[ExI] Moving goal posts

[Stuart LaForge]

As Spike has been saying for a while now, the so-called experts keep  
moving the goal posts for AI to be considered intelligent. In an  
earlier thread, it was mentioned that AI is not creative enough  
outside of the boundaries of whatever data they have been trained on.  
This has manifested in ever more hairsplitting discrimination as to  
what defines artificial intelligence. For example this expert contends  
that artificial general intelligence (AGI) is still weak AI, which is  
inferior to strong AI and, also, that we will never achieve AGI, let  
alone strong AI.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-0494-4

Abstract

The modern project of creating human-like artificial intelligence (AI)  
started after World War II, when it was discovered that electronic  
computers are not just number-crunching machines, but can also  
manipulate symbols. It is possible to pursue this goal without  
assuming that machine intelligence is identical to human intelligence.  
This is known as weak AI. However, many AI researcher have pursued the  
aim of developing artificial intelligence that is in principle  
identical to human intelligence, called strong AI. Weak AI is less  
ambitious than strong AI, and therefore less controversial. However,  
there are important controversies related to weak AI as well. This  
paper focuses on the distinction between artificial general  
intelligence (AGI) and artificial narrow intelligence (ANI). Although  
AGI may be classified as weak AI, it is close to strong AI because one  
chief characteristics of human intelligence is its generality.  
Although AGI is less ambitious than strong AI, there were critics  
almost from the very beginning. One of the leading critics was the  
philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, who argued that computers, who have no  
body, no childhood and no cultural practice, could not acquire  
intelligence at all. One of Dreyfus’ main arguments was that human  
knowledge is partly tacit, and therefore cannot be articulated and  
incorporated in a computer program. However, today one might argue  
that new approaches to artificial intelligence research have made his  
arguments obsolete. Deep learning and Big Data are among the latest  
approaches, and advocates argue that they will be able to realize AGI.  
A closer look reveals that although development of artificial  
intelligence for specific purposes (ANI) has been impressive, we have  
not come much closer to developing artificial general intelligence  
(AGI). The article further argues that this is in principle  
impossible, and it revives Hubert Dreyfus’ argument that computers are  
not in the world.
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Meanwhile AI has been ignoring the experts and doing stuff like  
pissing off human artists by winning art contests against them.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvmvqm/an-ai-generated-artwork-won-first-place-at-a-state-fair-fine-arts-competition-and-artists-are-pissed

"Jason Allen's AI-generated work "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial" took first  
place in the digital category at the Colorado State Fair."

The future seems to be shaping up to be humorously incongruous. :)


Stuart LaForge