2019-03-31, 09:41 AM
Grossly exaggerated media hype about AI advances continues. Here is a list of 10 top stories of 2018, from https://mindmatters.ai/t/2018-hype/:
Quote:- 1: IBM'S WATSON IS OUR NEW COMPUTER OVERLORD!
It won at Jeopardy (with specially chosen “softball” questions) but is not the hoped-for aid to cancer specialists.
- 2: AI CAN WRITE NOVELS AND SCREENPLAYS BETTER THAN THE PROS!
Software can automatically generate word sequences based on material fed in from existing scripts. But with what result?
- 3: WITH MIND-READING AI, YOU WILL NEVER HAVE SECRETS AGAIN!
The reality is that AI can read your mind for a few words repeated often if you have a flap cut out of your skull and electrodes are placed directly on your brain. As the abstract of the science paper puts it, the subjects were “implanted with electrode arrays over the lateral brain surface.” And after a neural network is trained to read the circuitry conveying your thoughts, it is no good on any other human being even if that other human being has a flap cut out of the skull. It learned to detect patterns in your wiring, not someone else’s.
- 4: MAKING AI LOOK MORE HUMAN MAKES IT MORE HUMAN-LIKE!
The power of AI often has little to do with its packaging. However, when AI is packaged as a human-like robot, for marketing purposes, you are looking at some seductive optics. One such example is Sophia, a chatbot that looks like a human being.
This summer, some were simply agog over “Sophia, the First Robot Citizen” (“unsettling as it is awe-inspiring”).
When you look at Sophia and hear her talk about herself and her place in the world, it almost makes you question if she could somehow be conscious. One audience member even asked her if she has consciousness. Sophia says: however, that it is aware that it is “not fully self-aware yet. I am still just a system of rules and behaviors. I am not generative, creative or operating on a fully cognitive scale like you.”
Notice that care is taken that the package mimics human nuances like blinking, smiling, and syncing lips so as to line up with words. Doing so increases the impression that the AI is human. You may fail to notice that Sophia says nothing that it isn’t programmed to say and the whole thing sounds like it was run past a company marketing specialist.
No details are offered as to how the Sophia program would become conscious, which is probably because no one in science today really understands how consciousness works.
- 5: AI CAN FIGHT HATE SPEECH!
AI can carry out its programmers’ biases and that’s all.
- 6: AI CAN EVEN EXPLOIT LOOPHOLES IN THE CODE!
AI adopts a solution in an allowed set, maybe not the one you expected.
- 7: COMPUTERS CAN DEVELOP CREATIVE SOLUTIONS ON THEIR OWN!
Programmers may be surprised by which solution, from a range they built in, comes out on top.
- 8: AI JUST NEEDS A BIGGER TRUCK!
We can't create superintelligent computers just by adding more computing power.
- 9: WILL THAT ARMY ROBOT SQUID EVER BE “SELF-AWARE?
What would it really take for a robot to be self-aware?
- 10: IS AI REALLY BECOMING “HUMAN-LIKE”?
....Incremental results are often extrapolated...into hype stories about the future. A small improvement in performance is simply assumed to be followed by an inevitable and indefinite series of further improvements. Many people thought that way in 1958 and many still do today. But series of improvements usually end, often abruptly.
Bottom line: ...Improvements might be surprising and impressive, but are only incremental so far as human capabilities are concerned.