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.
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.
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"
That part is at least easy to figure out. If you review the code, and then compile it, it should be identical to the application that they supply. If it isn't, than you're not reviewing the same code that is being shipped, or your compiler isn't the same as their compiler.
In many cities taxis are not a viable means of transportation. The regulatory capture where I live is so high that taxis are limited to an absurdly low number, and therefore it is almost impossible to get one at anything approaching a "busy" time. Even at "slow" times waits for taxis can easily exceed 30-45 minutes.
This is all in an effort to inflate the value of the taxi licenses which are held and traded by a very small handful of individuals who see them as an investment in their own right, and not as part of the business of providing transportation services.
This is the real reason people are willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that Uber is in fact an unlicensed taxi service. It's not that people really believe that Uber isn't a taxi service, it's that the existing taxi system is so broken by regulatory capture that people are willing to do anything to find an alternative.
The only reasons I ever heard for ditching Taxis in favour of things like Uber were: 1) Taxis have absolute fares which are too high 2) Taxis have artificially limited supply making it impossible to get a taxi at busy times 3) the lack of an easy to use app that matches you with the closest taxi at the right time 4) manual payment methods.
Everyone assumed that the drivers at Uber would be no better in any way than at the Taxis, only that they'd have less regulatory capture. In fact, this has been used by the taxi lobby to, in many cases effectively, try to block Uber from a market. People do tend to believe the taxi lobby when they say that Uber drivers aren't as well screened, and could be trouble. But they consider it a worthwhile trade-off to actually be able to get a ride in a reasonable amount of time, at a reasonable price, and using a convenient app and payment method.
Uber *IS* a taxi service "on the internet" doesn't change that, and the fact that they are immune to the laws that taxi companies must abide by is ludicrous. I however support them because the laws in question are horribly corrupt and cause more harm to society than they prevent. If taxi laws and regulations had stuck to safety (licensing, vehicle inspections, etc) and to enforcing fair trade (calibrated meters, maximum prices, etc.) and stayed away from protectionist tactics like limiting the number of taxis on the road and setting minimum prices, nobody would have wanted Uber to exist. This is a case of "the more you tighten your grip..."
Not entirely, streaming is ALSO the new CD. free streaming has killed the radio, but paid streaming with it's ability to request any song at any time has killed music ownership almost entirely.
Talk to professional home theatre installer, they spend hours on customizing shit. The harmony is a fraction of that.
I installed harmony remotes professionally for several months before our company wised up and stopped doing so. It was eating up WAY too much of our time in a customer's home. So if by "fraction" you mean "50% or more", then sure, you're absolutely correct.
Google also has the worst track record for long term support of any product. Using anything from Google is just begging to be hit with the plans obsolescence problem.
Around here consumer right laws aren't bad, but meaningless as there is no enforcement of any kind so all companies simply ignore them. How many thousands of dollars is it worth spending on lawyers to return a remote control?
It was just an example. Any video requires: screen, surround sound system, HDMI switch, whatever source I want to watch. Any audio requires: surround sound system, whatever audio source I want to listen to, and possibly the HDMI switch.
Flexible it may be, but if you read my complaints about the Harmony software being difficult to use, this is not exactly the solution, it makes the harmony system look... harmonious.
I don't think the public yet accepts that DRM on music is bad. Really people have simply switched away from owning music entirely. It's all streaming services now, and all of those are cloud based with no way to keep your music once you stop paying monthly. If you're using that as an example of a "win" for consumers, I think you're looking at the wrong industry.
And yet I have yet to find one with even half the functionality of the 7 year old Harmony remote I'm using. Please tell me what apps you find that are worth using, because I'm actively looking for a Harmony replacement, and this seems like the obvious option.
I also wouldn't buy it if the sources aren't available.
How's life without any technology? I agree about the idea of needing to control your own things as much as possible, but realistically you have a lot of technology that you don't have the source for. If you really are sticking to that, you aren't using any computer (you may have the source to the OS, but I doubt you have the source to what's running on the chips, or to the chips themselves which is just as important) You aren't using a car built in the past 20 years (they all have software, and I don't know of any manufacturer that publishes full sources) You don't have a TV, DVD player, gaming system, etc built in the past 10-20 years as they also all have at least some closed source software.
You can try to pretend you're living with full control, but the reality is that you're likely not that far different from most people who willingly run all sorts of stuff they have no source code for.
I think you underestimate the willingness of the average consumer to let companies screw them over. It's unlikely this will actually hurt Logitech in any meaningful way, and it may even benefit them as a certain percentage of users actually buy Logitech's newest version despite the fact that they really should know better.
It doesn't hurt any that, as pointed out by other respondents, there isn't nearly as much competition in this space as you'd think.
Unfortunately the cable company remotes can't compete with the feature set of something like a harmony. This isn't the case of a remote with 4 power buttons across the top or something, it really is a better remote in that with a single button it will turn a group of devices on, and change them all to the correct inputs for a specific activity, and when changing activities it will remember the current state of devices to change only the appropriate settings to support the new activity (e.g. if you're watching Netflix through a WD Live box and want to switch to listening to a CD, it will turn off the TV, but leave the surround sound system on, turn off the WD box, turn on the CD player, change the input on the surround sound system, and change the mode on the sound system to music instead of movie.)
Worse yet, there isn't nearly as much competition in this space as you might think, Logitech really is the massively dominant player here. I really like my Harmony remote, but I've always been worried about the cloud dependence (enough that I probably wouldn't have bought it myself, but when I got it as a gift I've enjoyed it) If/when I have to replace it though, I'm not sure exactly what I'll do. With my current setup I'd need 6 remotes without the Harmony, and 4 of those are needed just for the simple task of watching TV (and the cable company remote won't reliably control ANY of my devices other than their own cable box)
For most other companies that have tried this approach it's worked out great. And no, that's not sarcasm. It appears that very few future customers bother to research this sort of behaviour, it gets very little media attention overall, and unbelievably, a portion of the user base you just screwed over will actually buy your new product despite the fact that they really should know better.
Worse yet, this is becoming so widespread and common that it's actually hard to find a company that isn't willing to resort to these sorts of tactics, and consumers are actually coming to expect it, and actually don't seem to care.
I have a Logitech Harmony remote. It's a great remote, but the setup experience is absolutely abysmal. The software is Windows only, and dependant on a cloud service that may, or may not, exist tomorrow. Additionally about 80-90% of devices in the library seem to be incorrect in one small way or other (e.g. remote thinks a TV has more inputs than it actually does, resulting in the remote always cycling to the wrong one when changing inputs) which requires a large amount of manual workarounds to setup most systems. If that weren't bad enough, the workflow in their app makes these minor changes as painful as possible to accomplish because it's setup only to work with their specific envisioned perfect world workflow where you simply tell it what devices you have and it guesses at how you have them hooked together and what you might use each one for.
Knowing that the biggest issue was the software, not the hardware, I looked for alternative software, I figured that would also help if/when Logitech decided to discontinue my remote (which actually happened to a friend of mine with a slightly different model). Concordance looked like a godsend, it worked in Linux, and it wasn't affiliated with Logitech. Then I discovered that it mirrors the same workflow, and uses the same web service, and really just provides a way to get the data files from the website to the remote. This is extremely unfortunate as I has hoped to find an actual software independent of Logitech that could keep this thing going.
For now I'm still using the Harmony because it still works, and beats my old method of having 6 different remotes (4 of which were needed just for the simple task of watching TV). But if it stops working at some point (which seems likely, especially if I change any of my hardware and need to reprogram it) I highly doubt I'll be looking to Logitech for the next solution. Unfortunately, there isn't nearly as much competition in this particular space as one might think. (It should also be noted that it's getting harder to do this the same way too, as more devices are moving their remotes to bluetooth instead of IR, something that's much harder to make a universal remote for)
The odds of new customers heading this warning never to use Logitech products ever again is minuscule, meanwhile, it's likely at least a small percentage of the affected users will act against their own self interest and buy the new system despite knowing better from this experience.
End result for Logitech is likely positive, despite the fact that in a sane society it would sound their death knell.
If a page is written with lots of content so as to get users to click on the link in the search engine, but the user can't actually see the content because they'll be redirected away instead, the search engine shouldn't send users to the site, it's not like they can get at what they came to see anyway. That's what "bait and switch" is.
Google can obviously detect the practice, as Chrome is going to do so, so why not implement it as part of their search engine instead, that would provide far more value than in the browser. I'd much rather avoid clicking on the link in the first place than click on it and then get a message explaining what happened when I couldn't find the content I came for.
Redirect all you want. But if all the content that brought the search engine there is hidden by said re-direct, the search engine should stop sending people there (as they can't see what they came to see). Alternatively if all the content is after the redirect, that's the page the search engine should take people to, not the first page that does nothing but redirect the user.
Having the search engine look for this would eliminate the bs spamvertising sites without affecting a single legitimate use.
Maybe google could quit giving top rank in it's search engine to sites that do this. I don't care if someone wants to make a site like this, I care that when I search for a useful site I get one of these instead.
Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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"
That part is at least easy to figure out. If you review the code, and then compile it, it should be identical to the application that they supply. If it isn't, than you're not reviewing the same code that is being shipped, or your compiler isn't the same as their compiler.
In many cities taxis are not a viable means of transportation. The regulatory capture where I live is so high that taxis are limited to an absurdly low number, and therefore it is almost impossible to get one at anything approaching a "busy" time. Even at "slow" times waits for taxis can easily exceed 30-45 minutes.
This is all in an effort to inflate the value of the taxi licenses which are held and traded by a very small handful of individuals who see them as an investment in their own right, and not as part of the business of providing transportation services.
This is the real reason people are willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that Uber is in fact an unlicensed taxi service. It's not that people really believe that Uber isn't a taxi service, it's that the existing taxi system is so broken by regulatory capture that people are willing to do anything to find an alternative.
The only reasons I ever heard for ditching Taxis in favour of things like Uber were: 1) Taxis have absolute fares which are too high 2) Taxis have artificially limited supply making it impossible to get a taxi at busy times 3) the lack of an easy to use app that matches you with the closest taxi at the right time 4) manual payment methods.
Everyone assumed that the drivers at Uber would be no better in any way than at the Taxis, only that they'd have less regulatory capture. In fact, this has been used by the taxi lobby to, in many cases effectively, try to block Uber from a market. People do tend to believe the taxi lobby when they say that Uber drivers aren't as well screened, and could be trouble. But they consider it a worthwhile trade-off to actually be able to get a ride in a reasonable amount of time, at a reasonable price, and using a convenient app and payment method.
Uber *IS* a taxi service "on the internet" doesn't change that, and the fact that they are immune to the laws that taxi companies must abide by is ludicrous. I however support them because the laws in question are horribly corrupt and cause more harm to society than they prevent. If taxi laws and regulations had stuck to safety (licensing, vehicle inspections, etc) and to enforcing fair trade (calibrated meters, maximum prices, etc.) and stayed away from protectionist tactics like limiting the number of taxis on the road and setting minimum prices, nobody would have wanted Uber to exist. This is a case of "the more you tighten your grip..."
Not entirely, streaming is ALSO the new CD. free streaming has killed the radio, but paid streaming with it's ability to request any song at any time has killed music ownership almost entirely.
Talk to professional home theatre installer, they spend hours on customizing shit. The harmony is a fraction of that.
I installed harmony remotes professionally for several months before our company wised up and stopped doing so. It was eating up WAY too much of our time in a customer's home. So if by "fraction" you mean "50% or more", then sure, you're absolutely correct.
Google also has the worst track record for long term support of any product. Using anything from Google is just begging to be hit with the plans obsolescence problem.
Around here consumer right laws aren't bad, but meaningless as there is no enforcement of any kind so all companies simply ignore them.
How many thousands of dollars is it worth spending on lawyers to return a remote control?
It was just an example. Any video requires: screen, surround sound system, HDMI switch, whatever source I want to watch. Any audio requires: surround sound system, whatever audio source I want to listen to, and possibly the HDMI switch.
Having multiple devices is not at all uncommon.
c'mon Slashdot, get your act together, this very same story is still on the Slashdot front page!
I know dupes are a common theme on Slashdot, but at least wait until the original drops off the homepage!
Flexible it may be, but if you read my complaints about the Harmony software being difficult to use, this is not exactly the solution, it makes the harmony system look... harmonious.
I don't think the public yet accepts that DRM on music is bad. Really people have simply switched away from owning music entirely. It's all streaming services now, and all of those are cloud based with no way to keep your music once you stop paying monthly. If you're using that as an example of a "win" for consumers, I think you're looking at the wrong industry.
And yet I have yet to find one with even half the functionality of the 7 year old Harmony remote I'm using. Please tell me what apps you find that are worth using, because I'm actively looking for a Harmony replacement, and this seems like the obvious option.
I also wouldn't buy it if the sources aren't available.
How's life without any technology?
I agree about the idea of needing to control your own things as much as possible, but realistically you have a lot of technology that you don't have the source for. If you really are sticking to that, you aren't using any computer (you may have the source to the OS, but I doubt you have the source to what's running on the chips, or to the chips themselves which is just as important) You aren't using a car built in the past 20 years (they all have software, and I don't know of any manufacturer that publishes full sources) You don't have a TV, DVD player, gaming system, etc built in the past 10-20 years as they also all have at least some closed source software.
You can try to pretend you're living with full control, but the reality is that you're likely not that far different from most people who willingly run all sorts of stuff they have no source code for.
I think you underestimate the willingness of the average consumer to let companies screw them over. It's unlikely this will actually hurt Logitech in any meaningful way, and it may even benefit them as a certain percentage of users actually buy Logitech's newest version despite the fact that they really should know better.
It doesn't hurt any that, as pointed out by other respondents, there isn't nearly as much competition in this space as you'd think.
Unfortunately the cable company remotes can't compete with the feature set of something like a harmony. This isn't the case of a remote with 4 power buttons across the top or something, it really is a better remote in that with a single button it will turn a group of devices on, and change them all to the correct inputs for a specific activity, and when changing activities it will remember the current state of devices to change only the appropriate settings to support the new activity (e.g. if you're watching Netflix through a WD Live box and want to switch to listening to a CD, it will turn off the TV, but leave the surround sound system on, turn off the WD box, turn on the CD player, change the input on the surround sound system, and change the mode on the sound system to music instead of movie.)
Worse yet, there isn't nearly as much competition in this space as you might think, Logitech really is the massively dominant player here. I really like my Harmony remote, but I've always been worried about the cloud dependence (enough that I probably wouldn't have bought it myself, but when I got it as a gift I've enjoyed it) If/when I have to replace it though, I'm not sure exactly what I'll do. With my current setup I'd need 6 remotes without the Harmony, and 4 of those are needed just for the simple task of watching TV (and the cable company remote won't reliably control ANY of my devices other than their own cable box)
For most other companies that have tried this approach it's worked out great. And no, that's not sarcasm. It appears that very few future customers bother to research this sort of behaviour, it gets very little media attention overall, and unbelievably, a portion of the user base you just screwed over will actually buy your new product despite the fact that they really should know better.
Worse yet, this is becoming so widespread and common that it's actually hard to find a company that isn't willing to resort to these sorts of tactics, and consumers are actually coming to expect it, and actually don't seem to care.
Exactly this.
I have a Logitech Harmony remote. It's a great remote, but the setup experience is absolutely abysmal. The software is Windows only, and dependant on a cloud service that may, or may not, exist tomorrow. Additionally about 80-90% of devices in the library seem to be incorrect in one small way or other (e.g. remote thinks a TV has more inputs than it actually does, resulting in the remote always cycling to the wrong one when changing inputs) which requires a large amount of manual workarounds to setup most systems. If that weren't bad enough, the workflow in their app makes these minor changes as painful as possible to accomplish because it's setup only to work with their specific envisioned perfect world workflow where you simply tell it what devices you have and it guesses at how you have them hooked together and what you might use each one for.
Knowing that the biggest issue was the software, not the hardware, I looked for alternative software, I figured that would also help if/when Logitech decided to discontinue my remote (which actually happened to a friend of mine with a slightly different model). Concordance looked like a godsend, it worked in Linux, and it wasn't affiliated with Logitech. Then I discovered that it mirrors the same workflow, and uses the same web service, and really just provides a way to get the data files from the website to the remote. This is extremely unfortunate as I has hoped to find an actual software independent of Logitech that could keep this thing going.
For now I'm still using the Harmony because it still works, and beats my old method of having 6 different remotes (4 of which were needed just for the simple task of watching TV). But if it stops working at some point (which seems likely, especially if I change any of my hardware and need to reprogram it) I highly doubt I'll be looking to Logitech for the next solution. Unfortunately, there isn't nearly as much competition in this particular space as one might think. (It should also be noted that it's getting harder to do this the same way too, as more devices are moving their remotes to bluetooth instead of IR, something that's much harder to make a universal remote for)
Guess again.
The odds of new customers heading this warning never to use Logitech products ever again is minuscule, meanwhile, it's likely at least a small percentage of the affected users will act against their own self interest and buy the new system despite knowing better from this experience.
End result for Logitech is likely positive, despite the fact that in a sane society it would sound their death knell.
And the same now, some sites work on browsers other than chrome, some don't. Their loss.
And how is that in any way related to my comment?
If a page is written with lots of content so as to get users to click on the link in the search engine, but the user can't actually see the content because they'll be redirected away instead, the search engine shouldn't send users to the site, it's not like they can get at what they came to see anyway. That's what "bait and switch" is.
Google can obviously detect the practice, as Chrome is going to do so, so why not implement it as part of their search engine instead, that would provide far more value than in the browser. I'd much rather avoid clicking on the link in the first place than click on it and then get a message explaining what happened when I couldn't find the content I came for.
Redirect all you want. But if all the content that brought the search engine there is hidden by said re-direct, the search engine should stop sending people there (as they can't see what they came to see). Alternatively if all the content is after the redirect, that's the page the search engine should take people to, not the first page that does nothing but redirect the user.
Having the search engine look for this would eliminate the bs spamvertising sites without affecting a single legitimate use.
Maybe google could quit giving top rank in it's search engine to sites that do this. I don't care if someone wants to make a site like this, I care that when I search for a useful site I get one of these instead.