There is also a considerable level of politics, if you read Egan’s writings about Iran and Australia’s handling of migrants—anything which distracts from the real important issues, like how Iran is mistreated by the world, is the enemy.
(Plus a certain degree of mathematician crankery: his page on Google Image Search, and how it disproves AI, or his complaints about people linking the wrong URLs due to his ISP host—because he is apparently unable to figure out ‘website domain names’ - were quite something even when they were written.)
his page on Google Image Search, and how it disproves AI
The page in question is complaining about Google search’s “knowledge panel” showing inaccurate information when you search for his name, which is a reasonable thing for someone to be annoyed about. The anti-singularitarian snark does seem misplaced (Google’s automated systems getting this wrong in 2016 doesn’t seem like a lot of evidence about future AI development trajectories), but it’s not a claim to have “disproven AI”.
his complaints about people linking the wrong URLs due to his ISP host—because he is apparently unable to figure out ‘website domain names’
For the people being falsely portrayed as “Australian science fiction writer Greg Egan”, this is probably just a minor nuisance, but it provides an illustration of how laughable the notion is that Google will ever be capable of using its relentlessly over-hyped “AI” to make sense of information on the web.
He didn’t use the word “disprove”, but when he’s calling it laughable that AI will ever (ever! Emphasis his!) be able to merely “make sense of his information on the web”, I think gwern’s gloss is closer to accurate than yours. It’s 2024 and Google is already using AI to make sense of information on the web, this isn’t just “anti-singularitarian snark”.
he’s calling it laughable that AI will ever (ever! Emphasis his!)
The 2016 passage you quoted is calling it laughable that Google-in-particular’s technology (marketed as “AI”, but Egan doesn’t think the term is warranted) will ever be able to make sense of information on the web. It’s Gary Marcus–like skepticism about the reliability and generality of existing-paradigm machine learning techniques, not Hubert Dreyfus–like skepticism of whether a machine could think in all philosophical strictness. I think this is a really important distinction that the text of your comment and Gwern’s comment (“disproves AI”, “laughable that AI will ever”) aren’t being clear about.
(I agree; my intent in participating in this tedious thread is merely to establish that “mathematician crankery [about] Google Image Search, and how it disproves AI” is a different thing from “made an overconfident negative prediction about AI capabilities”.)
someone who probably has better things to do with his time than tinker with DNS configuration
I find such excuses to be unconvincing pretty much 100% of the time. Almost everyone who “has better things to do than [whatever]” is in that situation because their time is very valuable, and their time is very valuable because they make, and thus have, a lot of money. (Like, say, a successful fiction author.) In which case, they can pay someone to solve the problem for them. (Heck, I don’t doubt that Egan could even find people to help him fix this for free!)
If someone has a problem like this, but neither takes the time to fix it himself, nor pays (or asks) someone to fix it for him, what this means isn’t that he’s too busy, but rather that he doesn’t care.
And that’s fine. He’s got the right to not care about this. But then nobody else has the slightest shred of obligation to care about it, either. Not lifting a finger to fix this problem, but expecting other people to spend their time and mental effort (even if it’s only a little of both) to compensate for the problem, is certainly not laudable behavior.
(Plus a certain degree of mathematician crankery: his page on Google Image Search, and how it disproves AI
I’m starting to wonder if a lot/all of the people who are very cynical about the feasibility of ASI have some crank belief or other like that. Plenty of people have private religion, for instance. And sometimes that religion informs their decisions, but they never tell anyone the real reasons underlying these decisions, because they know they could never justify them. They instead say a load of other stuff they made up to support the decisions that never quite adds up to a coherent position because they’re leaving something load-bearing out.
There is also a considerable level of politics, if you read Egan’s writings about Iran and Australia’s handling of migrants—anything which distracts from the real important issues, like how Iran is mistreated by the world, is the enemy.
(Plus a certain degree of mathematician crankery: his page on Google Image Search, and how it disproves AI, or his complaints about people linking the wrong URLs due to his ISP host—because he is apparently unable to figure out ‘website domain names’ - were quite something even when they were written.)
The page in question is complaining about Google search’s “knowledge panel” showing inaccurate information when you search for his name, which is a reasonable thing for someone to be annoyed about. The anti-singularitarian snark does seem misplaced (Google’s automated systems getting this wrong in 2016 doesn’t seem like a lot of evidence about future AI development trajectories), but it’s not a claim to have “disproven AI”.
You mean how http://gregegan.net used to be a 301 permanent redirect to http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au, and then the individual pages would say “If you link to this page, please use this URL: http://www.gregegan.net/[...]”? (Internet Archive example.) I wouldn’t call that a “complaint”, exactly, but a hacky band-aid solution from someone who probably has better things to do with his time than tinker with DNS configuration.
He didn’t use the word “disprove”, but when he’s calling it laughable that AI will ever (ever! Emphasis his!) be able to merely “make sense of his information on the web”, I think gwern’s gloss is closer to accurate than yours. It’s 2024 and Google is already using AI to make sense of information on the web, this isn’t just “anti-singularitarian snark”.
The 2016 passage you quoted is calling it laughable that Google-in-particular’s technology (marketed as “AI”, but Egan doesn’t think the term is warranted) will ever be able to make sense of information on the web. It’s Gary Marcus–like skepticism about the reliability and generality of existing-paradigm machine learning techniques, not Hubert Dreyfus–like skepticism of whether a machine could think in all philosophical strictness. I think this is a really important distinction that the text of your comment and Gwern’s comment (“disproves AI”, “laughable that AI will ever”) aren’t being clear about.
Well, to be clear, that too has been solidly falsified. Gemini seems plenty capable of making sense of information on the web.
(I agree; my intent in participating in this tedious thread is merely to establish that “mathematician crankery [about] Google Image Search, and how it disproves AI” is a different thing from “made an overconfident negative prediction about AI capabilities”.)
I find such excuses to be unconvincing pretty much 100% of the time. Almost everyone who “has better things to do than [whatever]” is in that situation because their time is very valuable, and their time is very valuable because they make, and thus have, a lot of money. (Like, say, a successful fiction author.) In which case, they can pay someone to solve the problem for them. (Heck, I don’t doubt that Egan could even find people to help him fix this for free!)
If someone has a problem like this, but neither takes the time to fix it himself, nor pays (or asks) someone to fix it for him, what this means isn’t that he’s too busy, but rather that he doesn’t care.
And that’s fine. He’s got the right to not care about this. But then nobody else has the slightest shred of obligation to care about it, either. Not lifting a finger to fix this problem, but expecting other people to spend their time and mental effort (even if it’s only a little of both) to compensate for the problem, is certainly not laudable behavior.
Yes, while there are limits to what kinds of tasks can be delegated, web hosting is not exactly a domain lacking in adequate service providers.
I’m starting to wonder if a lot/all of the people who are very cynical about the feasibility of ASI have some crank belief or other like that. Plenty of people have private religion, for instance. And sometimes that religion informs their decisions, but they never tell anyone the real reasons underlying these decisions, because they know they could never justify them. They instead say a load of other stuff they made up to support the decisions that never quite adds up to a coherent position because they’re leaving something load-bearing out.