
Why Prediction Is the Essence of Intelligence - kawera
https://medium.com/inventing-intelligent-machines/prediction-is-the-essence-of-intelligence-42c786c3e5a9
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brooklyn_ashey
"If your roadmap is rooted in prediction as the essence, the law of the hammer
dictates that it’s a prediction problem. And when cast in prescriptive terms
to an adoring industry, the question is no longer questioned. It becomes
truth. Prediction is the essence of intelligence. And it will remain so until
a more dominant technology teaches us otherwise."

This was an excellent morning read. Thank you. I especially liked the quote
above. What is interesting/ironic is that while we have these incredibly
sophisticated machines (human brains) at our constant disposal, we just can't
seem to get as excited about innovative learning models for them. We are more
intrigued by the shiny, so we put nearly all our resources there, even though
overdue revelation there could drive better AI research, or at least create
better researchers! Even though we already have the kind of data in Actual
Human Intelligence we seek in AI to advance AI further, we ignore this data
and turn toward a new machine instead. (hey, I'm fascinated by it too, no
disrespect meant-- just observation) So we stick to our old ways, even as
those models (for example, our public education systems) show themselves to be
costly, resistant to scale, and largely ineffective and underperforming. The
other aspect that AI could give us if looked at from a slightly different
angle, is the surprising interconnection of idea- I mean ideas that reach
through and across domain or subject to reveal stronger, more influential
types of knowledge-- a more "poetic" type of understanding that could give
rise to novel understanding. It is almost as if we have plateaued, like a
young student learning tennis or something, but are addicted to the rapid
early states of visible progress, so we change sports so we can get that
"high' again. It is as if we are not psychologically ready to pass that
plateau and move into a more connection-robust model of education. So, we are
now enthralled with machines, because they are (we wrongly surmise)
controllable children for now. Thanks for posting this!

