What is Artificial Intelligence?

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Jan Sand
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Re: What is Artificial Intelligence?

Post by Jan Sand »

One of the essential problems of discussing intelligence is that it is not, as far as I can discern, something that can be measured simply by numbers. Some individuals with an extremely low general intellectual level can process amazing questions with dates and musical abilities. It is not a quantity like water that can be measured in teaspoons or cups or gallons.One goldfish might be measured at a negligible intellect compared to a human but I doubt ten thousand goldfish could solve an algebraic problem. each creature is designed by the strictures of survival to do well with its necessities but not much more. A computer is designed to function in a specialized area in ways quite different to humans and humans benefit with those differences. Computers have no hungers or sex drives or ambitions to be superior to other machines or be interested in commanding the world. It has to be directed to solve problems but those directions, like the problems with Aladdin's lamp, may have disastrous unexpected consequences.
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JamesOfSeattle
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Re: What is Artificial Intelligence?

Post by JamesOfSeattle »

Jan Sand wrote: May 11th, 2018, 1:48 pm A computer is designed to function in a specialized area in ways quite different to humans and humans benefit with those differences.
For now, and we will assume computer = computer running a specific program.
Computers have no hungers or sex drives or ambitions to be superior to other machines
But they will. Already some computers [robots] hunger for power and go find a power station when their charge is low. Sex bots, when they become more interactive, will have sex drives. (Users will want to be desired.) And ambition may not be the right word. It’s kinda hard to see the utility in creating a robot that compares itself with other robots and is satisfied when it judges itself superior to other robots. Seems more likely that we might create something that simply wants to keep improving.
or be interested in commanding the world.
Seems like this one is to be avoided.
It has to be directed to solve problems but those directions, like the problems with Aladdin's lamp, may have disastrous unexpected consequences.
They could also have wonderful unexpected consequences. Personally, I’m hopeful.

*
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ooPKoo
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Re: What is Artificial Intelligence?

Post by ooPKoo »

What would be put up as "rules" when something to count as truly AI. Alot have changed since Turing.

The first one to pop into my mind is survival instinct.
Jan Sand
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Re: What is Artificial Intelligence?

Post by Jan Sand »

The central problem involved in artificial intelligence seems to me to be that it is not a problem to be solved but a doorway to a path with unknown potentials. According to legend, God lost his way with apples and snakes, and there are an awful lot of apples and snakes involved in devising a life form with possibilities not tackled with the basics of survival which the prime driver of evolution. It's one hell of a strange adventure and gauging how humans have fared with the simple problem of learning to live with each other I am not over optimistic.
Jan Sand
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Re: What is Artificial Intelligence?

Post by Jan Sand »

Carpentering

The first god, perhaps,

Thrust out of the black

Star filled sky

As a fist of fire.

It thumped the earth

With nickel iron

And set the field aflame.

Men puzzled eyes into its surface

And a mouth agape.

A clever carpenter

Grew a body for the head.

Very quickly, an interpreter

Discovered how to tell

Its nickel iron thoughts.

Good interpreters translated well

And men thrived.

Mad interpreters made men

Do strange things.

It took centuries for good sense

To see the god as stone and wood.

Men missed this god,

So a clever carpenter

In silicon and plastic

Is putting one together

More satisfactory.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: What is Artificial Intelligence?

Post by ThomasHobbes »

ooPKoo wrote: May 12th, 2018, 6:27 pm What would be put up as "rules" when something to count as truly AI. Alot have changed since Turing.

The first one to pop into my mind is survival instinct.
What has Turing got to do with this question.
"survival instinct" - what are you talking about?
Jan Sand
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Re: What is Artificial Intelligence?

Post by Jan Sand »

Adding a survival instinct to an AI when other aspects of that creation prove troublesome could result in a contest between humanity and a program that could possibly out think humanity and invent highly destructive tools to survive.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: What is Artificial Intelligence?

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Jan Sand wrote: May 13th, 2018, 11:28 am Adding a survival instinct to an AI when other aspects of that creation prove troublesome could result in a contest between humanity and a program that could possibly out think humanity and invent highly destructive tools to survive.
This is philosophy not science fiction. When it comes to survival instinct, nothing has changed since Turing. AI does not have any sense or instinct. It would be a misunderstanding of AI to suggest that this is a meaningful suggestion.
Jan Sand
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Re: What is Artificial Intelligence?

Post by Jan Sand »

The false separation of philosophy. science fiction and other human fantasies is amusing, but hardly relevant. They are all as enjoyable as other excesses and delusions abound in all categories.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: What is Artificial Intelligence?

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Jan Sand wrote: May 13th, 2018, 12:15 pm The false separation of philosophy. science fiction and other human fantasies is amusing, but hardly relevant. They are all as enjoyable as other excesses and delusions abound in all categories.
It about attending to the thread.

What IS artificial intelligence.
NOT what might it become.
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Sy Borg
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Re: What is Artificial Intelligence?

Post by Sy Borg »

Amazed how you can still do the tough stuff on forums, Jan. By 92 I'll be lucky if my bones have not already decomposed :)

Given that no one seem to entirely know what AI is, skating around the tangential aspects of the problem would seem fair enough.

Also, Hobbses, your Turing statement is out of date. AI cold callers can now fool people into believing they are speaking with a person. In a demonstration, with a taped phone call played to an audience, the crowd laughed at the realism and appropriateness of the machine's strategic ums and ahs and pretence to be spending time thinking.

It's still just a simulation, of course - black inside.
Jan Sand
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Re: What is Artificial Intelligence?

Post by Jan Sand »

AI is an algorithmic adventure undergoing immense innovation. To rationally ask what it is requires a specific time and place. Perhaps you want to know what it is in Oklahoma at a specific basement laboratory where a brilliant twelve year old has created an artificial rat that is creating a new form of calculus. Unfortunately I am not informed on that. But I am free to speculate as to whether that rat might gather a group of indoctrinated real rats to conquer Oklahoma and make it civilized. The dangers of that are possibly worth considering. Of course a Turing examination of an artificial rat to determine if it can simulate a human requires a knowledge of what might be a human. A view of US politics may totally invalidate the concept of a Turing test.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: What is Artificial Intelligence?

Post by ThomasHobbes »

[amazon=][/amazon]
Greta wrote: May 13th, 2018, 5:49 pm Amazed how you can still do the tough stuff on forums, Jan. By 92 I'll be lucky if my bones have not already decomposed :)

Given that no one seem to entirely know what AI is, skating around the tangential aspects of the problem would seem fair enough.

Also, Hobbses, your Turing statement is out of date. AI cold callers can now fool people into believing they are speaking with a person. In a demonstration, with a taped phone call played to an audience, the crowd laughed at the realism and appropriateness of the machine's strategic ums and ahs and pretence to be spending time thinking.

It's still just a simulation, of course - black inside.
In what way is any of this a response to what I am saying?
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Sy Borg
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Re: What is Artificial Intelligence?

Post by Sy Borg »

ThomasHobbes wrote: May 14th, 2018, 4:37 pm [amazon=][/amazon]
Greta wrote: May 13th, 2018, 5:49 pm Amazed how you can still do the tough stuff on forums, Jan. By 92 I'll be lucky if my bones have not already decomposed :)

Given that no one seem to entirely know what AI is, skating around the tangential aspects of the problem would seem fair enough.

Also, Hobbses, your Turing statement is out of date. AI cold callers can now fool people into believing they are speaking with a person. In a demonstration, with a taped phone call played to an audience, the crowd laughed at the realism and appropriateness of the machine's strategic ums and ahs and pretence to be spending time thinking.

It's still just a simulation, of course - black inside.
In what way is any of this a response to what I am saying?
Hobbes Choice wrote:... nothing has changed since Turing
Which is wrong. It was only a few posts ago.
Karpel Tunnel
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Re: What is Artificial Intelligence?

Post by Karpel Tunnel »

ThomasHobbes wrote: May 13th, 2018, 12:01 pm
Jan Sand wrote: May 13th, 2018, 11:28 am Adding a survival instinct to an AI when other aspects of that creation prove troublesome could result in a contest between humanity and a program that could possibly out think humanity and invent highly destructive tools to survive.
This is philosophy not science fiction. When it comes to survival instinct, nothing has changed since Turing. AI does not have any sense or instinct. It would be a misunderstanding of AI to suggest that this is a meaningful suggestion.
The people designing AIs will including anything that gives the AI computing power. Hence they will mimic other aspect of animal intelligence (that is including humans). They have experimented with using rat brain portions to compute, they will model using other materials that still model animal and human brains. Since they currently are trying to create AIs that learn and are motivated to learn, there are good reasons to assume that AIs will be made in any way that enhances their speed and scope of learning. Once you recreate brains, essentially, I think it is hardly science fiction - which in any case has often been correct about what is coming - to consider the possibility that AIs will be like us in a number of ways and not simply super enhanced laptops. We now know that our minds depend on an interaction between the emotional and computational aspects to be effective learners and decision makers. Current neuroscience is not lost on the AI makers and unfortunately they are quite prepared to do anything, since AI offers both power and money.
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