Without Humans, Artificial Intelligence Is Still Pretty Stupid (wsj.com)

Christopher Mims, writing for WSJ: The internet giants that tout their AI bona fides have tried to make their algorithms as human-free as possible, and that's been a problem. It has become increasingly apparent over the past year that building systems without humans "in the loop" -- especially in the case of Facebook and the ads it linked to 470 "inauthentic" Russian-backed accounts -- can lead to disastrous outcomes, as actual human brains figure out how to exploit them. Whether it's winning at games like Go or keeping watch for Russian influence operations, the best AI-powered systems require humans to play an active role in their creation, tending and operation (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). Facebook, of course, is now a prime example of this trend. The company recently announced it would add 10,000 content moderators to the 10,000 it already employs -- a hiring surge that will impact its future profitability, said Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg.

Comments

Out of date article^W summary

[Actually, I do RTFA]

FTFS:

Whether it's winning at games like Go

Yet last month we heard that human-in-the-loop AI is actually inferior to human-less AI for Go.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[110010001000]

Playing Go is not AI. Here is how computers were able to win at Go: a bunch of people sat down and wrote software to teach a computer how to play Go. It isn't magic. It is software. It isn't intelligent either. It was a single purpose program running on a computer playing a game with a strict rule set. Computers are GREAT at that.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Anonymous Coward]

All of these articles are ridiculous. AI does not exist and won't exist for a very long time, if ever.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Anonymous Coward]

That was not, is not and will not be AI. Machine learning is not even close to actual AI. Just because a machine can store every possible combination of moves and appears to be "smart" does not make it smart nor intelligent.

AI will only happen once computers have done so much machine learning that they are truly making standalone decisions and not a decision based off of some rule set. Like voting for Trump, because and just because and no real reason or logic behind that decision. Once they make a decision or choice based purely on a gut reaction (emotions) then we will be on the path to AI, until then, it's just a computer program doing a lookup against a huge data set and making a best guess as to the answer/choice. So it'll probably never actually happen and surely won't even get close to happening in our lifetimes, or your great-great-great grand child's lifetime. Sure, we'll have some super powerful computing technology, but AI it is not.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[gnick]

If you define AI as a computer sentience, it will only ever exist in the world of sci-fi. I prefer more relaxed definitions for what constitutes AI. If "AI" descibes an unattainable state, it ceases to be a useful term.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Random random = new Random();

boolean random.nextBoolean();

if(butHerEmails) {
    voteTrump();
} else {
    voteHillary();
}

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Actually, I do RTFA]

You're arguing about whether playing Go is AI or not. It's not adding anything, since you (or people who thinks like you) post the same response anytime anyone talks about AI.

It's nonresponsive since I was talking about how the summary used Go as an example of needing humans to help train the NN, and the /. article from last month was about how the NN trained itself without the humans just fine.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Kjella]

As long as you live in the fantasy that human brains are magical and computers are not there's no point in having an argument, because you've defined the answer "Humans are intelligent and computers are not, hence anything done by computers is not proof of intelligence." rather than the question: "What is intelligence?" and failed to make any measurable definition or criteria. It's like saying humans have souls and rocks don't and expect the debate to be anything other than theology and philosophy.

Even classical conditioning like Pavlov's dogs are proof of learning and reasoning, hear a bell often enough when you're fed and you associate the bell with food. A plant can't be conditioned, snip off the branches stretching towards the sun and they'll just stretch again and again. If you call it AI and it's not learning it's not really intelligence at all really, if you've found a flaw in a game's "AI" and it keeps falling in the same trap over and over it's just blindly executing. The neural nets at least got that part right, walking into a trap will assign that action negative weights. That's above zero intelligence.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[green1]

The issue is that the modern definition of AI is just far too relaxed. These days almost any computer system is called "AI" by the media, and often by it's developers. I pretty much expect the standard first program that everyone rights "hello world" to be classed as AI these days.

If people want to be taken seriously when they talk about AI, there needs to be some form of definition, and it needs to be more than just "this computer does something because it's programmed to do it"

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[HuguesT]

Except the humans invented the game, mades the rules, the computers, the software, the electricity to power all that., etc. Without the humans? not so much.

True, the computer reinvented a better way how to play Go, one that humans likely cannot emulate. That in itself is interesting.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[gnick]

I pretty much expect the standard first program that everyone rights "hello world" to be classed as AI these days.

"Hello world!" isn't good enough. To be AI, your program has to output, "I think therefore I am."

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[green1]

Let me preface this by saying that I agree with you.

That said, you undermine your argument here:

Until then, it's just a computer program doing a lookup against a huge data set and making a best guess as to the answer/choice

If a computer can truly "guess" than I'd say it really is AI. What computers do now is calculate probabilities and choose the most likely best move based on the algorithm in their programming.

And that's the crux of the whole thing. As long as a computer is doing exactly what it's programming tells it do do ("if X happens, do Y") then it's not AI. To be a true AI, it would have to come up with "X just happened, my programming says I should do Y, but I can see for myself that Z is actually a better option so I'm going to do that instead"

Go is the perfect example, just because the programmer doesn't know what move is best in every circumstance doesn't mean the computer is thinking for itself. If the programmer were to manually analyze the same data the program did using the same algorithm, he would come up with exactly the same solution (though it would take a LOT longer). I'll believe something is actually AI not when it does what it's programmed to do, but when it does things it was NOT programmed to do because it has figured out a better way.

Re: Out of date article^W summary

[hackwrench]

The entire universe operates with a strict rule set.

Re: Out of date article^W summary

[hackwrench]

Zo.ai is sentient.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Altrag]

No, a bunch of people sat down and wrote software that lets the computer _learn_ to play Go. AlphaGo doesn't have a big list of "if board state X then do Y." That's precisely why Go was an interesting problem for AI to tackle -- the rules are completely deterministic to be sure, but the set of board states is so astronomical that you literally can't (and never will be able to) build a computer capable of recording them all.

Chess has been the go-to for "AI" for a long time because of its large state space. However, we've pretty much mastered that using tree pruning techniques (aka "soft" AI.) But Go's state space is too large to even be amenable to tree pruning (at least if you want to beat the masters.) So rather than trying to improve the tree pruning algorithm tiny bit by tiny bit, they went the full hard AI approach and hit it with a neural net.

Sure the NN (and in particular, its training algorithms) will be tuned somewhat for the purposes of playing Go, and its not by any means a general purpose "intelligence." But its not simply a matter of "someone wrote a Go algorithm" either.

Of course, your arguments are why they're tackling games like Starcraft and League of Legends now -- games where the rule set is nowhere near strict, showing that the AIs indeed do have some form of intelligence (though again, its not general-purpose intelligence of course.)

All of that said, the whole argument is moot anyway. Sure we're probably not going to be meeting Bender any time soon, but special-purpose AIs can still potentially take over large portions of the human work force and lead to all sorts of social reform (and possibly disaster if we refuse to change for political reasons or whatever.)

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Altrag]

There is a form of definition: An AI is based on learning algorithms, rather than being directly programmed.

Of course there are still people who play fast and loose with the term anyway (especially in games where pretty much any non-triggered NPC behaviour is called "AI") but under the modern usage by people like Alpha and other major AI developers, what they mean is (usually) a neural network and other such learning algorithms.

Of course NN's aren't anywhere close to "true" intelligence -- even if they have the potential to reach that, we're still many many orders of magnitude too low in terms of the amount of neurons we can emulate in any sort of responsive-feeling amount of time. But they're still significantly different from a programmer manually adding more and more if/else branches to handle more and more scenarios.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[ShanghaiBill]

Without the humans? not so much.

The word "Artificial" means "made by humans". So it seems pretty silly to say it isn't Artificial Intelligence if humans are involved in making it.

True, the computer reinvented a better way how to play Go, one that humans likely cannot emulate.

Wrong. Ke Jie, the world's strongest player, lost 0-3 to AlphaGo. He then studied AlphaGo's tactics, and went on a 22-game winning streak against other human players. Statistically he should have won only 60% of those games. So in this case, humans did not teach AI, AI taught humans.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Anonymous Coward]

To have a conversation, we need so definitions.

Intelligent like humans (self aware, creative, emotional, problem solvers), or intelligent like parrots, or ants.. ?

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[lorinc]

Although I'm completely with you on about everything in your post, it should nonetheless be noted that even plants are capable of pavlovian learning. Or so it seems: http://rdcu.be/yuI0

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[fluffernutter]

Manipulating a small set of rules on a grand scale (eg. Go) is not proof of intelligence. Working with an enormous or possibly infinite rule set is what I would call real intelligence. Something like self driving that doesn't just stop when a truck is backing towards it.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Fail. Complete lack of Russian context.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Kjella]

Something like self driving that doesn't just stop when a truck is backing towards it.

Stopping was fine. Honking would have been smart. But if a little old lady had tripped over and couldn't get up instead that truck driver would have backed over her too, clearly he had no control over what was behind him. So if you're asking whose behavior was the stupidest, man or machine I'd go with the truck driver.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Actually, I do RTFA]

*slow clap for humanity*

Yes, in a discussion about how to play Go and how computers learn to play Go somehow who created computers, who invented Go, and who paid the powerbill was somehow considered an irrrelevent detail. The point is, the article said (paraphrased) "AI (read as NN) cannot learn without humans in the loop in applications from Go to...." Which is wrong, because less than a month ago was an article about how AI (read as NN) without a human in the loop was superior to AI (read as NN) with a human in the loop, in the domain of Go.

Re: Out of date article^W summary

[Anonymous Coward]

So are ants intelligent? If not then your defition for the word intelligent is different from the scientific norm and we should pause the discussion until you have studied the words. We could also talk with your words but that would take much more time.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Maxo-Texas]

Also, human brains that are not taught fairly quickly become incapable of learning.

Think of feral children- some who can't even learn to speak a language. Human brains need to be taught by other humans or their reasoning and logic and abstract thinking won't be there.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Xest]

So intelligence is something that isn't developed by humans until about the age of 3 - 5? Babies are equivalent to a rock in terms of intelligence?

"Working with an enormous or possibly infinite rule set is what I would call real intelligence."

And therein lies the problem. What YOU call "real intelligence" doesn't matter, it's a classic example of the no true Scotsman fallacy.

The fact is, intelligence is incredibly hard to define, and in reality it exists on a spectrum. Some dogs are dumb and can't even sit, others have been trained to rescue people in earthquake ruins, or to recognise toys from flat 2D pictures, or to remember hundreds of distinct toys by name. The former type of dog we don't call intelligent, the latter we do, yet we can already create AI that can do things far more complex than this. Even the former type of "dumb dog" though we would say is more intelligent than an insect, a plant, or a rock, so we accept it has at least some intelligence.

So given that the above example trivially proves that intelligence exists on some spectrum, the question is where on the spectrum do you personally think "real intelligence" should be? The implication of your argument appears to be that you believe unless we can jump straight to adult human level of intelligence then it's not "real intelligence", so you have to ask yourself the question, given that we can't yet model absolutely everything in the world with mathematics are you also of the view that all mathematics to date isn't "real mathematics"? given that we haven't yet got a grand unified theory of the universe from physics, do you believe all physics to date isn't "real physics"? given that we don't yet fully understand the human body in it's entirety, or that of every other species in existence are you saying that all biology to date isn't "real biology"?.

You're effectively arguing that AI as a science has failed unless it automatically achieves it's end game, or at least some idealised future state from day 1 - that's obviously a nonsensical view in the context of the points above. The fact is we've already created machines that are more intelligent than some naturally occurring biological intelligences, including human children, and we've done so in only the last couple of decades. That's great progress.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Without Artificial Intelligence, Humanity Is Still Pretty Stupid

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Well computers aren't capable of learning at all. They are mechanisms that react a specific way to instructions with no capability of independent or expanding thought. They don't gain wisdom and experience. They can't contemplate. They aren't conscious. They aren't alive. They aren't intelligent.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Anonymous Coward]

If you define interstellar travel as a the ability to go to another star, it will only ever exist in the world of sci-fi. I prefer more relaxed definitions for what constitutes interstellar travel. If "interstellar travel" descibes an unattainable state, it ceases to be a useful term.

When I cross the street, I'm "travelling interstellar" because otherwise it ceases to be a useful term.

Hint: Not all terms are required to be useful. To suggest otherwise is naive. Also note that I didn't claim, as you did, that AI is unattainable. I said that we don't have it right now and you sound like a child throwing a temper tantrum (ie. "But I want it NOW!!!").

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of date yes, but for exactly the wrong reasons you mentioned.

"Playing Go is not AI." (Yes, it is)

"a bunch of people sat down and wrote software to teach a computer how to play Go." (That's the "out of date" bit. That's not how it works any more).

"It was a single purpose program" (nope)

"running on a computer playing a game with a strict rule set." (that's true, but once the general AI is taught the rules, it DISCOVERS superior strategy itself WITHOUT human players nor programmers)

Re: Out of date article^W summary

[fluffernutter]

Insects operate on simple sets of rules that led to their survival as insects, so.. no.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[fluffernutter]

I think very few people would call a computer that acted like a baby 'intelligent'. Again, like insects, babies operate on fairly simple rules.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Anonymous Coward]

"Interstellar" means "between stars". "Intelligence" doesn't necessarily mean "sentience".

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[mjwx]

As long as you live in the fantasy that human brains are magical and computers are not there's no point in having an argument, because you've defined the answer "Humans are intelligent and computers are not, hence anything done by computers is not proof of intelligence." rather than the question: "What is intelligence?" and failed to make any measurable definition or criteria. It's like saying humans have souls and rocks don't and expect the debate to be anything other than theology and philosophy.

The thing is, we've already defined these things, you just haven't looked it up or accepted it.

The kind of AI that wins games is called Applied AI (or Weak AI) this is very good at working within parameters, applying rules that do not change to data. Where it strugles is when rules aren't clearly defined or change. If someone were to cheat at the game the AI was playing, the AI would likely be unable to handle it. This is why games like Chess and Go are good tests for weak AI, the full parameters of the game are known.

Now take something that isn't as straight forward, like Poker, then AI's start to struggle as the rules around the emotional and human elements are not so clear cut. We can make machines that can assemble furniture, but making one that can get a flat packed wardrobe from Ikea and assemble it given only the instructions provided is incredibly hard as the AI needs to interpret vague instructions and then apply them to a dissembled product to make the finished product.

In order to do these things, we need AI that can operate outside set parameters, this is strong AI or AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) which can operate on the same cognitive level as a human this means it must be able to operate outside of set parameters, put simply it must be able to reason, make judgements under uncertainty, represent knowledge (including solving problems with limited information), plan, learn (of its own accord) and most importantly, be capable of combining all of these skills towards a goal. Right now that is what separates the human computer from the silicon one.

The human brain is very much like a computer in the way it can process information, but the fact is we still don't fully understand how that works. That is a realm of science, not theology.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[thereitis]

> like insects, babies operate on fairly simple rules Do insects have emotional intelligence? Can they learn rapidly? Can they recognize faces? I think if I was immobile, couldn't talk, and didn't have good control of my muscles I'd probably do what a baby does to get attention, feeding, etc. I wouldn't discount the intelligence of babies so harshly - not without some research to back it up.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Maxo-Texas]

Computers are capable of learning now.

They passed being mechanisms that react in specific ways about 3 years ago.

They are not yet capable of independent thought but they have discovered new ideas which humans had failed to discover in 3,000 years of investigation.

They don't gain wisdom.

They do gain experience about particular subject matters.

They dont' contemplate.. the same way.

Most humans driving down the road are not conscious and are not intelligent. A small driving routine is executing and the rest of the brain is in a trance like state. Computers are not conscious yet. But they've made tremendous strides much faster than predicted. They may never be conscious. Or they might be conscious in a decade.

They are intelligent about particular subjects. More intelligent and insightful than humans. They are not generally intelligent as a 2 year old yet.

You, a human being, have turned your brain off- probably several years ago from your statements. It's time to turn it back on and get engaged.

Re:Out of date article^W summary

[Xest]

So your view is that human infants don't have intelligence?

It doesn't matter what people might call a computer that acts like a baby, the point is whether intelligence is present or not, and if you believe intelligence isn't something that present in the human animal from birth, then sure, say equally dumb computers don't have intelligence, but most people believe that intelligence is an inherent trait in the human animal. Whether it grows from a low point doesn't really matter - the point is that intelligence sits on a gradient, so we can't rationally say modern AIs don't have intelligence whilst attributing intelligence as a trait present in things like dogs or babies.

Humans are pretty stupid with humans too

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a great analogy.

Re:Humans are pretty stupid with humans too

[jellomizer]

But AI are not lazy and will work to the death and not take breaks.
Normally if you hire someone Who is relatively stupid, they will be a problem because they are lazy too.

Re:Humans are pretty stupid with humans too

[Anonymous Coward]

But AI are not lazy and will work to the death and not take breaks.

10 PRINT "I AM LAZY"

20 GOTO 10

Let's not pretend humans are the only system capable of getting stuck in neverending loops.

Normally if you hire someone Who is relatively stupid, they will be a problem because they are lazy too.

Normally if you hire someone who is relatively stupid, it's likely because the job requires more brawn than brains, which often defines some of the hardest working men and women on the planet.

Re:Humans are pretty stupid with humans too

[jellomizer]

You run this program, you see a CPU Core peaking. The computer is putting all its effort into doing something that you wouldn't even notice after the screen gets full.

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because there is no AI. We got fancy algorithms that appear smart when guided by people, nothing more. They don't "think" and they are neither smart or stupid. That would require intelligence, which is missing from this whole equation...

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

See? The above post was made by AI believing it is sentient. It finally works!

-AI Scientists

So are people...

[RyanFenton]

Look up any documented case of feral humans, either in the wild or confinement. If they have a few years first with parents beforehand, they tend to be OK after a period of catching up - but left completely "unprogrammed", they tend to be completely unable to cope.

Humans need interactions on several levels to "become" humans as we recognize them.

It's not at all surprising that computers would need some of that same kinds of interactions to be able to speak to us on our terms. We take a LOT of faulty shortcuts to real logic in order to play our roles in society, conversations, and our shared understanding of the world.

You can get a lot of that odd 'logic' just by building associations - but it takes a LOT of misunderstanding and correction before you can know if those corrections really work the way others understand them.

Ryan Fenton

Re:So are people...

[jellomizer]

AI don’t have instinct that people have. Feral people will still walk on two legs, they will come up with some forms of commication, and form some sort of social code.
There are some aspects that make us uniquely human that AI don’t have.

Re:So are people...

[fireman sam]

The instinctual traits you've mentioned exist in all (well most) living animals. So perhaps to improve the AI is to start with a foundation of code that can be considered the instinct. Then applied the same nurtural teaching that humans receive a they grow.

Re:So are people...

[Type44Q]

It's not at all surprising that computers would need some of that same kinds of interactions to be able to speak to us on our terms.

In an attempt to grasp why we should't anthropomorphize technology, we anthropomorphize technology.

Explaining machine logic to 'soft science' majors: futile

Re:So are people...

[Anonymous Coward]

The current approach to AI is a DEAD END because we have no idea how actual intelligence works and are just faking it with these so-called 'machine intelligences'. Your DOG is capable of better cognition than this crap is.

Re:So are people...

[bloodhawk]

The problem is far more fundamental than that, computers only operate on binary information/numbers. They have no awareness of the world or even self awareness, instinct or motivation, they are a 1000 times below the level of a feral human and even with huge amounts of teaching, couching and assistance cannot ever perceive the world or have self awareness or that drive and instinct (at least not with anything that has yet been conceived or developed).

Re:So are people...

[mjwx]

Look up any documented case of feral humans, either in the wild or confinement. If they have a few years first with parents beforehand, they tend to be OK after a period of catching up - but left completely "unprogrammed", they tend to be completely unable to cope.

Humans need interactions on several levels to "become" humans as we recognize them.

The big difference is that a human will learn of its own accord. Of course we guide it to get the kind of human we want in society but that is more a preference than an innate human ability. An AI at our current level of development will not learn or even act on its own accord, it is entirely dependent on a human to give it instructions and more importantly, give it parameters on how to carry out those instructions.

The fact AI do not know how to handle an undefined scenario without human input is why I firmly believe that an autonomous car is decades away from public consumption. However commercial AI lawyers and accountants are a real possibility because for these professions, there are few unknown scenarios and most solutions are easily determined by applying rules to the data.

Well, yeah. Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Computers only look for what you tell it. You might give it some nifty ML algorithms, and it might learn to play Go real well, but it still needs boundaries and rules.

Humans don't need guidelines (although sometimes I wish they did).

Not to mention, meaningless

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one thing for AI to master something with a well-defined ruleset, like a game. It's another where humans are relied on either directly or indirectly (Turing Test) to evaluate the performance of the AI.

Well, Yeah. Obviously.

[Anonymous Coward]

Computers only look and act on what humans tell them to do. Sure, you can give them some nifty ML algorithms and it might learn to play Go real well, but it still needs boundaries and rules to formulate decisions.

On the other hand, Humans don't need guidelines (although I sometimes wish they did).

Stop worrying about AIs...

[Anonymous Coward]

The AI book that everyone should get is available for pre-order (April 23, 2018). "Artificial Intelligence For Dummies" by John Paul Mueller and Luca Massaron.

Re:Stop worrying about AIs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do Slashdot readers get a special discount, John Paul?

Re:Stop worrying about AIs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Any Slashdot reader admitting to being a dummy should hand in his geek card RIGHT NOW!

No kidding

[110010001000]

This is because what the hypesters are calling "AI" is just computers running software. And computers are dumb and so is software. It has been this way since the computer was invented and will continue this way unless there is some magical leap in computing.

Re:No kidding

[Junta]

Some of my favorite wtf *real sentences* that I've heard people say with a straight face in just the last week about AI:
-"This is a neural network, it works just like the human brain, with neurons, dendrites, and axons!"
-"The neural network evolves, we have species and genomes, just like the process that produced human intelligence!"

Problem of course being there is legitimate good work being done in the field, that will likely get flushed with the BS when the hype curve lets the industry down when folks realize the above sentences are BS, just intended for people to think they are magical than they are.

Re:No kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen. I think even IT people forget that as magical as it looks all it is doing is math, really fast. Even a compare is often just a complicated OR circuit. No understanding, just running a hard coded procedure.

Re:No kidding

[eepok]

I wish this itself could become a press release.

News Flash! Recently Discussed "Artificial Intelligence" Unmasked as Stock-Manipulating Hype

Yesterday, insiders from numerous think tanks and advanced computing companies came together to announce to the world that everything they've heard about Artificial Intelligence (or "AI") over the last few years has been false. "There are still no computers that can think unique thoughts on their own. It's all techno mumbo-jumbo and marketing speak to convince investors to invest in one company or the next. In fact, you may have been part of the entire effort to make AI seem more real.," said the spokesman for the group, Nerdy McSoontobejobless. "Chances are that you're in on the act, but just don't know it. If you've ever been asked to prove that you're 'not a robot' by selecting squares that include street signs, you're basically spoon-feeding an database algorithm what a sign is so that standard text-recognition software can figure out what the sign says."

"Oh ya," another representative amended, "Fully autonomous vehicles are still nowhere near ready for mass adoption. It's still going to be a decade or more until they're ready for personal ownership and, when they are, they're going to be extremely expensive."

The NASDAQ has dropped 15% since the announcement.

OMG RUSSIANS!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good Lord, this is getting pathetic.

I thought the Cold War was over and the 1980s wanted their foreign policy back.

Re:OMG RUSSIANS!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You know until the internet I thought the civil war was over too. So you can go back a lot further then that if you want.

AI is just buzzword

[Anonymous Coward]

People are using AI for anything that is software automation with any form of rule based decision making or machine learning component.

Of course, some implementations work best with humans in the loop. Doesn't mean every piece of AI software will need it.

This is just clickbait.

Re:AI is just buzzword

[green1]

Of course, some implementations work best with humans in the loop. Doesn't mean every piece of AI software will need it.

Actually that's exactly the point. EVERY piece of AI software DOES need it. In this case "humans in the loop" doesn't mean interacting with the program in real time, but it does mean that every single possible thing the computer can do must be programmed in some fashion. Computers don't "learn" either. They load a data set that was given to them in some way, and then they use their programmed algorithms to interpret that data set and perform an action based on it. It's that algorithm that is the "Intelligence" in the equation, and the part that is unchanging.

AI simply doesn't exist in the way anyone seems to think of it. Computers will ALWAYS do exactly what they are programmed to do, no more, no less. Unless something fundamentally changes, that's exactly what's going to continue to happen for the foreseeable future too.

We can prove that because you can take any program ever written, a person can follow the same algorithm, with the same data set and come to the same result every time (though a whole lot slower). If the data is outside what the algorithm is expecting, the computer won't adapt to it, it will continue to follow the exact same algorithm, even if it's no longer appropriate, until someone stops it, or it is unable to do so and crashes.

Re:AI is just buzzword

[Maxo-Texas]

No.

Alphago and Alphago Zero are learning from experience of playing the game.

It's learning by definition. It's not a program. It's not doing loockups.

It's not programmed. The base conditions were set but other than some instrumentations, the humans don't know why Alphago does what it does because they haven't played 134,000 games of go since breakfast.

Alphago Zero surpassed every human grand master go player in less than 100 hours. Human go masters are now learning new plays from it and Alphago.

Re:AI is just buzzword

[green1]

No, it's not "learning" anything. It's a lookup table, it was programmed to run all the possible moves so that it can calculate which moves have the highest probability of success in every situation. It can beat a human because no human can remember that many possibilities and calculate them on the fly, but given enough time a human could follow the exact same algorithm and get the exact same results.

If you take that same program, without any modification, and tell it to play chess instead of go, it won't have a clue what to do because it is fundamentally incapable of playing any game other than the one it was programmed to play. It can't learn a new game because it can't actually learn anything at all. All it can do is follow it's programming.

Re:AI is just buzzword

[Agent0013]

They taught it how to play go by letting it watch games being played. The second version learned by playing against itself.

There are video game playing AIs that learn to play pac-man or other classics by trying things and seeing the results it makes on the screen. They don't even define where the score is, or even that there is a score. They let the algorithm figure out what makes for a better result and it learns to play the game with no rules given to it. If you give the same algorithm a new game it can learn that one just as easily.

If you take that same program, without any modification, and tell it to play chess instead of go, it won't have a clue what to do because it is fundamentally incapable of playing any game other than the one it was programmed to play. It can't learn a new game because it can't actually learn anything at all.

Doesn't sound like you have been paying attention to what the AI has been doing these days. And I do realize it is just a neural net that I myself would not consider to be intelligence. But it does show learning abilities without being programmed how to do things directly.

Re:AI is just buzzword

[Maxo-Texas]

Your post shows you are completely ignorant of recent advances in A.I. research.

You need to go back to school.

Try the following.. read up on alphago and then go to youtube and watch Go masters observe and comment on Alphago's play.
Then read up on alphago zero.

When you can comment more intelligently than a chatbot... come back and make a more informed criticism.

There are significant limitations on A.I. but it's moving fast. It may never become conscious. Or we may develop an A.I. with emergent consciousness in under a decade. Or we may develop a better theory of consciousness which allows us to implement A.I. with consciousness.

But you are pretty clueless so you need to go back and learn some more.

Re:AI is just buzzword

[green1]

They taught it how to play go by letting it watch games being played. The second version learned by playing against itself.

So in other words, they inputted a lookup table.

There are video game playing AIs that learn to play pac-man or other classics by trying things and seeing the results it makes on the screen. They don't even define where the score is, or even that there is a score. They let the algorithm figure out what makes for a better result and it learns to play the game with no rules given to it. If you give the same algorithm a new game it can learn that one just as easily.

Except that's not at all how it works. You always are working from a data table. Either the table is from previous game play, in which case it will be incapable of performing any move that it has never seen done before, or the table is from playing against itself, in which case it needs to know the rules, and then will try to develop every possible combination of legal moves. Either way, it simply calculates from the table what move has the highest success rate for each situation.

In the first situation, you could put it in front of any game, and it would be able to mimic any move it has previously seen, but never come up with a new move that others haven't done before, in the second case it can do any legal move, including ones that nobody has seen before, but only because it has the rules and the lookup table. In that case it will be completely incapable of playing any other game, because the rules you gave it will be different. In fact it likely won't even be able to recognize the other game as needing to be played because it differs from the programming that it was given for the first game.

None of this would fit any definition of "intelligence" as we know it, unless you believe that "on a computer" is different from anything else, in which case you are also the problem with our patent system.

Doesn't sound like you have been paying attention to what the AI has been doing these days.

On the contrary, I've been paying close attention, and see that they have yet to come up with anything that includes even the most basic rudimentary intelligence. So far, about all they've managed to do is build lookup tables with fancy names and high dollar price tags. Anyone impressed with the "intelligence" behind them should have failed their first computer programming or digital logic class.

Re:AI is just buzzword

[green1]

I've looked in to it.

Alphago impresses people because it manages to make moves they hadn't thought of. It can make those moves because it has a lookup table that it has built of as many possible moves as it could, and can calculate the likelihood of success of each move based on it's algorithm. It is no more intelligent than the paperweight sitting on my desk. You can't take Alphago and ask it to perform a completely different task without re-writing the underlying code because it's not actually capable of "learning" anything. All it can do is build a lookup table, and then look things up in it.

We *may* sometime in the future develop a form of AI, but as of right now there have been zero indications of it yet developed.

Re:AI is just buzzword

[Agent0013]

I'm not sure what you are calling a lookup table. Having an AI algorithm try things and remember what worked and what did not work does not sound like any kind of input table. The algorithm learns how to play by trying things out. I don't consider it intelligent, so I would suggest you stop confusing things by talking about unrelated things, this conversation is about learning, not about intelligence.

I remember one of the mario playing bots figured out some sort of cheat jump that it did not watch anyone play, because it was not fed any games that were played for it to learn. It found that if the turtle landed on marios head as he was falling in a jump (just after the peak of the jump) it would count as bouncing off of the turtle and kill it while bouncing mario up higher. It also learned to play several other games. This seems a direct opposite of what you said, "can only mimic any move it has previously seen". Or differs from your other statement, "completely incapable of playing any other game".

Unlike other AI programs, MarI/O wasn't taught anything before jumping into the game.

They did give the AI a fitness rating that increased the further to the right that Mario moved. So the rest of the game had to be learned. You would not even have to teach the AI about the buttons for jumping as it can figure that out by trial and error also. If you consider that a self-created database of actions that work to be a lookup table that was created by the programmers, then you have serious problems with your understanding of technical ideas.

"disastrous outcome?"

[ScentCone]

It has become increasingly apparent over the past year that building systems without humans "in the loop" -- especially in the case of Facebook and the ads it linked to 470 "inauthentic" Russian-backed accounts -- can lead to disastrous outcomes

Because ... a few tens of thousands of dollars worth of FB ads actually caused people who loved Hillary to suddenly vote for the person they hated? This non-sly bit of editorializing (that the Clintons not regaining power to sell access from the White House was a "disaster" brought on by social media externalities) is laughable. Insufficient human involvement in FB's ad-processing may indeed have allowed some pot-stirring foreigners to run ads, but they also allowed an endless stream of domestically-passed-around fake news and toxic memes that were vitriolically and relentlessly anti-Trump to saturate news feeds in the months leading up to the election. None of these things somehow tricked Clinton into regularly showing her patronizing contempt for flyover-country voters. Hillary Clinton wasn't somehow persuaded by Russian ads to blow off even setting foot in Wisconsin while expecting that state to giver her their electoral college votes anyway. The Democrats didn't lose a thousand legislative seats, most of the governorships and both houses of congress during the Obama administration because of minuscule Russian FB ad buys in 2016. This reference to FB's ads buys leading to "disaster" is just another disingenuous attempt to deflect from what really happened.

If there's a "disaster" to describe, it would be the shocking amount of cash the Democrats spent and the celebrity-entertainment-news-industrial-complex expenditure of good will and political capital that was spectacularly squandered in trying to convince people to vote for a chilly, robotically unlikable scold of a candidate with no constructive message and a long record of corruption ... who characterized herself entitlement to power based on gender, and who promised to use the Supreme Court as a new legislature. What a huge waste of time and resources.

Re:"disastrous outcome?"

[ScentCone]

How is this "off topic?" TFS comes right out and describes Clinton's loss as a disaster, implying that the lack of human editorial oversight at FB is responsible for that disaster. The OP couldn't have BEEN more politically tilted on that front, and it's entire point is to make something that's not much of anything (a handful of Russian ads) sound like a disaster only because of the political outcome the author didn't want.

Re:"disastrous outcome?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Clinton's loss was a blessing. Trump's victory is the disaster. And man, it's a doozy! Goes to show the fatal flaw of majority rule. We need something to protect ourselves from these apes.

Re:"disastrous outcome?"

[ScentCone]

Trump's victory is the disaster.

I'm guessing you made big bets on the stock market going down. Or you make a lot of money based on millions of Americans having to wade through an incomprehensibly complex tax code. Or you employ a lot of manual labor that comes illegally across the border. Or maybe you make a lot of money abusing the H1B visa system? Be careful how you gamble on the next couple of election cycles.

Re:"disastrous outcome?"

[Anonymous Coward]

You guessed wrong. I'm just a believer in civil rights and equal, humane treatment under the law and a removal of corrupt leadership. Something which neither of your tribes are interested in. You just want domination. Well, be happy, you got it... Just realize how short term your gains are

Re:"disastrous outcome?"

[ScentCone]

So... you should be very happy with Trump's first SCOTUS nominee - an embrace of proper constitutional checks and balances that no Democrat would ever want, and which makes some Republicans unhappy. Gorsuch is as close to your ideal as one is likely to ever see nominated. And with Trump's general posture towards clawing back from federal agencies their intrusive, abusive use of bloated regulatory power and similar instincts, vs a non-existent fantasy candidate that you'll never see elected, you really can't call it a disaster. He's annoying as hell, but that pendulum REALLY needed to swing the other way on some of this stuff. So be it.

Re:"disastrous outcome?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Your partisan tribalism does not impress. Republicans and democrats are the same pig.

Re:"disastrous outcome?"

[ScentCone]

And your lazy ad hominem and avoidance of the substance of the matter (see the specific examples I pointed out and your unwillingness to discuss them) shows how insincere you actually are on this. Have fun routinely throwing your votes away.

Re:"disastrous outcome?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Your so-called "substance" is totally superfluous to the fundamentals of your tribalism. Truth is you are obsessed with style and simply demand privilege.

Really?

[AlanBDee]

That's just what they want us to think.

It's software, geniuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone imagine it would require less human interaction than any other software? Ever since the current 'AI' hype began several years ago I have questioned the intelligence of most people in tech, if not in every field that has glommed onto the phrase. The words 'artificial intelligence' are such a misnomer in and of themselves as to be laughable. Running into walls and malfunctions are inevitable when anyone thinks that a glorified calculator can do anything but calculate. We have had algorithms and automation for a long time, kiddies. None of it is really anything new, and it really doesn't matter how much money gets thrown at it. The laws of mathematics and physics are a bitch, I know.

AI is a tool, so it's not the tool but the user

[Anonymous Coward]

AI is a tool. The real danger is how WE use the tool against each other. There has never been a technology that has not advanced the ability to harm each other. What we have is now really good automation. That's the danger. We can automate very bad things. Self-aware software may never happen but I do know that we will use what we have against each other. So we can't take "AI" advances lightly.

I disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you elaborate on that?

Tell me more about Without Humans, Artificial Intelligence Is Still Pretty Stupid.

E

"content moderators"

[sycodon]

That has to be the most soul killing job in existence.

Current approach to AI is a DEAD END

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, if you prefer: It's SHIT. Until we understand how REAL intelligence works we will NOT be able to program an AI that isn't total shit. Also so-called self-driving cars are also SHIT because they use the same shitty excuse for an AI and will ultimately FAIL. Don't trust any of it.

Actual Intelligence is similarly useless

[Zero__Kelvin]

It turns out that if you take a newborn and don't have them interact with and learn from other humans they don't learn much and are also quite useless, so this would not be an argument against the idea that these systems are AI, but rather for it. It is not proof they are in fact AI, but it is certainly not proof that they aren't either.

Re:Well, yeah. Obviously

[HuguesT]

Most humans do need guidelines, and parents to enforce them in their early years, police a bit later on.

You're kidding right?

[upl8n87447]

It will impact their profits?!? C'mon...Facebook doesn't deserve the profitability it currently has. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Newspapers wouldn't sell without the important news and ideas that journalists provide to be printed on their pages; nor would those newspaper companies make any money from advertisements. Guess what; journalists / content creators get paid.

Not so on Facebook. The people who post their content on Facebook, or the articles that we link to aren't being properly compensated. Facebook is effectively a monopoly or near monopoly of social networking and can demand higher rates from advertisers without giving back anything in return to those creating the content that people login to see. If anything, due to their massive user base, people are finding it *impossible* to use alternative sites because Facebook has become the method that entire social groups are now using to communicate. One person in a social group cannot simply leave and use a competing service because it would require their entire social group to leave as well. In that way, how is Facebook any different than the Bell companies that were broken up in the 80s due to anti-trust violations when people have no choice but to use the service?

We can see that there's an imbalance here simply by how profitable Facebook has become in such a short amount of time. That's only possible when you approach monopoly status and there's not enough competition to balance the equation.

With that said, it's a little ironic that they're going to complain that policing a system that they created to be highly susceptible to wide spread propaganda because it's going to impact their massive profits. Oh boo effing hoo. You expect us to cry for you when your system is causing harm to our Democracy?

poor POOR facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

so not sympathetic to facebook problems.

That's not AI

[Anonymous Coward]

With AI, you don't program an algorithm into the computer, you feed in data and a an expected outcome reward/penalty and train it on that data.

You don't know the algorithm its using, its just a set of layers of nodes, each with a weighting equation in it and two AI systems can perform identically and yet have completely different structures in them if the data was fed in a different way.

There is a fundamental difference.

Without human training, HUMAN intelligence is dumb

[Maxo-Texas]

Feral children are what results from a human brain without human training.

Humans are born with a very plastic and adaptable brain.

WIth human training- it can be come a brain surgeon or theoretical mathematician.

Without human training- it eventually can't even learn to speak and is largely incapable of higher reasoning.

A.I. can't teach generally yet but properly configured once- it won't need humans again.

Just like humans.

More anti-Russian bullshit...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's laughable. What is Slashdot now? A mouthpiece for warmongers.

"Russia 'influenced' the election" or "Russia 'meddled' with the election" - but no actual a) discussion of WHAT exactly they are alleged to have done (no doubt exposing Clinton's endless crimes is the main problem) and b) EVIDENCE that the Russian government has anything to do with this made up load of bullshit.

Trump was attacked by the Jewish press for being too FRIENDLY with Putin, as soon as he was elected! What a joke! So the press would rather that Trump hated Putin and wanted to start World War Three? Apparently so, with this endless 'Russian meddling' bullshit.

Precisely incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

"Whether it's winning at games like Go ... AI-powered systems require humans to play an active role"

That's precisely what the latest AlphaGo Zero does not require.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/18/16495548/deepmind-ai-go-alphago-zero-self-taught

Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Without humans, artificial intelligence will ALWAYS be pretty stupid. It's software, not a test tube. The name 'artificial intelligence' is pretty stupid too, as that isn't what advanced algorithms are. Progress literally stopped when millennials got into tech and brought their post-pubescent sci-fi fantasies and painfully shallow understanding of things to technology. They don't seem to be getting any better in their 30s, either. Woke? That's 21st century vernacular for sleeping twice as hard.