Google

YouTube

Spotify

Scientific Sense Podcast

Monday, January 15, 2018

Broad learning

Deep learning has been in vogue. Combining ideas from the 60s and an insane amount of computing power, the search giant and others have been learning deep - mind and all. This is good news, gentle tricks on established mathematics seem to have reduced overfitting and accelerated "learning." But, technologies based on unlimited resources and computing power, tend to be lazy and deep learning seem to have all the characteristics. Some even call it "Artificial Intelligence," even though there is nothing artificial or intelligent about it.
Humans have been fascinated by their brains forever. They have searched for the mind and soul in a few pounds of messy grey matter they carry on their shoulders but found nothing. When the computer scientists arrived who could create "General Artificial Intelligence," by assembling dumb silicon and using dumber games, their age showed why wisdom is not that easy to attain, Ph.D. or not. The search giant has been on a prowl, picking up anything that ends in .ai for a premium and as the greatest technologist of all times who invented the electric car and electrified space travel proclaimed that only he knew what AI was all about, we seem to have arrived at ego driven emptiness.
Get used to it. Nobody is intelligent enough to create "general artificial intelligence." Those who harbor higher than average brain cells have headed in the opposite direction by proclaiming that knowledge results from understanding and not modeling ideas. Therein lies the conundrum, as the technologists rise without human contact and attempt to travel to Mars, there appears to be a great vacuum between knowledge and know-how. There is a distinct difference between the two, the former conquered by philosophers and the latter by engineers and it is important to distinguish between the two.
It is time to look forward and abolish ego-driven behavior. Those who are prone to it should be told that they are no better than the worst of humans.

No comments:

Post a Comment