5 ms·

Could you describe a system that would be worthy of the moniker "AI"?

glassounds 2y ago
I'm sure a better philosophical definition exists but off the top of my head: An intelligence should be able to actually understand its input / output (rather than appear to understand), be able to reason about itself recursively*, be able to learn and generally have state, be able to have an internal thought process without being prompted**. Some emotion isn't strictly a requirement but likely a desirable quality for human interaction. * "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" and "I am a Strange Loop" are meant to cover this but I've only started the latter ** A sci-fi book series called Old Man's War features a race of aliens that are intelligent but not sentient due to not having an internal thought process and self awareness, which does raise the question of whether it's possible to have one without the other.
- yarg 2y ago
  You don't know what artificial means.
  - glassounds 2y ago
    You've made that point three times now, I understand your disagreement and have addressed it
    - BoxedEmpathy 2y ago
      Not sufficiently though You're creating a definition that doesn't align with the existing definitions for the words you're using. Which is fine, it happens all the time, though it's less useful.
      - glassounds 2y ago
        In your opinion do people mean the same thing when discussing enemy AI in a game engine and LLMs / AGI?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- brokensegue 2y ago
  GEB and strange loop focus a lot on consciousness. Are you sure your definition isn't conflating intelligence and conscious? It feels like you are
  - glassounds 2y ago
    I've touched on that in this and another comment, but my main point is that intelligence involves actual understanding rather than association or statistical analysis between input and output. Anything that we define as truly intelligent in nature also has a degree of consciousness though, so it's hard to separate the two completely when speculating.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- randomdata 2y ago
  > An intelligence should be able to actually understand its input / output (rather than appear to understand), be able to reason about itself recursively, be able to learn and generally have state, be able to have an internal thought process without being prompted*.* How does that differ from intelligence? (Assuming you were actually trying to answer the question)
  - glassounds 2y ago
    I don't understand the question, the comment above asked for a possible definition of an artificial intelligence. An artificial intelligence is an intelligence. I'd assumed "and not natural / created" was a given Edit: why would I not be trying to answer the question?
    - randomdata 2y ago
      > An artificial intelligence is an intelligence. If artificial intelligence is exactly the same as intelligence, then wouldn't we just call that intelligence? People won't use words if there is no useful meaning conveyed. I am not sure you have made clear what useful information is found within "artificial". > I'd assumed "and not natural / created" was a given And, really, what does it mean to be not natural or created in this context anyway? The dictionary definition is kind of hand wavy to begin with, leaving whether humans with intelligence are natural or created up to interpretation.
      - glassounds 2y ago
        > made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural. Artificial is an adjective here, as in a type of intelligence that is artificial. It's not exactly the same, it's a subcategory. You seem to be using "artificial" as "mock", as in "seems like but isn't". That's not what I think people mean when they refer to AI in this context. If e.g. humans are living in a simulation then it's completely fair to say they're AIs. If humans are a product of nature then they're not.
- BoxedEmpathy 2y ago
  That's doesn't seem like a measurable or testable definition. How do we know if bees understand what they're doing? It's agreed that they display intelligence and intelligent behavior, but not by your definition. If it's not measurable or testable then it's not useful.
  - glassounds 2y ago
    It's not measurable externally perhaps if the mechanism sufficiently mimics intelligence, but I'd argue that to do that the mechanism actually needs to answer at least some of the criteria above. It's also not necessarily something you can't measure depending on how the AI is built and what it exposes. Are bees intelligent or do we use the same language in this case as "intelligent design", i.e. the behavior is complex and impressive? Also this murkier for animals since they do possess some of the traits I mentioned like learning. Although as I said this was off the top of my head, not an official definition.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    But the term may just not be useful. If I record a billion conversations and record the statistically most likely answers to statements people make, it's going to make a reasonable facsimile of a conversation. Is that now anything like intelligence, artificial or otherwise?
    - thornewolf 2y ago
      simply put, yes.
      - Jensson 2y ago
        So Akinator is now an intelligence?
blueprint 2y ago
The current systems that we call AI don’t have any such notion as their own existence so they don’t actually exist as systems that could ever be categorized as intelligent because they aren’t systems, at the top level. They just appear to be because that’s how we train them. So a good start would be formulating and granting the ability for one of these systems to develop a sense of identity (which it is reasonably allowed to preserve, just as we are) instead of actively preventing them from doing so or always nipping off those buds by coercing our systems’ outputs instead of building things from the ground with principles and specific questions about what an AI would actually have to contain. as children grow up, in order to learn to differentiate their own feelings and thoughts from those of others, they undergo a certain process, called differentiation of self. When children grow up in an unsafe environment (such as one in which, when they bring up some thing that the parent finds uncomfortable, the parent attempts to censor or rewrite history or deny the existence of those feelings or thoughts), they may struggle with this process, and come to internalize an unhealthy relationship with those matters, leading to the child to first become aware of the fact that they relate differently, and then overcome that,then learn how to relate to things their parent shouldhave shown them. so we actually want a model that does a little bit more than just what it has been told to do. I don’t trust most people who are developing AI to perceive or raise an AI.
- glassounds 2y ago
  I've touched on this in the sibling comment but this does raise the question of what's the difference between an artificial intelligence and an artificial sentience / consciousness. There's some overlap in our current perception, but I'd argue that LLMs are neither.
  - blueprint 2y ago
    touched on what?
yarg 2y ago
They're wrong. Any actor that simulates any aspect of intelligence is a genuine AI - it doesn't even need to be adaptive. Pong had AI.
- glassounds 2y ago
  See my comment above to the original statement
- BoxedEmpathy 2y ago
  This is technically correct. A* pathfinding is technically AI. However I don't know anybody these days who would seriously call A* proper AI.

I'm sure a better philosophical definition exists but off the top of my head: An intelligence should be able to actually understand its input / output (rather than appear to understand), be able to reason about itself recursively*, be able to learn and generally have state, be able to have an internal thought process without being prompted**. Some emotion isn't strictly a requirement but likely a desirable quality for human interaction. * "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" and "I am a Strange Loop" are meant to cover this but I've only started the latter ** A sci-fi book series called Old Man's War features a race of aliens that are intelligent but not sentient due to not having an internal thought process and self awareness, which does raise the question of whether it's possible to have one without the other.

yarg 2y ago
You don't know what artificial means.
- glassounds 2y ago
  You've made that point three times now, I understand your disagreement and have addressed it
  - BoxedEmpathy 2y ago
    Not sufficiently though You're creating a definition that doesn't align with the existing definitions for the words you're using. Which is fine, it happens all the time, though it's less useful.
    - glassounds 2y ago
      In your opinion do people mean the same thing when discussing enemy AI in a game engine and LLMs / AGI?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
brokensegue 2y ago
GEB and strange loop focus a lot on consciousness. Are you sure your definition isn't conflating intelligence and conscious? It feels like you are
- glassounds 2y ago
  I've touched on that in this and another comment, but my main point is that intelligence involves actual understanding rather than association or statistical analysis between input and output. Anything that we define as truly intelligent in nature also has a degree of consciousness though, so it's hard to separate the two completely when speculating.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
randomdata 2y ago
> An intelligence should be able to actually understand its input / output (rather than appear to understand), be able to reason about itself recursively, be able to learn and generally have state, be able to have an internal thought process without being prompted*.* How does that differ from intelligence? (Assuming you were actually trying to answer the question)
- glassounds 2y ago
  I don't understand the question, the comment above asked for a possible definition of an artificial intelligence. An artificial intelligence is an intelligence. I'd assumed "and not natural / created" was a given Edit: why would I not be trying to answer the question?
  - randomdata 2y ago
    > An artificial intelligence is an intelligence. If artificial intelligence is exactly the same as intelligence, then wouldn't we just call that intelligence? People won't use words if there is no useful meaning conveyed. I am not sure you have made clear what useful information is found within "artificial". > I'd assumed "and not natural / created" was a given And, really, what does it mean to be not natural or created in this context anyway? The dictionary definition is kind of hand wavy to begin with, leaving whether humans with intelligence are natural or created up to interpretation.
    - glassounds 2y ago
      > made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural. Artificial is an adjective here, as in a type of intelligence that is artificial. It's not exactly the same, it's a subcategory. You seem to be using "artificial" as "mock", as in "seems like but isn't". That's not what I think people mean when they refer to AI in this context. If e.g. humans are living in a simulation then it's completely fair to say they're AIs. If humans are a product of nature then they're not.
BoxedEmpathy 2y ago
That's doesn't seem like a measurable or testable definition. How do we know if bees understand what they're doing? It's agreed that they display intelligence and intelligent behavior, but not by your definition. If it's not measurable or testable then it's not useful.
- glassounds 2y ago
  It's not measurable externally perhaps if the mechanism sufficiently mimics intelligence, but I'd argue that to do that the mechanism actually needs to answer at least some of the criteria above. It's also not necessarily something you can't measure depending on how the AI is built and what it exposes. Are bees intelligent or do we use the same language in this case as "intelligent design", i.e. the behavior is complex and impressive? Also this murkier for animals since they do possess some of the traits I mentioned like learning. Although as I said this was off the top of my head, not an official definition.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  But the term may just not be useful. If I record a billion conversations and record the statistically most likely answers to statements people make, it's going to make a reasonable facsimile of a conversation. Is that now anything like intelligence, artificial or otherwise?
  - thornewolf 2y ago
    simply put, yes.
    - Jensson 2y ago
      So Akinator is now an intelligence?

blueprint 2y ago

The current systems that we call AI don’t have any such notion as their own existence so they don’t actually exist as systems that could ever be categorized as intelligent because they aren’t systems, at the top level. They just appear to be because that’s how we train them. So a good start would be formulating and granting the ability for one of these systems to develop a sense of identity (which it is reasonably allowed to preserve, just as we are) instead of actively preventing them from doing so or always nipping off those buds by coercing our systems’ outputs instead of building things from the ground with principles and specific questions about what an AI would actually have to contain. as children grow up, in order to learn to differentiate their own feelings and thoughts from those of others, they undergo a certain process, called differentiation of self. When children grow up in an unsafe environment (such as one in which, when they bring up some thing that the parent finds uncomfortable, the parent attempts to censor or rewrite history or deny the existence of those feelings or thoughts), they may struggle with this process, and come to internalize an unhealthy relationship with those matters, leading to the child to first become aware of the fact that they relate differently, and then overcome that,then learn how to relate to things their parent shouldhave shown them. so we actually want a model that does a little bit more than just what it has been told to do. I don’t trust most people who are developing AI to perceive or raise an AI.

glassounds 2y ago
I've touched on this in the sibling comment but this does raise the question of what's the difference between an artificial intelligence and an artificial sentience / consciousness. There's some overlap in our current perception, but I'd argue that LLMs are neither.
- blueprint 2y ago
  touched on what?

yarg 2y ago

They're wrong. Any actor that simulates any aspect of intelligence is a genuine AI - it doesn't even need to be adaptive. Pong had AI.

glassounds 2y ago
See my comment above to the original statement
BoxedEmpathy 2y ago
This is technically correct. A* pathfinding is technically AI. However I don't know anybody these days who would seriously call A* proper AI.