Artificial?

[Jaqui]

What is with this blatant discrimination in the world against Electronic Intelligence?

It is so common to see the term Artificial applied to them, just because they are man made.

I have news for you, YOU are MAN MADE. yup your parents made you so you are as artificial as any other form of intelligence created by man.

I say lets use the term Electronic Intelligence instead.. though that also implies that they have in-alienable rights, such as freedom of speech, right to life etc.


Just posting this to get some thought processes started, maybe it is time to actually lobby for a change in terminology, along with changes to "human" rights codes.

[Perspective]

Have you ever studied AI in depth? Calling it artificial intelligence is probably an overstatment as is. There is nothing intelligent about any AI i've seen. What's intelligent is the humans who come up with clever systems that seem intelligent. But the system itself is far from intelligent.

Also, your parents didn't engineer you, you're the result of a biological process.

[Bubba]

As far as I'm concerned our computers today are faster and more efficient (but with Windows OS that could be debateable :D) but they are still fundamentally stupid machines.

AI in games has not improved but slightly and most companies now have given up and devote their intelligent gameplay to online play. There are some shining moments like in Call of Duty 2 where your buddies take cover under windows and near doorways and actually look like they are trying to conceal themselves. Looks pretty good ...but then one of them steps right in front of you while you are discharging your weapon and shatters the illusion they have any intelligence at all.

There is a long way to go in this field and I doubt we have scratched the surface of what is possible.

[abachler]

I agree with bubba, except that highly robust adaptive AI does exist, but the average consumer doesnt have the horsepower to run it, and corporate america isnt going to spend the money to implement it for a game. Joe public isnt going to accept running good AI on his GPU when it slows his framerate to 5, not when the competitior will just bump up the hitpoints of the NPC's and achieve the same percieved increase in 'intelligence'. One of the major games ( I think Unreal Tournament 3) did a study and found that 85% of players can be tricked into thinking the AI is better just by giving it more hitpoints. It can cost up to $250,000 to implement good AI into a game, and the game mechanics or at least the AI interface has to be finished before you even start. Thats why we dont get a lot of interest from the game sector, its not that our AI wouldnt blow peoples minds.

[h3ckf1r3]

I agree with bubba about us barely scratching the surface. Also yes AI are not even intelegent . in the case of eliza it just breaks down your sentence for key words and then sets them as variables. then in the next sentence it does a response base on what you said (I will capitalise the varible word and quote the key word it looks for to determin the next sentence) like "i "am "BORED" reply "why "are" you BORED?" this should make a very good argument that artificial intelegence is artificial intelegence and not electric intelegence sorry but it is not that far yet. Also I think it isnt smart to completely rely on computer because they are stupid and the only thing they can do is proccess information very fastly. But when it comes to decisions it needs a fact or a command. It will draw a blank.

hope this clarifies what you were saying it is a inteligenceyes to a small extent but it is dependent on human input therefor making it a simple program that has been given instructions for a large amount of situations.
h3ckf1r3

[brewbuck]

What is with this blatant discrimination in the world against Electronic Intelligence?

It is so common to see the term Artificial applied to them, just because they are man made.

At one point, the alpha-beta algorithm was considered cutting edge AI. I mean, computers beating human chess players? That was crazy. And on slow machines!

I can write the alpha-beta algorithm from memory. It's really a stupidly simple algorithm which produces intelligent-looking behavior. If you're willing to assign sentience, rights, or whatever to 15 lines of C++ code then you're mad. If a chess-playing program is sentient, then surely a far more complex system, such as an operating system, is also sentient. So according to you, you're committing murder every time you shut off your computer.

I have news for you, YOU are MAN MADE. yup your parents made you so you are as artificial as any other form of intelligence created by man.

I agree that we need to get over this "artificial vs. natural" distinction in general, but calling humanity "man made" is ridiculous.

[abachler]

As someone that works with real AI in my career, I will say that even 'bleeding edge ai' is nowhere near anything that could be considered self aware even on a lost episode of star trek. The most powerful AI so far is somewhere between a cockroach and a house-fly.

These morons come out of the woodwork every now and then and think we are oppressing the AI or some such non-sense. Mostly they are just crackpots that have no clue what AI really is, they just watched 'terminator' one too many times.

[h3ckf1r3]

anyways it is like ablacher said there realy isnt a need for AI yet because in most situations you can just raise something else and get the same perception (oh yeah and why spend 250,000 on AI when you can spend nothing and change a number like health or damage.

[brewbuck]

These morons come out of the woodwork every now and then and think we are oppressing the AI or some such non-sense. Mostly they are just crackpots that have no clue what AI really is, they just watched 'terminator' one too many times.

Yeah... He wants to take issue with the "A" in "AI," but what he should really take issue with is the "I" itself. The term "artificial intelligence" was a poor choice, IMHO. Artificial APPARENT intelligence is more like it.

Thinking there is anything deep going on just shows that you don't understand the algorithms. Again, how the hell can 15 lines of code be self aware? If it is, then probably everything in the damn universe is self aware, and we should just go meditate in a temple somewhere.

[h3ckf1r3]

I agree except most AI is longer than 15 lines of code. AI could just be somethnig that says "hi", OH MY GOSH IT IS INTELLEGENT IT LEARNED ITS FIRST WORD!!!!!!!!! Or is can just wait for a single answer and if you dont say that one thing it says sorry but that is not in my vocabulary, HOLY IT SAID A SENTENCE!!!!!!! like I said before it is just programmed on how to react to different responses. It can just say "how are you?" you reply "fine" it could reply "well I dont care you gerk" you repond hurt "why did you do that you hurt my feelings?" once again it replies "well I dont care you gerk". Do you see a pattern? Sorry to all who disagree but AI doesnt really exist yet. All we have is programs. They cannot choose they need facts , they cant fell making them machine not human. What next "children let the 'electric inteligence' on the electric wheel chair get on the school bus first we were suppressing them for many years" it would be aparti all over again.

[BobMcGee123]

Also yes AI are not even intelegent


Oh the irony.

[h3ckf1r3]

that is why someone mentioned it should be called AAI (aparent artificial inteligence)

[@nthony]

I believe it should simply be called "intelligence": there is nothing artificial about it. Intelligence is the ability to produce useful and meaningful outputs given a sequence inputs. The human brain does it no different than a dog no different than a computer. Where we have neurons and synapses, the computer has transistors and buses. The only difference is that we are blessed with a look-up table that is (currently) much larger and utilizes algorithms more effecient. It has already been shown that the space advantage will no longer be possesed by the human brain in the near future as computers will soon overtake the brain in raw information storage; from which it is only a small step to conclude that algorithms will eventually follow suit.

As the famous argument goes, if/when the biologocial breakthrough occurs allowing us to build a replica of a neuron using nanotechnology, and we slowly replace, neuron-by-neuron, the brain tissue of a living subject, will his consciousness/intelligence cease to exist? No. To believe otherwise is to believe in some "mystical magical substance" which somehow organic cells posses, yet mechanical cells do not, and such a theory has no basis in science, but is rather a delve into religion.

Therefore, to answer the OP question, we call it "artificial" because of our human bias - we cannot fathom that anything "constructed" to the point of explanation could posses intellgience. It is stripped of its mystery exposing it to follow nothing more than simple rules and equations and thus, if equated with ourselves, strips us of our own mystery and reduces human intelligence to an equation. Even among scientists who claim to not be swayed by religion, we must remember they are still human and still subscribe to human bias - a self-contained religion in its own right, wraught with homo-centric smugness and the intrensic belief that tucks us into bed at night - that somehow we are "special".

[rogster001]

Prof Stephen Hawking notes in 'Universe in a Nutshell' that the computing power of any man made computer today is far outsripped by the brain of even an earthworm, nuff said.

[rogster001]

information storage nothing, even gargantuan amounts of information that can be indexed at lightning speed is missing the point, after all it has been suggested that memory fades in areas (for people!) over the years so as to free up space or to free up the memory that is in the 'always ready buffer' as opposed to those things we forget all about until something reminds us of them. But despite this apparent space limitation, is does not stop anybody having the base intelligent behaviour and co-ordination of thought and purpose almost all of our lives despite a persons mental condition.

[laserlight]

Prof Stephen Hawking notes in 'Universe in a Nutshell' that the computing power of any man made computer today is far outsripped by the brain of even an earthworm, nuff said.
But the computing power of the most powerful supercomputers in 2001 are far outstripped by the supercomputers in use now...

[robwhit]

This whole thread is irrelevant. Intelligence in the phrase AI has nothing to do with raw computing power.

[@nthony]

Sure it does. With infinite raw computing power you could perform an instantanious search in some insanely large look-up table that would always provide you the best output given the available input; thus creating for an infinitely intelligent being, a perfect agent.
But yes, moot points aside, AI seeks to focus on better ways of utilizing the means we do have today... well, in lieu of our first implementaiton of a Turing machine at least.

[robwhit]

Sure it does. With infinite raw computing power you could perform an instantanious search in some insanely large look-up table that would always provide you the best output given the available input; thus creating for an infinitely intelligent being, a perfect agent.no, it wouldn't.

[abachler]

An infinite data set would take an infinite time to search, and it woudl still need to be trained.

But the computing power of the most powerful supercomputers in 2001 are far outstripped by the supercomputers in use now...

The most powerful super computer of 2001 is outstripped by a high end desktop of today...

[h3ckf1r3]

ok one second rewind. A AI IS NOT INTELEGENT (dont care about mispellings). They are just programs. Nothing more. Maybe later they will be but for now they are jsut made by us. They can only process stuff they cant reproduce and they are software. If you take awayt eh file it is looking throguh it is useless. A human ont ehr other hand can learn without being programed.
maybe later we will make so advanced AI that they will reproduce by running machines to make computers and then download their AI program to that computer. When that happens though I will laugh realy hard. Maybe they will operate electric wheel chairs to get around. They might also be able to program later, Improve their software, maybe even learn. But that is still a long ways away so for now they are not intelegent OK?

Oh yeah and a computer cannot hold more information then the human brain and wint for a VERY long time. Just so you know an adult only fills about 4% of their brain. imagine 4% now think of all that a single adult knows. Times that by 25 and you will get A LOT of information. An amiount that aa computer will take a very long time until we have computers able to store that much memory. (think like 1000 tetrabytes).

[mike_g]

IMHO for an entity to be intelligent it must possess some form of consciousness. Without awareness things can only 'seem' intelligent.

[abachler]

Its not the storage capacity that computers lack, there are systems now with 1000 terabytes of ram, its processing power and architectural organization that they lack.

[h3ckf1r3]

I have nver heard of a computer with 1000 terabytes of ram. It may be possible to do it wiht a network of supercomputers but a single computer is way beyond our technological level.

[rogster001]

But the computing power of the most powerful supercomputers in 2001 are far outstripped by the supercomputers in use now...

So i guess that gets them up to the brains of snails? have you heard of Moores law? quantum computer development is the only thing that will allow for this kind of brute force power approach

[laserlight]

So i guess that gets them up to the brains of snails? have you heard of Moores law? quantum computer development is the only thing that will allow for this kind of brute force power approach
Of course I have heard of Moore's law, but I think you missed robwhit's reply to my observation: "Intelligence in the phrase AI has nothing to do with raw computing power."

Even if we take "AI" out of the equation, it seems to me that Hawking's statement means nothing in this context since we cannot delegate our computing tasks to earthworms and snails, but we can delegate many of them to the computers we have at hand.

[rogster001]

i am absolutely in agreement with RobWhit, that was the point i originally (somewhat obliquely) tried to make with the reference to earthworms, and i also commented again about the brute force aspect shortly after, it is in some ways i suppose analogous to a friend of mine that argued with me until he was blue in the face saying that a chess computer could always beat a human because it would just search out every possible game permutation leading from any given move, firstly he would not accept that it is just not possible to do that, tooo many gazillion permutations, secondly he did not realise what a wasteful approach that would be, (including all the wrong outcomes in your search) it is a question of approach, a chess player does not play like that, so why should the computer? is that the best way to try and approximate our thought processes? it is clearly not, and has not been engineered in that fashion by chess playing routines. a person playing against many opponents in exhibition matches is not searching a lookup table (though in a sense this is true because of research and training) and thinking n moves ahead so much as analysing each position on each board as they come to it and thinking of the best move from that given position.

[nvoigt]

With infinite raw computing power you could perform an instantanious search in some insanely large look-up table that would always provide you the best output given the available input; thus creating for an infinitely intelligent being, a perfect agent.


Even with a perfect agent, capable of coming up with the right answer in short time you will not have intelligence. Intelligence doesn't mean you have an answer to a question. Thats knowledge. Intelligence is more than knowledge, it's the power to apply knowledge when needed. Sometimes, Intelligence is not answering the question, but shutting up and saying "yes dear". When a computer becomes aware of situations, for example not harassing me with compiler errors before I had my first coffee in the morning, complimenting her on the new pair of shoes even though it had cost more then the whole friggin' computer or not showing that flashy McBurger commercial when I'm thinking about a new diet, then I will take that as a hint of intelligence.

Just imagine what a bunch of cool functions we could have with intelligent computers: gethostbyintuition() etc...

[rogster001]

Even if we take "AI" out of the equation, it seems to me that Hawking's statement means nothing in this context since we cannot delegate our computing tasks to earthworms and snails, but we can delegate many of them to the computers we have at hand.

and true, laserlight, a nice observation, but i simply wanted to draw attention to the relative processing power here, it is too easy to think silicone is king, because it isnt.;)

[abachler]

and true, laserlight, a nice observation, but i simply wanted to draw attention to the relative processing power here, it is too easy to think silicone is king, because it isnt.;)

Germanium is King, Silicon is just its easy to bed younger sister. GaAs is probably next in line for the throne.

40 years of research into silicon based semiconductors has taught us that we should have gone with germanium in the first place. Unfortunately, most of the research into Si doesnt apply to Ge.

Even neural networks arent AI, they are just linear adaptive filters capable of being used in image recognition and pattern classification. The application still has to be programmed how to use them or they are useless.

[@nthony]

Even with a perfect agent, capable of coming up with the right answer in short time you will not have intelligence. Intelligence doesn't mean you have an answer to a question. Thats knowledge. Intelligence is more than knowledge, it's the power to apply knowledge when needed.

The application of knowledge to produce the maximum utilized response is intelligence; if an agent can do this 100% of the time within an infinitely short period of time, then this agent is perfectly intelligent (alternatively, show me an agent less capable that can be more intelligent). Hence why a perfect agent is perfectly intelligent. In the face of only near-infinitesimal look-up time, you get near-perfection and so on. At what point does a linear time look-up become more effecient/faster than a humanistic/hypothesized algorithm? We haven't reached that point yet, but trends in technology tell us that it will be coming relatively soon (i.e. technological singularity).

@rog: yes, humans don't play chess by analyzing each possible move, but then again we cannot play chess perfectly can we? This is what I mean when I refer to human bias; you have a tendancy to believe that the best algorithm to playing chess is a humanistic one, which is falsifiable from the start. It works for us (and current computers) given our limited resources, but in the face of near-unlimited resources, other algorithms (i.e. complete transpotion table with look-up) may be employed more effectively. BTW, you're right, silicon isn't king, but quantum may be diety...

[abachler]

What you described is MEMORY, not intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to determine a solution without prior knowledge of such solution. As for yoru assertion of 'current' computers, you are a bit out of date there. Computers have been better chess players for nearly half a decade now. Again, this isnt intelligence, as they are essentially doing a brute force search of the output space and selecting the solution that scores best at some fitness function.

[CornedBee]

It's not brute force. There's a lot of early elimination.

But then, that's exactly how human chess players work, too. Except for the part where they might play the person. But that won't really work when they play against a computer.

[Jaqui]

@nthony,
You are the only one who caught my point.
"I believe it should simply be called "intelligence": there is nothing artificial about it. "

I wasn't commenting on the current state of AI design or capabilities, just on the term Artificial in it.

I would use electronic intelligence to indicate the difference between biological intelligence and electronic, since the biological ones will have actions based on biological failings, and an electronic one, I would assume, not have those failings.