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South Korea Commits $863 Million To AI Research After AlphaGo 'Shock' (nature.com)
schwit1 writes: In reaction to the recent Go victory by a computer program over a human, the government of South Korea has quickly accelerated its plans to back research into the field of artificial intelligence with a commitment of $863 million and the establishment of [a] public/private institute. According to Nature.com, "It is not immediately clear whether the cash represents new funding, or had been previously allocated to AI efforts. But it does include the founding of a high-profile, public-private research center with participation from several Korean conglomerates, including Samsung, LG Electronics and Hyundai Motor, as well as the technology firm Naver, based near Seoul. The timing of the announcement indicates the impact [AlphaGo has on South Korea], which two days earlier wrapped up a 4-1 victory over grandmaster Lee Sedol in an exhibition match in Seoul. The feat was hailed as a milestone for AI research. But it also shocked the Korean public, stoking widespread concern over the capabilities of AI, as well as a spate of newspaper headlines worrying that South Korea was falling behind in a crucial growth industry. South Korean President Park Geun-hye has also announced the formation of a council that will provide recommendations to overhaul the nation's research and development process to enhance productivity. In her [March 17] speech, she emphasized that "artificial intelligence can be a blessing for human society" and called it "the fourth industrial revolution." She added, "Above all, Korean society is ironically lucky, that thanks to the 'AlphaGo shock,' we have learned the importance of AI before it is too late."' Not surprisingly, some academics are complaining that the money is going to [the] industry rather than the universities. Will this crony capitalistic approach produce any real development, or will it instead end up [being] a pork-laden jobs program for South Korean politicians?
ok...i'll play...too late for what?
Most likely before someone less snags up the multi billion dollar business and control over the technology lies mostly abroad...
Too late to save themselves from having their 'dumb' conglomerates eaten by Google and Facebook.
Because people are lazy and people with money would rather throw money at things to meet their desires and go back to whatever they were doing prior than to sift through people and all their associated bullshit trying to determine who is actually qualified. Plus one person can only do so much, you'd end up getting celebrities instead of coders.
Before it beats them at Starcraft.
Moderate your expectations. Strong AI? We're not even close.
Perhaps I skimmed the articles too quickly, but who is talking about strong AI? Perhaps the most important take away here is what can be accomplished with AI research regardless of how far off strong AI is.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Too late to cash in on the final blow to the concept of employment and position themselves such that they can continue to create scarcity and become the arbiters of who will be fed and housed for the rest of human civilization.
Wait until Google's computer beats them at Starcraft... then they'll really be pissed!
Whoever controls the first general AI controls the world.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Employment rates keep rising, the youth employment rate has just reached the highest point in years. She's ruined just about everything including inter-Korea relations. I can't wait until she gets out of office. !
I recall 20 years ago when Deep Blue won against Kasparov, people said that an AI would never be able to brute-force Go well enough to beat a human master. It may not have used only brute-force techniques, but AlphaGo surely did win. I expect that arrangements are being made for the AI to face off against the #1 world Go champion (Sedol was #3 IIRC) and it may even take some tweaking for it to triumph. However this raises the question: where do we move the goalposts to next? What does AI have to accomplish to change how we fundamentally think of it, and consider it as 'real AI'?
Many people have an AI assistant (ok a text-to-speech shortcut to a semantic search engine) in their pocket, and will soon be entrusting their lives daily to autonomous cars. Anyone else feeling like the singularity is coming?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
with their Fifth Generation Computer Systems initiative. They demonstrated that just throwing money at the problem doesn't solve it.
If South Korea are worried, it can't be because they didn't build a machine for playing Go before the Americans.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
... pachinko! That'll put off the singularity for at least a century or more.
The first organization to successfully develop advanced general artificial intelligence trained toward its goals and towards preventing the development of other AI wins. It just wins.
We can try to beat it, but we're the ant colony trying to stop the man from building a new house. He can outthink us at every turn.
On a semi-side note, other AI co's should sue IBM for their Watson ads because the ads make it sound like Watson is actually carrying on a conversation. It's all pre-scripted by humans, though.
Table-ized A.I.
Not sure about SK or Japan but China has did some original thinking and decided it's cheaper to let others take the risks and pay for the R&D. Then they can just copy the end product.
"...The nail that sticks out the most is the first to be hammered in..."
It's not that they aren't capable of original thought and creativity, it's that the society is very conformist, and no-one will risk trying to do things differently. There are European cities like that too. In Summer everyone wears the exact same clothes that are shown in an H&M catalog.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Whoever controls the first general AI controls the world.
Assuming anyone controls it...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> mad ninja coding skills
Is that like when your fellow employees say they've been doing lots of work but you never see it? Finally, a month later, they push their code into the trunk and it kills the project?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Maybe because the people writing the code are employed by the companies and research institutions?
Yes, it could very well be the AI is in charge of itself. In which case, one can only hope it was instilled with a good sense of morality.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Back in 2006, I was asked on Slashdot what my advice would be to students interested in a career in AI. I told them to get their PhD under Hutter. Hutter's first students were founders of Google DeepMind thence AlphaGo.
I'm now, as then, advising investment in compression prizes for the same reason*. (And thanks to Matt Mahoney for pointing me to Hutter's AIXI theory way back then.)
*An additional reason today is founding "friendly AI" on understanding natural language. Before "friendliness", however one defines it, can be achieved, misunderstandings must be avoided.
Seastead this.
So, will there be a big hiring spree in South Korea? What does it take to work there?
"I'm sorry Dave but I'm afraid I can't let you do that."
Re:
Not surprisingly, some academics are complaining that the money is going to [the] industry rather than the universities. Will this crony capitalistic approach produce any real development, or will it instead end up [being] a pork-laden jobs program for South Korean politicians?
Giveaways to giant tech companies may produce short term results (or not if the companies spend it on executive bonuses) but then they're not necessarily supporting the longer term development of AI. It's the universities that do possibly ground-breaking research with no guarantees of results and the corporations that monetise them. Corporations don't have problems finding investors for short-term projects. We need to support the longer term through adequately funding universities.
Don't kid yourself. When it comes to AI universities are actually mostly just centres for incompetence and wasting big baskets of money..
My own project, begun in 1990 has been developing the theory for building a Strong AI since then - private research, no money no external backing.. With even a tiny bit of the kind of money the universities have wasted my project could have had a working machine by about 2005. The real problem with Strong AI is that it requires a lot of extrapolation and thinking well outside the box, plus application without many results over an extended number of years - something that most universities are terrible at by definition. (and most corporations are not much better at either)
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
All it will take for the inflexion point to happen is that the AI computer designs better AI computers than humans can.
So, what is your project?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"