An extensive letter from Edsger Dijkstra to my 19 year old self (1989)
mastodon.online
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"...the question of whether Machines Can Think, a question of which we now know that it is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim."
In the same "post" he also talks a lot about hype and how it hurts the field. The last few years of computing have been exceptionally hype driven, even more than usual. We could've been better with a few more critics like him in that period.
"No people"'s comments only seem to be worth enough in attention currency once things explode and it turns into an "I told you so".
At least within the world of facehype.com and hypper.com et al. Behind closed doors people are probably more critical.
It's the kind of criticism that leaves room for genuine acceptance of the technical excellence and usefulness of those tools, while not buying the hype in the slightest.
EWDs are a gold mine. He's an exceptional thinker and his prose is beautiful.
books listed at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra#Selected_pu...
1) A Method of Programming.
2) A Discipline of Programming.
Browse the EWDs and read those whose titles interest you. My favourites are those dealing with Program Correctness and Languages.
Note that understanding Dijkstra can be hard; so don't be discouraged if you don't "get" something at the first read.
On the cruelty of really teaching computer science: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd10xx/EWD1036.PDF
How do we tell truths that might hurt?: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/ewd498.htm...
The humble programmer: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340...
The notational conventions I adopted and why: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd13xx/EWD1300.PDF
The Mathematical Divide: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd12xx/EWD1268.PDF
Why American Computing Science seems incurable: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd12xx/EWD1209.PDF
Next time use this: "Is it your belief that we are all idiots?"
From: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/misra/Speeches.dir/Banquet-W...
Having said that, I don't think any serious AI researcher would claim that their creations are close to actually thinking.
I don't think anybody seriously believes that -- but setting reasonable public expectations from emerging technologies is at least in part the responsibility of the "technically literate class" broadly defined, research scientists, practitioners, even developers in ML/AI-adjacent fields such as myself.
Stuff like "GPT3 is coming for your job" is already out to the press. Nobody thinks that, nobody has even said that, but nobody has done anything to set expectations straight either.
We ought to be more responsible in this respect.
Which is pretty freaking cool.
But yes, your deeper point is hard to dispute; this business has always run on punctuated equilibrium. We may be in for another 50+ years of "AI winter." I doubt it, though. It feels different this time.
Some said it though, I remember a prominent AI professor talking about radiologists losing their jobs on twitter and the ensuing mess surrounding it.
Except that, I agree strongly with everything else you pointed out.
It doesn't mean it is right, but it is a good reminder that there is a high chance it is just me missing something.
As for the "marketing" thing, it is hard even for a full time teacher not to treat their audience as idiots and avoid losing them completely. Good teachers, when unsure, prefer to go the "idiot" path, not ideal, but at least your audience may understand something in the end.
I don't think that his statement is meant to be an answer, rather, I think it's meant to be a statement to jump off of. It's bringing up how definitions matter, and that in different contexts the answer to the same questions could be yes or no.
Now even though Submarines (usually) have propellors, one can easily imagine a design that used limb-like oars to propel it. Does this mean that such a strange submarine is swimming?
The point Dijkstra was making is that the comparison is pointless: there is a fundamental difference between an organism swimming and a machine moving through water. Trying to equate these two actions is pointless, since it adds no new depth of understanding. He therefore dismisses the question of "can machines think" as having no usefulness.
My intent in quoting was to point out how careless usage of words in AI can fool people, especially the layperson and create wrong expectations. Most can see the difference in the usage of word 'swim' w.r.t fish and submarines, but public knowledge about AI is not at the point where they can make a similar distinction when using 'think' or 'chat' between human and machine.
He uses it differently though, he's using that sentence to criticize Alan Turing's early hypothesizing about AI. If you're interested, that document linked has more context.
Too often i see people being dismissive of Dijkstra because of his aphorisms, they don't understand the context that drove it.
In my mind he was a "True Perfectionist" who demanded Perfection of himself and everybody else. It was a rare uncompromising and mathematically focused mind well suited to the then nascent "Computing Science" field.
it is a shame that io is not more well known, because it is a brilliant achievement; by virtue of a simple syntactic trick it turns explicit cps code from its usual impenetrable form into something quite readable
Viewing continuations as the "mother of all monads", this work (1989) could have anticipated Moggi (1991) if there had been continued development in that direction! (it would've taken much more work though, as IIRC EWD noted Io as presented wasn't properly associative in ';')
levien's io is maybe less practical, though it's hard to tell since nobody's done the work of putting together an implementation with batteries
my notes on it from sometime in 02007–02009 are at https://dercuano.github.io/notes/raph-io.html but i didn't have a copy of the actual paper at the time, just some badly ocred code and quotes from the paper, plus some commentary
These things seem so small and would probably take less than an hour for an adult but would mean the world to a kid.
Presumably this was requested by whoever currently owns the place.
Actually I have an even more amazing artifact. He wrote out the entire book "Predicate Calculus and Program Semantics" as a manuscript, beautifully formatted two pages to a letter-sized sheet, page numbers and all. It is nearly perfect but does have a few crossed out bits. I can't find that anywhere online, and just sent an email to the EWD archive. I'd be very surprised if I have the only extant copy, but if so I will certainly get it properly preserved.
A legend like Edgar Dijkstra referring to his mind as simple is insane to me. Such humility.
[0]: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/E...
I hope we go back to that someday.
This letter would be even more amazing if he did not.
A legend like Dijkstra spending several hours to work out what the author was saying in the letter and to offer advice.
I would expect a terse 3 line reply if any replay at all.
Instead he is kind enough to put real effort into it.
I wish I'll be able to help my kids get these kinds of chances in whatever field or endeavour they chose. Writing letters and getting people's attention, centering them on the impact a very little of their time can be a huge boost, help, to a young person, seems like a parent's job.
You can use e.g. twitter/nitter instead.
Anyway, it is a big step in the wrong direction, and people that care about web or privacy really shouldn't post on mastodon in its current form.
You realise twitter runs loads of JS, including all kinds of tracking. However unlike mastodon, twitter scripts are not open and reviewed.
Let me repeat my point again: don't publish text on media that javascript walls it. It is so wrong on so many levels. In regards of privacy, safety, environment, speed, accessibility, etc etc etc, javascript wall is total bonkers, and should be considered as unacceptable.