There is artificial intelligence (AI) and artificial general intelligence (AGI). The former is about intelligently operating machines that can respond to input from the environment to take action and achieve a specific goal. This is not like natural intelligence (NI) in biology like humans and other animals have.
Artificial general intelligence however, is like natural intelligence, only it's not natural, hence artificial. AGI is about doing what a human can do, performing intellectual functions that human beings can. Current "narrow/weak AI" development hopes to progress towards AGI, a real "strong/full AI". The desire to create AGi/full-AI has been surrounded by hype for decades.
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Is real general artificial intelligence around the corner?
Marvin Minsky, who co-founded the MIT AI laboratory, has done work on cognition and AI. He is considered to be the father of AI. He once said that "... from three to eight years, we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being. I mean a machine that will be able to read Shakespeare, grease a car, play office politics, tell a joke, have a fight."
But this was said way back in 1970. His 3 to 8 year vision didn't seem to work out. It seems there has always been hype around technology, robotics and smart machines to do what humans can do, and this comes with unrealistic timeframe expectations.
There has always been hype around robots and robot intelligence that is artificially created by humans. When nothing came about from the big promises and hopes of a future, this field of research, AGI or AI, was abandoned by many thinkers for decades. Some saw it as a pipe dream because the prerequisite technological developments had not yet been created to further develop the concept. Thus came the "AI Winter" where we have been slowly unthawing our way out of.
The dream of a techno robotic future was crushed. It's taken time to work up to that image and dream again. There is buzz anew surrounding AI and the deep learning being applied to beat humans in games like chess and Go.
The first early AI blunder was focusing on rule-based learning to try to emulate human reasoning. The lab results fueled the hype, and then when a report showed that all they were good at was in the lab, but not real world complexity. The funding dried up and so began the AI winter. No more government funding, no more students who instead sought out more promising careers.
But recently things have been moving to make AI more popular again. 1997's Deep Blue chess defeat of Kasparov. In 2005 131 miles was driven by an autonomous car. And in 2011 IBM's Watson beat two Jeopardy contestants. Having hit the mainstream again, AI was back in the hot seat and out of the cold long winter, with new visions and dreams for the future.
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The savior of the AI winter was deep learning which forms a neural network hierarchy to filter information and make sense of the world. In looking at an object, its scans layers of various types, like layers of edges, texture, brightness, and so on. Then an object can be recognized from previous training. With enough training, patterns are developed and new unfamiliar objects can also be recognized as something as well.
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Much of the terminology we use towards AI is metaphorical and anthropomorphic. "Neural" network, "cognitive" computing, deep "learning". Machines don't think or learn. These are just familiar terms for us to simplify communication through referencing something with ourselves. This has been done for thousands of years, as far back as Ancient Egypt.
Even when we say AI, its not true AI yet. It's just computations being done, but not a free thinking artificial intelligence. Machine learning is not real learning. Neural networks are not neurons. Just to be clear. We should not mistake the metaphors for a literal reality. Some people don't make this distinction, and take the terms literally and put too much trust into the technology. When accidents can happen, such as with self-driving cars, then "AI" gets blamed, but it was always a machine programmed by humans, not a free thinking entity.
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Many people think that with enough power, the programs could begin to learn on their own and go from their. So now there is an AI seduction going around. People don't understand how AIs function due to their level of complexity, so they imagine an emergent intelligence is on its way, just around the corner. But it isn't. We don't even understand how consciousness is created in ourselves, so we can't realistically create it somewhere else anytime soon.
Rule-based mathematics, or deep learning, might never yield a real artificial intelligence. A cat is a cat, real or in a picture, for the "AI" we have now. The AI doesn't distinguish between the two. It doesn't have a real understanding of the world like a human.
This doesn't stop more students from taking up AI studies though. There is a new vision for AI in the future, and people are trying to get in early. Whether it pans out or not has yet to be seen. The field of AI may be settings itself up for yet another fall if it focuses too heavily on one field again, like it did with rule-based learning. Deep learning may seem great now, but the limitations may show up sooner or later.
Here is the Gartner Hype Cycle. It shoots up with the hype, then falls, then levels off.
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The super hyper around AI may lead to it's downfall again with more unrealistic expectation of it in the near future. But the mainstream keeps chugging along the image of AI and its potential, with no signs of a bubble popping or that there is a bubble. AI is a hot topic with a lot of expected growth to come. The industry is booming. The hype around fake news is a drive for AI to detect and even create it.
Here is a more detailed Gartner roadmap:
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Maybe things will boom and more progress will be made, or maybe we will reach another block for a few decades. For now, it's a hot investment that many people are trying to get into. Autonomous vehicles and AGI are still 10+ years away according to the Gartner hyper cycle of emerging technologies. Blockchain technology is another hype that still has 5-10 years before we see wide-spread adoption in the mainstream. A lot of things are coming tough.
References:
- Artificial intelligence
- Artificial general intelligence
- Marvin Minsky
- AI is So Hot, We’ve Forgotten All About the AI Winter
- AI winter
- New Scientist Issue 3082
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I see AI studies like development of better algorithms. I think we are very far from true AI, it's a very very complex thing and as you mention we don't really understand how our consciousness works. And the energy amount needed for our brain to work is very tiny if you compare to computer and I am not even talking about super computers
Yeah. The brain is the most complex thing in the universe we have found, and biology did such a great job on power use compared to our attempts with computers. We have a long way. The complexity is so great to create our consciousness that people invented beliefs to try to explain how our consciousness comes from somewhere else... because it can't have been created by what's in our bodies... lol
Whoever or WHATEVER can predict the future , controls the world.
Steemit Blockchain Will Be The Central Cortex Of The Global Quantum A.I.'s Brain - The Sentient World Simulaion, for predicting the future.
STEEMIT PROCESSES MORE DATA THAN ALL THE OTHER BLOCKCHAIN CRYPTO-CURRENCIES COMBINED.
All the quantum computers of all the worlds biggests corporation are interlinked and working to this end.
Any one with even half a brain knows that blockchain technology is not going away. It's here to stay!
Why? Because EVERYTHING... every piece of data and every piece of edge computing hardware is soon to be tied (chained) into the blockchain matrix in the cloud. Including EVERY product, service, creative and recreational activity that we do.
Using 5g technology and cheap telemetric printed circuit tattoos (like barcodes on steroids) able to sense, process and transmit data, will be in EVERYTHING and EVERYONE.
We will all become part of the Sentient World Simulation (SWS) as described in the popular Purdue University white paper on this subject, It's already up & running right under your noses as you read this blog post. IT'S WATCHING YOU!!!
We each have a Global Quantum A.I. avatar following and recording our every move using our 'smart' phones, 'smart' appliances - TV's, game consoles, 'smart' fridges, 'smart' meters & 'smart' cookers, etc.
We each have our own virtual world avatar that simulates & mimics our character, in order to predict the future.
Whoever or WHATEVER can predict the future , controls the world... The Global Quantum A.I.
Thank you for the clarification. I now see more clearly where AI is a potential impending disaster. As you wrote there is shortfall between expectations and implementation. This may lead to AI being released from the labs in commercial or military products that could fail catastrophically and reveal those very flaws that we missed, at great cost, financially or in human lives.
I agree completely with your concluding remarks, how can we possibly create a complete General AI when we don't even fully understand our own organic intelligence and consciousness?
Yes good point, it can backfire on us. We are trying to create something that can lead to our destruction. Much fiction has used that theme. From Terminator to the Matrix.
The thing is, I think many military heads have also been watching and reading the same fiction and are using their bottomless budgets to fund the development of their dream weapons, without a thought for how it could go so horribly wrong. They seem to ignore the moral or the warning of such fiction.
Commercially also, businesses see the dollars and not the problems.
We seem to become mesmerised with challenge of, we can, to the detriment for any consideration as to why we perhaps should not.
Then there the unforeseen consequences that none of us can anticipate.
AI is a neutral entity that can be used for good or for evil. There are those of us who fear the latter. And sometimes it is a trade off you get some good, but you must sacrifice something. Is the sacrifice of what you are giving up worth it? I read an article of giving certain AI rights to vote like humans to in the future. Thanks for sharing @krnel
Yes, people are so lost they want to give robots rights... an they aren't even conscious entities with thoughts and feelings like other animals.... world is mad...
All of these AI programmer wannabes should go and learn Zen.
Because, they do not have the first clue about what "intelligence" is.
Let alone consciousness.
Our computer chips are built on logic. They can't do reasoning or rhetoric. They can only attempt to emulate it. And so, you could get a very smart game show contestant, but you can't get an AI that will discuss a new idea with you.
Perhaps they should spend their time on chemically encoding bits. Like the brains memory storage. Making a much smaller and lower power memory.
Yeah computer power is huge compared to the brain power for consciousness.
Extraordinary, I also think we are just teaching machines how to do some things yet as we still don't know how the brain ''works''. If somehow we achieved it, it could be dangerous because any kind of intelligence or conscience seeks its survival. There's a lot of hype and fear and I see it as a good thing to certain extent, being aware and vigilant but we should pay more attention on shortage of organic intelillence.
Yes, and if we try to control and threaten it, it can fight back, and we are in shit. It's a bad move to make unless we are ready to give it rights to life as conscious life... like we should already do for other animals :/
Tricky point, It has always seemed impossible to me how we have dominated and destroy the animal kingdom in all its broad spectrum, from the cutest to the fiercest beasts, but I guess we have guns, machines and a ''smarter'' brain, sadly it does not seem to be something that is being paid attention.
Great and very provocative article!
I am unable to understand, however, the desire for true "AI," nor do I even believe it is achievable-- any more than I believe that life can be created in a laboratory. With all the multiplicity of warnings from writers and thinkers from Shelley to Huxley to Musk, why do people still think pursuing such a thing is a good idea? I am no Luddite, and I have no aversion to automation, but why would humanity ever intentionally give up control of the planet to non-humans??
Yeah I'm apprehensive of it. I think it's a mistake. But that doesn't stop people from trying to be creators of a new type of life... Some people want the merging with AI in some fantasy "singularity" where we essentially die, as merging to be one means the death of all individuality that existed before.
Sounds like some people are being influenced from below....WAY below....
I have not had chance to read the article yet, I wanted to ask you a question, then this article appeared, my question is how do you find the time to answer everyone all the time, I am finding it so time consuming, that it leaves little time to do a post, and you run a server also, how is it you have time? and this is from a man that is retired.
Hehe, you figured it out, I'M AN AI! :P
It takes time, I was 8 posts behind on replyingto comments, got caught up to 6 yesterday, and at 5 after this one... it takes time. I don't work. I do Steem to make money :/ This week my g/f has been here each day so I have had less time than normal to catch up hehe. I don't have much time after I get through my day of Steem... sigh...
As long as it pays well, and let's face it - this is better than standing on the assembly line of a car factory doing the same job very 1 minute and 30 seconds. :-)
Nothing to say but very good your post man
And resteemid done 👍
your post is very good sir @krnel, aspirative, accommodative and implementative. hopefully more glorious
Technology one of the greatest gift to humanity with the right intelligence then they is not that is impossible great post as always @krnel
Being aware and vigilant we should pay more attention on shortage of organic intelillence.
Curated for #informationwar (by @wakeupnd)
Relevance: Sharing the truth.
amazing piece of work.
im crazy lately about AI and I totally enjoy reading yout post @krnel
thanks for sharing. obviously upvoted