
Andrew Ng: What Artificial Intelligence Can and Can’t Do Right Now - seycombi
https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-artificial-intelligence-can-and-cant-do-right-now
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agentofoblivion
Refreshing. The hype around AI/machine learning in places like here and
TechCrunch is exhausting. It doesn't help when people like Stephen Hawking and
Elon Musk speculate about nightmare scenarios that seem to have both feet
firmly in the distant future. We're so, so far away from anything resembling
so-called "general intelligence". It's totally nuts to compare clever
engineering scenarios like Google's Go project to general intelligence. It
just isn't.

My theory is that paid per click advertising/clickbait is making it
increasingly difficult to say anything that gets attention on the internet, so
people increasingly use hyperbole. "Internet journalists" will trump things up
to make it sound more exciting, feeding the hype machine. Those that don't
succumb to the practice are just not heard. There are, of course, exceptions.
But a well-reasoned, calmly stated argument from a nobody is never going to go
viral in the way that an outlandish story from that same nobody could. i.e.
Seth Godin doesn't have reach just because he's interesting, it's also because
he's been working at it for over a decade, but any idiot can make up some fake
story that goes viral and impacts the public consciousness.

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ilaksh
I guess because business people tend to be confused by hype or anti-hype and
sometimes unable to care about five years from now this is a realistic
message.

But he really emphasized the supervision and input -> output parts which is a
bit of an oversimplification. There is definitely less supervision than before
and demos from groups like Deep Mind or OpenCog that are powerful interactive
agents.

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mojomark
"...the amount of work we can automate with AI is vastly bigger than before.
As leaders, it is incumbent on all of us to make sure we are building a world
in which every individual has an opportunity to thrive."

Andrew Ng is cerainly an AI liminary, but the above excerpt begs for a
refreshed discussion summarizing leading ideas on what this new "AI-infused"
world looks like.

In a 2014 Bloomberg article, Ng stated "There will always be work for people
who can synthesize information, think critically, and be flexible in how they
act in different situations."(1)

This logic worked for the Industrial Revolution (IR), and I'm sure it will
certainly hold true for our lifetimes and perhaps a few generations onward.
However, while steam engines and special purpose machines of the IR
drastically increased productivity, displacing many physical labor jobs,
humanity still carried the reserve of our intellect to fall back on in a post
IR world. There was still a largely untapped reservoir of intellect and
creativity.

I suspect the transition to an AI-infused world will occur gradually over a
few generations and my great grandchildren will have a much different sense of
nastalgia and what it means to live a meaningful life in a world where people
gladly receive a base wage and spend the day consuming the latest computer
generated song, novel, or scientific white papers. A world where computer
creations arrive at a pace and quality faster and higher than humans could
never compete with, so why bother?

In my current mindset, however, that just doesn't seem like a fun world to
live in. Every single thing I do being far inferior to what a computer can do.
If I were transplanted in that world, I think there would be many products
where I would draw the line and opt for a good portion of non-AI generated
products. Like a modern day Amish person I suppose.

1\. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-12/your-
job-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-12/your-job-taught-
to-machines-puts-half-u-s-work-at-risk)

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jstnstwrt
ai community needs to put out more clear writing like this to help educate
business world on what is possible and what isn't.

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dilemma
The AI community is the source of false information. They will never tell you
that AI is fundamentally impossible because a machine cannot think; it can
only do as its told by its programmer. That is the bottom line.

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gumby
How is that different from a human or a dog?

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hood_syntax
Creativity imo. We can choose to create novel things, with intention, that
fulfill a use.

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gumby
Dogs are creative as well, though not as much as humans. The comment I was
replying to simply _asserted_ that people have something a machine inherently
cannot. I wonder what that thing is, and if the writer thinks it's a machine-
vs-nature issue or a humans-vs-all-other issue.

FWIW I don't believe the assertion in the slightest. I do believe it is quite
likely to have an AGI that does not recognizably exhibit _conciousness_ but
that, to me, is irrelevant.

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hood_syntax
That's fair, I understand your stance on that, and definitely agree with you
on the AGI.

