One of the fine folks down in Florida was agog over AI. I had a difficult time verbalizing my inherent skepticism at the time. I think I am ready to give it a shot.
The current form of AI is "Ask a question: Get an answer"
Frankly, we suck at asking questions.
Look at the Mainstream, Legacy Media. They do all kinds of (il)logical gymnastics to avoid asking obvious questions. Rather, they pound every peg into the round-hole of what-is-cool-now dogma. Any deviation is seen as heresy.
A well-posed problem is a problem half-solved.
A well-posed problem does not start with the officially-sanctioned answer and then work backwards to formulate the question that points to THE ANSWER (Global Warming, Racism, Sexism...)
A well-posed problem might start by listing two, seemingly-contradictory observations and then some context to frame the issue. That is followed by the stating the desired goal and the question is "what path will lead us to the goal?".
We would not need Artificial Intelligence if we taught people how formulate well-posed problems. That is, how to ask intelligent questions.
We cannot take advantage of Artificial Intelligence if we are unable to ply it with well-posed problems.
And hence my skepticism.
Good point. I hadn't thought quite this thought, but to your point about education today (errrr, lack thereof).
ReplyDeleteOur best and brightest are 'programming' the AI. The programmers do not have the well rounded context of a proper education. Their programming will thus be lacking the critical thinking skills they themselves were never taught.
As is evidenced by the ability to confound the current crop, there are severe limitations.
That being said, "The Terminator" wasn't supposed to be instructions.
Despite the hype, I believe we are nowhere near any real form of AI - we are barely at machine learning.
ReplyDeleteRight now we have systems with a list of data/ knowledge and some rules for processing that data.
As to the comment above, I've read that the systems making waves now have lots of restrictions on what they can talk about when, severely limiting their true usefulness and growth.
"That is, how to ask intelligent questions."
ReplyDeleteThat is very much A Learned Skill, and "how to do it" does not fall from the clouds into brains, it must be taught. And, unfortunately, very damn few people are teaching it, making me wonder how many are actually capable of teaching it.
And, RE: AI Programming - to reinforce Anon's comment (above) the Deep Thinkers and Doers in IT absolutely do not have anything remotely resembling a rounded education (or rounded existence...) nor does their vocation lend itself to wide, patient and deep consideration of problem scope. They work in Ones and Zeroes, and when your only tool is a hammer, etc. As proof, look at the absolute crap they produce as web sites and business' internal GUIs; they know how to build it and make it work, but so rarely consider how it's actually used and exactly what the user seeks to achieve with it.
I quit my office job and now I am getting paid 90 Dollars hourly. How? I work over the internet! t My old work was making me miserable, so I was forced to try-something different. 2 years later...I can say my life is changed completely for the better!
ReplyDeleteCheck it out what i do.. office job
The Army teaches an analytic process that ends in asking one key question.
ReplyDeleteI.e. “how can 1000 gals of diesel be provided to this supply line every day?” This process of narrowing and prioritizing often reveals key problems. In this case, for example, we aren’t focused on the back and forth of the tactical situation, just on the key point that the whole operation will bog down without a certain fuel supply. At a squad level, one might ask “how many minutes can we expect to attack with this ammo supply?”