Non-Problems in Artificial Intelligence
Nonexistent problems require fixing things that ain't broke as solutions!
I see lots of things going on in artificial intelligence, and I agree with most of the people who say it is obviously on the wrong track. However, that is entirely a political problem involving people who don’t seem to matter all that much. Like yeah, ChatGPT is not general AI… obviously. And Dall-E especially isn’t. If anything, it’s probably an example of the problems with the news, and we all know the news can be depended on to manage to be wrong about literally everything anyway. The news is wrong about AI too, news at 11. Except the news being wrong is never news, it’s… old news, and they would never treat it as anything other than a correction to be ignored anyway.
Here is an example of what I think is kind of a valid critique on a level where it’s removed from any kind of wider social context whatsoever. Notice the Atlantic is hosting this article. The Atlantic is also now charging for it when they didn’t used to, showing they’re in dire straits financially, probably due to all the fawning over Hamas:
Noam Chomsky: Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong - The Atlantic
It’s in the accursed Atlantic, and not only is Chomsky at MIT, the person at the bottom who made the article, Yarden Katz, is also at MIT, just like one of the presidents who got fired! See, all the corruption really is related and flows out of a deeper cause which I don’t think most people even really consider, a sort of metaphysical group psychology which has become how I tend to look at world events readily nowadays and has been for some years.
The critique that what one of my professors called the “black box” approach is too dominant is correct. However, the “black box” approach is flashy and gives people calculations, bad AI art that can’t make faces or hands, etc. It gives people some kind of results quickly. I don’t personally think super highly of it, I don’t think ChatGPT is coming to kill us, but I’m not going to insult it either because it’s still accomplishing something, it’s just accomplishing getting specific computations, not anything like the sort of cognitive science goals of AI, but still an economically valid activity. My professor showed me there are people in compsci trying to understand things, and said they’re mathematicians turned computer scientists and gave me a paper, Dijkstra’s argument for the a prior correctness of code, and a textbook.
And the “black box” work is not drowning out real AI research at all either. For example, one of my friends is an author in this thesis:
Applications of Neural Architecture Search to Deep Reinforcement Learning Methods (tamu.edu)
In case you don’t want to read that right now or ever: They built a deep learning neural network to play Othello AI on a 7-year-old home PC. I can’t program in C++ but now I kind of want to actually learn.
Notice the people doing the important things also all seem to work in Texas for the time being. I wonder if that could also have anything to do with why the Atlantic people have so many problems with Texas and “Texas and other states to our south are more conservative and we must treat them like bumpkins and call them Nazis” is not actually the causal factor. I’m sure it does, but studies must be done and even then they’ll probably add to the “replication crisis” because people in the South can’t actually be more productive than wolx!
This Christmas one of my aunts actually decided to talk to me about what I was studying and I brought up that article. She asked if I was just taking math classes and I said yes, and she asked why not any programming and I said I was learning that myself but not taking it in class, because even to the extent I want to do computer science, all the good computer science is being done in mathematics departments. The citations on these papers and books is case in point. But it’s still being done! It’s just people like the Atlantic (ahem) who I think are mostly spinning a false narrative, because no news is good news since all news is fake news in my experience.
My same aunt from this discussion also sewed this robot potholder and another sci-fi one and I got them for Christmas, along with everyone else who wanted potholders also picking other designs. Do all these miserable people pumping out fake news in a desperate bid to stay relevant have their aunts sew robot and rocketship potholders? I don’t think so.
Another criticism I would make of Chomsky’s the Atlantic (heh, now you know how Chomsky sold out) argument is that no, the non-theory-based AIs aren’t even that good at doing the engineering aspect either. I don’t think it’s possible to get a better approximation without knowing how something works. For example, I wanted a satirical book cover of Prometheus Unbound if it were written by Ayn Rand because we all know objectivists are obsessed with the idea of Prometheus, even though there’s nothing wrong with having an art deco Prometheus, and it ties back into the whole idea of “cyberpunk Romanticism” that I mentioned in a comment before learning
had an article in the works about it. So I went to Stable Diffusion and I inputted “prometheus unbound by ayn rand art deco book cover.” The result? Something that’s really obviously not what anyone was going for:
A lot of people say we live in interesting times, but I think we live in awfully boring times where the main characteristic is everything is somewhat being stifled compared to what really should be happening. Banality ov evil and evil is a deprivation and all that. It’s only interesting if you pay attention to interesting things instead of the faux news Atlantic cycle (yes, I called the Atlantic faux news instead of Fox and it just came out that way.) Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the light except J. K. Rowling has been canceled for supposedly being a TERF Nazi too but I couldn’t care less anymore.
Alternatively, if you just want to give me a one-time payment, buying my binaural beats album which I listen to every day since that’s I made it because I couldn’t find what I wanted to listen to in the first place will also send 100% of the profits to me.
I always am reminded of the 1970s movie The Devils.
The catholic goes into the protestant walled castle and using theatre and a small ornate box which he claims has the tears of christ in it. Basically psychologically influences the rebellion within the gated protestant stronghold and takes over to destroy the monastary and nunnery. A.i (houses of the holy ) concept of a hidden god like irrational being that reflects the human desire to know does the same thing. It infiltrates the walls of the mind with irrationality and promise of knowing.
So the illustration is a square within a square within a square. like a pyramid but flat version.
outer square is the market place. Next square in is the money changers. Next square in is the guards of the houses of the holy (politicians) final square at the centre is the houses of the holy that no one can enter.
Great concept to control the masses. Works everytime. Every eon same thing again.
An highly amusing musing. Thank you. Now, I must ponder, cheesecake or lasagna? Was this a meal, an entree or dessert?
Who cares!
Tasty! Thoughtful, tasty, delightful, and delicious.