7 ms·

I don‘t see any hint of AI being used here, but rather a handcrafted computer vision algorithm. Can anyone more involved in the matter elaborate if there was an

by pgraf 2y ago

I don‘t see any hint of AI being used here, but rather a handcrafted computer vision algorithm. Can anyone more involved in the matter elaborate if there was an actual AI model used?

snapcaster 2y ago
I'm so tired of this argument. AI is a blurry term as it's used in the world. Who the fuck cares if this is "officially AI" or not? Can we just stop having this discussion?
yifanl 2y ago
We don't have a formal classification of which technologies can be considered "AI", but computer vision would feel like a valid entrant to me.
- nostrademons 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect
  - keybored 2y ago
    I thought that AGI covered that. AGI to my mind doesn’t have to surpass human thinking. It just has to be categorically the same as it (it can be less powerful, or more). It has to be general. A chess machine in a box which can’t do anything else is not general.[1] I’ve always been fine with calling things AI even though they are all jumbles of stats nonsense that wouldn’t be able to put their own pants on. Does a submarine swim? No, but that’s just the metaphor that the most vocal adherents are wedded to (at the hips). The metaphor doesn’t harm me. And to argue against it is like Chomsky trying to tell programming language designers that programming languages being languages is just a metaphor. [1] EDIT: In other words it can be on the level of a crow. Or a dog. Just something general. Something that has some animalistic-like intelligence.
    - nostrademons 2y ago
      I think the point of the Wikipedia article is that human categories are flexible, and they get redefined to suit human ego needs regardless of what's happening in the objective outside world. Say that you have a closed system that largely operates without human intervention - for example, the current ad fraud mess where you have bots pretending to be humans that don't actually exist to inflate ad counts, all of which gets ranked higher by the ML ad models because it inflates their engagement numbers, but it's all to sell products that don't really work anyway so that the company can post better revenue numbers to Wall Street and unload the shares on prop trading bots and index funds that are all investing algorithmically anyway. On some level, this is a form of "intelligence" even though it doesn't put pants on. For that matter, many human societies don't put pants on, nor do my not-quite-socialized preschool kids. It's only the weight of our collective upbringing, coupled with a desire to feel intelligent, that leads us to equate putting pants on with intelligence. Plenty of people don't put pants on and consider themselves intelligent as well. And the complexity of what computers actually do do is often well beyond the complexity of what humans do. I often like to flip the concept of "artificial intelligence" on its head and instead think about "natural stupidity". Sure, the hot AI technologies of the moment are basically just massive matrix computations that statistically predict what's likely to come next given all the training data they've seen before. Humans are also basically just massive neural networks that respond to stimulus and reward given all the training data they've seen before. You can make very useful predictions about, say, what is going to get a human to click on a link or open their wallet using these AI technologies. And since we too are relatively predictable human machines that are focused on material wealth and having enough money to get others to satisfy our emotions, this is a very useful asset to have.
      - keybored 2y ago
        > I think the point of the Wikipedia article is that human categories are flexible, and they get redefined to suit human ego needs regardless of what's happening in the objective outside world. I know what the point is. Of course computer scientists that make AI (whatever that means) want to be known for making Intelligence. And they get cross when the marvel of yesterday becomes a humdrum utility. As you can see this part cuts both ways: > > and they get redefined to suit human ego needs > Say that you have a closed system that largely operates without human intervention - for example, the current ad fraud mess where you have bots pretending to be humans that don't actually exist to inflate ad counts, all of which gets ranked higher by the ML ad models because it inflates their engagement numbers, but it's all to sell products that don't really work anyway so that the company can post better revenue numbers to Wall Street and unload the shares on prop trading bots and index funds that are all investing algorithmically anyway. On some level, this is a form of "intelligence" even though it doesn't put pants on. For that matter, many human societies don't put pants on, nor do my not-quite-socialized preschool kids. It's only the weight of our collective upbringing, coupled with a desire to feel intelligent, that leads us to equate putting pants on with intelligence. Plenty of people don't put pants on and consider themselves intelligent as well. And the complexity of what computers actually do do is often well beyond the complexity of what humans do. I bet your AI of choice could write a thesis on how putting pants on is a stupid social construct. Yet if it is incapable of doing it it would just be a bunch of hot air. > I often like to flip the concept of "artificial intelligence" on its head and instead think about "natural stupidity". This philosophy tends to go with the territory. > Sure, the hot AI technologies of the moment are basically just massive matrix computations that statistically predict what's likely to come next given all the training data they've seen before. Humans are also basically just massive neural networks that respond to stimulus and reward given all the training data they've seen before. “Basically” doing some heavy lifting here. This is obviously false. We would have gone extinct pretty much immediately if we had to tediously train ourselves from scratch. We have instincts as well. “But that’s just built-in training.” Okay, now we’re back to it not basically being stimulus-responses to training data they’ve seen before. So what’s the point? When it’s not basically just that. > You can make very useful predictions about, say, what is going to get a human to click on a link or open their wallet using these AI technologies. And since we too are relatively predictable human machines that are focused on material wealth and having enough money to get others to satisfy our emotions, this is a very useful asset to have. Yes. Humans have wants and needs and act in ways consistent with cause and effect. E.g. as the clueless “consumer subject” against billions of dollars of marketing money and AI owned by those same marketing departments. Amazingly: Humans are what you allow them to be. We could treat all humans according to Skinner Box theory. We could treat them as if Skinner’s stimulus-response theories are correct and only allow them to act inside that framework. That would (again, amazingly) confirm that Skinner was right all along. Any organism can express itself maximally only in a maximally free setting. A free dog is a dog; a chained human might only be a dog. The only difference is that humans have words that they can express through their mouthholes about what kind of future they want. If they want to be humans (i.e. human ego needs, sigh) or if they want to be the natural stupidity subjects of the artificial intelligence. Or they don’t care because they don’t think AI will ever be able to put its pants on.
  - mportela 2y ago
    I had heard that quote many times but never know it's called "AI effect". Thanks!
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
  Maybe? I am currently going through 'artificial intelligence modern approach' by Russel&Norvig and from historical perspective alone, it seems vision would qualify. It is just that the language drifted a little the way it did with cyber meaning something else to post 90s kids. So now AI seems to be mostly associated with llms, but not that long ago, AI seemed to almost include just use to of an algorithm. I am not an expert in the field at all. I am just looking at stuff for personal growth.
- datameta 2y ago
  Computer vision totally qualifies as AI as it can grant an agent artificially intelligent behavior.
  - sleepybrett 2y ago
    Based on what is said in the article, it seems like a VERY simple algorithm. It clusters the pixels in the image by color and reports any small blobs of unusual color. That's not AI by any of the stupid definitions we've come up with recently.
    - morkalork 2y ago
      Clustering and outlier detection is not AI?
      - short_sells_poo 2y ago
        I mean, if something as traditional as simple clustering is AI, then so is linear regression and Excel Sheets have been doing AI/ML for the past 2 decades. At some point we just have to stop with the breathless hype. I'm sure labelling it as AI gets more clicks and exposure so I know exactly why they do it. Still, it's annoying.
        wizzwizz4 2y ago
        You're only saying this because we're in a hype cycle. Circa 2018, there was no problem at all with calling this AI: in fact, it was normal.
        kjkjadksj 2y ago
        Back then we still called things image classifiers or machine learning, and when you said AI most people probably had an image of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Cortana flash in their mind.
        sleepybrett 2y ago
- IshKebab 2y ago
  No, even before the current AI era classical computer vision was not considered to be "AI"... because it isn't. That's just a fact.
- gamblor956 2y ago
  Computer vision is a field of AI. But this is just an algorithm without any sort of learning or training process.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    ML =/= AI. Machine learning was widely considered to be a subset of AI, until it got a big resurgence almost 2 decades ago. Now some people use the terms interchangeably.
  - luke-stanley 2y ago
    They might have needed to learn what a good difference threshold and cluster size is. It's hardly ML like fine-tuning CLIP embeddings is, but there are few solid differences: both explore visual embedding spaces with learned values. Granted, cluster thresholds are more likely to be manually learned, but they are both embedding spaces, with the main difference being dimensionality. It's very vague for Wired to have used AI in the title, but it's more confusing to say "A previous headline on this piece incorrectly stated that the drone software used AI." - and not obviously correct either.
    - gamblor956 2y ago
      No, the problem is that the human programmers are the ones doing the learning. That's not artificial intelligence, that's just regular human learning. The algorithm is: identify pixels that are chromatically different from the surrounding pixels. And that's it. That's not AI, that's an algorithm. Any changes come from the human programmers manually changing the algorithm, not from any self-increased capabilities acquired through machine learning, etc.
      - luke-stanley 2y ago
        A lot of people do class rule based systems under the umbrella of AI, when I was a kid, I'd run Alicebot on my pocket computer. Definitely "artificial" "intelligence" and well before any of this modern fancy machine learning stuff! Definitely lots of human work. People have different ways of understanding words and AI is a term that is not well defined, to say the least.
- godelski 2y ago
  I thought AI meant "ML" + marketing. I joke, but not. I'm a researcher and AI has been a pretty ambiguous term for years, mostly because intelligence is still not well defined. Unfortunately I think it's becoming less well defined in the last few years (while prior to that was getting better defined) via the (Fox) Mulder Effect.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
  I think at one time, a mechanical calculator would have been considered AI
moffkalast 2y ago
Deep learning is just a subset of AI which has officially been a thing since 1956. A chess algorithm is smarter than any human yet it's just classical search.
- ithkuil 2y ago
  It's just that the "AI" word is no longer taboo
RayVR 2y ago
What is AI?
pj_mukh 2y ago
Handcrafted CV algorithms and this level of autonomy is textbook AI, it’s just not Machine Learning.
meigwilym 2y ago
Wired have edited the headline to remove "AI".

by pgraf 2y ago

I don‘t see any hint of AI being used here, but rather a handcrafted computer vision algorithm. Can anyone more involved in the matter elaborate if there was an actual AI model used?

snapcaster 2y ago

I'm so tired of this argument. AI is a blurry term as it's used in the world. Who the fuck cares if this is "officially AI" or not? Can we just stop having this discussion?

yifanl 2y ago

We don't have a formal classification of which technologies can be considered "AI", but computer vision would feel like a valid entrant to me.

nostrademons 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect
- keybored 2y ago
  I thought that AGI covered that. AGI to my mind doesn’t have to surpass human thinking. It just has to be categorically the same as it (it can be less powerful, or more). It has to be general. A chess machine in a box which can’t do anything else is not general.[1] I’ve always been fine with calling things AI even though they are all jumbles of stats nonsense that wouldn’t be able to put their own pants on. Does a submarine swim? No, but that’s just the metaphor that the most vocal adherents are wedded to (at the hips). The metaphor doesn’t harm me. And to argue against it is like Chomsky trying to tell programming language designers that programming languages being languages is just a metaphor. [1] EDIT: In other words it can be on the level of a crow. Or a dog. Just something general. Something that has some animalistic-like intelligence.
  - nostrademons 2y ago
    I think the point of the Wikipedia article is that human categories are flexible, and they get redefined to suit human ego needs regardless of what's happening in the objective outside world. Say that you have a closed system that largely operates without human intervention - for example, the current ad fraud mess where you have bots pretending to be humans that don't actually exist to inflate ad counts, all of which gets ranked higher by the ML ad models because it inflates their engagement numbers, but it's all to sell products that don't really work anyway so that the company can post better revenue numbers to Wall Street and unload the shares on prop trading bots and index funds that are all investing algorithmically anyway. On some level, this is a form of "intelligence" even though it doesn't put pants on. For that matter, many human societies don't put pants on, nor do my not-quite-socialized preschool kids. It's only the weight of our collective upbringing, coupled with a desire to feel intelligent, that leads us to equate putting pants on with intelligence. Plenty of people don't put pants on and consider themselves intelligent as well. And the complexity of what computers actually do do is often well beyond the complexity of what humans do. I often like to flip the concept of "artificial intelligence" on its head and instead think about "natural stupidity". Sure, the hot AI technologies of the moment are basically just massive matrix computations that statistically predict what's likely to come next given all the training data they've seen before. Humans are also basically just massive neural networks that respond to stimulus and reward given all the training data they've seen before. You can make very useful predictions about, say, what is going to get a human to click on a link or open their wallet using these AI technologies. And since we too are relatively predictable human machines that are focused on material wealth and having enough money to get others to satisfy our emotions, this is a very useful asset to have.
    - keybored 2y ago
      > I think the point of the Wikipedia article is that human categories are flexible, and they get redefined to suit human ego needs regardless of what's happening in the objective outside world. I know what the point is. Of course computer scientists that make AI (whatever that means) want to be known for making Intelligence. And they get cross when the marvel of yesterday becomes a humdrum utility. As you can see this part cuts both ways: > > and they get redefined to suit human ego needs > Say that you have a closed system that largely operates without human intervention - for example, the current ad fraud mess where you have bots pretending to be humans that don't actually exist to inflate ad counts, all of which gets ranked higher by the ML ad models because it inflates their engagement numbers, but it's all to sell products that don't really work anyway so that the company can post better revenue numbers to Wall Street and unload the shares on prop trading bots and index funds that are all investing algorithmically anyway. On some level, this is a form of "intelligence" even though it doesn't put pants on. For that matter, many human societies don't put pants on, nor do my not-quite-socialized preschool kids. It's only the weight of our collective upbringing, coupled with a desire to feel intelligent, that leads us to equate putting pants on with intelligence. Plenty of people don't put pants on and consider themselves intelligent as well. And the complexity of what computers actually do do is often well beyond the complexity of what humans do. I bet your AI of choice could write a thesis on how putting pants on is a stupid social construct. Yet if it is incapable of doing it it would just be a bunch of hot air. > I often like to flip the concept of "artificial intelligence" on its head and instead think about "natural stupidity". This philosophy tends to go with the territory. > Sure, the hot AI technologies of the moment are basically just massive matrix computations that statistically predict what's likely to come next given all the training data they've seen before. Humans are also basically just massive neural networks that respond to stimulus and reward given all the training data they've seen before. “Basically” doing some heavy lifting here. This is obviously false. We would have gone extinct pretty much immediately if we had to tediously train ourselves from scratch. We have instincts as well. “But that’s just built-in training.” Okay, now we’re back to it not basically being stimulus-responses to training data they’ve seen before. So what’s the point? When it’s not basically just that. > You can make very useful predictions about, say, what is going to get a human to click on a link or open their wallet using these AI technologies. And since we too are relatively predictable human machines that are focused on material wealth and having enough money to get others to satisfy our emotions, this is a very useful asset to have. Yes. Humans have wants and needs and act in ways consistent with cause and effect. E.g. as the clueless “consumer subject” against billions of dollars of marketing money and AI owned by those same marketing departments. Amazingly: Humans are what you allow them to be. We could treat all humans according to Skinner Box theory. We could treat them as if Skinner’s stimulus-response theories are correct and only allow them to act inside that framework. That would (again, amazingly) confirm that Skinner was right all along. Any organism can express itself maximally only in a maximally free setting. A free dog is a dog; a chained human might only be a dog. The only difference is that humans have words that they can express through their mouthholes about what kind of future they want. If they want to be humans (i.e. human ego needs, sigh) or if they want to be the natural stupidity subjects of the artificial intelligence. Or they don’t care because they don’t think AI will ever be able to put its pants on.
- mportela 2y ago
  I had heard that quote many times but never know it's called "AI effect". Thanks!
A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
Maybe? I am currently going through 'artificial intelligence modern approach' by Russel&Norvig and from historical perspective alone, it seems vision would qualify. It is just that the language drifted a little the way it did with cyber meaning something else to post 90s kids. So now AI seems to be mostly associated with llms, but not that long ago, AI seemed to almost include just use to of an algorithm. I am not an expert in the field at all. I am just looking at stuff for personal growth.
datameta 2y ago
Computer vision totally qualifies as AI as it can grant an agent artificially intelligent behavior.
- sleepybrett 2y ago
  Based on what is said in the article, it seems like a VERY simple algorithm. It clusters the pixels in the image by color and reports any small blobs of unusual color. That's not AI by any of the stupid definitions we've come up with recently.
  - morkalork 2y ago
    Clustering and outlier detection is not AI?
    - short_sells_poo 2y ago
      I mean, if something as traditional as simple clustering is AI, then so is linear regression and Excel Sheets have been doing AI/ML for the past 2 decades. At some point we just have to stop with the breathless hype. I'm sure labelling it as AI gets more clicks and exposure so I know exactly why they do it. Still, it's annoying.
      - wizzwizz4 2y ago
        You're only saying this because we're in a hype cycle. Circa 2018, there was no problem at all with calling this AI: in fact, it was normal.
        kjkjadksj 2y ago
        Back then we still called things image classifiers or machine learning, and when you said AI most people probably had an image of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Cortana flash in their mind.
        sleepybrett 2y ago
IshKebab 2y ago
No, even before the current AI era classical computer vision was not considered to be "AI"... because it isn't. That's just a fact.
gamblor956 2y ago
Computer vision is a field of AI. But this is just an algorithm without any sort of learning or training process.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  ML =/= AI. Machine learning was widely considered to be a subset of AI, until it got a big resurgence almost 2 decades ago. Now some people use the terms interchangeably.
- luke-stanley 2y ago
  They might have needed to learn what a good difference threshold and cluster size is. It's hardly ML like fine-tuning CLIP embeddings is, but there are few solid differences: both explore visual embedding spaces with learned values. Granted, cluster thresholds are more likely to be manually learned, but they are both embedding spaces, with the main difference being dimensionality. It's very vague for Wired to have used AI in the title, but it's more confusing to say "A previous headline on this piece incorrectly stated that the drone software used AI." - and not obviously correct either.
  - gamblor956 2y ago
    No, the problem is that the human programmers are the ones doing the learning. That's not artificial intelligence, that's just regular human learning. The algorithm is: identify pixels that are chromatically different from the surrounding pixels. And that's it. That's not AI, that's an algorithm. Any changes come from the human programmers manually changing the algorithm, not from any self-increased capabilities acquired through machine learning, etc.
    - luke-stanley 2y ago
      A lot of people do class rule based systems under the umbrella of AI, when I was a kid, I'd run Alicebot on my pocket computer. Definitely "artificial" "intelligence" and well before any of this modern fancy machine learning stuff! Definitely lots of human work. People have different ways of understanding words and AI is a term that is not well defined, to say the least.
godelski 2y ago
I thought AI meant "ML" + marketing. I joke, but not. I'm a researcher and AI has been a pretty ambiguous term for years, mostly because intelligence is still not well defined. Unfortunately I think it's becoming less well defined in the last few years (while prior to that was getting better defined) via the (Fox) Mulder Effect.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
I think at one time, a mechanical calculator would have been considered AI

moffkalast 2y ago

Deep learning is just a subset of AI which has officially been a thing since 1956. A chess algorithm is smarter than any human yet it's just classical search.

ithkuil 2y ago
It's just that the "AI" word is no longer taboo

RayVR 2y ago

What is AI?

pj_mukh 2y ago

Handcrafted CV algorithms and this level of autonomy is textbook AI, it’s just not Machine Learning.

meigwilym 2y ago

Wired have edited the headline to remove "AI".