[skepticATX]

The predominate view of AI is that it is essentially magic. Which of course couldn’t be further from the truth.

But I find these arguments much easier to understand if you look at it through that lens. Of course magic can cure cancer because… it’s magic!

[ToucanLoucan]

There's a lot of media swirling around right now that's remarking upon the fact that the AI movement especially at it's most evangelical end strongly resembles what would otherwise be called a cult.

I don't think it's a coincidence we're seeing the largest numbers ever of people leaving organized religion at the same time we're seeing so many communities like the one that's grown around AI spring up that are essentially religion without the historical baggage.

[ToValueFunfetti]

"AI will cure X" is equivalent to "Human intelligence will cure X", except that we expect AI to get there first because it's denser and can be replicated orders of magnitude more quickly and cheaply. You can levy a couple of counterpoints- that humans will never cure cancer either or that this kind of AI is impossible- but those are magical pessimism moreso than the alternative is magical optimism.

[missedthecue]

Some things AI will probably just do better, even if there aren't any paradigm-shifting breakthroughs with cures and medicines.

For example, reading an MRI or other medical scan correctly goes a long way toward curing cancer. Reading it incorrectly wastes precious time as problems are ignored or mistreated with the wrong methods. I knew someone whose bone cancer was mistreated as a rotator cuff injury for a little over a year due to the fact that an inexperienced and probably overworked doctor did not correctly identify it in the slew of tests and scans the patient had taken.

In the future, it is likely that AI will always read these scans and test results more accurately than a human physician, leading to higher remission success rates. This will happen fairly quietly and behind the scenes, even if AI doesn't invent the magic cancer pill.

[jph00]

> we expect AI to get there first because it's denser and can be replicated orders of magnitude more quickly and cheaply

There is no evidence that AI that's useful enough to help make research breakthroughs can be replicated orders of magnitude more quickly and cheaply. Whilst that's a true fact about software, AI is not just software -- it requires a lot of hardware. And currently it's far less efficient at using that hardware for general purpose problem solving than humans are.

[xanderlewis]

To the extent that machine learning models are a black box, it is ‘magic’.

Of course, at the lowest levels it’s entirely understood but it’s the emergent properties that give many the feeling of magic — and I would argue quite reasonably so.

…for people who use ‘magic’ to refer to things that accomplish complicated tasks whilst abstracting it all away so that it looks easy (much like how I can copy and paste between my iDevices on a LAN and it magically works), anyway.

> Of course magic can cure cancer because… it’s magic!

If you take magic to mean something supernatural, then yes. It’s essentially of the same form as ‘god is perfect; a god that exists is greater than a god that doesn’t; therefore god exists’-type arguments.

[mlinhares]

Magic or god. I’m at a point that if I can replace AI with magic/god in a phrase I know it’s bullshit.

[idle_zealot]

The real test is to replace AI with "humanity, given 1000 years". If the statement is reasonable after replacement then it is possible. If it still sounds unlikely then it merits deeper inspection. Will humanity cure cancer given 1000 of study and medical development? It's quite possible, and AI will probably help. So it's not unreasonable to claim that AI can cure cancer (eventually).

[skepticATX]

> humanity, given 1000 years

The problem is that this makes almost anything sound reasonable, besides things that violate the laws of physics.

I don't think that thinking this far out is anything but pure speculation. Whether the mechanism is human intelligence, AI, or magic.

[Davidzheng]

Chess AI is pretty much chess god