AI Doesn't Exist

[iguanaman]

ChatGPT was also not the first. Developed at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum between 1964 and 1967 ELIZA did precisely the same thing as ChatGPT. A LISP version of ELIZA was also developed during the 1970s. Programmers have been developing LLMs for more than 50 years. While the current versions are more sophisticated due to improved technology, they really are not any different from what they were originally.

The Limits of Computation : Joseph Weizenbaum and the ELIZA Chatbot - Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society, Volume 3, Issue 3, 2023 (open access)

It is not really the computer making decisions, but rather the developer who tells the computer what decisions to make, when to make those decisions, and how they should be made. There is no indication of intelligence on the computer's part. All the intelligence for the program originates with the developer(s).

You keep missing the point of AI and that is a computer's ability to learn from inputs. This ability may have been in earlier programs but the amount of data storage available has increased by 1000's of times as has the speed of accessing that data. The more data a program can absorb the "smarter" it is. The programmers have no idea what an AI program might calculate from the data it has received and that is why there is some danger to this software. I believe it is overplayed though. Intelligence is the ability to absorb and recall data and use it to make calculations consistent with that data.

 

[exoplanet]

Because humans have the ability to learn, computers don't. As I pointed out above. A human can have absolutely no understanding of the game, and after careful observation learn all of the rules without having to be instructed. This denotes intelligence. Something computers obviously do not have.

Would anyone care if a chess grandmaster was explicitly taught the rules by another human being? Do you honestly think it would denigrate their accomplishments somehow? Almost no one learns to play that way.

Furthermore, this is basically how LLM's learn. No one taught them "rules" for how to communicate. They observe human writing are rewarded for outputting communication that humans like or is similar to outputs that humans have liked before. That's basically it. There are no rules that any of its creators can verbalize to each other much less to instruct the LLM. Your standards that appear custom constructed to disqualify one AI would fall apart on another.

The skill and knowledge you are referring to is not that from the computer, but the developer. The computer has neither skill nor knowledge. You continually demean developers by giving inanimate objects all the credit. It is the developers who are intelligent here, not the computers. The computer is doing nothing more than what it was specifically instructed to do, and that does not indicate intelligence.

The developer's skill and knowledge lies in computer science and mathematics. You are denigrating them by trying to depict them as Go masters who can program, rather than scientists who have discovered how to help software learn and formulate strategies that the scientists themselves could never articulate or come up with on their own.

 

[Glitch]

Would anyone care if a chess grandmaster was explicitly taught the rules by another human being?

They wouldn't be a Grandmaster if they had to be taught how to play the game. They are a Grandmaster specifically because they know how to play the game.

Do you honestly think it would denigrate their accomplishments somehow? Almost no one learns to play that way.

Yes, it would be terribly condescending to presume to teach a Grandmaster how to play the game.

Furthermore, this is basically how LLM's learn. No one taught them "rules" for how to communicate. They observe human writing are rewarded for outputting communication that humans like or is similar to outputs that humans have liked before. That's basically it. There are no rules that any of its creators can verbalize to each other much less to instruct the LLM. Your standards that appear custom constructed to disqualify one AI would fall apart on another.

The developer's skill and knowledge lies in computer science and mathematics. You are denigrating them by trying to depict them as Go masters who can program, rather than scientists who have discovered how to help software learn and formulate strategies that the scientists themselves could never articulate or come up with on their own.

I know all about LLMs, as I pointed out, they have been around for 57 years. Other than becoming somewhat more sophisticated, they really haven't changed. ELIZA and ChatGPT are essentially the same thing.

You are also mistaken about not being taught the rules. All LLMs are taught the rules of grammar pertinent to the language in which they are conversing. ChatGPT was taught the rules of grammar, including how to break-down and construct a sentence. This is where you become very demeaning towards developers yet again, dismissing the intelligence of the developers and crediting the computer for abilities it does not have.

Why do you hate computer developers so much? What did they ever do to you? If you wish to continue this dialog, you need to stop being so condescending and demeaning towards the developers. They are the ones with the actual intelligence, not the computer.

 

[exoplanet]

They wouldn't be a Grandmaster if they had to be taught how to play the game. They are a Grandmaster specifically because they know how to play the game.

It seems like you are mixing up learning the rules of the game and learning how to play well. Almost no one learns to play any game simply by watching and deducing what the rules are. I'm also certain that most grandmasters have been taught by other, at least moderately good players and learned from the history of the game, etc...

I know all about LLMs, as I pointed out, they have been around for 57 years. Other than becoming somewhat more sophisticated, they really haven't changed. ELIZA and ChatGPT are essentially the same thing.

You are also mistaken about not being taught the rules. All LLMs are taught the rules of grammar pertinent to the language in which they are conversing. ChatGPT was taught the rules of grammar, including how to break-down and construct a sentence. This is where you become very demeaning towards developers yet again, dismissing the intelligence of the developers and crediting the computer for abilities it does not have.

Why do you hate computer developers so much? What did they ever do to you? If you wish to continue this dialog, you need to stop being so condescending and demeaning towards the developers. They are the ones with the actual intelligence, not the computer.

You don't know anything about LLM's. You are confused about what they even are. You don't understand how the are created in the least. I'm serious. I think you are confusing them with chat bots. Yes an LLM can be used to create a chat bot, but they weren't even used for that to begin with. It's like you are telling me that cars can't go faster than 25 miles per hour because the horse shoes will fall off.

Do some research. Understand what you are talking about. Then come back.

 

[SammyCp]

What the uninformed - such as the media - call Artificial Intelligence is not actually Artificial Intelligence. They just don't know any better.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer to go beyond its original programming and solve problems that it was never specifically programmed to accomplish. A computer that follows its programming exactly as written cannot be construed as Artificially Intelligent, no matter how clever its programming may be. Those systems are called "Expert Systems" and they are not AI.

We have Expert Systems capable of making accurate medical diagnosis. We have Expert Systems capable of flying aircraft and spacecraft. We have Expert Systems doing a wide variety of complex tasks, and none of them are AI. Expert Systems are when the programmer(s) write their expertise into a form that the computer can calculate. It is therefore not the expertise of the computer, but the expertise of the programmer(s) involved.

A computer can only be considered artificially intelligent when it can exceed its own programming by performing tasks it was never specifically programmed to accomplish. If a program that was designed and developed to diagnose medical issues, and it also provided a solution for cleaning up an oil spill, for example, then that would be an example of true AI.

Unfortunately, what we have are a bunch of ignorant fools in the media calling everything AI, when none of it is. Everything the media calls AI is actually an Expert System and not AI at all.

As someone who has worked in the field since the 1970s, AI is quite impossible to achieve with binary computers. It may be possible with quantum computers, but that is at least another 50 to 100 years into the future before that will become a reality.

Yeah, it's not going to be tommorrow. But hey, it's solid marketing.

The first real AI will be bio-electronic or not at all. It should look to survive (or try to kill itself), it should have a goal that wasn't a result of instructions, etc....
Unless of course... we come at a point that we know everything about the human brain in a certain environment and put the real AI in exactly that environment.

 

[JoeyJoystick]

What the uninformed - such as the media - call Artificial Intelligence is not actually Artificial Intelligence. They just don't know any better.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer to go beyond its original programming and solve problems that it was never specifically programmed to accomplish. A computer that follows its programming exactly as written cannot be construed as Artificially Intelligent, no matter how clever its programming may be. Those systems are called "Expert Systems" and they are not AI.

We have Expert Systems capable of making accurate medical diagnosis. We have Expert Systems capable of flying aircraft and spacecraft. We have Expert Systems doing a wide variety of complex tasks, and none of them are AI. Expert Systems are when the programmer(s) write their expertise into a form that the computer can calculate. It is therefore not the expertise of the computer, but the expertise of the programmer(s) involved.

A computer can only be considered artificially intelligent when it can exceed its own programming by performing tasks it was never specifically programmed to accomplish. If a program that was designed and developed to diagnose medical issues, and it also provided a solution for cleaning up an oil spill, for example, then that would be an example of true AI.

Unfortunately, what we have are a bunch of ignorant fools in the media calling everything AI, when none of it is. Everything the media calls AI is actually an Expert System and not AI at all.

As someone who has worked in the field since the 1970s, AI is quite impossible to achieve with binary computers. It may be possible with quantum computers, but that is at least another 50 to 100 years into the future before that will become a reality.

Hi Glitch,

I agree with your line of thinking. However, I also think that you generalize a little too much. A few comments if you do not mind.

Expert systems. Exactly like you say. But! They can include AI technology for aspects of the system.

I also completely agree with you about the criteria that one aspect of AI is the ability to improvise. Being able to do things that it was not programmed to do. Changing, writing and replicating it's own code. Just recently I saw a video about some achievements at Google regarding exactly this. Pretty amazing. Link below.

The developments is going very fast. And the speed at which this technology is developed is increasing too. I think we would be foolish at this point to predict where this is going to end. But as long as a healthy overdose of caution is used, we should not scare away from the development of AI.

Joey