Slashdot Log In
Arguing A.I.
from the the-greatest-tech-debate-of-the-century dept.
| Arguing A.I. | |
| author | Sam Williams |
| pages | 94 |
| publisher | Random House |
| rating | 8 |
| reviewer | Jon Katz |
| ISBN | 0-8129-9180-X (pbk) |
| summary | perspectives on the A.I. debate |
In some ways, the author argues, the debate over A.I. is undergoing a profound revolution. What was once a discussion largely confined to tech and academic circles has mushroomed into a more mainstream brawl as a growing number of engineers and lay authors vent on the acceleration of modern technology and the future of humanity. Given the explosive growth of the Net, the near-continuous increases in computing power and much-publicized A.I. breakthroughs like Deep Blue's 1997 victory over chess champion Gary Kasparov, the question is no longer whether artificial intelligence will reach the level of human intelligence: It's when.
As the title suggests, Williams's book is less about A.I. itself than about the increasingly ferocious debates raging through the scientific community about it. The conflicts surrounding A.I., Williams suggests, may be the most significant since the titanic battles over evolution a century ago. In fact, Williams is among those who've argued that the A.I. debate is really an extension of the same fight. Artifically intelligent machines are already changing human evolution, many argue, even evolving inevitably into life-forms and species all their own. A growing number of critics and skeptics also argue that A.I. proponents are moving too quickly, failing to take into account the mind-boggling cultural and philosophical problems being raised by their new, still-imperfect technologies.
Williams traces the contemporary birth of A.I. -- via Hilbert and Turing -- on to the living pioneer credited with coining the term (John McCarthy), and talks to several of the principals guiding the A.I. debate today, like Ray Kurzweil, Jaron Lanier and Bill Joy.
This is a necessary book. It's one you could actually recommend to students, journalists, friends, parents, anybody trying to grasp the issues and implications of A.I., surely one of the most significant technologies human beings will face in the 21st Century. Even if A.I.'s impact on life is being overstated, it's poorly understood by the public. So Williams walks us through inventor Kurzweil's almost radical optimism about A.I. and the future -- especially his claims that human society is rapidly approaching the evolutionary equivalent of a new species, a fusion of humans and intelligent machines. This is the point of no return when it comes to artificial intelligence, Kurzweil claims. "The progress will ultimately become so fast that it will rupture our ability to follow it. It will literally get out of our control. The illusion that we have our hand on the plug will be dispelled."
But Williams also introduces some of the people that don't see this as a good thing -- or even a likely development. Bill Joy is more pessimistic, as he made clear in his now famous article in the April 2000 issue of Wired, "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us." The piece thrilled technophobic intellectuals and journalists because it came from a software entrepeneur and reaffirmed something they desperately wanted to believe: technology -- especially genetics, bio-tech and robotics -- is out of control and likely to generate as much evil as good in the future. Joy sees little in the modern history of software development to suggest the emergence of sentient machines. His experience has led him to believe that it's difficult to build things that are reliable.
Jaron Lanier, whom Williams also interviews, coined the term virtual reality and once likened A.I. research to alchemy. Lanier accuses many in the A.I. firmament of choosing faith and hyperbole over science and reality. He likens the current tech obsession with A.I. to medieval scholars' attempts to prove the existence of God through Aristotelian logic. In their rush to endorse the concept of thinking machines, warns Lanier, many authors are putting scientific faith before scientific skepticism.
Williams does a skillful job of presenting these different points of view without intruding on them. It might have been nice to hear more of Williams's own thoughts and perspective, since he's one of the few journalists with this much understanding an access to so many principals in the A.I. discussion. On the other hand, he might not have been wise not to wade in amongst these A.I. heavyweights and their raging debate. "Arguing A.I." is as timely a book about technology as you're likely to come across, and, perhaps more surprisingly, highly readable.
We (probably) won't ever actually ACHIEVE AI (Score:5, Insightful)
AI won't be considered successful until we build HAL or Data, but the journey so far has been very useful.
The hardware is the software (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The hardware is the software (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing that's always bothered me about the AI debate is that the thinking for a long time has centered around how to model intelligence on silicon.
Actually this is not true, for example an early AI system was constructed to play tic-tac-toe on a computer using matchboxes and marbles. No silicon at all.
One of the fundmental results of computing (discovered by Alan Turing, the first researcher in the field of AI) is that there is a basic set of computable functions. It doesn't matter what hardware you use, the set of things you can compute is ultimately the same. An interesting question is whether human-like intelligence is a combination of functions from the computable set or not. People like Roger Penrose argue that there is something more than computable functions going on in the human brain (he calls it the "divine spark"). In my opinion that's nonsense.
If an AI system can be built using computable functions it doesn't matter what hardware you execute it on (apart from perfromance issues). The results will be the same.
To me the true marvel of the mind is the holographic quality of intelligence and the way in which the physical form of the brain influences, and is shaped by, the quality and nature of one's thoughts.
You should look into neural net research. This uses massively parallel networks of artificial neurons to simulate the real structure of the brain. Its an important branch of AI research. Of course neural networks can be completely simulated on traditional computer hardware. Again, the hardware is not the key, its totally down to the software you run.
By the way, what do you mean "holographic" nature of intelligence. I don't understand what you are trying to imply with this term.
It will be exciting to see what part the new polymers can play in this research.
In my opinion, none, except perhaps to give us faster computers. They can do nothing to change the fundamental computations that are taking place.
wrong topic (Score:3, Insightful)
is a machine that to a human appears to be human, human?
Re:wrong topic (Score:4, Interesting)
"A robot becomes human when you can't tell the difference any more".
That one film influenced me more than all the other sci-fi films I ever saw as a kid. It's the only one that really got that concept and went for it. OK, Asimov did it first ("Bicentennial Man") but cinema still hadn't really got there.
Grab.
I'm doubtful (Score:3, Insightful)
I tend to agree. I'd like to see something using AI play in a poker game. Can AI ever simulate bluffing? Or analyze the expressions on the other player's faces to determine if perhaps that they are bluffing, and call the bluff? Human intelligence can do thiss, but I'm not sure if something this complex exists now, or ever will.
Chess is one thing. It follows a certain set of rules. Even conversation does, but it also invloves human expression like the bluffing example. But to to play out a scenario given a unique situation, machines are not up to the task yet.
My thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
- Within 50 years, there will be a computer that will pass the Turing Test. For those of you who don't know (and I hope nobody is in this category on Slashdot
:-) the Turing Test is basically making a computer indistinguishable from a human being. A tester will ask the computer questions, and will be unable to determine whether a computer is answering the questions or whether a human is mimicing a computer.
- Within 50 years after that (100 years total), computers will be able to parse speech flawlessly, so voice recognition will finally end up being plausible. Computers will understand the nuances of speech and will be able to change homonyms (here and hear) based on the context of the sentence.
- Within 50 years of that (150 years total) we'll have computers that can respond to voice commands like in Star Trek. The computer will not only understand the syntax of language, but it will be able to determine, on its own, the difference between a question asked in conversation and a question asked to the computer in conversation.
Of course, these are just random guesses on my part, but I really think that they're reasonable. Give me your thoughts, please.The other way around? (Score:4, Interesting)
First, computers will recognize voice commands. Well, there are already programs that do this like Dragon, so we're almost there anyway. The point now is that you are still giving keyword commands to a computer, and as it is refined, you'll better recognition of specific commands, and questions that can be filtered from within conversations. Giving commands to a computer is easier than open ended questions to the computer.
Second, we'll solve the natural language problem, or at least enough to provide flawless voice recognition that you speak of. It will be capable mainly of handling accents and bad grammar.
Lastly, a computer will pass the Turing test. Unless a computer can understand the intricassies of the english language, there will be people who will be able to tell by the way the answer is phrased. If you solve the NLP or get far enough for a computer to analyze and spit back poetry, then you got the Turing test licked.
Chinese Rooms and Software Guys (Score:3, Insightful)
It's always seemed funny to me how the technologists take this field, which is tied irrevocably to philosophy, and ignore everything the philosophers say about it. For example, has there ever been a good refutation of Searle's Chinese Room argument?
Another of Searle's arguments is pretty damning as well; those that pursue strong AI are, in fact, favoring a form of dualism. For them the mind is completely separate from the brain, an idea that has been pretty much discarded by the thinking public. Why is it, when computers are concerned, that the mind is no longer a product of a brain?
Random Rant on the purpose of Science (Score:4, Informative)
The general public is not now, nor has it EVER been, part of the dialogue of Science. Here I mean science as an instution, like banking and marriage is an instition.
The dialogue in science is people publishing papers. These papers are peer-reviewed by other people who also publish and have 'scientific credibility'. Scientific credibility is gained by publishing good papers and having academic credentials. There's a book by Bradley Latour that describes a 'scientific economy' based on credibility.
As such, the general public may be a spectator to the dialogue of science but does not participate, as the 'general public' isn't publishing and therefore isn't part of the economy.
The public gets disappointed when science doesn't live up to claims that they read into the dialogue which is, frankly, not taking place in the Real World anyway, and it's a mistake to expect that it should produce anything the Real World can use.
It's the public that PULLS things from the realm of science, develops expectations, and tries to change the Real World with it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't work. You can't blame science for those failures.
Now, science isn't perfect. The landscape of debate is subject to bloody revolutions in paradigm, like the changes from Ptolemy to Galileo to Newton to Einsten and beyond. Scientists play politics, too, and sometimes lose their objectivity when reviewing papers for publication. It doesn't change the Real World. Over the last 30 years, there have been a dozen opinions and 'proofs' on whether the Universe will expand forever, collapse in a 'big crunch', or eventually stop and stabilize. So what? Life goes on here on Earth. Nobody's jumping off of buildings because astronomers tell us one day the Sun will swallow the earth (oops... they changed their mind on that one, too! Did anyone notice?)
The usefulness of this review or the book it talks about is diminshed and tarnished for me by such a sensationalistic lead-in. Many, many Slashdot readers are familiar with the division between the general public as users of computer systems, and their own roles as the makers and maintainers of those systems. We never stop bitching about clueless users, 'we' always know better what to expect out of our machines than 'they' do, etc, etc. Ha ha. Very funny.
Stop and think for a minute why that happens. When your users expect things you didn't promise, is it because they read things into your claims you didn't intend? Is that your fault or theirs? Who do they blame for it? Who do YOU blame for it?
It cuts both ways, people. If you don't want science to disappoint you, don't expect it to do things it isn't meant to do. You may play chess better than your cat, but you'd look pretty stupid if your cat asked you to catch a mouse.
Has he talked about Rod Brooks? (Score:3, Informative)
I wonder if he talks about Professor Rodney A. Brooks [mit.edu] at MIT [mit.edu] and his ideas about artificial intelligence, situatedness, and embodiment.
For Rod Brooks, "intelligence" cannot really be programmed into a system; it is rather an emergent property of systems as they interact with their environment. In The Matrix Morpheus says that the body cannot exist without the mind, but Brooks would rather say that the mind cannot exist without the body, because the body is the only way that the mind can have any experience of its environment. It's a radical idea. It answers the problems behind knowledge representation that have been argued by Hubert Dreyfus in 1965, where he stated that any representation of knowledge is incomplete without its connection to all other pieces of knowledge. The paradigm Brooks is presenting in his ideas about embodied intelligence is that explicit representation of knowledge is superfluous: let the world itself be its own best model, and let the artificially intelligent being formulate its own judgments about what the world is and what it means from its own experience of that world. Intelligence emerges from its interaction and experience of the world. If Brooks is correct, then true AI is absolutely inseperable from robotics.
The seminal paper where Brooks discusses this philosophy is "Intelligence Without Reason" and is available at his website which is linked above.
Any book on AI that does not discuss this other branch of AI philosophy is in my view hopelessly incomplete.
Creative adaptation (Score:3, Insightful)
complexity of supercomputers approaching brain (Score:4, Interesting)
The fastest supercomputer operates on 64 bit words at a several trillion operations a second, or about a hundred trillion ops per second; a hundred times slower or so.
Instead of quibbling exactly about these numbers, note that Moore's Law implies a factor of ten every five years. So a supercomputer will be as complex as brain somewhere in the 2010 to 2020 time frame. Don't even think about 2050 or 2100!
However, computers aren't programmed as well as a brain in many areas, so the software people have a long way to catch up.
Re:complexity of supercomputers approaching brain (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps true A.I. is undetectable! (Score:3, Funny)
So how would we notice before it sneaks up on us from behind?
Are they? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wouldn't we need to have some, first, before we could say they "are" doing anything?
Emergent emotions? (Score:3, Insightful)
Some could attribute this to hardware configuration problems, and that would likely be true. But it was interesting to me that Windows itself changes as it grows. Every change in my computer makes it a little different, and I'm starting to notice. I can even tell the difference between two installs of Windows on the same machine, even though they look virtually the same.
What I think is happening is that each component changes the complexity of the overall system. If that component has an issue (i.e. bad driver or maybe misconfigured), then it adds a little spark of personality to the computer. When enough of these little quirks add up, my computer feels different than other people's computers.
This yields an interesting question. If computers get more complex, will a rudementary set of 'emotions' evolve? They may not be emotions in the sense that they cry if you switch to a Mac, but maybe emotions in the sense that the computers have moods? What if your computer's performance was tied to bandwidth on the internet, and a congested network bogs the computer? What if you're running a laptop off a battery, and the computer gets 'tired' as it wears down? What if you're running a screensaver that makes it 'daydream.'?
Again, these aren't the same type of emotions or moods that people feel, but it is interesting that the more complex a computer gets, the more we can personify it.
Definition of intelligence - it's most basic form. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ability to perceive oneself as part of the universe? Animals have it.
Self-awareness? Dogs seem to have it. Chimpanzees, elephants, cetaceans certainly seem to know that they are individuals. Dolphins even recognize their own reflections in mirrors.
Tool use? Chimps use sticks to dig with. They can stack boxes to reach high places, which is borderline engineering for most humans.
Language? Chimps have one. So do gorillas. Dolphins and other cetaceans have great capacity for communication underwater.
Now, machine intelligence. Turing test? Simple programs passed limited tests years ago. The more complex ones to come will be far more capable of fooling people into believing they are speaking to a human.
Play chess? Limited, but the best can beat our best.
In the future, the AI's will be able to speak, emote, manipulate items and use tools, even be able to design their own descendents. Give tools, the AI's could even build their successors.
But, will they ever be regarded as intelligent by humans?
Nope.
Most europeans and americans for centuries considered blacks and American Indians as sort of half-people, using great logic and rigor that was totally idiotic looking back from our time.
Many tests for animal intelligence and self-awareness has shown that the subjects can indeed show the traits necessary to be considered sapient. But, after each hurdle, the bar gets raised another notch philosophically.
If I were a suspicious type, and I am, I would say that humans simply don't want to recognize intelligence in other species, much less animals, because it threatens us enormously. Our pride in ourselves, our domination of the planet, and our cruelty towards other species are all shaken if the animal looking back at us in the treetops is actually a thinking being, tho a bit furry.
Religion has more than a little to do with it as well.
Down to my definition of intelligent life:
If it fights back, and wins, it is intelligent. All other players are dead meat.