[telmo]

> These were not AIs but rule-based systems with if elses.

What is fashionable to call AI these days are ultimately rule-based systems with if elses. It just so happens that it's a bazillion of those, and they are created by gradient descent.

[mort96]

And that they're not if-elses but nonlinear functions.

[telmo]

You mean functions such as:

   if x > 0:
       return x
   else:
       return 0

?

[mort96]

That's one example of a nonlinear function, yes. You also have (eˣ)/(1+eˣ), or (e²ˣ-1)/(e²ˣ+1), or a host of others which don't contain anything if-like at all.

[telmo]

My somewhat snarky point was that there is no magic distinction such as:

> These were not AIs but rule-based systems with if elses.

I believe I already made my point with the ReLU example, if you don't want to concede it that is also ok.

[mort96]

I don’t know what point you’re trying to make. Neural nets are fundamentally different from rule-based systems. The fact that one of the non-linear functions which is sometimes used in neural nets can be implemented using an if statement seems utterly irrelevant.

[Matumio]

That's RELU, which clearly belongs to the realm of AI. Dangerous stuff.

[telmo]

It's almost like a chose the example on purpose ;)