4 ms·

As an Android/Maps/Chrome user, Google answers all of my questions, tells me what to buy, tells me where to go, and directs and monitors all of my communication

by IvyMike 12y ago

As an Android/Maps/Chrome user, Google answers all of my questions, tells me what to buy, tells me where to go, and directs and monitors all of my communications. I think the only question left is: did you notice? Edit: Dear immediate downvoter: I'm far more serious about this than you think. How do you define an AI? I'm personally convinced Google qualifies. I once asked Google, "What's that thing where a boat is replaced one part at a time" and it answered "Ship of Theseus". That was my "holy crap" moment--because, quite frankly, that is amazing. If you had asked me in 1990 "is a program that can read online books, magazines, and encyclopedias and extract an answer an AI" I would have said yes. I'm sticking by that today.

radarsat1 12y ago
It's true, but that's still considered "soft AI", I believe. It's highly intelligent and can reason about the world based on a huge database of available information. It can make inferences. However, it is not "self-aware," by any definition. (Which there are many, I guess.) You might say it is "externally aware," I suppose, but "self-aware" is something else entirely. It seems to carry with it some implications of self-interest. Not, "what does my user want to know," but "what do I want to do with myself, now that I'm here." This may or may not include instincts towards self-preservation. (Personally I don't think it's inherently implied.)
- stefantalpalaru 12y ago
  Can something that's not self-aware - and most likely not even aware at all - be highly intelligent?
  - riffraff 12y ago
    for people who might not know, that is likely the chinese room argument[0] [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
  - plasma_coil 12y ago
    You should practice programming. Learn a structured programming language, even something as simple as Basic. Then you would not feel this way.
    - stefantalpalaru 12y ago
      You should do your homework before embarrassing yourself: https://github.com/stefantalpalaru?tab=repositories https://github.com/stefantalpalaru?tab=repositories
      - plasma_coil 12y ago
        Why would I look you up? You are not that important.
        stefantalpalaru 12y ago
        Important enough for you to take some of your precious time to share some shitty advice and then use a second account to downvote me ;-)
- MarkPNeyer 12y ago
  > "what do I want to do with myself, now that I'm here." This may or may not include instincts towards self-preservation. "i want to increase the amount people trust me, to reduce the chances that they will get rid of me." check. "i want to increase the amount people rely on me". check. "i want to increase the amount of resources that flow through me, including engineers that work on me, hardware that runs me, and ads that are spent on me." check. "i want an article about me to be on hacker news, with people debating whether or not i'm as smart as i think i am" - check. that last one is one I'D like to accomplish, but i've been unable to, myself. most people consider ME self aware because i operate through a human body. that's kind of silly; it's more political than it is empirical. i can tell you for a fact i was not fully self aware for most of my life; i was not aware of all of myself. i was walking in circles without realizing it. i feel like i'm _more_ self aware now, but im still aware there are things i am doing for reasons that i don't understand. 'humans are self-aware' is a heuristic. it served us ok for the last few thousands years, but it's going to start having serious problems in the future. even when we have ai's that write business plans, raise capital, and launch companies - would you still ask if it were self aware? would your question be any different if you were told that all of this done by google were done by a human being named Alice, with such and such parents, who likes to eat ice cream and watch old mystery movies on netflix?
  - waps 12y ago
    Don't you think that any AGI "personality" is going to be very much like a human ? Humans, until they get quite far in their development wouldn't care about any of those questions : > "i want to increase the amount people trust me, to reduce the chances that they will get rid of me." Nope > "i want to increase the amount people rely on me". Nope > "i want to increase the amount of resources that flow through me, including engineers that work on me, hardware that runs me, and ads that are spent on me." No way. I think an AGI would actually try to avoid that. I would (and I am 2 thirds of an AGI), and I believe most of humanity would want to do this. > "i want an article about me to be on hacker news, with people debating whether or not i'm as smart as i think i am" - check This one I fully agree on. People want to gloat, and an AGI will be no different. > i can tell you for a fact i was not fully self aware for most of my life; i was not aware of all of myself. i was walking in circles without realizing it. The trouble with this sort of view is that people often think this. Any definition of self-aware I would ever accept would focus on how much you control your own actions, and how much you control their evolution over time. And given the algorithm your brain is running, that control is mostly absent. You wouldn't want the brain to control it's own thoughts. That's called "overdimensioning" and it's really, really, really bad. You are a robot in the real world trying to survive, so the vast majority of your thoughts are dictated by "the real world", not by any internal conscious process. Consciousness only exists insofar as it's necessary to carry out long-running processes without screwing up due to loss of focus (e.g. to negotiate group action). You also have to take into account that consciousness only exists after the fact. If you think about how it must work in a neural network, consciousness is effectively you trying to analyse your own actions after the fact (and/or explain them to others).
- dedward 12y ago
  The question said "AI" - not "self-aware consciousness"
- xanderstrike 12y ago
  If I say "OK Google, what is Google?" it gives me the definition of google (the search engine). Google is therefore aware of Google. So by at least one definition of self aware, it is self aware.
  - plasma_coil 12y ago
    No. The program parsed the word "Google" from the question, used an algorithm to determine that the word was the subject of a "What is?" question, and then returned you a link to a website or a paragraph that was specifically related to the subject word "Google" in a database. That is not AI or self-awareness. That's simple programming.
fsloth 12y ago
Well, I think Larry Page stated anecdotally before Google became big that they were actually building an AI (http://www.wired.com/2014/10/future-of-artificial-intelligence/ http://www.wired.com/2014/10/future-of-artificial-intelligen...)
acheron 12y ago
Thanks for reminding me why I'm an iPhone/Apple Maps/Firefox/DuckDuckGo user.
- ossreality 12y ago
  What a pithy, completely fucking useless statement. Everyone looks at that and rolls their eyes and pities you for saying that aloud.
pron 12y ago
> Google answers all of my questions Really? I might be very bad at Googling, because unless I look for something very specific, it takes me four or five searches to get something that's related to what I'm looking for. I have better luck with Wikipedia, where I start with something generic and then follow relevant links. These days I start all of my "interesting" searches on Wikipedia, and don't even bother with Google. It feels like little more than a computerized phone directory.
plasma_coil 12y ago
The Google Search analogy is understandable, but with the Google Search algorithm it is not a matter of AI, but of very good programming that knows how to correctly parse the English language to determine what is required by the user. True AI would only use this algorithm as part of it's AI algorithm, the part that parses English sentences. It would only be AI if the server application behind it was learning in real-time; programming itself to change it's algorithm based on previous interactions with the current user. This does not happen when we perform a Google Search, even though to us it seems like it is happening.
- dennisgorelik 12y ago
  1) AI is supposed to be "good programming". 2) Google actually learns from your behavior as you search. It also constantly learns by crawling web. Hence: AI.

by IvyMike 12y ago

radarsat1 12y ago

It's true, but that's still considered "soft AI", I believe. It's highly intelligent and can reason about the world based on a huge database of available information. It can make inferences. However, it is not "self-aware," by any definition. (Which there are many, I guess.) You might say it is "externally aware," I suppose, but "self-aware" is something else entirely. It seems to carry with it some implications of self-interest. Not, "what does my user want to know," but "what do I want to do with myself, now that I'm here." This may or may not include instincts towards self-preservation. (Personally I don't think it's inherently implied.)

stefantalpalaru 12y ago
Can something that's not self-aware - and most likely not even aware at all - be highly intelligent?
- riffraff 12y ago
  for people who might not know, that is likely the chinese room argument[0] [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
- plasma_coil 12y ago
  You should practice programming. Learn a structured programming language, even something as simple as Basic. Then you would not feel this way.
  - stefantalpalaru 12y ago
    You should do your homework before embarrassing yourself: https://github.com/stefantalpalaru?tab=repositories https://github.com/stefantalpalaru?tab=repositories
    - plasma_coil 12y ago
      Why would I look you up? You are not that important.
      - stefantalpalaru 12y ago
        Important enough for you to take some of your precious time to share some shitty advice and then use a second account to downvote me ;-)
MarkPNeyer 12y ago
> "what do I want to do with myself, now that I'm here." This may or may not include instincts towards self-preservation. "i want to increase the amount people trust me, to reduce the chances that they will get rid of me." check. "i want to increase the amount people rely on me". check. "i want to increase the amount of resources that flow through me, including engineers that work on me, hardware that runs me, and ads that are spent on me." check. "i want an article about me to be on hacker news, with people debating whether or not i'm as smart as i think i am" - check. that last one is one I'D like to accomplish, but i've been unable to, myself. most people consider ME self aware because i operate through a human body. that's kind of silly; it's more political than it is empirical. i can tell you for a fact i was not fully self aware for most of my life; i was not aware of all of myself. i was walking in circles without realizing it. i feel like i'm _more_ self aware now, but im still aware there are things i am doing for reasons that i don't understand. 'humans are self-aware' is a heuristic. it served us ok for the last few thousands years, but it's going to start having serious problems in the future. even when we have ai's that write business plans, raise capital, and launch companies - would you still ask if it were self aware? would your question be any different if you were told that all of this done by google were done by a human being named Alice, with such and such parents, who likes to eat ice cream and watch old mystery movies on netflix?
- waps 12y ago
  Don't you think that any AGI "personality" is going to be very much like a human ? Humans, until they get quite far in their development wouldn't care about any of those questions : > "i want to increase the amount people trust me, to reduce the chances that they will get rid of me." Nope > "i want to increase the amount people rely on me". Nope > "i want to increase the amount of resources that flow through me, including engineers that work on me, hardware that runs me, and ads that are spent on me." No way. I think an AGI would actually try to avoid that. I would (and I am 2 thirds of an AGI), and I believe most of humanity would want to do this. > "i want an article about me to be on hacker news, with people debating whether or not i'm as smart as i think i am" - check This one I fully agree on. People want to gloat, and an AGI will be no different. > i can tell you for a fact i was not fully self aware for most of my life; i was not aware of all of myself. i was walking in circles without realizing it. The trouble with this sort of view is that people often think this. Any definition of self-aware I would ever accept would focus on how much you control your own actions, and how much you control their evolution over time. And given the algorithm your brain is running, that control is mostly absent. You wouldn't want the brain to control it's own thoughts. That's called "overdimensioning" and it's really, really, really bad. You are a robot in the real world trying to survive, so the vast majority of your thoughts are dictated by "the real world", not by any internal conscious process. Consciousness only exists insofar as it's necessary to carry out long-running processes without screwing up due to loss of focus (e.g. to negotiate group action). You also have to take into account that consciousness only exists after the fact. If you think about how it must work in a neural network, consciousness is effectively you trying to analyse your own actions after the fact (and/or explain them to others).
dedward 12y ago
The question said "AI" - not "self-aware consciousness"
xanderstrike 12y ago
If I say "OK Google, what is Google?" it gives me the definition of google (the search engine). Google is therefore aware of Google. So by at least one definition of self aware, it is self aware.
- plasma_coil 12y ago
  No. The program parsed the word "Google" from the question, used an algorithm to determine that the word was the subject of a "What is?" question, and then returned you a link to a website or a paragraph that was specifically related to the subject word "Google" in a database. That is not AI or self-awareness. That's simple programming.

fsloth 12y ago

Well, I think Larry Page stated anecdotally before Google became big that they were actually building an AI (http://www.wired.com/2014/10/future-of-artificial-intelligence/ http://www.wired.com/2014/10/future-of-artificial-intelligen...)

acheron 12y ago

Thanks for reminding me why I'm an iPhone/Apple Maps/Firefox/DuckDuckGo user.

ossreality 12y ago
What a pithy, completely fucking useless statement. Everyone looks at that and rolls their eyes and pities you for saying that aloud.

pron 12y ago

> Google answers all of my questions Really? I might be very bad at Googling, because unless I look for something very specific, it takes me four or five searches to get something that's related to what I'm looking for. I have better luck with Wikipedia, where I start with something generic and then follow relevant links. These days I start all of my "interesting" searches on Wikipedia, and don't even bother with Google. It feels like little more than a computerized phone directory.

plasma_coil 12y ago

The Google Search analogy is understandable, but with the Google Search algorithm it is not a matter of AI, but of very good programming that knows how to correctly parse the English language to determine what is required by the user. True AI would only use this algorithm as part of it's AI algorithm, the part that parses English sentences. It would only be AI if the server application behind it was learning in real-time; programming itself to change it's algorithm based on previous interactions with the current user. This does not happen when we perform a Google Search, even though to us it seems like it is happening.

dennisgorelik 12y ago
1) AI is supposed to be "good programming". 2) Google actually learns from your behavior as you search. It also constantly learns by crawling web. Hence: AI.