|
|
|
|
|
|
by imiric
208 days ago
|
|
|
Whether or not that question is interesting is hardly relevant in this particular discussion. Companies building this technology are marketing it as if computers can think. They're telling us they can, and people are buying into it based on that claim. So that quote doesn't reconcile the extraordinary claims of one side with the skepticism of the other. And also, no disrespect to Dijkstra, but that sentiment is a bit shortsighted. If we could make computers think, it would have a profound impact on humanity. This is why there is so much excitement around this. We've been imagining this scenario for centuries, and we hope that this time around we can finally crack it. So comparing that achievement with something we can produce with classical technology is... uninspiring? Underwhelming? Selling ourselves short? I can't quite put it into words, but the possibility of answering that question would certainly be very interesting. |
|
|
I say this remains to be seen. You know that a lot of times you see the expression "AI" in the news. it comes followed by the word "bubble", right? If we see a big crash on the AI companies stocks we'll have proof that people aren't buying. And I strongly believe we'll see this crash and I think smart people aren't buying it.
OTOH, I think we need to be careful with the usage of the word "think". Dijkstra would probably give it a very broad meaning, going from French Impressionism, Bach and Shakespeare to Relativity Theory, Evolution Theory or Quantum physics, maybe even to Maradona's or Johan Cruyft's feet (Dijkstra was Dutch, remember). Computers and AI might go very deep in their "think" but will be very, very bad at the broad game. Frankly, I don't see how Markov Chain based technologies (e.g LLMs and most of AI today) can stop being replicators and start being innovators.
It is a bit like Pablo Picasso's quotation: "Computers are useless, they can only provide us answers".