The dark ages of AI: A panel discussion at AAAI-84 (1985)
researchgate.net
researchgate.net
All of which happened. That was the "AI Winter".
The "Fifth Generation" was an initiative by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry in Japan to develop a new generation of computers intended to run Prolog. Yes, really.[1]
The "Strategic Computing Initiative" was a DARPA-funded push on AI in the 1980s. DARPA pulled the plug in 1987.
I got an MSCS from Stanford in 1985. Many of the AI faculty from that period were in deep denial about this. I could see that expert systems were way overrated. I'd done previous work with automatic theorem proving, and was painfully aware of how brittle inference systems are.
Each round of AI has been like that. Good idea, claims that strong AI is just around the corner, good idea hits its limit, field stuck. I've seen four cycles of this in my lifetime.
At least this time around, machine learning has substantial commercial applications and generates more than enough revenue to fund itself. It's a broadly useful technology. Expert systems were a niche. There's enough money and enough hardware now that if someone has the next good idea, it will be implementable. But strong AI from improvements to machine learning? Probably not.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Computing_Initiative
I got hired in 1984 into the AI group at Boeing Computer Services (neither the AI group nor BCS exists any more, and yes, it was part of that Boeing); I was in the Natural Language Processing group (the expert systems group was a different set of people). I left in 1987 to do s.t. else. By that time, we had built a syntactic parser of English that covered most everything in "standard" English (but without most of the probabilistic apparatus that modern parsers have). It was a solution in search of a problem.
After I left, the rest of the NLP team came up with the problem. When Boeing builds an aircraft, they have hundreds, if not thousands, of manuals. (No comment on the 737 MAX...) The planes are sold to airlines around the world, many of whose employees don't understand English anywhere near as well as a native speaker would. Boeing wanted its writers of manuals to write in simplified English. There was (and is) a standard for that, but it was very hard to ensure that writers conformed to it. The solution was to rip out all the "interesting" constructions from my grammar, and retain only the constructions and lexicon that conformed to the simplified (technical) English standard. Then the manuals got pushed through the parser; anything that didn't parse had to be re-written to conform to the grammar. And (I think, remember this was after I left) if anything parsed too ambiguously, it was sent for a rewrite as well.
And that's how a 1980s AI program is still in use today.
• Interactively acquire information from video, Web pages, hologlasses (electronic glasses with holographic-like overlays), online data bases, sensors, articles, human speech and gestures, etc.
• Real-time integration of massive pervasively inconsistent information
• Self-informative in the sense of knowing its own goals, plans, history, provenance of its information and having relevant information about its own strengths and weaknesses.
• Close human interaction using hologlasses for secure mobile communication.
• No closed-form algorithmic solution is possible to implement the above capabilities
• Reusable so that advances in one area can readily be used elsewhere without having to start over from scratch.
• Scalable in all important dimensions meaning that there are no hard barriers to continual improvement in the above areas, i.e., system performance continually significantly improves.
A large project (analogous to Manhattan and Apollo) is required to meet strategic challenges for Intelligent Systems and S5G (Secure 5G).
See the following for an outline of technology involved:
Do you see any reason that the technology outlined in the article cannot be implemented by 2025?
What if all AI tech that has come before sucks because there is a fundamental limit to what algorithms can do, and that limit is much less (infinitely less) than what human intelligence can do?
There is a fundamental assumption behind all AI research that the human mind can be simulated by a Turing machine, and no one has verified that assumption. AI research is just floating on the materialistic bias that the mind is reducible to the matter in the brain. We could very well have a supernatural soul, and thus the materialistic bias is completely wrong.
Thus, I don't see any reason the technology can be implemented by any date.
You didn't give any reason why you think that technology in the preprint cannot be implemented by 2025.
What I mean is the novels as a whole correctly label the halting machines, an unreasonable assumption to be sure. That would prevent the novels from being computable.
If real novels somehow exhibit an equivalent characteristic, then that would prevent real novels from being computable. Perhaps the logical consistency of good novels would be such a characteristic. We probably cannot depend on novels being perfectly consistent, but still consistent to a greater degree than we can achieve by randomly generating bitstrings.
The objection would be that a finite set of axioms can generate consistent novels, so there is also some other criterion that is necessary to make the novels uncomputable. I would say this second criterion is novelty, defined as an increase in Kolmogorov complexity.
Using a single set of axioms to enumerate an infinite set of novels will hit a novelty plateau, as per the proof of uncomputability of Kolmogorov complexity.
So, based on these two criteria, one can derive a hand wavy argument that novels in general are uncomputable.
My understanding is quantum physics disproves the 'clockwork universe' because it is probabilistic instead of deterministic. Nothing to do with using real numbers.
Also, even if the universe made use of real numbers, the universe can still be computable in an asymptotic sense, which is still inadequate to violate the law of information conservation.
Violation of said law requires essentially non mathematical entities, such as halting oracles and non stochastic processes (neither deterministic, random, nor combination thereof). None of which are dealt with in the STEM fields.
I would define intelligence as the ability to increase net information in a closed system. Something no algorithm can do, per the conservation of information.
When you have AIs that can do arbitrary work that humans can do, what prevents other humans from simply cutting out the humans that want to do that work for AI?
E.g. here's an experiment I ran with an EEG. Seems pretty tangible.
https://mindmatters.ai/2019/12/playing-tetris-shows-that-tru...
I honestly don't understand why these sorts of ideas receive so much friction. I cannot think of logically coherent objections to them. They seem very scientifically testable to me.
Because then it stops being metaphysical and becomes physical.
Now as to your central problem, conciousness being beamed to brain. The reason why it gets so much friction is that it flies agains a massive amount of tangible evidence and research that brain generates conciousness. It also falls to Occams' razor very easily (like the idea of ether medium did - a PhD in electrical engineering should know this). And in it's core it is basically the same as "soul" - intangible, immeasurable, unknown entity with scientifically unknowable properties.
In order to bring it from the realm of metaphysics (matters of souls, virtues, etc - read Thomas Acquinus and continue towards antica via Augustinus to better understand what metaphysics is and how it is different from scientific knowledge), you have to propose both a full hypothesis on how this "brain as a receiver" works, and a set of reproducible experiments to show your theory to be true.
Jesus Christ, I never thought that I, a person with no degree, will ever explain the basics of epistemiology and scientific method to a PhD on the internet...
Or simply, why do people behave differently when they are drunk? I mean, it's only their body that is drunk, not their soul (or wherever the mind supposedly resides), so how can alcohol have an impact on the mind?
Why does bending my TV antenna have predictable effects on the signal I receive? Why doesn't this imply my TV signal is produced by the antenna instead of received by the antenna?
Answer these questions, then apply your answers to your questions.
The act of forgetting is itself interesting. How is the information removed from the immaterial mind, and why things like having enough sleep have an impact on how much the immaterial mind remembers?
I still fail to see how these sorts of arguments show the mind must be physical. We have many examples of interfaces, where damaging the interface can impact the transmission, but does not thereby entail the interface is the transmission.
On the other hand, why do amnesia victims sometimes regain their memories, and even more(!), after brain damage if the mind is just the brain? Why can people live normal, even high performing lives, while missing most of their brain if the mind is just the brain? How can we explain out of body experiences, where the person learns information they cannot have learned any other way, if the mind is just the brain? How can consciousness arise from non sentient matter? How can we think about immaterial, abstract concepts if mind = brain?
In my opinion, the arguments for mind = brain largely depend on logical fallacies, as explained above. And, there are also phenomena that are very difficult and even impossible to explain if mind = brain is true. Additionally, I haven't gotten into this, but there are a number of thought experiments that indicate mind = brain is logically incoherent. So, the most parsinomous explanation is that mind != brain.
Additionally, can you prove the contrary, that every behavior is the result of an equation? If you cannot, why make a hard assumption either way? What does that gain us?
What if weak AI systems are extremely useful? What if we don't need to mimic the human mind to create intelligent systems? What if machine intelligence is very different than human intelligence?
We may never build a replica of a human brain. I think it would be absurdly lucky for the Turing model to be the correct one for understanding the human mind since it was developed without much knowledge of how the human mind works. But is that the only way for AI to be successful in your opinion? I don't understand that perspective.
I have noticed human emotions and intelligence seem to be at odds with each other. Sometimes they are even a trade-off. The increase of one may lead to the decrease of the other. If we look around, humans today have the most advanced technologies in history, but are our lives really better compared to people's in the past? Materialistic wise, certainly yes because they are products directly produced by technologies, but mentally and emotionally it could arguably be worse.
AI and techs keep getting better and better everyday, but then human have to work more with longer hours and higher stress. We all thought the machines are supposed to help us human but it's actually the other way around. We work tirelessly days and nights in order to keep making those machines better and more advanced, but in return our lives have not seen many meaningful improvements, and even arguably worse than before in some areas. Individually our personal ability has limits and naturally it evolves very slowly, but the power of AI machines is potentially unlimited and growing at an even faster rate than Moore's law. We seem to be collectively working to make machine much better than us while we are remaining relatively the same individually. Are technlogies actually enslaving us?
We keep buying things that don't really serve us much. We have a lot of stuff now but they don't mean much. If something broke, meh we will just get another one. It's just another item and it will get shipped here tomorrow. We didn't have as much in the past but every little thing carried much greater value. Even the most simplest thing could fascinate and brought us joy.
We humans today already operate based on rules and algorithms dictated by the machines. We still don't know how our brains function organically (memory, consciousness, etc...), but in the quest of trying to make AI becoming human-like, we have created AI neural networks to simulate our brain. The danger is that even though we still don't know how our real brain functions, but we have now turned around and claimed that the human brain works in a similar way under the same principles of an AI neural network. We are enforcing AI rules onto ourselves.
This is a dangerous assumption to make simply because AI does not have emotions. Once we begin to operate strictly under these rules and principles that are dictated by AI, we would soon lose the attributes and characteristics of what made us human. Our emotional spectrum may get increasingly shorten.
TV shows and movies are an example as they are a form of story telling that have biggest influences on us at the emotional level. It's no coincidence that "Seinfeld" and "Friends" are still the two best tv shows today. Many movies that are considered as best were also made from a while ago. Despite the most advanced technologies, why is it that today we can't seem to tell stories that bring out the same level of emotional reponse and intensity as before? They all seem to lack the genuity and inspiration that the previous generation once had.
Is it because AI do not understand human emotions so its algorithms cannot accurately factor that into consideration? One can say that today humans are the ones who write those algorithms so maybe we can add in compenents to account for that? But just like the example above, if we don't even understand how our brain works, how can we simulate the machine to accurately reflect us? In the future, machines are supposed to learn and write all the codes by itself without human intervention, what would likely happen then? Would we still retain the ability to even understand those codes? Would it possible that human may slowly evolve into machines? In trying to make those machines becoming like us, we may instead become like machines.
More seriously, we are almost about to
i) Generate a good book using a short intro.
ii) Generate a meaningful video using a few photos and a basic text scenario.
Which makes us closer to generate movies on demand (say in 2025) and then good luck to people claiming that the current progress in AI is a bubble.
You’re confusing a 1000 monkeys (transformers) with 1 human intelligence (AGI). That giant leap hasn’t been met.
Edit: I was right, he is an engineer and not a researcher who is active in the field.
Instead, if you know more, share some of what you know. Then we all can learn something.
> The Battle of Austerlitz was the decisive French victory against Napoleon
It didn't even catch that Napoleon was the leader of the French as described in the source snippet. And this was when it just generated text of similar size as the input. Based on just that paper I highly doubt that this method will generalize to creating entire books.
see, e.g., https://gluebenchmark.com/leaderboard/