Who's Smarter? Humans or AI Systems?

  • Steve Jones - SSC Editor - Thursday, July 27, 2017 11:37 AM

    allinadazework - Thursday, July 27, 2017 1:42 AM

    AI is largely fake news and propaganda. AI hasn't taken a single job where I live... maybe over a long period of time it will. I don't even see a robot sweeping the streets yet.
    AI should be kept in perspective. Don't believe the hype.

    Perhaps that's your experience, but I guarantee it's taken jobs. It reduced our workforce in 1996 by being able to read a variety of marks from people sorting wood, removing the need for manual labor. AI continues to advance and get better. It removes the need for some people. It doesn't mean no humans, it means less because of leverage.

    Gosh... I don't consider that to be AI.  I consider that to be a single purpose robot.  I think people are perverting the term "AI" just as they have the term "DBA".

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • I expect the problems from AI to be the social fallout from the change in employment hits.
    In the UK we got a forewarning of this during the late 1980s/early 1990s when the ship building and coal mining industries suffered massive layoffs.  The communities built around those industries were devastated.  Some communities never recovered.  For others recovery came too late for at least one generation.
    The difference this time is that it won't be manual and semiskilled people getting layed off, it will cut across a huge swaithe of the working population.  I'm expecting something akin to the great crash of the 1930s

  • David.Poole - Saturday, July 29, 2017 4:22 PM

    I expect the problems from AI to be the social fallout from the change in employment hits.
    In the UK we got a forewarning of this during the late 1980s/early 1990s when the ship building and coal mining industries suffered massive layoffs.  The communities built around those industries were devastated.  Some communities never recovered.  For others recovery came too late for at least one generation.
    The difference this time is that it won't be manual and semiskilled people getting layed off, it will cut across a huge swaithe of the working population.  I'm expecting something akin to the great crash of the 1930s

    I think you are correct. To what degree, no one can tell at this point. And I agree that it will strike across a wide swath of industries and skill sets. Personally, I believe that will hit skilled workers. At this point I believe its still too early to say which skills will be hit the worst. Depends upon whatever skills AI takes.

    Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.

  • Hi,

    AI has already taken over, but we don't think it has taken over.   For example, all high frequency stock trading is done by AI now.   What is the consequence of this?   AI high frequency trading creates more pressure on corporations to produce short term profits, in order to satisfy the AI algorithms, to avoid selloff (hence high frequency Darwinism).  AI increases the pressure on corporations to work people harder, ensure high ROI, to ensure high short term returns.  Hence we are already slaves to our AI overlords, no?   They are not inherently evil, but they are increasing the pressure on corporations to improve productivity to ensure short term gains, which in turns puts the pressure on corporations to either get rid of humans and replace with AI or force humans to work harder and longer.

  • Jeff Moden - Friday, July 28, 2017 3:57 PM

    Steve Jones - SSC Editor - Thursday, July 27, 2017 11:37 AM

    allinadazework - Thursday, July 27, 2017 1:42 AM

    AI is largely fake news and propaganda. AI hasn't taken a single job where I live... maybe over a long period of time it will. I don't even see a robot sweeping the streets yet.
    AI should be kept in perspective. Don't believe the hype.

    Perhaps that's your experience, but I guarantee it's taken jobs. It reduced our workforce in 1996 by being able to read a variety of marks from people sorting wood, removing the need for manual labor. AI continues to advance and get better. It removes the need for some people. It doesn't mean no humans, it means less because of leverage.

    Gosh... I don't consider that to be AI.  I consider that to be a single purpose robot.  I think people are perverting the term "AI" just as they have the term "DBA".

    AI is going to be a moving target anyways, a few decades ago, chess playing programs were probably considered AI and now they're pretty routine programs with opening dictionaries, some tree searching and pruning code, etc but even then the top tier chess programs are still probably considered AI-ish programming projects. Top rated GO playing machines are apparently even a pretty recent development.

    Expert systems for awhile were a big thrust with AI with their giant stacks of searchable facts and rules, and now we have neural networks for machine learning. To think that "single purpose robots" can't have any intelligence built in (which is by definition "artificial" in nature) just sounds like you are going to discount anything except some fully independent robot who can sit down at your interview table and tell you how to get the current date in SQL 😀

  • mattn 23726 - Sunday, July 30, 2017 10:20 PM

    Hi,

    AI has already taken over, but we don't think it has taken over.   For example, all high frequency stock trading is done by AI now.   What is the consequence of this?   AI high frequency trading creates more pressure on corporations to produce short term profits, in order to satisfy the AI algorithms, to avoid selloff (hence high frequency Darwinism).  AI increases the pressure on corporations to work people harder, ensure high ROI, to ensure high short term returns.  Hence we are already slaves to our AI overlords, no?   They are not inherently evil, but they are increasing the pressure on corporations to improve productivity to ensure short term gains, which in turns puts the pressure on corporations to either get rid of humans and replace with AI or force humans to work harder and longer.

    When it comes to investing, following the herd isn't smart, and electronic trading bots are essentially the new herd, making a lot of fast trades and trying to earn a profit on the margin. In the event of a massive sell-off, "slow thinking" humans on the golf course see sell offs as long term strategic buying opportunities, taking price swings not related to fundamentals. There have been a lot of sell-offs of Microsoft stock in the past, but here it is today trading at it's highest level ever.

    "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho

  • Eric M Russell - Friday, July 28, 2017 6:38 AM

    Maybe this is what they're already doing, I'll admit I'm not too familiar with how exactly they do their testing, their but one way of testing self driving AI technology in the field would be to install the AI and sensors in a vehicle but just not hook it up to the steering and break system. Just let an experienced human with a good driving record go about their daily routine through different variations of traffic patterns. If the AI makes identical decisions as the human driver over a period of several months, then they know the technology is proving itself. For those situations where the AI made a significantly different decision from the human driver, software and DOT engineers can playback the dash-cam video, sensor data, and decision tree logs to determine if it made the right call.

    Certainly could be. I'd be surprised if this wasn't how initial training was done. The Space Shuttle did this, having mutiple redundant computers voting, and when a new model came in, it was added as a view only, making decisons that didn't count, but were reviewed when it returned.

  • Jeff Moden - Friday, July 28, 2017 3:57 PM

    Gosh... I don't consider that to be AI.  I consider that to be a single purpose robot.  I think people are perverting the term "AI" just as they have the term "DBA".

    I'd call it an AI, since it took feedback and learned to be better. Just like humans do.

  • Steve Jones - SSC Editor - Monday, July 31, 2017 8:52 AM

    Jeff Moden - Friday, July 28, 2017 3:57 PM

    Gosh... I don't consider that to be AI.  I consider that to be a single purpose robot.  I think people are perverting the term "AI" just as they have the term "DBA".

    I'd call it an AI, since it took feedback and learned to be better. Just like humans do.

    Got a link on that?  I'd like to see what "learned" means in this case.

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • Jeff Moden - Monday, July 31, 2017 11:01 AM

    Got a link on that?  I'd like to see what "learned" means in this case.

    No, internal system for the company I worked at. Without reprogramming, operators could pull up marks the machine scanned, classify them as something else, and the machine would get better in interpreting marks. This was important as the people making the marks changed over time, and there needed to be a way to let the system know that an L shaped mark( for example), that was slightly larger/smaller/angled/rotated was the same mark.

  • Steve Jones - SSC Editor - Monday, July 31, 2017 12:30 PM

    Jeff Moden - Monday, July 31, 2017 11:01 AM

    Got a link on that?  I'd like to see what "learned" means in this case.

    No, internal system for the company I worked at. Without reprogramming, operators could pull up marks the machine scanned, classify them as something else, and the machine would get better in interpreting marks. This was important as the people making the marks changed over time, and there needed to be a way to let the system know that an L shaped mark( for example), that was slightly larger/smaller/angled/rotated was the same mark.

    That's not machine learning.  That's machine training and there's quite the difference, IMHO.  The machine did not learn on its own so it's not AI.  It's only doing what it was programmed to do.  Part of the programming was to take addition "parameters" from humans without having to change the programming.  I think people confuse ease of use, flexibility, machine training, and some very clever programming with AI.

    They had a really cool robot at GM when I had a private tour of the production line.  It was the machine that added caulking to pickup truck beds.  It was a wonder to watch.  A truck bed would be shifted onto the stand, cameras would look at the mounting holes in the truck bed to figure out where in 3 dimensional space the bed was, and it would lay the prettiest beads of caulk you ever saw and about 100 times faster than a human could.  But, that's still not AI.  It couldn't tell what kind of truck bed it was.  All that was encoded on the bed carrier stand.  If you put a new bed on the line and a human didn't put in the caulking coordinates, it couldn't figure out how to caulk the bed on it's own.    Really cool robot and great programming but not AI in my opinion.

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary,  my personal definition of AI is incorrect and you are correct.  Apparently, a machine doesn't actually have to have any form of even simple self-learning to be classified as "AI".  It only needs to do something that would ordinarily require a human to do.  Even "S-Voice" on my Android phone is considered to be a form of artificial intelligence.

    Guess I can add AI to my resume for the file systems that I wrote.  Technically, even a dynamic CROSS TAB would be a form of AI because it "learns" what the data looks like on it's own and then programs itself to handle it.  BWAAA-HAAAA!!!!   I even have a hammer that's AI... it knows that it can pound in screws as well as nails. 😉

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/artificial%20intelligence

    artificial intelligence

    Definition of artificial intelligence for English Language Learners

    • : an area of computer science that deals with giving machines the ability to seem like they have human intelligence

    • : the power of a machine to copy intelligent human behavior

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • patrickmcginnis59 10839 - Monday, July 31, 2017 7:21 AM

    Jeff Moden - Friday, July 28, 2017 3:57 PM

    Steve Jones - SSC Editor - Thursday, July 27, 2017 11:37 AM

    allinadazework - Thursday, July 27, 2017 1:42 AM

    AI is largely fake news and propaganda. AI hasn't taken a single job where I live... maybe over a long period of time it will. I don't even see a robot sweeping the streets yet.
    AI should be kept in perspective. Don't believe the hype.

    Perhaps that's your experience, but I guarantee it's taken jobs. It reduced our workforce in 1996 by being able to read a variety of marks from people sorting wood, removing the need for manual labor. AI continues to advance and get better. It removes the need for some people. It doesn't mean no humans, it means less because of leverage.

    Gosh... I don't consider that to be AI.  I consider that to be a single purpose robot.  I think people are perverting the term "AI" just as they have the term "DBA".

    AI is going to be a moving target anyways, a few decades ago, chess playing programs were probably considered AI and now they're pretty routine programs with opening dictionaries, some tree searching and pruning code, etc but even then the top tier chess programs are still probably considered AI-ish programming projects. Top rated GO playing machines are apparently even a pretty recent development.

    Expert systems for awhile were a big thrust with AI with their giant stacks of searchable facts and rules, and now we have neural networks for machine learning. To think that "single purpose robots" can't have any intelligence built in (which is by definition "artificial" in nature) just sounds like you are going to discount anything except some fully independent robot who can sit down at your interview table and tell you how to get the current date in SQL 😀

    Heh.... if that were the case, I'd hire it to replace me and retire. 😉

    You're kind of right in my thinking about what AI is, or at least used to be.  If I go by the definition in Merriam-Webster, one of those bloody damned IVRs that we're all plagued with when we call a company to pay a bill or one that calls us and says something like "Hello.  My name is Sherry. Can you hear me ok?" and then gives us some interactive sales pitch can be considered as some form of AI.  I even asked one if it was human or not.  Of course, it failed that basic "Turing Test" by asking me why I wanted to know instead of answering the question and the directive I gave it of "Just answer the question.".

    A single purpose bot that's been programmed just doesn't strike me as a form of "intelligence" unless it can do something like figure out a better way to do the job (for example).  Of course, the definition of "AI" seems to support the idea that both the mark reader that Steve spoke of and the caulking bot I spoke of are a form of AI simply because it can do what a human used to be required to do, however single purpose that task may be.

    I am trying also to convince myself that the spreadsheet that I wrote that had a VB "kicker" that would go out to all the PollCat (a "buffer that stored Call Detail Records from telephone switches) buffers that our customers had, read the model number of the PollCat, check a list of download speeds (back in the hayday of telephone modems and thiis new fangled thing call FTP) for that model number, check that against a "download history" table that identified what the best speed for the fewest transmission errors seemed to be, and then create the current download scheduled across 8 or 10 modems/ftp connects so that all of the devices would be active at the same time and finish almost at the same time based on the number of CDRs each PollCat currently contained.

    Does something so simple qualify as AI simply because it made decisions that previously required a human to run a spreadsheet to derive such a schedule?  Up until this thread was started and folks started talking about AI and what the definition is, I wouldn't have thought so but it sounds like it does qualify.

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • Of course, it failed that basic "Turing Test" by asking me why I wanted to know instead of answering the question and the directive I gave it of "Just answer the question.".

    @jeff you must be kidding.  My teenagers fail that test, does that prove they are lacking in.....oh, they take after their mother.

    I think we have to consider AI as being on a spectrum from idiot to gifted.  A self adjusting algorithm to decide whether indexes need defragmenting will be at the idiot end.  A device that starts evolving it's own language is at the other.

    The problem is that marketeers have got hold of terms like "Machine Learning" and are badging everything up with the same zeal that they peeled off the "cloud enabled" stickers to replace them with "Big Data ready"!

    Someon who can play a grade one piano piece can be considered musical though not to the same degree as someone who can play Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No2.  That's how I think of AI.  Just because there's a lot of marketing for the equivalent of 1st round X-Factor rejects doesn't invalidate the principle

  • David.Poole - Tuesday, August 1, 2017 12:23 AM

    I think we have to consider AI as being on a spectrum from idiot to gifted.  A self adjusting algorithm to decide whether indexes need defragmenting will be at the idiot end.  A device that starts evolving it's own language is at the other.

    https://www.techspot.com/news/70359-facebook-shuts-down-ai-system-after-invents-own.html
    :Whistling:

    Far away is close at hand in the images of elsewhere.
    Anon.

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