Slashdot Mirror
Are Companies Overhyping AI? (hackaday.com)
When it comes to artificial intelligence, "companies have been overselling the concept and otherwise normal people are taking the bait," writes Hackaday:
Not to pick on Amazon, but all of the home assistants like Alexa and Google Now tout themselves as AI. By the most classic definition, that's true. AI techniques include matching natural language to predefined templates. That's really all these devices are doing today. Granted the neural nets that allow for great speech recognition and reproduction are impressive. But they aren't true intelligence nor are they even necessarily direct analogs of a human brain... The danger is that people are now getting spun up that the robot revolution is right around the corner...
[N]othing in the state of the art of AI today is going to wake up and decide to kill the human masters. Despite appearances, the computers are not thinking. You might argue that neural networks could become big enough to emulate a brain. Maybe, but keep in mind that the brain has about 100 billion neurons and almost 10 to the 15th power interconnections. Worse still, there isn't a clear consensus that the neural net made up of the cells in your brain is actually what is responsible for conscious thought. There's some thought that the neurons are just control systems and the real thinking happens in a biological quantum computer... Besides, it seems to me if you build an electronic brain that works like a human brain, it is going to have all the problems a human brain has (years of teaching, distraction, mental illness, and a propensity for error).
Citing the dire predictions of Elon Musk and Bill Gates, the article argues that "We are a relatively small group of people who have a disproportionate influence on what our friends, families, and co-workers think... We need to spread some sense into the conversation."
[N]othing in the state of the art of AI today is going to wake up and decide to kill the human masters. Despite appearances, the computers are not thinking. You might argue that neural networks could become big enough to emulate a brain. Maybe, but keep in mind that the brain has about 100 billion neurons and almost 10 to the 15th power interconnections. Worse still, there isn't a clear consensus that the neural net made up of the cells in your brain is actually what is responsible for conscious thought. There's some thought that the neurons are just control systems and the real thinking happens in a biological quantum computer... Besides, it seems to me if you build an electronic brain that works like a human brain, it is going to have all the problems a human brain has (years of teaching, distraction, mental illness, and a propensity for error).
Citing the dire predictions of Elon Musk and Bill Gates, the article argues that "We are a relatively small group of people who have a disproportionate influence on what our friends, families, and co-workers think... We need to spread some sense into the conversation."
I think they're dumbing down the term just as how 'Hover Boards' were dumbed down from their original concept.
I'd consider them more voice activated assistants from the consumer ends. From the machine learning part it's just heuristics on a pile of data to find patterns.
I don't read AC
This has nothing to do with Betteridge's Law. If that applied to any question, the answer to any Ask Slashdot question would also be no. That's absurd. This headline is asking your opinion of whether companies are overhyping AI. Betteridge's Law does not apply here.
Ian Betteridge observed that sometimes journalists who hadn't adequately researched a story and couldn't confirm the story would still run with it. To avoid printing false statements, journalists would write their headlines as questions about the facts. The classic example was "Did Last.fm Just Hand Over User Listening Data To the RIAA?" where the headline is asking a question about the facts. The headline insinuates that the answer is yes, without directly saying so. The journalist doesn't have the evidence to be confident it happened but ran with the story anyway. It's poor journalism and basically a form of clickbait. That's where Betteridge's Law applies, where the question can be answered with 'no' instead of assuming that the answer should be yes. It's observing that the journalist isn't confident about what the facts are, so the reader shouldn't be, either. Betteridge's Law is a criticism of reporting unsubstantiated stories.
The headline here isn't asking a question about the facts. Instead, it's asking a question of opinion, specifically whether businesses are overhyping AI. Betteridge's Law does not apply here. It does not apply in situations such as this story.
If you're going to mention Betteridge's Law, please understand what it actually means. It doesn't apply to this headline or story. The headline is a question to solicit your opinions and encourage discussion.
Defining thought and original thought is a very complex issue. But to give a very simple example a common chess machine can be overwhelming against human players. And yes the program functions with a list of rules and values. But the telling point is that machine may well play a unique, winning game. To my way of thinking that is original thought and intelligence. There are alos electronic circuits that have been created by computers that are totally inscrutable to humans.
Well I'll be damned.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Just wouldn't happen.
Right?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Not at all. No, no, no, no, no. Not even a little bit round the edges.
Oh, alright then, yes.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
bean counters and financial officers ...
And THAT'S the problem. Nothing wrong with AI really. The stuff Amazon pushes at me while I try to shop is far closer to my interests and needs than the stuff advertisers not assisted by AI tout to me on TV. Used intelligently, AI is possibly useful at times and hopefully harmless.
The problems will come when people with a limited contact area with reality (pretty much everyone I fear) start confusing the educated guesses from AI agents with facts.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Most of the AI hype is coming from people who are paid to write tech stuff. They write about whatever they think will get them page views; AI is a hot topic so AI it is.
Worse still, there isn't a clear consensus that the neural net made up of the cells in your brain is actually what is responsible for conscious thought. There's some thought that the neurons are just control systems and the real thinking happens in a biological quantum computer...
Penrose, is that you?
Seriously, there is no evidence for any kind of "quantum consciousness", nor any convincing theory as to why a neural net would be insufficient to produce consciousness. I suspect that the main attraction of this idea is that it is a non-religious excuse for believing consciousness to be magical or special in some way.
(no sig)
AI has been overhyped since the computer in Willy Wonka refused to tell where the golden tickets were...
Now that it has been monetized, the people selling it are going to hype it up like everything else that gets sold for profit.
Also, of course, "Machine Intelligence" isn't the same thing that we consider human intelligence to be. And, no, they're not likely to go SkyNet on us (anytime soon), but the Flash Crash of 2010 was a small taste of how AI can, and does, affect our lives, and as AI gets more integrated into more aspects of human endeavors, the unpleasant surprises will be getting bigger and more impactful.
Exactly, often at work I may implement some basic learning, adaptive algorithms. To help solve problems where there isn't a 1 for 1 answer. The code is good enough to outperform people in terms of numbers on these tasks, as it is able to handle a large number of items without exhaustion or cutting corners. However the toughest part is trying to explain to the people who will need to be responsible for the data, that it isn't perfect, so just don't go blindly accepting all the results, or go into a panic just because there is a non 0 error rate.
Because the data I work with isn't perfect, assumptions based off of trending needs to be made, statistical models have a degree of error. The human brain which is one of the biggest statistical engines also has a high degree of error too, and can be tricked with unexpected inputs. Hence why magicians can perform their tricks.
But for the less than technical people, there is the idea that the computer is somehow smarter then us. It isn't it is just better doing what it is told, and doesn't take shortcuts in exhaustion. A Program will run until it is complete, even if it kills the hardware while doing it (overheating, draining batteries etc....) A human when getting stressed will take short cuts, stop working on problems, make crazy assumptions just to keep the body functioning.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Is Slashdot overhyping headlines?
#DeleteFacebook
Too much Hype.
A deep neural network, a massive dataset brings you a statistical correlation where one is expected to be found and its called AI now?
This is impressive in itself but even the futurists singularity proponents like Ray Kurzweil are not calling this 'AI' as 'The AI' for the singularity. Or true 'thinking' AI in the sense of human cognition.
There is a massive gap in understanding the definition of AI, its a 'magic hat' term that is ambiguous and over-reaching. The progress should be appreciated for what it is, however all too often it is used to abuse and obfuscate other issues in society like involuntary unemployment and some of the structural faults of rent-seeking capitalism in its current form.
The marketing department
From TFS:
There is zero evidence for this. Zero. You can also say, with exactly as much evidentiary backing (none), that "there's some thought that the mind is outside the body" and "there is some thought that the mind is a program running in a computer simulation."
The evidence has thus far pointed in exactly one direction: That the mind is a product of electrical and chemical signals channeled by living cells in manners fairly conventional and guided by topology, both innate and developmental (as opposed to the quantum nature of photosynthesis, for example.)
Yes, quantum effects come into play at extremely low levels with pretty much everything; but no, they are not known to be a common modulating force from cell to cell in nature. Furthermore, the harder we look, the more normal (non-quantum) activity and complexity we find.
Finally, the more our simulations of neural activities have been advanced to model what we learn of real neural systems, the more performant they have gotten. The arrow is pointing in one pretty specific direction - and to date, it's not pointing at quantum activity as mechanism for mind even a little bit.
It's not impossible – but it's also not indicated, at all, at this point in time. It's speculation, and more to the point, it's uninformed, evidence-free speculation.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Hey Siri, "How many cylinders in a V6 engine?" .... let me search that for you. Seriously?
Hey Siri, "How many doughnughts are in a dozen doougnughts?" let me search that for you.
Hey Siri, "What is the nominal size of a 2X4 board?", it's 2x4=8
Hey Siri, "What time is it on Mars?", I am sorry, I don't know where that is.
So yeah, I am thinking AI is perfect.
Seriously, there is no "I" in AI. There is no intelligence.
But a person following the same rules as a chess beating computer would still beat a human player, albeit 100billion times slower.
Uhhh yes! Betteridge's law of headlines has been broken!
love is just extroverted narcissism
This particular battle of semantics has been going on for a while now, and much like previous battles (hoverboard, drones, HDR in 4K), it'll be won by advertisers who don't know better.
The point is building interest in a generic marketing term even if it comes at the cost of the original meaning of the word. Scientific or technical terms (and in some cases, terms made up by sci-fi authors) have always been appropriated, it'll keep happening.
But is AI being overhyped? Definitely. Because behind all the AI craze, the real interest for several companies is in user data collection which is becoming the new coin of the day. It is a very convenient way for tech companies to imply that there are some vague gains to be had using their products while not mentioning that they are harvesting your data or saying that they need to do it "because the AI needs it to work better".
Notice how it's also super convenient for companies and services to use vague terms like that because they not only "fancy up" their products, it also serves as a convenient scapegoat when things go south (see how "algorithms" is losely employed by social media networks to put the blame on for mishaps).
For those who didn't see the dimention of this overhyping just yet, here's a comprehensive list of a whole ton of products and services where the term is used, most of which have zero AI in it:
https://medium.com/imlyra/a-li...
Some of them barely have any intelligence on them at all.