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Yeah, that felt like a weird and very out-of-place insult. I also thought this was an odd assertion: >In fact, computers can’t “win” at anything, not until the

Yeah, that felt like a weird and very out-of-place insult. I also thought this was an odd assertion: >In fact, computers can’t “win” at anything, not until they can experience real joy in victory and sadness in defeat, a programming challenge that makes Go look like tic-tac-toe. It seems like when it comes to AI advances, there's always a shifting of goalposts as soon as an AI is able to do a task that was once thought to be a defining characteristic of human cognition. Why does it matter if a computer "feels good or bad" at the outcome of a competition for that competition to be somehow valid?

stingraycharles 12y ago
Yeah exactly. If anything, I would like to avoid emotions in AI, since emotions makes for an unpredictable outcome. That is the last thing you want in an AI, imho.
- montecarl 12y ago
  This reminds me of the movie Sphere, when they discuss the ramifications of the unknown object having emotions: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120184/quotes?item=qt0360936 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120184/quotes?item=qt0360936
- ithkuil 12y ago
  TL;DR don't conflate emotions with instinctive response. Emotions are orthogonal to rationality, that's why you can devise rational plans to minimize or maximize your likelihood of feeling an emotion. In other words it's perfectly rational to act in such a way to prevent sadness or pain, if that's the value you want to optimize for. You can imagine a creature (natural or artificial it doesn't matter) that feels emotions and nevertheless it doesn't start acting irrationally just whenever the emotion is strong enough. I could argue that human beings are in many cases such creatures; even apparently irrational behaviour caused by emotional response usually is not a bad strategy in the original environment where that instinctive reaction was selected for. I'm not sure it would be a good idea to create AI that simulate humans in all aspects, including unpredictability, just for the sake of it. But I understand some might be tempted to explore that area in order to research creativity, assuming it had something to do with unpredictability. Perhaps we are just fooling ourselves into thinking that our very failures are what enables us to be so $special (put whatever aspect you prefer in $special). Unfortunately we don't have much means to compare us with something else.
  - cubancigar11 12y ago
    Emotions are what enable us to judge something as right vs. wrong. This has been conjectured philosophically since forever, and has recently been proven to be true by scanning a brain while it solves mathematical questions. Every right step evokes emotional center of the brain, qed. EDIT: This fact has been used to argue against the 'enlightenment' era approach to solving problems. Unfortunately I am unable to find the relavant talk on youtube right now, since all the results for 'enlightenment' return mystic sadhu bs.
    - nitrogen 12y ago
      Emotions are still a physical process that can be modeled, and it may be possible to give computers a sense of "correctness" that doesn't require "real" emotion.
      - ithkuil 12y ago
        With a sufficiently precise simulation is hard to define what's real and what's not.
  - im3w1l 12y ago
    Interestingly an irrational-emotional creature can outperform a rational player in some games, because an irrational-emotional player can make credible threats. Consider the ultimatum game[0]. "The ultimatum game is a game often played in economic experiments in which two players interact to decide how to divide a sum of money that is given to them. The first player proposes how to divide the sum between the two players, and the second player can either accept or reject this proposal. If the second player rejects, neither player receives anything. If the second player accepts, the money is split according to the proposal. The game is played only once so that reciprocation is not an issue." If you are rational and the other player offers you a cent, you will accept. But humans will become disgusted and angry and therefore refuse. A rational counterparty is hence forced offer more. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game
    - 12y ago
- catshirt 12y ago
  depends on what you're trying to accomplish
- Shorel 12y ago
  I think emotions are simply hardwired shortcuts for some very specific outcomes. Mostly related to mammal reproduction. Emotions are not really unpredictable, just very limited in comparison to rationality. They essentially can't deal with unexpected or unprogrammed situations.
bpyne 12y ago
I'm unsure sometimes if the AI moniker isn't misleading people as to what is really happening. We (human beings) aren't creating an artificial intelligence. We are learning about our own intelligence and then trying to put instructions to a machine so it can process them and simulate our intelligence. Beating Kasparov wasn't the result of powering up a machine and letting it learn on its own: on its own it would just sit there with a light on indicating power is passing through the on/off switch. People spent perhaps thousands of hours studying how chess experts approached the game and developed algorithms from it. I think of what they did as not so much artificial intelligence as collective intelligence in which the computer was just a medium.
- AndrewKemendo 12y ago
  Great explanation of how the process actually works for automating these complex systems. What you are describing though is how we build narrow AIs, which are considered part of the "Artificial Intelligence" portfolio. The idea of naive learning is very much a goal of most interpretations of what "Artificial Intelligence" encompasses. The scope of the self directed learning though I think is what distinguishes between narrow AI and AGI.
  - bpyne 12y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to explain this to me: I was a little off target. I don't have a background in AI but find it fascinating. (I'm preparing to undertake a formal study of it within the next 2 years. If you can recommend introductory books, I welcome it.)
- jules 12y ago
  That's not a correct characterization of what happened with chess. Computer chess programs do not work the same way as the human mind. The human mind uses very strong heuristics, and then simulates the game to a relatively small set of positions. We do not really understand how that heuristic part works. On the other hand, computers use very simple and weak heuristics, but search a huge space of possible moves. I'd argue that we learned relatively little about how humans play chess from chess AI. The same goes for most other kinds of AI. AI/machine learning isn't studying how the human mind does it an replicating that, it is developing a method that is effective for computers.
baddox 12y ago
It also seems like this author isn't aware of even the most basic concepts in the philosophy of mind, like the philosophical zombie problem, which deals precisely with the idea that the outward expression of emotions seems to be indistinguishable from "actually" experiencing emotions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
- rosser 12y ago
  As a professor of philosophy, I very much doubt he's ignorant of Philosophical Zombies. He probably just disregards them; they're not universally accepted as remotely meaningful, or even possible. (Note that the most meaningful forms of the zombie argument require them to be metaphysically possible, not merely logically.) They're also not one of "the most basic concepts in philosophy of mind." They're a very pointed way of illustrating the Hard Problem of Consciousness, and specifically Epistemic Asymmetry, but it's the latter two that are fundamental to modern philosophy of mind, not zombies.
  - baddox 12y ago
    He still doesn't even recognize that the idea exists. He just claims that "winning" requires internal emotion, without any support or recognition that other opinions might exist. To me, that sounds philosophically ignorant.
    - rosser 12y ago
      He still doesn't even recognize that the idea exists. Do you somehow not see the fundamental disconnect between making an argument based on p-zombies and attributing internal state to someone else?
wwweston 12y ago
> It seems like when it comes to AI advances, there's always a shifting of goalposts as soon as an AI is able to do a task that was once thought to be a defining characteristic of human cognition. Usually it's because people all over the discussion fail to correctly distinguish between generally adaptive intelligence and specifically engineered "intelligence" (tool that appears to perform a task intelligently), and also between conscious and unaware mechanical intelligence. A Go or Chess program isn't a goalpost for generally adaptive intelligence, it's a milestone for specifically engineered intelligence. And it isn't conscious, which is the writer's point, though the expression is imprecise enough it could be misunderstood as criticizing the more specific form.

stingraycharles 12y ago

Yeah exactly. If anything, I would like to avoid emotions in AI, since emotions makes for an unpredictable outcome. That is the last thing you want in an AI, imho.

montecarl 12y ago
This reminds me of the movie Sphere, when they discuss the ramifications of the unknown object having emotions: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120184/quotes?item=qt0360936 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120184/quotes?item=qt0360936
ithkuil 12y ago
TL;DR don't conflate emotions with instinctive response. Emotions are orthogonal to rationality, that's why you can devise rational plans to minimize or maximize your likelihood of feeling an emotion. In other words it's perfectly rational to act in such a way to prevent sadness or pain, if that's the value you want to optimize for. You can imagine a creature (natural or artificial it doesn't matter) that feels emotions and nevertheless it doesn't start acting irrationally just whenever the emotion is strong enough. I could argue that human beings are in many cases such creatures; even apparently irrational behaviour caused by emotional response usually is not a bad strategy in the original environment where that instinctive reaction was selected for. I'm not sure it would be a good idea to create AI that simulate humans in all aspects, including unpredictability, just for the sake of it. But I understand some might be tempted to explore that area in order to research creativity, assuming it had something to do with unpredictability. Perhaps we are just fooling ourselves into thinking that our very failures are what enables us to be so $special (put whatever aspect you prefer in $special). Unfortunately we don't have much means to compare us with something else.
- cubancigar11 12y ago
  Emotions are what enable us to judge something as right vs. wrong. This has been conjectured philosophically since forever, and has recently been proven to be true by scanning a brain while it solves mathematical questions. Every right step evokes emotional center of the brain, qed. EDIT: This fact has been used to argue against the 'enlightenment' era approach to solving problems. Unfortunately I am unable to find the relavant talk on youtube right now, since all the results for 'enlightenment' return mystic sadhu bs.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    Emotions are still a physical process that can be modeled, and it may be possible to give computers a sense of "correctness" that doesn't require "real" emotion.
    - ithkuil 12y ago
      With a sufficiently precise simulation is hard to define what's real and what's not.
- im3w1l 12y ago
  Interestingly an irrational-emotional creature can outperform a rational player in some games, because an irrational-emotional player can make credible threats. Consider the ultimatum game[0]. "The ultimatum game is a game often played in economic experiments in which two players interact to decide how to divide a sum of money that is given to them. The first player proposes how to divide the sum between the two players, and the second player can either accept or reject this proposal. If the second player rejects, neither player receives anything. If the second player accepts, the money is split according to the proposal. The game is played only once so that reciprocation is not an issue." If you are rational and the other player offers you a cent, you will accept. But humans will become disgusted and angry and therefore refuse. A rational counterparty is hence forced offer more. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game
  - 12y ago
catshirt 12y ago
depends on what you're trying to accomplish
Shorel 12y ago
I think emotions are simply hardwired shortcuts for some very specific outcomes. Mostly related to mammal reproduction. Emotions are not really unpredictable, just very limited in comparison to rationality. They essentially can't deal with unexpected or unprogrammed situations.

bpyne 12y ago

I'm unsure sometimes if the AI moniker isn't misleading people as to what is really happening. We (human beings) aren't creating an artificial intelligence. We are learning about our own intelligence and then trying to put instructions to a machine so it can process them and simulate our intelligence. Beating Kasparov wasn't the result of powering up a machine and letting it learn on its own: on its own it would just sit there with a light on indicating power is passing through the on/off switch. People spent perhaps thousands of hours studying how chess experts approached the game and developed algorithms from it. I think of what they did as not so much artificial intelligence as collective intelligence in which the computer was just a medium.

AndrewKemendo 12y ago
Great explanation of how the process actually works for automating these complex systems. What you are describing though is how we build narrow AIs, which are considered part of the "Artificial Intelligence" portfolio. The idea of naive learning is very much a goal of most interpretations of what "Artificial Intelligence" encompasses. The scope of the self directed learning though I think is what distinguishes between narrow AI and AGI.
- bpyne 12y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to explain this to me: I was a little off target. I don't have a background in AI but find it fascinating. (I'm preparing to undertake a formal study of it within the next 2 years. If you can recommend introductory books, I welcome it.)
jules 12y ago
That's not a correct characterization of what happened with chess. Computer chess programs do not work the same way as the human mind. The human mind uses very strong heuristics, and then simulates the game to a relatively small set of positions. We do not really understand how that heuristic part works. On the other hand, computers use very simple and weak heuristics, but search a huge space of possible moves. I'd argue that we learned relatively little about how humans play chess from chess AI. The same goes for most other kinds of AI. AI/machine learning isn't studying how the human mind does it an replicating that, it is developing a method that is effective for computers.

baddox 12y ago

It also seems like this author isn't aware of even the most basic concepts in the philosophy of mind, like the philosophical zombie problem, which deals precisely with the idea that the outward expression of emotions seems to be indistinguishable from "actually" experiencing emotions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

rosser 12y ago
As a professor of philosophy, I very much doubt he's ignorant of Philosophical Zombies. He probably just disregards them; they're not universally accepted as remotely meaningful, or even possible. (Note that the most meaningful forms of the zombie argument require them to be metaphysically possible, not merely logically.) They're also not one of "the most basic concepts in philosophy of mind." They're a very pointed way of illustrating the Hard Problem of Consciousness, and specifically Epistemic Asymmetry, but it's the latter two that are fundamental to modern philosophy of mind, not zombies.
- baddox 12y ago
  He still doesn't even recognize that the idea exists. He just claims that "winning" requires internal emotion, without any support or recognition that other opinions might exist. To me, that sounds philosophically ignorant.
  - rosser 12y ago
    He still doesn't even recognize that the idea exists. Do you somehow not see the fundamental disconnect between making an argument based on p-zombies and attributing internal state to someone else?

wwweston 12y ago

> It seems like when it comes to AI advances, there's always a shifting of goalposts as soon as an AI is able to do a task that was once thought to be a defining characteristic of human cognition. Usually it's because people all over the discussion fail to correctly distinguish between generally adaptive intelligence and specifically engineered "intelligence" (tool that appears to perform a task intelligently), and also between conscious and unaware mechanical intelligence. A Go or Chess program isn't a goalpost for generally adaptive intelligence, it's a milestone for specifically engineered intelligence. And it isn't conscious, which is the writer's point, though the expression is imprecise enough it could be misunderstood as criticizing the more specific form.