The pioneering computer scientist on why Trump is using ‘superintelligence’ wrong, whether AI could wipe out humanity – and how our biggest challenge will be accepting we’re not the only intelligent beings
AI is about making machines that mimic human level intelligence. Whether they possess actual intelligence doesn’t matter. They just need to act intelligently.
You can disagree with the terminology, but it has been an active field of study since the 1950s.
Remember the Turing test? Damn goal posts move faster than the ball. I’m not sure how one could fail to be impressed by the technological advancements in the last 3 years in the field
I think Turing thought, “well something that could do this would surely HAVE to be intelligent”, but I seriously doubt that he would have waved the white flag for an intelligence that can convincingly mimic human communication but can’t count letters in a word.
Well the Test now includes casual tasks like counting letters, doesn’t it? You have to move your head in a certain way to spot the leopard in the shaded forest.
You can’t just say a thing is intelligent or not intelligent without coming up with a good definition. We are ugly meatbags of mostly water that are constantly driven by chemical processes. How the hell do you call that intelligent? Prove that we are intelligent, and then prove that the “algorithmic iterator”, that uses weighted metrics with an eerie similarity to neurons, isn’t actually intelligent.
I know you’re not a fan of the dictionary, but they are the authority on words and their meanings.
Before you get too excited about definition 3 I suggest you familiarize yourself with what it means to “compute” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compute you’ll notice repeated use of the word “determine”. LLMs are by nature “non-deterministic” or in other words “incapable of determining / incapable of making a determination”.
A computer is deterministic
An LLM is a probabilistic next-word-guessing machine / software as a service
AI is about making machines that mimic human level intelligence. Whether they possess actual intelligence doesn’t matter. They just need to act intelligently.
You can disagree with the terminology, but it has been an active field of study since the 1950s.
Remember the Turing test? Damn goal posts move faster than the ball. I’m not sure how one could fail to be impressed by the technological advancements in the last 3 years in the field
Sort of.
I think Turing thought, “well something that could do this would surely HAVE to be intelligent”, but I seriously doubt that he would have waved the white flag for an intelligence that can convincingly mimic human communication but can’t count letters in a word.
Well the Test now includes casual tasks like counting letters, doesn’t it? You have to move your head in a certain way to spot the leopard in the shaded forest.
An important variable of the Turing Test that is never spoken about is the intelligence (or gullibility) of the user.
Then define intelligence.
You can’t just say a thing is intelligent or not intelligent without coming up with a good definition. We are ugly meatbags of mostly water that are constantly driven by chemical processes. How the hell do you call that intelligent? Prove that we are intelligent, and then prove that the “algorithmic iterator”, that uses weighted metrics with an eerie similarity to neurons, isn’t actually intelligent.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intelligence
I know you’re not a fan of the dictionary, but they are the authority on words and their meanings.
Before you get too excited about definition 3 I suggest you familiarize yourself with what it means to “compute” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compute you’ll notice repeated use of the word “determine”. LLMs are by nature “non-deterministic” or in other words “incapable of determining / incapable of making a determination”.
A computer is deterministic
An LLM is a probabilistic next-word-guessing machine / software as a service