Artificial Intelligence

[Scott NC]

  Good or bad?  It's coming fast.  Do you think it can't mimic blacksmith or metal arts?  Will we be able to tell the difference?   It's a hideous idea, but there's no hiding from it.  Robot blacksmiths, artisans, fabricators, artists, what have you.  Do you think someday it wont even require physical robots?  What do you think the end game will be?  I would never quit doing what I do in the face of it, but I wonder about human creativity.  It may not be on everybodies radar but maybe it should be.  

[Frosty]

There are some really good "futurists" online, the best being high level scientists. AI is a well covered topic. Do a search for "Isaac Arthur" on Youtube. Brilliant and very entertaining educator, you'll get used to his speech impediment in a few episodes of his channel.

John Michael Godier is another hard science, futurist and author, he has his own channel and posts to Youtube. 

If you like paleontology, check out, Ben G. Thomas. A real mover and shaker in modern paleontology and really entertaining to listen to / watch. He doesn't talk about AI except where high power computers are increasing his ability to interpret fossils and such. 

All three of these guys are binge worthy. Both Isaac and John discuss metal in it's many implications for civilization here and through out space.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

[Scott NC]

  How can AI be a well covered topic when advances move so fast.  What is the word?  Exponentialy?  I will look into them though..  Ben G. Thomas...

[Frosty]

The episodes about AI by Isaac Arthur and John M. Godier are well thought out both of these guys live science but are good at toning the jargon down so "normal" folk can learn enough to pursue it farther if they wish. 

Ben G. Thomas provides testimony as to improvements "AI" has made to his science. He doesn't talk about AI he just talks about the instruments and how much more can be learned from tiny bits of info. 

Is AI good or bad? Could go either way, probably both. Just because current quantum computers can operate at gigaherz cyclic rates doesn't make them sentient. In the hands of bad guys though? Oh yeah. Not that long ago bad guys discovered how to remote operate your car door lock, ignition, alarm, etc. so for a while peoples cars were shutting off in traffic, car alarms were gong off, etc. Software upgrades fixed it. . . Till the next bright boy finds away to hack that.

You can build houses with a hammer or crack skulls. Tools is tools.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Steve Sells]

I was a programmer active at the start of AI with languages like Prolog.  Things have moved a long way since then.  Searching an established database went to programs building their own databases to make choices from, but its not the same as really thinking

[Scott NC]

  Enjoyed programming and electronics as a hobby a long time ago but gave it up. 

  I searched and bookmarked Isaac Arthur and John Michael Godier.  That should give me six months or more reasearch and going down the ol' rabbit hole.  I'm suprised I never came across them before. Thanks.   Ben G. Thomas I enjoy.  He had a video examining a "filthy hair" dinosaur IIRC.  What's not to like?   

[anvil]

Interesting topic. When the industrial revolution matured it removed the "Trades" type work from all crafts as a viable form of economics, but can't compete, even now, with the "Craft" and "Arts" branches. I suspect it will be the same with AI.  

I find it interesting that internet commerce got its start from the porn side of the internet and much of A.I. development comes from the game side of computer programming.  

[JHCC]

AI has been developing for a long time, but it's stayed out of public consciousness until recently because much of what it does has been things other than "realistically mimics human communication". Once we start getting things like GPT and similar chatbots, we get into the whole "gee wiz" realm, and then everybody who's ever read a science fiction book or seen a tech thriller movie starts freaking out about Skynet or the Matrix or violating the First Law of Robotics. 

One of the more interesting things I've read recently about AI is an interview with Rodney Brooks who used to teach this stuff at MIT and has a long career in both the academic and business sides of AI. He makes a very good point that part of what's happening right now in the public consciousness is a widespread confusion between performance and competence. It's a short read, but quite fascinating: Just Calm Down About GPT-4 Already.

Brooks also has an article entitled "The Seven Deadly Sins of Predicting the Future of AI", which is excellent. For example:

Quote

Today, there is a story in Market Watch that robots will take half of today’s jobs in 10 to 20 years. It even has a graphic to prove the numbers.

The claims are ludicrous. [I try to maintain professional language, but sometimes…] For instance, it appears to say that we will go from 1 million grounds and maintenance workers in the US to only 50,000 in 10 to 20 years, because robots will take over those jobs. How many robots are currently operational in those jobs? ZERO. How many realistic demonstrations have there been of robots working in this arena? ZERO. Similar stories apply to all the other job categories in this diagram where it is suggested that there will be massive disruptions of 90%, and even as much as 97%, in jobs that currently require physical presence at some particular job site.

 

[Frosty]

Exactly Steve. AI by one name or another has been the dream since before Charles Babbage developed his "difference engine" and though he never finished his "analytical engine" his computers were so far ahead of the time few people could see anything but accountants having to find different jobs.

I suppose the definition of "Artificial Intelligence" has morphed to cover very fast very connected computers and software. Holding a conversation with a human the human couldn't tell wasn't another human is a very old definition. It's from the 40s I think, about the time transistors reduced the size of a useful electronic computer from building size to something that'd fit in a 2 car garage.

Just the reduction in physical distance between switches caused a significant increase in speed due to light speed through copper. Physical size has a lot do to with how fast current chips are, what 5gb of switches on a chip a little larger than a penny means tens of thousands of miles of "wiring" connecting over literally microns of length.

We still don't have "thinking" machines, we have infinitely diverse calculators just because we can write software that can operate human languages as numerical calculations doesn't mean they think. They don't if you have a handle on what's happening.

The warnings from really smart people who've been involved from the 60s on aren't about really powerful computers, they're trying to warn folks to be ready for this revolution though it's been turning for 60 years easy. Unless we get a handle on it the things could get away from us easy. Look at this latest generation's desire to have someone else make their decisions for them. You can't buy a printer or software you can print something without going through a long list of options, templates have a long menu in themselves when 95% if the time I just want to highlight a thing and print it. Bells and whistles that have little practical value are taking over.

Sorry end rant. 

Goodness Anvil you missed the commercialization of the internet by a couple decades at least, heck the "invention" of the internet. Sure it got it's start as a military decentralization of important data, control and communications that spilled over into education and eventually the general public. The first commercial use and actually one of the first examples of the "internet" was based on commerce. Ever been to a wrecking yard looking for a 650 cfm Holly spread bore and the guy at the counter types it in on a keyboard then tells you if there's one in their inventory and how many are available for what price and delivery time? 

I experienced the internet at wrecking yards around 1968 looking for shocks for my first car, even Midas didn't have available. The net covered the entire country and it wasn't long before it covered the free world. Commerce made the internet worth developing, everybody likes to make a buck.

I'd say current "AI" is reasonably "Sapient" but falls short of "Sentient". That will probably change and hopefully it won't be as disastrous as some sci fi stories and there are always doom sayers, there have been since we started writing things down in cuneiform. The better authors have written AI into stories from many points of view, just because one writes a cautionary tale doesn't make them a doom sayer. Just because an author writes doom and gloom tales doesn't make them a "Futurist." 

Above I used sapient and sentient, don't confuse the two, Sapient means thinking as in smart. "Sentient" means self aware, they aren't mutually necessary, computers are smart, they just don't know it, your cat and maybe your goldfish are aware of themselves just not very smart. 

That's more than enough rambling to get warmed up for today.

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

Just to throw a little Classics into the mix, "Sapient" comes from the Latin "sapientia", which means wisdom.

[Frosty]

Indeed, wise or later thinking. Who went into a long piece about wisdom and self examination & determination? Self aware and wisdom sounded synonymous there and that was a Greek philosopher wasn't it?

Definitions change with times. It's why I try not to laugh when a marketing department tries to sell me AI.  Intelligence being the ability to acquire, understand and use knowledge. I haven't seen a computer do more than acquire what it's been told to, or "use" it in a way it hasn't been instructed to. Understand? Maybe someday, certainly not now.

This is a fun subject, I've been thinking about this stuff since I read Asimov and others. I even read his medical books though didn't understand much. He hadn't explored robotics as well as it seemed, have you considered the final implications of the 3 laws? Talk about AI doomsday for humans!

Frosty The Lucky.

[BrianV]

I realize this is an odd topic in which to make a first post, but being as my day job is in the AI industry...

The challenge with AI is 'the last 20%'. That is, writing an AI that can handle 80% of situations well is not that hard (well, relatively speaking). However, it's that last 20% of oddities and edge cases that the real world throws at you that become exponentially more difficult to train an AI to handle well.

For generative AI (ie, ChatGPT or other AI that 'creates things'), the answer is simple - you won't see some of the complexities and subtleties that humans may put in their writing / art etc. This is why the Hollywood writers are pushing to exclude generative AI from the scriptwriting process, because they see a future where AI generates the first draft and they add the 'human touch'.

For other AI, such as autonomous vehicles, it's a different story. Much of the research being done right now in autonomous vehicles is handling the myriad of different situations that can happen on the road. For example, different types of construction barriers, bad road markings, the unpredictability of other vehicles, animals on the road, and now what happens when all these combine.

Progress will continue to be made in all these things, but at increasing expense and time.

[Shainarue]

Anvil can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure internet commerce is in reference to accepting currency, not databases of inventory stock information. 

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard Brian, glad to have you. If you put your general location in the header you'll have a better chance of meeting up with folk living within visiting distance. How are autonomous vehicle software at handling changing road conditions? Living in Alaska it's a factor for 7 months a year, from dry black to black ice to wet snow, rain, etc. Gets iffy for experienced drivers and the inexperienced ones often get close up looks at the ditch.

Shaina: The wrecking yards weren't just running inventories, if you wanted the constant velocity unit in Kansas you paid up front preferably with a credit card. Yard often shifted parts from low demand to high demand markets and no wrecking yard ships parts gratis and rarely COD.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Shainarue]

You paid using a credit card over the internet in 1968? Erm...

[Scott NC]

  I often wonder if the singularity will come about.

 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

  Sorry for starting a doomsday thread.

[JHCC]

Scott, read the "Seven Deadly Sins" article I posted above. The short version is, "Not for a very long time, if at all."

[Scott NC]

   Ok.   I buzzed through both links real fast earlier as I was running behind, I will go back and re-read it.  The thing is, no human being knows it all.  I read something interesting by Stephen Hawking on this but have to go reread it as well.

[Purple Bullet]

I won't say there is no cause for alarm, yet the current AI hype smells an awful lot like 1999. I was in IT for a major oil company at the time and had a continual anger burn against all the folks scaring old folks into buying bushels of wheat (that rotted in their garages) and lifeboat rations that were barely palatable. Was there a lot of stuff to fix for Y2K? Yes, but it was pretty easy (although tedious) to do so. I even had to fix a billing program I wrote in the '70's for a garbage collection company originally on a CP/M system using a database called "Condor"

Frosty - I'm not saying it ain't so, but I doubt the wrecking company was on the Internet. They may have had a dedicated line but most databases back then were accessed via dial-up modem. Not the same as Internet Protocol. I can remember in the '80's constructing Boolean searches offline  to use on Dialog - Lockheed's collection of databases - then dialing up to zip the query and download the response to minimize online and long distance charges. 

[Goods]

I wouldn’t write off dial-up as not being on the web. When I was in college a lot of my internet access was dial-up. Sound a bit early for true internet though… maybe a precursor.

Keep it fun,

David

[Scott NC]

  I am always going out on a limb, because I don't have the time to do the proper research but doesn't Rodney Brooks and, MIT in particular, have a vested interest in promoting the safety in all of this?  The timeline is what actually facinates me.  I'm not concerned about my own life time but is it coming?  I suppose an errant astroid could cleave off half the earth between then and now and we'd never know.  Please don't get me wrong, I am not trying to stir up fear and arguments, it's a curiousity of mine.  My first statement about it coming fast may have been a bit hasty....  Or not.

 

[Purple Bullet]

Contracts by DARPA to create ARPANET were issued in 1969. That was just remote access, I believe,  but was the first step to the web as we know it. 

[Scott NC]

  Here's my contribution to AI. 

[Frosty]

I didn't no, I was just legal to drive and dealt in cash. Thinking about it now I realize they probably dealt in bank transfers between yards, shippers, etc. I paid when I ordered or when they located the part if it wasn't on their net. I grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles so an auto part not being available was really rare. Often the salvage yard I was shopping at would just tell me which yard to go to and the yard almost always had it pulled and waiting on the counter. 

I can buy a dedicated searchable data base between wrecking yards, auto parts stores and such, that covers what I experienced then. The year I have down pat, I was 16 and I was dead set on fixing up my first car. I was almost 18 when I gave up on it and dropped it at one of those wrecking yards. Didn't make as much as I'd spent though. <sigh>

Yeah, ARPANET was probably the first real internet type system, then came Milnet I believe.

I didn't go to college when the .EDU was put in operation, I only heard rumors of the wonderfulness of instant access to all the knowledge on Earth. I went online when it went public 1986 +/- I THINK. I went online on a 386, hot rod of the day, the service provider was CustomCPU which was squeezed out of business by AOL and similar. 

Heck, my first computer was a Commodore 64 with an external 5"(?) floppy drive and dot matrix printer. I replaced both my electric typewriters and got decent money for the old OLD IBM. I briefly owned an Apple 2 plus, got it from a friend and gave it away shortly afterwards. Taught me to dislike Apple intensely. Then came the 386 and the internet. Been here since leaving a trail of dead computers and hardware.

Frosty The Lucky.