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by Top19 3189 days ago
Currently reading the work of Hubert Dreyfus. Dreyfus was widely ridiculed in the 60’s and the 80’s for coming out against AI simply on the grounds that it wouldn’t work, but for those decades at least he was certainly right as it turned out. Reading his book “The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer” from 1983 is haunting and eerily sounds a lot like today.

>“AI entrepreneurs and researchers will climb a tree, sometimes even a tall one, and then tell you they’ve got all the workings of a space program”
4 comments
dEnigma 3189 days ago
"simply on the grounds that it wouldn’t work"

That is a weird position to hold. Surely he must realize that it will work some day; or does he believe there is something more to human-like intelligence, that can never be achieved in silicon? I'm not saying we are close, or that the currently available tools are enough, but at some point in the future we will be there.

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raverbashing 3189 days ago
> “AI entrepreneurs and researchers will climb a tree, sometimes even a tall one, and then tell you they’ve got all the workings of a space program”

Sounds more like a cranky Luddite than anything else. "on the grounds that it wouldn’t work", lovely argument right there. The list of inventions that "wouldn't work" is vast, including trains, aircraft, personal computers, etc

All modern inventions started as feeble/underpowered/clunky inventions

Compare Atari graphics with PS4 ones

Compare the first works with Mnist digit recognition to what Snapchat filters or AlphaGo do

But that's fine since skeptics means less competition to those who actually make things work

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vorotato 3189 days ago
Sure but you couldn't actually do anything with AI in the 1960's and 1980's.
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ansible 3189 days ago
We've reached a cross-over point though.

Current-generation ML techniques have proven business value. You can talk to your phone, and it understands a decent set of common actions to be performed. It is now mass-market.

Businesses see the value of the existing ML systems, and can also see that investments in incremental improvements will pay dividends. And so, investment will continue.

Meanwhile, we're finally starting to figure out the actual architecture that allows us to think and move. [1] With continued research, we'll see progress there as well.

[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-unc...

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