8 ms·

This may be slightly OT, but is it unfair of me to assume that science reporting done by mainstream outlets is at worst so inaccurate and at best half true; to

This may be slightly OT, but is it unfair of me to assume that science reporting done by mainstream outlets is at worst so inaccurate and at best half true; to the point that when it involves subjects I know little about, I simply avoid the article entirely, and wait for a reasonably credible source to comment on the matter?

undersuit 12y ago
I call that a downvote, or in my current situation no upvote.
ilaksh 12y ago
Kevin Kelly is an opponent of the most optimistic AI researchers. For him to use a title like that is a bit of a concession. This is the closest you are going to get to something that is more-or-less accurate and that you can accept. He is reporting that because he has to. Deep learning is not something anyone can dismiss. If Kevin Kelly thought he could downplay the massive importance of deep learning and similar technologies, or say that it wasn't AI, he would. This is actually a fairly pessimistic article in terms of AI prediction, and yet, that title was absolutely justified. AI is here and very powerful, and no one can deny it. People can still pretend, however, that it will never have human-like capabilities, or cannot become smarter than us (at least not in _our_ lifetimes). Give it five to ten years, human-like and beyond-human intelligence will be built, Kevin Kelly will be talking to it, and he will have to write an article about how he was wrong about everything (of course he won't admit that much).
- quonn 12y ago
  > Give it five to ten years, human-like and beyond-human intelligence will be built It is absolutely safe to say that human-like AI in five years is not going to happen. Even ten years seems highly unlikely. All leading researchers in the field agree on this.
  - PeterisP 12y ago
    If I had a human-level-AI capable machine delivered today to my basement, then it'd still take something like 5 years of training to bring it to a human-level intelligence. Babies are born with all the hardware to have an adult-level intelligence, but converting that potential to actual skills requires months/years for each skill of active learning, experimentation and feedback, not only reading information from the web.
- michaelkeenan 12y ago
  > Give it five to ten years, human-like and beyond-human intelligence will be built That's probably a bit early. The Machine Intelligence Research Institute has collected various surveys of experts asked about this question. The one with the earliest estimates asked the question, “Assuming beneficial political and economic development and that no global catastrophe halts progress, by what year would you assign a 10%/50%/90% chance of the development of artificial intelligence that is roughly as good as humans (or better, perhaps unevenly) at science, mathematics, engineering and programming?” Of 19 replies, the median estimates for 10%, 50%, and 90% were 2025, 2035, and 2070, respectively." Other surveys and research are described here: http://intelligence.org/2013/05/15/when-will-ai-be-created/ http://intelligence.org/2013/05/15/when-will-ai-be-created/
  - ilaksh 12y ago
    If you asked those same experts in 2005 if a Jeopardy computer would beat the best human Jeopardy contestants ever in 2011, what percentage of them would go on the record with the correct answer? What is expertise today, tomorrow is passé.
    - kd0amg 12y ago
      Yes, it would have been hard for them to predict that anybody would decide to tackle that particular task. The question from GP is about a much broader range of tasks.
      - pinkyand 12y ago
        Watson understands natural language(to some extent).That's a general capability, not a specific task.
        karmacondon 12y ago
        Watson was designed to answer Jeopardy questions. If Alex Trebek had used natural language to ask it anything other than a jeopardy question it would have failed spectacularly. ie, "So where are you from?". It was definitely built for one specific task.
- pyre 12y ago
  > Give it five to ten years 5-10 years is the default prediction for everything nowadays... We've been 5 - 10 years away from holographic storage mediums for the last 20 years...
georgemcbay 12y ago
Not unfair. Also: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gel...

undersuit 12y ago

I call that a downvote, or in my current situation no upvote.

ilaksh 12y ago

Kevin Kelly is an opponent of the most optimistic AI researchers. For him to use a title like that is a bit of a concession. This is the closest you are going to get to something that is more-or-less accurate and that you can accept. He is reporting that because he has to. Deep learning is not something anyone can dismiss. If Kevin Kelly thought he could downplay the massive importance of deep learning and similar technologies, or say that it wasn't AI, he would. This is actually a fairly pessimistic article in terms of AI prediction, and yet, that title was absolutely justified. AI is here and very powerful, and no one can deny it. People can still pretend, however, that it will never have human-like capabilities, or cannot become smarter than us (at least not in _our_ lifetimes). Give it five to ten years, human-like and beyond-human intelligence will be built, Kevin Kelly will be talking to it, and he will have to write an article about how he was wrong about everything (of course he won't admit that much).

quonn 12y ago
> Give it five to ten years, human-like and beyond-human intelligence will be built It is absolutely safe to say that human-like AI in five years is not going to happen. Even ten years seems highly unlikely. All leading researchers in the field agree on this.
- PeterisP 12y ago
  If I had a human-level-AI capable machine delivered today to my basement, then it'd still take something like 5 years of training to bring it to a human-level intelligence. Babies are born with all the hardware to have an adult-level intelligence, but converting that potential to actual skills requires months/years for each skill of active learning, experimentation and feedback, not only reading information from the web.
michaelkeenan 12y ago
> Give it five to ten years, human-like and beyond-human intelligence will be built That's probably a bit early. The Machine Intelligence Research Institute has collected various surveys of experts asked about this question. The one with the earliest estimates asked the question, “Assuming beneficial political and economic development and that no global catastrophe halts progress, by what year would you assign a 10%/50%/90% chance of the development of artificial intelligence that is roughly as good as humans (or better, perhaps unevenly) at science, mathematics, engineering and programming?” Of 19 replies, the median estimates for 10%, 50%, and 90% were 2025, 2035, and 2070, respectively." Other surveys and research are described here: http://intelligence.org/2013/05/15/when-will-ai-be-created/ http://intelligence.org/2013/05/15/when-will-ai-be-created/
- ilaksh 12y ago
  If you asked those same experts in 2005 if a Jeopardy computer would beat the best human Jeopardy contestants ever in 2011, what percentage of them would go on the record with the correct answer? What is expertise today, tomorrow is passé.
  - kd0amg 12y ago
    Yes, it would have been hard for them to predict that anybody would decide to tackle that particular task. The question from GP is about a much broader range of tasks.
    - pinkyand 12y ago
      Watson understands natural language(to some extent).That's a general capability, not a specific task.
      - karmacondon 12y ago
        Watson was designed to answer Jeopardy questions. If Alex Trebek had used natural language to ask it anything other than a jeopardy question it would have failed spectacularly. ie, "So where are you from?". It was definitely built for one specific task.
pyre 12y ago
> Give it five to ten years 5-10 years is the default prediction for everything nowadays... We've been 5 - 10 years away from holographic storage mediums for the last 20 years...

georgemcbay 12y ago

Not unfair. Also: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gel...