[skymuse]

I read some of google's patent mentioned in the text and thought it was interesting. They basically want a connected network of devices that communicate with each other and with google. Most of the devices follow the following algorithm: watch -> think -> act -> report. What is interesting is the 'report' phase of the algorithm.

I think there is a battle between two competing AI philosophies. One philosophy thinks AI should be central: all devices need to talk to the overmind for learning. The other philosophy thinks AI should be local: the device should learn on its own, kind of like a biological agent. I think the 'biological agent' form of AI is interesting when it comes to privacy of information. Only you and the device have the data.

The future of AI should be interesting with these two philosophies in mind.

[zapita]

There is a possible middle-ground between central and local AI: federated learning. Its goal is to provide the best of both worlds. Here's a recent paper: https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/04/federated-learning-collabo...

[pacala]

Judging by the relative success of biological and social systems, systems that communicate effectively with each other end up much smarter than systems that don't communicate as effectively. Smarter as in winning the competition for resources more often.

The big question is whether we can build systems that communicate, but don't create vast disparities of information between overminds and everybody else. At this point the handful of information slurping mega-corporations have a huge information advantage compared with the average person. If nothing changes, this is the end of the humanistic world order based on the primacy of the individual brain.

[robocat]

>One philosophy thinks AI should be central > The other philosophy thinks AI should be local

I suspect is usually a mixture. For example Google Translate runs locally if you download a language pair, yet the training is not local. Google Gboard Swipe runs locally: in airplane mode I just added a new word to the dictionary and swipe recognised it, also contact names. However Google sends swipe information to a central location to improve the service...

[SkyMarshal]

The latter philosophy sounds like what Apple is working towards with their recent A12X chip direction.