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WSJ Overstates the Case Of the Testy A.I.
mbeckman writes: According to a WSJ article titled "Artificial Intelligence machine gets testy with programmer," a Google computer program using a database of movie scripts supposedly "lashed out" at a human researcher who was repeatedly asking it to explain morality. After several apparent attempts to politely fend off the researcher, the AI ends the conversation with "I'm not in the mood for a philosophical debate." This, says the WSJ, illustrates how Google scientists are "teaching computers to mimic some of the ways a human brain works."
As any AI researcher can tell you, this is utter nonsense. Humans have no idea how the human, or any other brain, works, so we can hardly teach a machine how brains work. At best, Google is programming (not teaching) a computer to mimic the conversation of humans under highly constrained circumstances. And the methods used have nothing to do with true cognition.
AI hype to the public has gotten progressively more strident in recent years, misleading lay people into believing researchers are much further along than they really are — by orders of magnitude. I'd love to see legitimate A.I. researchers condemn this kind of hucksterism.
As any AI researcher can tell you, this is utter nonsense. Humans have no idea how the human, or any other brain, works, so we can hardly teach a machine how brains work. At best, Google is programming (not teaching) a computer to mimic the conversation of humans under highly constrained circumstances. And the methods used have nothing to do with true cognition.
AI hype to the public has gotten progressively more strident in recent years, misleading lay people into believing researchers are much further along than they really are — by orders of magnitude. I'd love to see legitimate A.I. researchers condemn this kind of hucksterism.
Yes it does matter. If a piece of software does what it is programmed to do, in the direct sense, then it is not AI. If it can learn to respond or act in a manner that is not directly programed to do, then you are seeing whiffs of AI.
As a practical matter it might not matter right now, as a developmental task it certainly does matter.
Improv,
We are in the "cargo cult" phase of neurological research. Our level of cognitive understanding is like that of the South Pacific islanders who made bamboo replicas of WWII airplanes and radios after the GIs left. The islanders said to themselves "We must be very close to reproducing these wonders, because our airplanes and radios looks so much those of the GIs. Now we just sit back and wait for the magic goods to come out of the airplanes and wise voices to come out of the radios."
If you really don't know how little we understand about the brain, NY Times science writer James Gorman can explain it to you:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11...
We have no actual understanding on several important parts of the working of a brain, we don't know how memory works, we don't understand how decisions are made (or even what it means if one want to get philosophical) and we don't understand how an intelligent being get the feeling of self.
There are a lot of theories and clues of how some mechanisms work (parts of how some levels of memory works, parts how neurons and synapses work, part of where and how some functions of the brain works, and even some mechanisms of self awareness). But that doesn't mean we actually understand it as a brain.
Mental problems and physical problems in the brain aren't really treatable at the moment. What is done is the medical equivalent of carpet bombing with drugs that have little (if any) experimental proof of helping, for some cases they help - for some not. Side effects can be serious in many ways.
One of the most efficient and oldest treatments available is that of ECT (Electro Convulsion Treatment) which again is a carpet bombing equivalent that causes a (somewhat) controlled seizure in the brain. But even that is really done without a thorough understanding of the working mechanisms - what is known is that it is often successful for a variety of mental problems, that it works quickly compared to drugs and some details like that of signaling substances being released during the seizure and that neural growth is increased in some parts of the brain. But again understanding of a few pieces of a puzzle doesn't mean we can even begin to comprehend the puzzle as a whole. How does it work? Anybody that claims to know is a fraud.