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Critically speaking, this article doesn't add anything. I don't know why I read it. Can anyone explain why they upvoted?
by elwell 13y ago
Critically speaking, this article doesn't add anything. I don't know why I read it. Can anyone explain why they upvoted?
- Zikes 13y agoIt's certainly not something to be published in a scientific journal, but it's a nice subject to bring up and spark discussion on now and then.
- elwell 13y agoMaybe the second sentence is being taken as a prophecy.
- tylermauthe 13y agoIt's nice to hear smart people talk about important topics in a down-to-earth fashion. This is why I upvoted.
- membrain 13y agosmart - nope. pretentious guesswork and attention whoring is what is going on here
- tylermauthe 13y agoThere are many types of smart, good sir.
- mappum 13y agoWhat it adds is the simple point, "be optimistic about strong AI in the near future".
- Buttons840 13y agoSo an article that lacks all substance besides "be optimistic about AI" is front page material on HN?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- 3rd3 13y agoBecause it has an exceptionally short link title.
- dennisgorelik 13y ago... and samaltman.com domain
- mindcrime 13y agoI upvoted because HN does not have a separate 'save' feature like Reddit, and upvoting is a quick and easy way to tag it as "read this eventually". So I reflexively upvote anything that looks even vaguely interesting. In this case, I did read the article, and would probably have upvoted it anyway. Why? Because it stands to serve as the seed of an interesting discussion. Personally, I don't give a fuck if the article itself "adds anything" or not. Who cares about that? It's irrelevant. If the topic itself and/or the content of TFA are interesting enough that it gets a bunch of interesting HN readers talking and commenting and linking and sharing stuff, then it's a worthwhile article in my book. Not everything has to be an earth-shattering scientific breakthrough, that's published in a peer-reviewed journal, blah, blah, blah.
- gus_massa 13y agoI saved 59 stories in the last 7 days. I don't expect to be able to find any of them in the future (in more than 1 month). The only realistic way to find old stories is to use the search feature, if you can remember a few keywords.
- mindcrime 13y agoNo doubt, once they get past a certain age, they become basically useless bookmarks (probably like most bookmarks). But I find that my pattern is usually to vaguely recall something from sometime in the past 3-6 weeks or so, and that often times if I go to my "saved stories" and just start scrolling back through them, I find the one I'm looking for.
- rdl 13y agoFor me, "There are certainly some reasons to be optimistic. Andrew Ng, who worked or works on Google’s AI, has said that he believes learning comes from a single algorithm - the part of your brain that processes input from your ears is also capable of learning to process input from your eyes. If we can just figure out this one general-purpose algorithm, programs may be able to learn general-purpose things." is what was most interesting to me. The idea that there's a fairly simple algorithm to learning, applied in the brain, which produces at least the basic learning capability, and possibly consciousness.
- elwell 13y agoFair enough, but can we imagine a better algorithm?
- rdl 13y agoI've always assumed any real machine intelligence would be scalable to the point where even if it started at a millionth the functionality of a human, it would end up far surpassing humanity.
- derefr 13y agoWhy do you believe this? We don't see animals self-improving to become humans (in the "consciously deciding what revisions to make to their mental architecture at each step" sense), so why would you expect electronic animal-level minds to be able to do the same to become electronic human-level minds, or beyond? Personally, I doubt even electronic human-equivalent minds would be capable of self-improvement. After all, we are not smart enough to build AIs better than us (yet), so why should electronic minds only as smart as we are be capable of that, either? A possible answer to that, I suppose, would be that the electronic mind would have far more input/training data fed to it per second than biological minds receive, and far more time to "work on" that sense data to derive patterns between each decision-step.
- rdl 13y ago
- Void_ 13y agoIt's well written. And I like the idea that maybe there is one algorithm. That'd be cool.
- charlesju 13y agoSuper pertinent and more in depth article on this subject: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-would-teach-machines-to-think/309529/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-...
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoBecause the title on HN is "AI", which makes it a small click target [1], prone to accidental upvotes. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law
- aragot 13y agoI just did that. iPad here, click target is below 44px.
- lbenes 13y agoYes, that's exactly how this article gained my upvote. For misclicks and link-bait, I would love to see HN add the ability to retract votes from articles. I have many "saved stories" that I'd love to remove from my list.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago280 votes and counting. I'm betting this will stay on the first page for a long time.
- sandieman 13y agoIMO this is much more interesting than a multi-billion dollar exit of a simple chat application
- 3rd3 13y agoIsn’t Fitt’s law about how long it takes to aim for an element of a certain size at a certain distance? I think this has nothing to do with Fitt’s law.
- dcre 13y agoI've felt this way about every Sam Altman piece that's been posted in the past week (and possibly every one I've ever read). And I feel guilty because PG speaks so highly of him. And then I feel guilty for feeling guilty.
- sama 13y agodon't feel guilty. I'm blogging to practice writing. It surprises me at least as much as you when articles like this do well on HN and makes me feel embarrassed I didn't make them better (there are some posts I work really hard on and hope people like, but this was not one of them)
- tzm 13y agoI like your candor.
- applecore 13y agoIf you're interested, you should read On Intelligence[1] by Jeff Hawkins (inventor of the Palm Pilot). In it, Hawkins presents a compelling theory of how the human brain works and how we can finally build intelligent machines. In fact, Andrew Ng's Deep Learning research is built on Hawkin's "one algorithm" hypothesis. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/0805078533/ http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...
- sushirain 13y agoArtificial general intelligence is not coming in the next, say, 30 years. And I am a big fan. A quick analogy: note that we can't even build an ant. It will take decades after that accomplishment to build a human level intelligence.
- ilaksh 13y agoI think you are an excellent blogger and glad that you are posting to HN. That said, I hope that you will think more critically and clearly before publishing vague, fuzzy, uninformed, and unlogical thoughts (not illogical, but unlogical) like the following: >The biggest question for me is not about artificial intelligence, but instead about artificial consciousness, or creativity, or desire, or whatever you want to call it. I am quite confident that we’ll be able to make computer programs that perform specific complex tasks very well. But how do we make a computer program that decides what it wants to do? How do we make a computer decide to care on its own about learning to drive a car? Or write a novel? Consciousness, creativity, and desire are all quite distinct things. It is very important for people who are attempting to approach the coming reality of artificial intelligence to be able to distinguish between different things like that. There have been computer programs that decide what they want to do for decades. Perhaps you were thinking of a specific human-like type of decision process, but if so, you must say so and reason that way. Otherwise you are just conveying some fuzzy thoughts. And the problem is that you are doing so in the context of real scientific undertakings with results directly applicable to your thoughts. A computer deciding what to care about or learn or what behavior to engage in "on its own" is related to the previous topic you mention, and in and of itself, does not require artificial general intelligence. How do we make a computer program write a novel? I think that is a good question and an effective answer to it I believe _might_ be in the category of 'real' artificial general intelligence. However, I think that it will probably soon be possible to create 'narrow' AIs that can generate novels without being generally intelligent. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/business/computer-generated-articles-are-gaining-traction.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/business/computer-generate...
- awkward 13y agoCynically, it's a partner at a VC firm saying that AI is a space to watch. Less cynically, after about 40 years of AI winter, any possible sighting of a sprout is news.