What Does Artificial Intelligence Actually Mean? (qz.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A new bill (pdf) drafted by senator Maria Cantwell asks the Department of Commerce to establish a committee on artificial intelligence to advise the federal government on how AI should be implemented and regulated. Passing of the bill would trigger a process in which the secretary of commerce would be required to release guidelines for legislation of AI within a year and a half. As with any legislation, the proposed bill defines key terms. In this, we have a look at how the federal government might one day classify artificial intelligence. Here are the five definitions given:

A) Any artificial systems that perform tasks under varying and unpredictable circumstances, without significant human oversight, or that can learn from their experience and improve their performance. Such systems may be developed in computer software, physical hardware, or other contexts not yet contemplated. They may solve tasks requiring human-like perception, cognition, planning, learning, communication, or physical action. In general, the more human-like the system within the context of its tasks, the more it can be said to use artificial intelligence.
B) Systems that think like humans, such as cognitive architectures and neural networks.
C) Systems that act like humans, such as systems that can pass the Turing test or other comparable test via natural language processing, knowledge representation, automated reasoning, and learning.
D) A set of techniques, including machine learning, that seek to approximate some cognitive task.
E) Systems that act rationally, such as intelligent software agents and embodied robots that achieve goals via perception, planning, reasoning, learning, communicating, decision-making, and acting.

Comments

Asimovian

[rmdingler]

Not unlike the intent of the three laws of robotics, it would be wise beyond the normal abilities of those in government to get a sensible definition and implementation of rules in place before corporations have a billion dollar interest in the outcome.

Re:Asimovian

[Aristos Mazer]

Asimov tackled this in his short story ...That Thou Art Mindful Of Him. "Don't kill people" has a weakness... how do you define "people"? Dehumanizing the enemy is a major part of getting past the "don't kill" tendency in humans... that'll likely work for AIs also.

Re:Asimovian

[JoeDuncan]

Did you READ Asimov's robot books?

It doesn't really seem like you have, because while the "3 Laws" were presented as a workable solution "in world" - *EVERY* robot story Asimov wrote was about how the "3 Laws" were insufficient and unworkable and the spectacular ways such things FAILED.

Re:Honestly... that doesn't look too bad

[Baron_Yam]

>Forgot "systems that are self aware"

I don't think so - we can't prove that in humans, so it's not really a useful definition.

Regulate Applications not Technology

[gazelam]

These are way too broad for a workable regulation. Anything that has a neural network could be regulated and that is just too rudimentary a technology to be usefully regulated. Also, it's probable that even things like adaptive filters could be regulated under such a definition. If the bill regulates the areas in which the applications are used - e.g. driving vehicles, surveillance, etc. where the federal government already has an interest, well MAYBE that's OK, but this seems like an easy overreach nonetheless.

Re:Honestly... that doesn't look too bad

[Mikkeles]

An interesting one they missed is generating problems to solve; aka asking the right questions.

The definitions that are acts (or behaves) as a human are just as ambiguous as AI itself. For example, would enjoying (or hating) a sauna be required?

I've always taken it to mean....

[mark-t]

...intelligence that happens to be artificial, as opposed to natural. While this is more or less a tautology, I don't see any compelling reason that the definition needs to be any more complex than this.

Just as certainly as there are varying levels of natural intelligence, there can be varying levels of artificial intelligence.

Now if you want me to define "intelligence".... well, there's a trickier one. Is little Billy intelligent because he learned how to to multiply, or was that just the result of memorization? Is Alphazero intelligent because it learned how to play its games very well, or is it merely the result of following heuristic algorithms that coincidentally create the sufficiently persistent illusion of being a superior games player, while in fact possessing absolutely no real skill?

The answer is subjective... its going to depend on who you ask. Personally, I think that both are examples of intelligence, and more generally, any sufficiently persistent illusion of the existence of a thing, by virtue of being indistinguishable from that thing, should be considered completely equivalent to that thing, or else whatever we happen to call that thing doesn't really mean anything in the first place.