Comment by chubot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chubot | Hacker News Reader

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I feel like anyone drawing a line from deep learning to general AI also has this problem. And that appears to be a large part of Silicon Valley.

While I wasn't entirely convinced by a lot of arguments in the philosophy of mind as an undergrad 20 years ago, it definitely addresses problems "in the zeitgiest" now, e.g. with self-driving cars, etc.

And the conversation there is of a higher level than I see now.

I think taking a tiny bit of undergrad psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science, would help a lot of people think more clearly about AI. I didn't necessarily think that was true when I took it, but with hindsight I think there is a big hole in the conversation.

Gary Marcus is an AI practitioner with a psychology background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Marcus

he has a decidely different perspective that I think is a lot more grounded and reasoned: https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.00631

Also related: https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm

Agreed 100%. The media's conflation of "artificial intelligence" with neural networks is particularly irritating.

It would definitely be good for more "AI"-interested tech people to grapple with Searle, Nagel, Chalmers, even if you don't fully buy all their arguments.

> It would definitely be good for more "AI"-interested tech people to grapple with Searle, Nagel, Chalmers, even if you don't fully buy all their arguments.

No, it wouldn't, especially Searle whose best known argument in this area is entirely for a distinction which can by definition make no difference in the material universe. It might have theological/spiritual applications (though beyond holding open the possibility than certain material facts do not demand the naively obvious spiritual conclusions without itself rebutting those conclusions, it doesn't likely to bear much load even there), but from a material perspective it's pure intellectual autoeroticism that has already been granted far too much attention by people who could contribute more to human progress by spending that time on (almost literally) any other pursuit.

It also matters what problems you work on at the beginning of your career and who you are surrounded by.

People who work on things that nobody in their group has good answers for, become much more aware of other disciplines and the histories, as they go looking for better answers.

But if entering a group working on known paths, or existing ideas (being tested), then wandering too far from base camp is going to look unfocused. The existing path has to hit a dead end. Which in many fields/professions takes decades.

Herbert Simon started off with Political Science. But look where the path takes him as he doesn't find answers on what he is working on - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon

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