
Ask HN: Does the term artificial-intelligence drive you up the wall? - Fsp2WFuH
This might be unpopular. There is no such thing as AI, there&#x27;s only machine learning. Can intelligence even be artificial? So much misuse of this term.
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mindcrime
_There is no such thing as AI, there 's only machine learning_

That's a pretty bold assertion given that the field of AI has a
history[1][2][3] stretching back 60 some odd years. What's your basis for
making the claim that there is "no such thing as AI"? And for that matter, why
would you make a bright-line distinction between "machine learning" and AI in
the first place? Most people consider ML a subset of the broader AI rubric,
meaning ML _is_ AI.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_workshop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_workshop)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intellig...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intelligence)

[3]: [https://aitopics.org/misc/brief-
history](https://aitopics.org/misc/brief-history)

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meiraleal
> What's your basis for making the claim that there is "no such thing as AI"?

Intelligence created by the man (or a group of) is not artificial
intelligence, is human intelligence in a canvas. It might be books, paintings
or code.

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agitator
It's the same thing as saying "reverse racism". Intelligence is all the same,
irrelevant of where it comes from or who has it.

It's just another example of humans elevating themselves above the, so far,
non-sentient, intelligences in the world.

Yeah currently nothing we have encountered is as intelligence as us, so I'd
say yeah we haven't created anything that mimics human level intelligence or
sentience yet, so yeah everything thus far has been an artificial attempt at
some aspect of human intelligence, but eventually we will create something
intelligent, and it won't be "artificial" or mimicking intelligence, but it
will be an independent source of sentience and intelligence.

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sp332
> Can intelligence even be artificial?

Why don't I just answer "yes" and then you can stop worrying about it?

~~~
meiraleal
You could create a bot to answer this kind of question. /s

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jryan49
We have "natural" intelligence, intelligence that arose from natural
processes. Artificial intelligence is intelligence we produced. What is so
confusing?

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unwaba
> Can intelligence even be artificial?

Well, yes. "Artificial" first and foremost means "man-made". The point of
terming intelligence as artificial is to explicitly differentiate between the
intelligence/cognitive modules developed over millennia of natural evolution
and, well, man-made attempts at mimicking this.

Moreover, as another comment mentions, ML is a subset of AI.

The term "Artificial intelligence" is not what drives people up a wall. It's
actually the fact that it is _sold_ as capable of more than reality is what
angers people.

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IpV8
Yea! And while we're at it, I'm livid that we're still calling them
REfrigerators! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

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joejerryronnie
Whhhoooaaa, like, mind blown man! I'm fully woke now and will never look at
that silver box in my kitchen the same!

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Isamu
Well ... if you're going there ... there's no machine "learning" either. It's
just a clever kind of numeric optimization. It's nothing like human learning,
which is incredibly adaptable. No comparison.

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rurban
Every AI engineer is well aware of the bad taste of the name. AI is just
advanced technology. Either search, dynamic problems, advanced algorithms or
linear algebra used on generic problems. As soon as a formerly AI field
becomes main stream it is not under the AI umbrella anymore. Such as search,
backtracking, game strategy, planning, bignum arithmetic, symbolic
interpretation, ...

Verbatim interpretation of AI has nothing to do with the field of AI, only
with science fiction.

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laurentl
The way you write "artificial-intelligence" with an hyphen drives me up the
wall, if that helps.

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ttsda
Artificial as opposed to natural, doesn't mean it would not be as real as
ours.

