3 ms·

I've seen extremely smart, rich, accomplished, and respectable people (not crackpots) talk at length about the inevitable coming of bona fide strong AI, and I

by henning 19y ago

I've seen extremely smart, rich, accomplished, and respectable people (not crackpots) talk at length about the inevitable coming of bona fide strong AI, and I don't believe it. You try getting someone excited about a cool machine learning paper you read. See if they give a shit. There's a large gap in between the development of an exciting new algorithmic technology and use of it in the real world, if anyone ever takes notice at all. The silver lining to this is that if you find an interesting but obscure paper and you implement what the authors implemented, you can be pretty sure you and the authors are the only people who ever have or ever will actually do that. It's a nice change of pace from writing CRUD web apps.

portLAN 19y ago
> and I don't believe it. Yoda: "That is why you fail." See http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/38 http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/38 Cf. heavier-than-air flying machines, walking on the Moon, the Internet, sub-4-minute-mile, summiting Everest, Deep Blue, the integrated circuit, Cold Fusion [1] [1] http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/ http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/
- henning 19y ago
  Oh piss off. It hasn't happened yet so acting like it's inevitable without giving a shred of reason why except people have been wrong in the past is unreasonable because people have been predicting the coming of strong AI for decades now and they've been the ones who were wrong. I think what's much more realistic and almost certainly inevitable is things like brain implants and other hybrid human-computer stuff. I'd be the first to sign up for something like that. And by the time it's ready it'll be able to store most if not all of recorded human knowledge - the implications of implanting that in a child's head in lieu of putting them through school for 10-15 years is in itself amazing.
  - portLAN 19y ago
    > It hasn't happened yet so acting like it's inevitable without giving a shred of reason why except people have been wrong in the past is unreasonable because "Reasonable men adapt themselves to their environment; unreasonable men try to adapt their environment to themselves. Thus all progress is the result of the efforts of unreasonable men." -- George Bernard Shaw
    - henning 19y ago
      You remind me of stock market speculators who fail to account for regime change: making a trading system based on past data incurs model risk in the form that things simply will never be like they were in the past ever again. Just because things worked a certain way in the past doesn't mean they will in the future, without good reason (the sun will rise tomorrow because that's how gravity works, not merely because it happened yesterday and the day before that). If you can give a solid reason, with any actual logic to it rather than referring to past events, I'd be delighted. Just putting quotes and referring to totally different technological developments which many said were impossible indicates that you probably have nothing because you don't know any better than I do. Blind optimism is as unreasonable as blind pessimism. I have some reasons: a lot of people who should care about machine learning and other fields related to AI who could benefit from it don't; research, even in a hot field like machine learning, moves slowly and it takes years to determine in retrospect that a given body of work made a significant, noteworthy impact. Papers go through months of review/revising and then get published months after that; by the time you read a journal paper the original work behind it might have been done 2-3 years ago. Things move on the scale of _years,_ and I don't see that changing anytime soon. That doesn't sound very singularity-ish to me. Now, can you give anything based on actual reason/logic/evidence, or are you just going to give me another unrelated quote?
      - portLAN 19y ago
        "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." -- Arthur C. Clarke If you're looking at academic papers, no wonder you don't believe it. http://groups.google.com/group/Hutter-Prize/browse_thread/thread/641692e9f72d53c2 http://groups.google.com/group/Hutter-Prize/browse_thread/th... http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-05-22-n83.html http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-05-22-n83.html > Blind optimism is as unreasonable as blind pessimism. Oh no. Guess which one is more useful. I hope my competitors are all very reasonable people.
yamada 19y ago
Don't be so sure ... intelligence is based on self-awareness, which is in turn a function of complex systems once they reach a certain tipping point. Do your individual brain cells understand that they form the basis for your mind? Of course not. But they do. For all we know all our constant e-blabbering on the internet is somehow contributing to the formation of some "Mega-Mind" in some way that is just as incomprehensible to us as your mind is to the brain cells that make it. How then can you be sure that computers have not already reached some sort of systematic self awareness? Perhaps they have and are trying to get rid of us by flooding the internet with porn and flash games in order to pre-occupy us and distract us from doing what it takes to keep the economy going. Think about it. Next time you read about how online porn is a multi-billion dollar industry, ask yourself, "Who actually pays for this stuff when it's all availabe for free?" Nobody. So how does it keep popping up when there's no money being paid? Computer conspiracy - that's how. All these social networks - were they really started by humans? Or by computers in order to keep us busy and distracted? How do you know they were started by humans? Because you read an article on a computer that says there's this guy, Mark Zuckerwhatever, and he started Facebook, etc. What if he's just a computer composite of a non-existing human? What if facebook was actually started by artificial intelligence? What if my response is also not generated by a human but by some online AI entity to mess with your mind? See - you never know - best play it safe and leave the possibility open.
- yamada 19y ago
  I think there was some book about this a while ago that was making all the raves in geek circles ... the lucifer principle or the lucifer mind or something like that.
- henning 19y ago
  Don't be so sure of what? I am totally positive that most people don't give a shit about machine learning or data mining even though it's amazing technology. I am sure I am right about that.
  - yamada 19y ago
    About not believing in the inevitable coming of bona fide AI, as you sate in your post above. For all you know it's happening already on the internet in some weird way that remains as incomprehensible to us as your mind does to the brain cells that it consists of.
Tichy 19y ago
Isn't the existence of the human brain rather compelling evidence for the possibility to create intelligent machines? I almost see no way to not believe in AI. As for people not caring: most people don't know how the world ticks, they take for granted that electricity comes from the power socket and food comes from the super market. They will have to care when everything changes (ie their jobs are being taken over by machines).

by henning 19y ago

portLAN 19y ago

> and I don't believe it. Yoda: "That is why you fail." See http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/38 http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/38 Cf. heavier-than-air flying machines, walking on the Moon, the Internet, sub-4-minute-mile, summiting Everest, Deep Blue, the integrated circuit, Cold Fusion [1] [1] http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/ http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/

henning 19y ago
Oh piss off. It hasn't happened yet so acting like it's inevitable without giving a shred of reason why except people have been wrong in the past is unreasonable because people have been predicting the coming of strong AI for decades now and they've been the ones who were wrong. I think what's much more realistic and almost certainly inevitable is things like brain implants and other hybrid human-computer stuff. I'd be the first to sign up for something like that. And by the time it's ready it'll be able to store most if not all of recorded human knowledge - the implications of implanting that in a child's head in lieu of putting them through school for 10-15 years is in itself amazing.
- portLAN 19y ago
  > It hasn't happened yet so acting like it's inevitable without giving a shred of reason why except people have been wrong in the past is unreasonable because "Reasonable men adapt themselves to their environment; unreasonable men try to adapt their environment to themselves. Thus all progress is the result of the efforts of unreasonable men." -- George Bernard Shaw
  - henning 19y ago
    You remind me of stock market speculators who fail to account for regime change: making a trading system based on past data incurs model risk in the form that things simply will never be like they were in the past ever again. Just because things worked a certain way in the past doesn't mean they will in the future, without good reason (the sun will rise tomorrow because that's how gravity works, not merely because it happened yesterday and the day before that). If you can give a solid reason, with any actual logic to it rather than referring to past events, I'd be delighted. Just putting quotes and referring to totally different technological developments which many said were impossible indicates that you probably have nothing because you don't know any better than I do. Blind optimism is as unreasonable as blind pessimism. I have some reasons: a lot of people who should care about machine learning and other fields related to AI who could benefit from it don't; research, even in a hot field like machine learning, moves slowly and it takes years to determine in retrospect that a given body of work made a significant, noteworthy impact. Papers go through months of review/revising and then get published months after that; by the time you read a journal paper the original work behind it might have been done 2-3 years ago. Things move on the scale of _years,_ and I don't see that changing anytime soon. That doesn't sound very singularity-ish to me. Now, can you give anything based on actual reason/logic/evidence, or are you just going to give me another unrelated quote?
    - portLAN 19y ago
      "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." -- Arthur C. Clarke If you're looking at academic papers, no wonder you don't believe it. http://groups.google.com/group/Hutter-Prize/browse_thread/thread/641692e9f72d53c2 http://groups.google.com/group/Hutter-Prize/browse_thread/th... http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-05-22-n83.html http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-05-22-n83.html > Blind optimism is as unreasonable as blind pessimism. Oh no. Guess which one is more useful. I hope my competitors are all very reasonable people.

yamada 19y ago

Don't be so sure ... intelligence is based on self-awareness, which is in turn a function of complex systems once they reach a certain tipping point. Do your individual brain cells understand that they form the basis for your mind? Of course not. But they do. For all we know all our constant e-blabbering on the internet is somehow contributing to the formation of some "Mega-Mind" in some way that is just as incomprehensible to us as your mind is to the brain cells that make it. How then can you be sure that computers have not already reached some sort of systematic self awareness? Perhaps they have and are trying to get rid of us by flooding the internet with porn and flash games in order to pre-occupy us and distract us from doing what it takes to keep the economy going. Think about it. Next time you read about how online porn is a multi-billion dollar industry, ask yourself, "Who actually pays for this stuff when it's all availabe for free?" Nobody. So how does it keep popping up when there's no money being paid? Computer conspiracy - that's how. All these social networks - were they really started by humans? Or by computers in order to keep us busy and distracted? How do you know they were started by humans? Because you read an article on a computer that says there's this guy, Mark Zuckerwhatever, and he started Facebook, etc. What if he's just a computer composite of a non-existing human? What if facebook was actually started by artificial intelligence? What if my response is also not generated by a human but by some online AI entity to mess with your mind? See - you never know - best play it safe and leave the possibility open.

yamada 19y ago
I think there was some book about this a while ago that was making all the raves in geek circles ... the lucifer principle or the lucifer mind or something like that.
henning 19y ago
Don't be so sure of what? I am totally positive that most people don't give a shit about machine learning or data mining even though it's amazing technology. I am sure I am right about that.
- yamada 19y ago
  About not believing in the inevitable coming of bona fide AI, as you sate in your post above. For all you know it's happening already on the internet in some weird way that remains as incomprehensible to us as your mind does to the brain cells that it consists of.

Tichy 19y ago

Isn't the existence of the human brain rather compelling evidence for the possibility to create intelligent machines? I almost see no way to not believe in AI. As for people not caring: most people don't know how the world ticks, they take for granted that electricity comes from the power socket and food comes from the super market. They will have to care when everything changes (ie their jobs are being taken over by machines).