Why is AI such an impossible goal?

Why is AI such an impossible goal?

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AshVX220

5,929 posts

189 months

Thursday 12th January 2017
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Terminator X said:
Why wish for this as we're fked once it turns up.

TX.
Not necessarily, it depends on many factors, but your 50% right, or 50% way off. If you read the Waitbutwhy piece linked to earlier it talks about the impact of real AI on humanity and talks about it either being our doom, or our saviour. AI is likely to end up in one of two ways. It could be so good and could result in extremely good nano-technology that we basically become immortal the tech will exist to keep us going and repair us at the atomic level.

Or yes, it could form a way of wiping us out completely if it wanted to.

It depends on how it's safeguarded, and also who gets there first and what the "parent" of real AI's motivations are.

Moonhawk

10,730 posts

218 months

Thursday 12th January 2017
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I personally don't think we will see true AI until we have cracked quantum computing.

Although technology like this may get us part of the way there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueNorth

Terminator X

14,922 posts

203 months

Friday 13th January 2017
quotequote all
AshVX220 said:
Terminator X said:
Why wish for this as we're fked once it turns up.

TX.
Not necessarily, it depends on many factors, but your 50% right, or 50% way off. If you read the Waitbutwhy piece linked to earlier it talks about the impact of real AI on humanity and talks about it either being our doom, or our saviour. AI is likely to end up in one of two ways. It could be so good and could result in extremely good nano-technology that we basically become immortal the tech will exist to keep us going and repair us at the atomic level.

Or yes, it could form a way of wiping us out completely if it wanted to.

It depends on how it's safeguarded, and also who gets there first and what the "parent" of real AI's motivations are.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38583360bandit

TX.

SystemParanoia

14,343 posts

197 months

768

13,602 posts

95 months

Friday 13th January 2017
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SystemParanoia said:
The amazon Echo/Dot is pretty good at picking up on inference.
Alexa. Who is the Potus ?

Alexa said:
Sex was a boutique run by Malcolm McLaren and Viviene Westwood at 430 King's Road, London between 1974 and 1976.
Alexa. Who is the Potus ?

Alexa said:
The US President is Barack Obama.
Alexa. What is his wife's name?

Alexa said:
Sorry. I don't have the answer to that question.
My AI lecturer told us nearly 15 years ago that we won't see anything more than minor (but often useful) improvements in specific areas of AI without some sort of revolutionary breakthrough, be it quantum computing, or something else and that it may never fulfill its promise.

I remember thinking there was enough hype that that seemed an unusual opinion. These days I suspect he's right but I'm more still hopeful for that revolutionary breakthrough than he seemed to be.

Toaster

2,938 posts

192 months

Friday 13th January 2017
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otolith said:
Morningside said:
What/who is the latest best AI so far?
We're seeing advances made in single purpose AI for functions like voice recognition or game playing which are edging closer to the possibility of general purpose AI.

For instance, the way that the Go challenge was won was to build a neural net, teach it to recognise winning patterns used by human masters and then have it play millions of games against other instances of itself and learn from those. Effectively it was taught to play and then sent away to think about it.

https://www.wired.com/2016/03/sadness-beauty-watch...

That's a very different thing to the algorithmic, mechanical way that chess was won.
Erm no

Voice recognition is just that it is pattern matching no understanding and no consciousness, and pretty dumb as well. as for Neural Nets, they have their place as does other AI software.

Whilst what is refers to as AI software can be used in constrained environments it is not like a human, another example is Prolog which can underpin expert systems it can complement what and expert does but if your looking at an engineering design or medical application it can need tweaking before the final solution is output.

Toaster

2,938 posts

192 months

Friday 13th January 2017
quotequote all
768 said:
My AI lecturer told us nearly 15 years ago that we won't see anything more than minor (but often useful) improvements in specific areas of AI without some sort of revolutionary breakthrough, be it quantum computing, or something else and that it may never fulfill its promise.

I remember thinking there was enough hype that that seemed an unusual opinion. These days I suspect he's right but I'm more still hopeful for that revolutionary breakthrough than he seemed to be.
Spot on

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Friday 13th January 2017
quotequote all
Toaster said:
Erm no

Voice recognition is just that it is pattern matching no understanding and no consciousness, and pretty dumb as well.
Hence making the distinction between narrow and general AI, the former of which is widely used, the latter as yet unsolved, and the relevance of the quote earlier about how once it can be done we don't think it's AI at all.

SystemParanoia

14,343 posts

197 months

Saturday 14th January 2017
quotequote all
768 said:
SystemParanoia said:
The amazon Echo/Dot is pretty good at picking up on inference.
Alexa. Who is the Potus ?

Alexa said:
Sex was a boutique run by Malcolm McLaren and Viviene Westwood at 430 King's Road, London between 1974 and 1976.
Alexa. Who is the Potus ?

Alexa said:
The US President is Barack Obama.
Alexa. What is his wife's name?

Alexa said:
Sorry. I don't have the answer to that question.
My AI lecturer told us nearly 15 years ago that we won't see anything more than minor (but often useful) improvements in specific areas of AI without some sort of revolutionary breakthrough, be it quantum computing, or something else and that it may never fulfill its promise.

I remember thinking there was enough hype that that seemed an unusual opinion. These days I suspect he's right but I'm more still hopeful for that revolutionary breakthrough than he seemed to be.
well almost!
that will teach me to take what podcasters say as gospel. nearly purchased one on the back of that podcast! ( coderradio i think )

768

13,602 posts

95 months

Saturday 14th January 2017
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There do seem to be US/UK differences, I doubt the ability to ask questions based on the previous is one, but maybe.

It's a bit annoying that it keeps saying it couldn't find a device called saving light when I say ceiling light. Only once so far has it not been able to find a semen light!

For £40-50 I'd thoroughly recommend the Dot, especially if you have Hue lights or a Nest. But it won't take you long to find yourself discovering the limitations and acting accordingly.

hairykrishna

13,159 posts

202 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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It must be a bit demoralising being an AI researcher. Take Go for example. Up until very recently it was held up as a milestone in AI intelligence and thought to be a problem that would remain unsolved for a long time due to the enormous move search space. Researchers build an AI which can crush the greatest living player at Go and suddenly it's uninteresting and we're still in an AI dead end.

My perception as someone who admittedly has little deep knowledge about the subject is that we're right on the cusp of a total revolution in capabilities. AI systems are being seriously talked about to replace people in a lot of 'thinking' jobs. That's proper sci fi stuff.


768

13,602 posts

95 months

Tuesday 17th January 2017
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hairykrishna said:
My perception as someone who admittedly has little deep knowledge about the subject is that we're right on the cusp of a total revolution in capabilities.
That's not been an unusual perspective for 60 years. Maybe you're right this time.

30v

99 posts

146 months

Thursday 26th January 2017
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We'll never 'crack' Artificial Human Intelligence until we understand what human intelligence is and how it works. There is still much scientific debate as to how our neural structure is affected by external stimuli and the role of glial cells as both storers and processors of information. In short, we know little of how our brains actually work and the chances are it does not act as the 'straight' information processors current AI simulations are based on. Quantum computing may give us the computational capacity to mimic neural activity. But we need a clearer model of the stimuli/feedback mechanics of our brain chemistry on which to base its architecture on.

scorp

8,783 posts

228 months

Thursday 26th January 2017
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otolith said:
Yet we have biological machines in our heads which appear to do exactly that.
No one understands how they work though, so how would you begin to model something based on something you don't understand ?

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Thursday 26th January 2017
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scorp said:
otolith said:
Yet we have biological machines in our heads which appear to do exactly that.
No one understands how they work though, so how would you begin to model something based on something you don't understand ?
We don't know - but intelligence as we understand it is a property which can emerge out of something that works using nothing more than physics. We might not know how to do it, but it's clearly possible.

Monty Python

4,812 posts

196 months

Thursday 26th January 2017
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otolith said:
We don't know - but intelligence as we understand it is a property which can emerge out of something that works using nothing more than physics. We might not know how to do it, but it's clearly possible.
Could you explain that a bit further - as I understand it, intelligence is something that allows you to acquire knowledge and skills and apply them - a machine can't do that at the moment as none have yet developed the ability to understand the world around them.

As yet there are no machines that can take in information and make use of it like a human can.

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Thursday 26th January 2017
quotequote all
Monty Python said:
otolith said:
We don't know - but intelligence as we understand it is a property which can emerge out of something that works using nothing more than physics. We might not know how to do it, but it's clearly possible.
Could you explain that a bit further - as I understand it, intelligence is something that allows you to acquire knowledge and skills and apply them - a machine can't do that at the moment as none have yet developed the ability to understand the world around them.

As yet there are no machines that can take in information and make use of it like a human can.
The point is that a human is a machine of sorts. We might not know how to make a machine which has similar properties, but the existence of such things means that it must be possible.

Alex

9,975 posts

283 months

Thursday 26th January 2017
quotequote all
Ransoman said:
you can't program genuine free will and curiosity.
Why not? What is free will? Do you have free will?

scorp

8,783 posts

228 months

Wednesday 1st February 2017
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otolith said:
We don't know - but intelligence as we understand it is a property which can emerge out of something that works using nothing more than physics. We might not know how to do it, but it's clearly possible.
That sounds like a long way off from becoming a practical reality. We can barely simulate a single protein fold in any reasonable amount of computing time. A neuron simulated down to atomic level would need magnitudes more processing power. Then we'll need a few trillion more than that for a whole brain.

Edited by scorp on Wednesday 1st February 10:06

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Wednesday 1st February 2017
quotequote all
scorp said:
That sounds like a long way off from becoming a practical reality. We can barely simulate a single protein fold in any reasonable amount of computing time. A neuron simulated down to atomic level would need magnitudes more processing power. Then we'll need a few trillion more than that for a whole brain.
I don't think brute force simulation is likely to be the answer - I'm merely pointing out that there is nothing magical or spiritual about how intelligence (and what we call consciousness) emerges from biological machines.