First, I’m not really claiming “machines cannot do that.” I can see advances in machine learning and I can imagine the next round of advances being pretty exciting. But I’m thinking in terms of maybe someday a machine being able to distinguish foreground from background, or understand a sentence in English, not being a superintelligence that controls Earth’s destiny. The scales are completely different. One scale is reasonable; one strains credibility, I’m afraid.
Thanks for the book recommendation; I’ll be sure to check it out.
I think controlling Earth’s destiny is only modestly harder than understanding a sentence in English—in the same sense that I think Einstein was only modestly smarter than George W. Bush. EY makes a similar point.
You sound to me like someone saying, sixty years ago: “Maybe some day a computer will be able to play a legal game of chess—but simultaneously defeating multiple grandmasters, that strains credibility, I’m afraid.” But it only took a few decades to get from point A to point B. I doubt that going from “understanding English” to “controlling the Earth” will take that long.
There’s a problem with it, though. Some decades ago you’d have just as eagerly subscribed to this statement: “Controlling Earth’s destiny is only modestly harder than playing a good game of chess”, which we now know to be almost certainly false.
I agree with Rain. Understanding implies a much deeper model than playing. To make the comparison to chess, you would have to change it to something like, “Controlling Earth’s destiny is only modestly harder than making something that can learn chess, or any other board game, without that game’s mechanics (or any mapping from the computer’s output to game moves) being hard-coded, and then play it at an expert level.”
It’s the word “understanding” in the quote which makes it presume general intelligence and/or consciousness without directly stating it. The word “playing” does not have such a connotation, at least to me. I don’t know if I would think differently back when chess required intelligence.
First, I’m not really claiming “machines cannot do that.” I can see advances in machine learning and I can imagine the next round of advances being pretty exciting. But I’m thinking in terms of maybe someday a machine being able to distinguish foreground from background, or understand a sentence in English, not being a superintelligence that controls Earth’s destiny. The scales are completely different. One scale is reasonable; one strains credibility, I’m afraid.
Thanks for the book recommendation; I’ll be sure to check it out.
I think controlling Earth’s destiny is only modestly harder than understanding a sentence in English—in the same sense that I think Einstein was only modestly smarter than George W. Bush. EY makes a similar point.
You sound to me like someone saying, sixty years ago: “Maybe some day a computer will be able to play a legal game of chess—but simultaneously defeating multiple grandmasters, that strains credibility, I’m afraid.” But it only took a few decades to get from point A to point B. I doubt that going from “understanding English” to “controlling the Earth” will take that long.
Well said. I shall have to try to remember that tagline.
There’s a problem with it, though. Some decades ago you’d have just as eagerly subscribed to this statement: “Controlling Earth’s destiny is only modestly harder than playing a good game of chess”, which we now know to be almost certainly false.
I agree with Rain. Understanding implies a much deeper model than playing. To make the comparison to chess, you would have to change it to something like, “Controlling Earth’s destiny is only modestly harder than making something that can learn chess, or any other board game, without that game’s mechanics (or any mapping from the computer’s output to game moves) being hard-coded, and then play it at an expert level.”
Not obviously false, I think.
It’s the word “understanding” in the quote which makes it presume general intelligence and/or consciousness without directly stating it. The word “playing” does not have such a connotation, at least to me. I don’t know if I would think differently back when chess required intelligence.
(Again:) Hey, remember this tagline: “I think controlling Earth’s destiny is only modestly harder than understanding a sentence in English.”
Hey, remember this tagline: “I think controlling Earth’s destiny is only modestly harder than understanding a sentence in English.”