other than that, the robot seems to be following a hand-coded set of instructions to assemble the provided parts. The current state of research, as described in the article, is a neural network which recognizes which hardware it's currently controlling and uses it to autonomously perform tasks assigned using natural language. So it seems to me that there has been some progress.
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
  It works, so it's not AI.
roenxi 3y ago
As far as I can tell, all the AI stuff happening at the moment seems to be matrix multiplication. Someone wrote up the equations behind transformers the other day and it was a half-page of maths. I skimmed the video and I think the point you're making is not much has changed? The important variable is FLOPS/$, which is nothing like 1974 and still increasing exponentially. The researchers have known what to do for decades; it is only a question of being able to actually do it.
- foobarian 3y ago
  It seems like a repeat of Deep Blue when the "clever algorithm" approach was embarrassed by Hsu's (also very clever in many ways) throwing a lot of brute force at the problem.
  - kiba 3y ago
    If it works, it ain't stupid. That said, a better approach would probably be found eventually.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

neom 3y ago

I wasn't aware of this, but from wikip: "In 1973, professor Sir James Lighthill was asked by the UK Parliament to evaluate the state of AI research in the United Kingdom. His report, now called the Lighthill report, criticized the utter failure of AI to achieve its "grandiose objectives". He concluded that nothing being done in AI could not be done in other sciences. He specifically mentioned the problem of "combinatorial explosion" or "intractability", which implied that many of AI's most successful algorithms would grind to a halt on real world problems and were only suitable for solving "toy" versions. The report was contested in a debate broadcast in the BBC "Controversy" series in 1973. The debate "The general purpose robot is a mirage" from the Royal Institution was Lighthill versus the team of Donald Michie, John McCarthy and Richard Gregory. McCarthy later wrote that "the combinatorial explosion problem has been recognized in AI from the beginning". The report led to the complete dismantling of AI research in the UK. AI research continued in only a few universities (Edinburgh, Essex and Sussex). Research would not revive on a large scale until 1983, when Alvey (a research project of the British Government) began to fund AI again from a war chest of £350 million in response to the Japanese Fifth Generation Project (see below). Alvey had a number of UK-only requirements which did not sit well internationally, especially with US partners, and lost Phase 2 funding." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter Seems this is the report if anyone is curious to read it: https://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/events/lighthill1973/lighthill.pdf https://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/events/lighthill1973/lighthill.pdf

huppeldepup 3y ago
Thank you for taking the effort to look this up. The other commenters missed my intent but you picked it right out.
YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
That prancing moron, Lighthill, is the reason why the UK has no robotics industry to speak of today. And the instigator of the first AI winter to boot, as you have found out. Curse that bloody idiot.

T-A 3y ago

Pretty much the only "AI" in that demo is edge detection (against a uniform background) and pattern recognition (by direct comparison with a handful of simple geometric shapes). Other than that, the robot seems to be following a hand-coded set of instructions to assemble the provided parts. The current state of research, as described in the article, is a neural network which recognizes which hardware it's currently controlling and uses it to autonomously perform tasks assigned using natural language. So it seems to me that there has been some progress.

YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
It works, so it's not AI.

roenxi 3y ago

As far as I can tell, all the AI stuff happening at the moment seems to be matrix multiplication. Someone wrote up the equations behind transformers the other day and it was a half-page of maths. I skimmed the video and I think the point you're making is not much has changed? The important variable is FLOPS/$, which is nothing like 1974 and still increasing exponentially. The researchers have known what to do for decades; it is only a question of being able to actually do it.

foobarian 3y ago
It seems like a repeat of Deep Blue when the "clever algorithm" approach was embarrassed by Hsu's (also very clever in many ways) throwing a lot of brute force at the problem.
- kiba 3y ago
  If it works, it ain't stupid. That said, a better approach would probably be found eventually.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]