[tikwidd]

This program, like everything that has been called "AI", is following an algorithm. It's an impressive algorithm but not fundamentally different from my dishwasher.

In the Enlightenment period, philosophers and scientists marvelled at mechanical automata, machines that simulated aspects of digestion, the circulatory system and the brain. New developments in machine learning are rehashing the same philosophical questions that were raised in the 17th century in response to technological progress.

[benlivengood]

I, as a human, am following an algorithm similar to QCD for moving subatomic particles around which is fundamentally the same way a dishwasher moves particles around. Intelligence is mechanical in the Physics sense.

[BlueTemplar]

But it doesn't. That's different for neural networks : there is no pre-made algorithm that someone would implement (well, except for the overall architecture, but that's not what we are talking about).

[tikwidd]

An algorithm with an indeterminate output is still an algorithm.

[BlueTemplar]

The issue here is not so much that it's the output that is indeterminate, but the "algorithm" itself.

[tikwidd]

There's nothing indeterminate about the algorithm though. It's a fixed set of instructions fed into a Turing compatible machine like any other program.

[BlueTemplar]

And there's nothing indeterminate about the results of a pseudo-random number generator, but you seem to be missing my point ?

[ItsMattyG]

Let's just keep moving those goal posts.

[tikwidd]

The goalposts should be to create something useful, not trying to reach some nebulous criterion of "true intelligence". Submarine engineers don't labour over the question of whether their new designs are "truly swimming".