# Most progress in AI is hype



## Ray McCarthy (May 19, 2016)

Watson is a party trick, a special interface on a Human curated database.
Facebook stuff supposed to be automatic is human curated.
Google use humans to tune search
Computers winning at Go or Chess use brute force, not AI
Chat bots today are no better than Eliza (1966)
Machine learning = Add stuff to database automatically and then have human curate it
Neural Network = A way to use an array of computers or multiple cores. Not related to real brains. 



			
				Andrew Orlowski said:
			
		

> Jaron Lanier's observation that in order to make AI seem impressive, we first have to make ourselves stupid, holds true. My own personal litmus test for AI breakthrough is whether a computer can distinguish between sarcasm and irony. So far, none can. Can the AI actually do humour?



You wanted innovation? We gave you Clippy the Paperclip in your IM client



			
				Andrew Orlowski said:
			
		

> What the chatbot wars reveal, then, is a Silicon Valley that, far from being disruptive and innovative, is desperately uninventive, and creepy with it. Now that the low-hanging fruit (search, free music, free email) has been plucked, we can see them for what they are, quite transparently, which is consumer data slurping operations.



Since I wrote my AI short story in 1971 or 1972, I learnt programming, Prolog, Lisp, had AI courses, read articles in ACM and elsewhere and studied Expert systems.


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## J Riff (May 19, 2016)

Black Goo anyone? The logic of AI is not neccesarily good... it likely leads to a horror story rather than science fiction.


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## psikeyhackr (May 19, 2016)

Yeah, I tell people it is simulated intelligence not artificial intelligence.   It is hilarious that we encounter the terms AI and Big Data but hardly ever see *von Neumann machine*.  That is what nearly all of these devices really are.  They manipulate symbols but do not UNDERSTAND symbols.  So lots of software is written to give the bots the "appearance" that they understand.  They simulate intelligence without actually achieving it.  So we get semantic debates about what constitutes "understanding".

They impress people who are never taught to comprehend how von Neumann machines work and most have never even heard the term.   IBM hired John von Neumann as a consultant in 1952 but I never heard any mention of his name when I worked there.






Jeez!  I don't know how I would explain the difference between sarcasm and irony.

psik


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## Ray McCarthy (May 19, 2016)

psikeyhackr said:


> I tell people it is simulated intelligence not artificial intelligence.


Good idea.
The only computers we have are variants for Von Neumann and Harvard (a variant of Von Neumann) all of which are limited implementations of Touring machine as they don’t have infinite memory (tape). So ultimately they ALL run programs created by humans, functionality is decided at design time. 
A Machine Learning system programmed for poker may get "better" at poker but it won't learn chess and certainly not a natural language. No computer "learns" the way people do. Even some simple creatures have more flexibility and "learning" ability than any computer system. The computer systems are fragile and need people over many years to find and fix mistakes (bugs and flaws).


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## tinkerdan (May 20, 2016)

This sounds like a lot of people I know:


psikeyhackr said:


> They simulate intelligence without actually achieving it.  So we get semantic debates about what constitutes "understanding".


: And they received a degree for that simulation.


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## Ray McCarthy (May 20, 2016)

tinkerdan said:


> And they received a degree for that simulation.


I've been involved with quite a few students doing masters and PhDs. It seems the value of the content isn't the important thing, but putting in time, effort and doing the thesis according to the rules. Actually, in terms of learning HOW to do projects and research, rather than end result, that might be a reasonable approach.
I don't think people should mistake Uni papers or IBM patents as evidence of anything important, feasible, economic or even true. It's not ultimately the goal. The goal is qualifications, funding, employment and in case of Patents, more about have IP so as to sue or constrain the competition.


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## Stephen Palmer (May 20, 2016)

Artificial intelligence is the easy option. What's difficult is artificial consciousness. Most people in the AI field seem to use the terms interchangeably, which is a profound mistake.

In my novel _Beautiful Intelligence_ I try to disentangle the two.


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## J Riff (May 20, 2016)

And, if they ever can make a real living creature it will probably be Frankenstein all over again.


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## psikeyhackr (Aug 8, 2016)

*Artificial intelligence is dead: long live data analytics*



> In 1967 Marvin Minsky, co-founder of MIT’s AI laboratory, proclaimed that the problem of AI would be substantially solved within a generation. Minsky’s optimism proved to be misplaced and by the 1970s, agencies funding this research had become frustrated at the lack of progress. As a result, funding all but dried up.
> 
> The field recovered in the early 1980s, but again fell victim to massive expectations and by 1987 nobody wanted to fund AI research. The AI winter closed in yet again. Research stalled.
> 
> ...


Artificial intelligence is dead: long live data analytics

psik


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## Nick B (Aug 8, 2016)

AI, SI, is there a real difference? Ray, you say that AI is really just a great database with a fancy interface, well, arn't humans really just a database with a fancy interface?  It is a great debate!


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## psikeyhackr (Aug 8, 2016)

Haven't read this yet, but want to keep the link:

*What’s the Difference Between Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning?*
The Difference Between AI, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning? | NVIDIA Blog

psik


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## BAYLOR (Aug 9, 2016)

But that is precisely the danger no one sees . The AI's want us to think that they are not real so they can lull us into a sense of complacency.  It's part of their long range  plans for world domination.


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## tinkerdan (Aug 16, 2016)

Interesting, though somewhat old, food for thought.
I Had a Dream: AAAI Presidential Address | Bledsoe | AI Magazine


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