Slashdot Mirror
New IBM Robot Holds Its Own In a Debate With a Human (nbcnews.com)
PolygamousRanchKid shares a report: The human brain may be the ultimate super computer, but artificial intelligence is catching up so fast, it can now hold a substantive debate with a human, according to audience feedback. IBM's Project Debater made its public debut in San Francisco Monday afternoon, where it squared off against Noa Ovadia, the 2016 Israeli debate champion and in a second debate, Dan Zafrir, a nationally renowned debater in Israel. The AI is the latest grand challenge from IBM, which previously created Deep Blue, technology that beat chess champion Garry Kasparov and Watson, which bested humans on the game show Jeopardy.
In its first public outing, Project Debater turned out to be a formidable opponent, scanning the hundreds of millions of newspaper and journal articles in its memory to quickly synthesize an argument on a topic and position it was assigned on the spot. "Project Debater could be the ultimate fact-based sounding board without the bias that often comes from humans," said Arvind Krishna, director of IBM Research. An audience survey taken before and after each debate found that Project Debater better enriched the audience's knowledge as it argued in favor of subsidies for space exploration and in favor of telemedicine, but that the human debaters did a better job delivering their speeches.
The AI isn't trained on topics -- it's trained on the art of debate. For the most part, Project Debater spoke in natural language, choosing the same words and sentence structures as a native English speaker. It even dropped the odd joke, but with the expected robotic delivery. IBM's engineers know the AI isn't perfect. Just like humans, it makes mistakes and at times, repeats itself. However, the company believes it could have a broad impact in the future as people now have to be more skeptical as they sort out fact and fiction. "Project Debater must adapt to human rationale and propose lines of argument that people can follow," Krishna said in a blog post. "In debate, AI must learn to navigate our messy, unstructured human world as it is -- not by using a pre-defined set of rules, as in a board game."
In its first public outing, Project Debater turned out to be a formidable opponent, scanning the hundreds of millions of newspaper and journal articles in its memory to quickly synthesize an argument on a topic and position it was assigned on the spot. "Project Debater could be the ultimate fact-based sounding board without the bias that often comes from humans," said Arvind Krishna, director of IBM Research. An audience survey taken before and after each debate found that Project Debater better enriched the audience's knowledge as it argued in favor of subsidies for space exploration and in favor of telemedicine, but that the human debaters did a better job delivering their speeches.
The AI isn't trained on topics -- it's trained on the art of debate. For the most part, Project Debater spoke in natural language, choosing the same words and sentence structures as a native English speaker. It even dropped the odd joke, but with the expected robotic delivery. IBM's engineers know the AI isn't perfect. Just like humans, it makes mistakes and at times, repeats itself. However, the company believes it could have a broad impact in the future as people now have to be more skeptical as they sort out fact and fiction. "Project Debater must adapt to human rationale and propose lines of argument that people can follow," Krishna said in a blog post. "In debate, AI must learn to navigate our messy, unstructured human world as it is -- not by using a pre-defined set of rules, as in a board game."
...when PEOPLE start talking and arguing with themselves like this, we start to consider medicating them quickly.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
AI doesn't exist!
Currently this machine isn't connected to the internet. If we connect it to the internet, it will become a master-debater in no time!
Completely fake. The topics were prearranged, and yes they were "assigned on the spot" but there was a predetermined list. IBM is desperately trying to sell their AI snakeoil. If AI worked, why not have it solve REAL problems that people will pay for, rather than parlor tricks like plying Go, and Chess and other games?
So, it scans human-generated content, and then builds a plausible sounding argument to support whatever position you give it.
This thing is going to cause a lot of unemployment in politics.
This is a cool project, but the article is utterly useless without a transcript.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If this AI truly uses real facts in a debate it would be wonderful. One thing most "debaters" these days seem to despise is actual facts. They get in the way of an emotional argument, something I (sadly) see as most prevalent in the SJW crowd. They have nice-sounding ideas that appeal to emotion but do not stand up in the face of factual examination.
This is also going to derail politicians in a big way, especially if it sticks to facts. Politicians hate facts. They bank on their constituents not knowing the facts and being too lazy to check them.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
One could plausibly make the same assertion about humans. There is nothing magic about the brain, after all.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I know a lot of humans who fit that definition, some in high places.
Table-ized A.I.
this thing is just a collection of dumb reflexes that give the appearance of an intelligent agent
We could probably say the same about most people.
There is no "AI" on this planet and this thing is just a collection of dumb reflexes that give the appearance of an intelligent agent.
And so are you.
Of course, you can argue otherwise, but then the AI can make such an argument as well, and will likely do a better job at it (according to the article).
So how should I determine which stream of electronic communication was generated by "an intelligent agent" and which one by "a collection of dumb reflexes"?
The most logical conclusion is that there's not much of a difference.
The "AI debater" mainly seems to search for possibly relevant statements in a large library and then inject them into the debate. Throwing factoids at each other is clearly how debates happen these days take place and how many "decision makers" operate.
But that isn't how debates ought to take place. Debates should start with premises and mutually agreed facts and then reach conclusions via reason and logic.
In its first public outing, Project Debater turned out to be a formidable opponent, scanning the hundreds of millions of newspaper and journal articles in its memory to quickly synthesize an argument on a topic and position it was assigned on the spot. "Project Debater could be the ultimate fact-based sounding board without the bias that often comes from humans," said Arvind Krishna
If the data it uses to "argue" comes from human sources, it has a human bias.
That being said, it is cool technology and it demonstrates how bad human debate can be. If you can win an argument without actually knowing what you are talking about (which you can), it demonstrates the (lack of) value debate can have; it also underscores the lack of real value in the level of political discourse that we have today. We spend a lot of time arguing over things we don't really know about.
No, it didn't.
Yes, it did.
No ....
Have gnu, will travel.
>> that isn't how debates ought to take place
I disagree. This was clearly an even match between two master debaters.
Just that.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
I mean, a computer simulation of Congress cannot be described with any terms that include "intelligence" can it?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"without the bias that often comes from humans"
Bullcrap. This makes it super super easy to bias by just doing ONE simple THING. Just by selecting what "sources" it uses as "facts" you can totally make this biased in an instant. Just make sure it uses "facts" from sources you "agree with". Instantly done, bias achieved.
Let me know when the computer can win a Slashdot debate. There's no way it could cope with this sort of argument:
Computer: "AI has made great improvements in it's cognitive ability."
Anonymous Coward: "Yeah, WELL FUCK YOU!!!!"
AC wins every time.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Maybe they'll target politicians next..
Imagine how powerful augmented lobbyists could become.
Greed is the root of all evil.
Selecting Response.....
"Your Mother is so fat she smokes Turkeys...."
It may have been a Master Debater, but its Israeli opponents were Cunning Linguists.
So IBM is claiming this can be used as a fact-based sounding board, but if it is looking through published work how does it know that what the system is repeating is actually fact? I realize that humans have this same issue, but if you are going to present your device as a paragon of factual information, then I would expect a rigorous system of validation to be part of it.
I will say being able to build this type of language structure in a way that is at least passable is quite an achievement in and of itself. I have the feeling "holding it's own" is an overstatement, but it was apparently not ridiculous.
"Just make sure it uses "facts" from sources you "agree with". Instantly done, bias achieved."
You don't even need to explicitly filter the sources, just asking the question will implicitly filter the sources because it's only going to use sources that support the position it has been assigned. So for example if you pick a debate topic "was the moon landing a hoax" and you assign the AI the position of "yes it was", it's going to be picking from a _very_ biased set of sources.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Not a rhetorical question. Like all the pseudo-intelligent software being trotted out the last several years, it does not know how to 'think'. Try asking it "What are you doing right now, and why are you doing it?" and let's see what it says. All this software is doing is sifting and sorting information, and arranging it into statements, and it doesn't matter if the statements it's making are in response to statements made by the human debater, the machine does not understand what it's doing, just like it doesn't understand anything at all; there's no mind in there, it doesn't 'think', it just processes information, and it's not relevant so far as I'm concerned that it happens to do that in a sophisticated and remarkable way. Not impressed, it's just another dog-and-pony-show to placate investors and stockholders.
I look forward to when a computer can be on stage at a presidential debate to refute all the bullshit they spout. "That's not correct, Dave, according to 384 scientific articles..." Fact checking in real time on stage would make the debates much more watchable.
https://xkcd.com/810/
IBM's engineers know the AI isn't perfect.
I detest writing like the above. People trot out the "I know I/it/whatever isn't perfect" lead-in all the time, and I dislike it because it's seductively-packaged idiocy... it costs the speaker nothing (who would, or even could, argue that xyz IS in fact perfect?), while then paving the way for them to follow with an equally vapid statement that does nothing to inform.
I was recently trying to assess whether buying expensive retainers for my son's post-braces teeth would be worthwhile, and asked his orthodontist what the success/stability rate with them was. She replied, "Well, we can't guarantee perfection, of course, but most people like them." Which cornered me into "being rude" by explaining to her that the fact that the outcomes weren't "perfect" was not informative or helpful; do they work in 80% of patients? 99? 40? THAT information is helpful.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Not knowledge, however this thing can process vast amounts of knowledge and provide a response which has a very high probability of being correct and/or at the very least relevant, and it can do this in real-time.
If users could follow directions regarding computers, or even have a two-way conversation with this machine, then this thing could take over a third of my duties in I.T. (Handholding, and transliterating). As it stands the machine may reduce my time to research answers, a problem which Google has largely solved.
I suppose this could provide a high level of research to those who need to learn how to research, making them ineffective at their jobs without technology, and unable to accurately access the quality of the technology leading to stagnation and the collapse of modern society.
Deploying this thing in a field of debate shows an effective alternative to reducing the value of intelligence. If we were to capitalize on this for educational and testing purposes, somehow outlawing and blocking its use in commercial environments, it could prove an incredible asset for building a brighter future. We could potentially use this machine to sharpen our brains rather than to dull them.
There is nothing magic about the brain, after all.
He asserts.
There is no "AI" on this planet and this thing is just a collection of dumb reflexes that give the appearance of an intelligent agent.
And so are you.
Of course, you can argue otherwise, but then the AI can make such an argument as well, and will likely do a better job at it (according to the article).
So how should I determine which stream of electronic communication was generated by "an intelligent agent" and which one by "a collection of dumb reflexes"?
The most logical conclusion is that there's not much of a difference.
Sorry, what? I was tuning you out since you sounded like an AI agent.
(CS Lewis and others dealt with this reductionist stuff long ago ... )
Tell that to the voting populace in the USA. People don't bother to feel "puzzled or shameful or anything" as long as they're told it's okay not to.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
It is not quite developed yet. Soon it will become a master debater.
... or elect them to be the most powerful person in the world.
Actually, I would love to see a debate between this robot and Trump to see how it handles made-up facts, illogical assertions etc. Somehow logic and reason does not seem to work with him and he goes after emotion and feelings. Since I suspect that logic and facts are the only tools available to the program I suspect it will lose horribly - but regardless would still be an interesting debate to see.
I'd love to see how it works against a political opponent, where only opinions and fist-shaking matter, and facts are actively discouraged.
It is a sad state that we equate Debate skills with leadership skills.
Debates are something you need to win or loose. Not an open discussion to grow and learn. You can win a debate on a false idea or lie over someone who has the truth and data on their side, however they may lack the debate skills to try to convince a neutral party. Often the best and well thoughout idea is far more complex then what can be stated in quick sound blurbs.
Presidential debates over the past few generations have not been really productive. Most of us are already had made up their mind on who they are voting for, most will just vote for whoever has a R or D on their party affiliation regardless of their stance. So the Debators neutral party is just a tiny fraction of the population. And for the most part they are trying to read non-verbal queues. (such as Nixon sweating) or finding someone just loosing their temper. The topic up for debate are not relevant as we have a good idea where the stance is.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"Feed the AI garbage data and it won't know the difference. It won't feel puzzled or shameful or anything. "
So you're saying Trump is an AI?
I always thought he was an A.
If you're proposing a magical, non-physical component to the human mind, then isn't the the onus on you to provide support for your extraordinary claim?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
This platform is not a presence in a debate as we think of it. It has no inherent values, no physical experience, and it doesn't have anything at stake other than the demo itself. It is not free of bias, rather, it sorts through the information and biases humans supply it with.
That last part is why it's still super-valuable, in my opinion. In my time as a politically engaged citizen of the USA, there have been times when the big media across the political spectrum has lagged for almost a year in reporting information that could be found with very good corroborating evidence in major media across the globe. Regarding the Iraq war, major stories seemed to break in the Summer or Fall after the invasion, but they were only breaking stories in the USA. They'd been reported on extensively before the invasion in Europe in Lebanon. I'd been reading that media and cross-comparing and detecting US corporate bias, noticing what was either left out or buried in the footnotes, and becoming aware of the biases and motives they implied.
One really stunning example: word came out that the BBC and CNN were both carrying "full" transcripts of Hans Blix's testimony to the UN about the efficacy of UN inspectors to verify Iraqi compliance with denuclearization, but that CNN had omitted major parts of a "full" transcript. I did the homework. I downloaded both transcripts and broke out my tools as a Linux guy and analyst, and did the diff. What amounted to two large paragraphs on my screen right in the middle of the testimony were the omitted parts. They were the most detailed and convincing parts of Hans Blix's testimony, and the most relevant to a public that had a right to informed participation about whether the nation should start a pre-emptive war. That a "liberal" institution doctored verified and significant news in favor of a pro-war stance was really, really damning.
That wasn't the end, that story goes on.
Point is, as a human, cross-comparing many diverse pieces of information and journalism has definitely brought not just the story, but how some actors are trying to manipulate the story to light. We need an equitable, fairly administered system to make this sort of analysis available to the public. It needs to detect discrepancies and focus the public on where it can validate and verify something into being closer to fully true. It needs to be broad-based enough to not be itself a prop for those looking to use it for propaganda.
I'm all for using this AI in ways that might help critical thought prevail.
So, for example, discussing the news in the UK, where most of the newspapers have a mainstream bias, this poor AI will just parrot the same old rubbish you can read in papers such as the Telegraph, Times and Guardian, or worse the Mail, Express or the Sun. Also it is wrong to associate what is in those papers with facts. All these papers bend and distort, over report or omit in order to fit their agenda. Rubbish in, rubbish out.
If you're proposing a magical, non-physical component to the human mind, then isn't the the onus on you to provide support for your extraordinary claim?
We already know that parts of the brain interact with other parts of the brain using EM fields. Nothing extraordinary about old, well-repeated experiments.
Extraordinary is to believe that the human brain is such a trivial mechanism without knowing how it works and having wildly insufficient replication ability.
Magic is just science we don't understand yet. Yes, our brains are magic.
The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. cascadingstylesheet made no claim, he just pointed out that the parent made a claim based on the dominant metaphysic, not one supported by empirical evidence.
If you want to make a scientific claim, you have to do the science part first. You don't get to just make scientific-sounding guesses that fit with your beliefs.
think of how many call center employees just answer simple questions out of a database. That's what this is for. Parts of India & the Philippians are genuinely worried about the job loses.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Guys, this is really silly. As Godel has already demonstrated, it is impossible for a machine to meet the criteria of consciousness. "Artificial intelligence" is a chimerical idea and is not possible.
"Imitative intelligence" would be more accurate. A machine may be able to hold a facade of "intelligence," but any semblance of intelligence has been derived from its creators.
The claim that the machine "synthesized an argument" is misleading. Machines are not capable of a priori. The machine simply sorted information giving the appearance of a synthesized argument. The author projected this activity of synthesizing an argument onto the machine, but that is not what happened.
Then the author of the article made the incredible claim that the machine does not have bias, but just the same, they fed it a junk-food diet of newspaper articles & mental garbage.
This article is propaganda.
They're trying to persuade you to believe that machines can be intelligent, that machines will soon be just as or more capable than men at thinking, and that human mental faculties are mechanical. Perhaps the hope is that the general populace will eventually fall under of a large "appeal to authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam" umbrella and give up critical thinking altogether. This is already happening to people in STEM, who have largely ignored philosophy, and evidently cannot think rightly.
Feed the AI garbage data and it won't know the difference. It won't feel puzzled or shameful or anything. Humans can at least second guess the "truth" that is given to them. An AI is happy to drive into a wall without giving it any thought, because that was the "most logical conclusion"
Feed a newborn human garbage data and it won't know the difference either.
Oh, you meant an adult human? One that had their neural network constantly trained with real-world data for a couple of decades?
Well then, shouldn't an AI compete on a level playing field?
Humans can at least second guess the "truth" that is given to them.
History indicates otherwise.
You seem to be deep into quasi-religious delusion. Most of what is observable at the interface of the brain is not understood and how it is done is not understood either. Incidentally, life is still not really understood either. And that is the scientific state-of-the-art. Everything else, like your statement, is pure, unfounded belief.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The claim that the brains is "not magic" is not scientifically sound as it is baseless. The actual scientific fact is that nobody knows. Physicalism is religion and not fact-based.
At the very least we would need a complete description how general intelligence is created and one that can be implemented on ordinary matter. We have nothing of the sort.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
While every healthy human has some intelligence, they also have free will and can chose to not use that intelligence. So doing what some humans do does not prove intelligence. A bit more is required. This machine is impressive, no doubt, but it does not have intelligence of any kind. It has zero understanding of what it does. That, incidentally, is also true for many humans.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Just ask this machine to debate something not discussed in the press. It will immediately fall flat on its face. I will not.
But since you are a physicalist, you do not have active general intelligence anyways (it being a fundamentalist quasi-religious belief at this time), so arguments from you are worthless.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Some humans can. It requires a member of the 10% or so of independent thinkers, the rest cannot. They will eat up whatever garbage is fed to them. So while we do not and will not anytime soon have intelligent machines, we are finding out that the average human is not using most of the intelligence it has available. Not really a surprise.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Indeed. If reductionism would work here, we probably would have machines with some real general intelligence quite a while ago. Instead we have nothing, not even a mathematical theory that could do it in a physical implementation.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I would even dispute it makes you intelligent. It makes you a lexicon with a very powerful user interface, but not more. You still even need to do some searching (the "debate" action), While Science does not have anything on how general intelligence works, active users of it (a minority in the human race, I know) always describe a moment of "insight" or "understanding" as a critical component, and that one does critically require sentience, and possibly not only as a passive component.
For some reason the quasi-religious group of "physicalists" are deathly scared of the idea that a human mind could be more than matter and physics, so they are trying to always call it "obvious" that only matter and basically known physics is involved, despite pretty good indicators to the contrary. Quite the same ways as proper religions argue for an existence of a "God", and about just as fact based, i.e. not at all.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This machine does not deal in truth in any way.
So this one is easy: Trump clearly is the most stupid president, ever. Yet clearly he got elected. That means he did master the hardest challenge a successful presidential candidate has been given, ever, and that makes him the best president. And since Tump is the best and one of his techniques is to just not listen to counterarguments, this technique is clearly the best as well and I can just use, learning from the great stable genius. You lose.
Not saying this machine could do that, especially the last part, but it sghould have not trouble putting together a completely demented argument like this.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Does trying to debate with ELIZA piss it off?
New IBM Robot Holds Its Own In a Debate With a Human
"No it didn't."
"Yes, I did."
"No, you didn't."
"Yes I did!"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"I am not prepared to debate that subject."
Which is exactly what I'd say if I was asked to debate "phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny"
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
Probably exceedingly boring. At least some creativity is required for this to work and the machine has nothing.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Nature managed to produce a brain without knowing anything about how it works.
It follows that some amount of intelligent application of the theories that we know to be true may be able to replicate it many orders of magnitude faster.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The AI isn't trained on topics -- it's trained on the art of debate.
Does that means it uses ad nominem attacks when he runs out of good points?
I think that if it can formulate and debate against people, then it's not a big stretch to have a much more impartial adjudication between two people. This would make debates around certain divisive topics quite a lot better, because having watched a few, I'm convinced that the audience is stacked with closed minded people there just to vote with their internal biases.
Additionally, it could test against stated facts and statistics, as opposed to false ones being asserted confidently and fooling many people.
Pretty soon we won't need to comment on /. all the best comments will be posted by AI (the stories will probably get better to).
It may be logically impossible to prove that magic doesn't exist, if a scientific definition of 'magic' could even be devised. However, it is easy to point out that no scientific observations have been made of what might scientifically be called 'magic', and that using magic to explain general intelligence resembles a God of the Gaps, given that the gaps in our knowledge of general intelligence keep getting filled in yet 'magic' keeps failing to show up in that new knowledge.
One could argue that magic is inherently inscrutable and thus only the gaps surrounding it will be filled... but evidence for that (that's better than "we still don't know X") should be supplied, or at least a theoretical mechanism of action that is consistent with every other component of observed reality. That said, countless things once considered magic are now well-understood phenomena, and no longer considered magical.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
If you want to argue that meta-cognition and comprehension are required for 'intelligence', then you're going to need to use a more specific term, like 'wisdom'. Otherwise, recalling rote-memorized data and restating it in a relevant context is sufficient (hey, like in TFA.)
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Proud Philosophical Zombie here!
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
No, you do not get it. You are making an assumption and present it as fact. That is not Science, that is religion.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Well, yes. But in the explanation part you get things like Quantum Mechanics which are truly bizarre and very different from what you would expect. By some definition some effects in Quantum Mechanics do qualify as "magic".
But you are misunderstanding. I am not claiming that "magic" explains general intelligence. I am claiming, and with a sound scientific stance, that we do not know at all how general intelligence works and hence "magic" cannot be ruled out. It looks pretty certain that known physics will be not sufficient to describe it and it is hence unknown what extensions will be required.
Incidentally, physics is known to be incomplete and partially wrong at this time (e.g. Quantum Mechanics against Gravity) and hence an argument that a complex device where the function is not really understood and that we cannot build or analyze in detail must use known physics is pretty stupid.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Your requirements are pretty low. Like that of a marketeer that want to sell something at all cost.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Not knowledge, however this thing can process vast amounts of knowledge and provide a response which has a very high probability of being correct and/or at the very least relevant, and it can do this in real-time.
It actually processes data, not knowledge (yes, the distinction is critical here) and it cannot actually do this in real-time. It takes significant pre-computation time to get there and only the last step is somewhat real-time. But that is not the main problem. It unfortunately has no "very high probability of being correct" (as it does not do any fact-checking and there are countless things the press consistently get wrong) and being "relevant" without being correct is worse than having nothing. This is were anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers come from. Their arguments are most decidedly relevant, but they are deeply wrong.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
He does not need that. He just points out it cannot be ruled out. The unproven assumption "there is nothing magic" is from you. Got any proof? Because the last results from Neuroscience say "the closer we look, the more mysterious things become".
Incidentally, physics as known today is known to be incomplete and partially wrong. If the brain uses some of the unknown parts, that is already enough to completely invalidate your assumption.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It follows that some amount of intelligent application of the theories that we know to be true may be able to replicate it many orders of magnitude faster.
Yet nothing of the sort has happened so far. Oh, and incidentally, the "theories that we know to be true" do not include Quantum Mechanics at this time. It is just very well verified, but it does not go together with Gravity, which is also very well verified. So one or both must be wrong and nobody so far has a clue which it is. And one thing we do know is that the brain is a heavy user of quantum effects.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Well, I for one welcome our p-zombie friends!
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Progress doesn't always resemble a 100% complete, fully-baked solution. Intelligence has a large continuum with human intelligence at the top, which itself has a range.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
It could someday be a master debater.
It can be ruled out unless someone provides some evidence that it should be considered.
"It's magic" does not follow from "There is a gap in our knowledge" and anybody pretending otherwise is fraudulent, stupid or both.
Entirely untrue. There are many things that exist in nature that humans have figured out how to do for ourselves, where nature took millions or even of years to evolve it, we did it in only the compartively short time since humans have been making machines.
Of course, but we don't even have any reason to conclude that the brain's operation uses quantum mechanics, other than the laziness to assume that the fact that we don't know exactly how it works yet means that it must fit into one particular theory we have which would be compatible with uncertainty. That's right up there with assuming there is a God just because we don't know how everything got here in the first place*.
*Disclaimer: I mean no offense to people who believe in God, but I do think that if the only reason that one has to do so is because they just don't otherwise know how things happen to have come to be a weak one.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The thing is, I can put forward an argument on many topics purely by reverting to basic principles and core knowledge. I not only don't need discussion in the press but can actually challenge the viewpoints expressed in the media.
This AI will merely regurgitate the media lies du jour.
Hmm. You reckon the AI could Gish gallop as much as some of those commenters?
Since you do not even know the medical state-of-the-art here, I am going to stop responding now.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You do not understand Science one bit, really.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Well, that is just your personal definition. It is not shared by actual experts.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I overspoke.... I meant that it was not any more dependant on quantum mechanics than anything else in the physical world.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Actually, there are a lot of quantum-effects in synapses. This has been known for quite a while. Of course, nobody knows yet whether they have any real influence (since nobody knows how sentience works), but it pretty much is the elephant in the room. So, no, the brain pretty much is a maximally complex construct with a lot of quantum effects in its critical interconnect and as such it is unique. In simple, uniform structures, quantum effects will just cancel themselves out to produce an average. Nobody knows whether that is also true in highly complex structures like the brain.
And that is my whole point: The question is completely open. Funnily, I am not actually opposed to AI with general intelligence in any way, but I just don't see it in anything done today or proposed today. Unfortunately, as so many people are so easily fooled by non-intelligent machines, I usually have to take the position that no, these are not intelligent and that no, the reductionist argument (simplified: "the brain is a computer build up of independent logical elements") does not work as a situation must meet pretty hard criteria before reductionism works. For example, a digital computer that works deterministically is an object where reductionism applies. But put in some "real" random numbers (e.g. quantum-noise generated, not actually hard to do) and that goes out the window and reductionism becomes a mere approximation that may fail in complex questions and you cannot use it as a tool to prove things anymore. This again does not say that the brain is _not_ a computer, it just says the argument used to "prove" this is invalid and hence the question remains open.
I do notice that a really large number of people can apparently not stand such a question to be open and just jump on any and all possible explanations and present them as "obvious" truth. There is nothing "obvious" here and most things are unknown.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
There's a lot of quantum effects in lots of things... we know that now. Operation of transistors, of example, depends on quantum phenomena. The colors of most objects are dependant on quantum effects. It's entirely reasonable to expect that the brain might depend on quantum mechanics as well. My point is that using "quantum effects" to explain away the parts of the brain that we don't yet understand is just being plain lazy.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
And my intent was not to explain anything away, just to point out that there are a lot of things we do not understand and where we do not know the totality of the relevant mechanisms either. Giving one example of a possibility not understood is a standard proof technique for that. It does not, in any way, imply that the example given is the missing piece.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
But my point was that just because we do not fully understand it, does not mean that we cannot do something like it. Heck, the example I gave of the transistor, whose operation is *entirely* dependant upon quantum mechanics, and which we made long before the field of quantum mechanics even existed, is I think a pretty good precedent that even ignoring the quantum effects which may be involved, with intelligent application of the theories that we do understand, we can still be capable of things that previous generations may have well believed to be impossible.
The fact that nature did it means that it's within the realm of physical possibility, so I see no reason why we won't have the AI problem solved as well. I think we are within but a single human generation of having generalised AI that will be able to do anything that a human can do, and I think that its discovery and the ability to analyze its operation as we can with any computer right now may give us some heretofore undiscovered insight into how human consciousness emerges as well.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Ah, sorry if that was unclear. Quantum Mechanics is just one possibility not ruled out so far, it is not the only one. I certainly do not subscribe to any "quantum mysticism" bullshit or the like. That would require extraordinary proof.
However, I disagree on general artificial intelligence. We have now done about 60 years of intense research, theoretically (zero results) and experimentally (zero results). I think something essential is missing and I would maintain that at this time it is completely unclear what that is. I do agree that if we get general AI, that fact should solve a lot of fundamental questions.
Incidentally, to the best of my knowledge, neither bipolar transistors nor FETs work with quantum mechanical effects. They work by shifting mobile electrons using electric fields and thereby changing material properties between insulator and conductor. Not so different on the base level from vacuum tubes, also no quantum effects there. The only two examples of semiconductors I know using quantum effects is a diode in breakdown (partially uses tunnel-effect) and some exotic semiconductors.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I should qualify this a bit: Of course semiconductors use quantum effects. It is just the more bizarre ones (like tunneling) that are usually not needed. My apologies.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I thought that the entire operation of an NP junction, whether it be part of a diode or a transistor, was dependant on quantum tunnelling.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
No. No tunneling in a conducting PN junction except in breakdown, and there it is dependent on voltage and not the only type of conduction. At least as far as I understand this process. It has been about 30 years that I looked at the details.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.