3 ms·

When I studied computer science, the artificial intelligence practical courses were things like building a line-follower robot or implementing a border detectio

by Rygian 10mo ago

When I studied computer science, the artificial intelligence practical courses were things like building a line-follower robot or implementing a border detection algorithm based on difference of gaussians. Anyone calls anything "AI" and I think it is fair to accept that other people trace the line somewhere else.

IanCal 10mo ago
> I think it is fair to accept that other people trace the line somewhere else. It's a pointless naming exercise, no better than me arguing that I'm going to stop calling it quicksort because sometimes it's not quick. It's widely called this, it's exactly in line with how the field would use it. You can have your own definitions, it just makes talking to other people harder because you're refusing to accept what certain words mean to others - perhaps a fun problem given the overall complaint about LLMs not understanding the meaning of words.
gwd 10mo ago
I think I'd define "classical" AI as any system where, rather that putting in an explicit algorithm, you give the computer a goal and have it "figure out" how to achieve that goal. By that definition, SQL query planners, compiler optimizers, Google Maps routing algorithms, chess playing algorithms, and so on were all "AI". (In fact, I'm pretty sure SQLite's website refers to their query planner as an "AI" somewhere; by classical definitions this is correct.) But does an SQL query planner "understand" databases? Does Stockfish "understand" chess? Does Google Maps "understand" roads? I doubt even most AI proponents would say "yes". The computer does the searching and evaluation, but the models and evaluation functions are developed by humans, and stripped down to their bare essentials.
- IanCal 10mo ago
  RMS might say yes, here's from the linked page describing other things as having knowledge and understanding: > There are systems which use machine learning to recognize specific important patterns in data. Their output can reflect real knowledge (even if not with perfect accuracy)—for instance, whether an image of tissue from an organism shows a certain medical condition, whether an insect is a bee-eating Asian hornet, whether a toddler may be at risk of becoming autistic, or how well a certain art work matches some artist's style and habits. Scientists validate the system by comparing its judgment against experimental tests. That justifies referring to these systems as “artificial intelligence.”
  - gwd 10mo ago
    Thanks -- that's not at all clear in this post (nor is it clear from the link text that its target would include a more complete description of his position). I've updated my comment in response to this. Basically: It seems his key test is "Is someone validating the output, trying to steer it towards ground truth?" And since the answer re ChatGPT and Claude is clearly "yes", then ChatGPT clearly does count as an AI with semantic understanding, by his definition.

by Rygian 10mo ago

IanCal 10mo ago

> I think it is fair to accept that other people trace the line somewhere else. It's a pointless naming exercise, no better than me arguing that I'm going to stop calling it quicksort because sometimes it's not quick. It's widely called this, it's exactly in line with how the field would use it. You can have your own definitions, it just makes talking to other people harder because you're refusing to accept what certain words mean to others - perhaps a fun problem given the overall complaint about LLMs not understanding the meaning of words.

gwd 10mo ago

I think I'd define "classical" AI as any system where, rather that putting in an explicit algorithm, you give the computer a goal and have it "figure out" how to achieve that goal. By that definition, SQL query planners, compiler optimizers, Google Maps routing algorithms, chess playing algorithms, and so on were all "AI". (In fact, I'm pretty sure SQLite's website refers to their query planner as an "AI" somewhere; by classical definitions this is correct.) But does an SQL query planner "understand" databases? Does Stockfish "understand" chess? Does Google Maps "understand" roads? I doubt even most AI proponents would say "yes". The computer does the searching and evaluation, but the models and evaluation functions are developed by humans, and stripped down to their bare essentials.

IanCal 10mo ago
RMS might say yes, here's from the linked page describing other things as having knowledge and understanding: > There are systems which use machine learning to recognize specific important patterns in data. Their output can reflect real knowledge (even if not with perfect accuracy)—for instance, whether an image of tissue from an organism shows a certain medical condition, whether an insect is a bee-eating Asian hornet, whether a toddler may be at risk of becoming autistic, or how well a certain art work matches some artist's style and habits. Scientists validate the system by comparing its judgment against experimental tests. That justifies referring to these systems as “artificial intelligence.”
- gwd 10mo ago
  Thanks -- that's not at all clear in this post (nor is it clear from the link text that its target would include a more complete description of his position). I've updated my comment in response to this. Basically: It seems his key test is "Is someone validating the output, trying to steer it towards ground truth?" And since the answer re ChatGPT and Claude is clearly "yes", then ChatGPT clearly does count as an AI with semantic understanding, by his definition.