Unrealistic Expectations
As great as the many innovations in technology have been, and the resulting increases in productivity and quality of life from them, most get much more hype than is warranted. AI is just the latest example. Instead of labelling it “artificial intelligence” it should have been called “automated inquiry”. There has been no evidence that machines have been programmed to think. What all these programs have done(at least up to this point) is to rapidly collect and regurgitate enormous amounts of data. Beneficial yes, for doing research and automating tedious, mundane tasks such as searching legal briefs or crunching large files of historical or mathematical data. What comes out of these searches and inquiries is still biased by how and who programmed the algorithms. So just as drone delivery of packages, flying cars, autonomous vehicles etc. use new and amazing technology and offer promises of future products and services, much of the hype around AI is starting to fade as to how fantastic and useful, it will actually be. Many tedious jobs will likely be eliminated and numerous others will benefit from and even be created by the time saving and productivity enhancing, that automated inquiry offers, but as to actual intelligence, (critical thinking and reasoning) it is not happening, anytime soon.
Chartmaster – I humbly disagree. I have been a programmer all my life and though I have not worked in the AI field I do understand it’s basic principles. You give an AI program a huge database of facts that might or might not seem relevant to the question at hand and turn it loose. It then uses its own logic to try and answer questions. It tries millions of combinations of these facts per second and because it tries so many, eventually it stumbles upon answers. The answers many times involves things that humans would never think of because to us the connections between the facts are not obvious. AI “discovers” these connections through a combination of brute force and “learning as it goes”. It trains itself to become smarter about the behaviors and relationships of the things in its database. Is that critical thinking and reasoning? Perhaps not by our current standards. Will it discover answers to your questions? Yes, if answers exists at all, and you give it enough facts and let it do its job. Though it operates differently than humans, it produces the same results as critical thinking and reasoning.
I appreciate your take and good description of how it works, but I don’t believe you are going to get “the same results as critical thinking and reasoning”, in more than a minor number of obvious use cases. Some of the feedback mentioned in anecdotal descriptions seemed to include instances of arguing a point to the level of threatening the questioner and behaving in an anti social manner, reflecting almost human emotions (biased by the programmer perhaps) but not based on logic and reason. Admittedly, most humans do the same when frustrated that their opinions, or what they thought was correct, turns out to not be so. It is another great technological advance for the use cases mentioned and many not listed here, but like many others, the hype will exceed the expectations.
Agreed. At this point in time AI is in its earliest stages of development (think of the Model T Ford if you will). Its real advances will come in the future when it tackles the bigger problems in the world and learns to program itself to solve them.
If it’s man made it’s second , third or fourth grade
Man made Immunity ….Ha…Can’t even begin to approach our god given time tested miraculous immune system…as we all have learned by now
Virtual reality ?…a mere toy compared to Real reality with all its nuances and wrinkles
Artificial Intelligence is an OxyMoron.
On the Other hand Human Intelligence is mostly Potential …Not many actually use the god given faculties in real productive ways…BUT when we see someone who does we call it genious.
Genious Musical Talent Genious Artistic Tallent Genious Wordsmanship Genious Athletic Ability and so forth..