62
votes
Accepted
Can digital computers understand infinity?
I think this is a fairly common misconception about AI and computers, especially among laypeople. There are several things to unpack here.
Let's suppose that there's something special about infinity (...
- 9,037
38
votes
Accepted
What is the difference between strong-AI and weak-AI?
The terms strong and weak don't actually refer to processing, or optimization power, or any interpretation leading to "strong AI" being stronger than "weak AI". It holds conveniently in practice, but ...
- 556
29
votes
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Is the "Chinese room" an explanation of how ChatGPT works?
Yes, the Chinese Room argument by John Searle essentially demonstrates that at the very least it is hard to locate intelligence in a system based on its inputs and outputs. And the ChatGPT system is ...
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25
votes
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What is the concept of the technological singularity?
The technological singularity is a theoretical point in time at which a self-improving artificial general intelligence becomes able to understand and manipulate concepts outside of the human brain's ...
- 768
25
votes
Accepted
What is the idea called involving an AI that will eventually rule humanity?
If I'm not mistaken you're looking for Roko's Basilisk,
in which an otherwise benevolent future AI system tortures simulations of those who did not work to bring the system into existence
- 436
23
votes
Accepted
How close are we to creating Ex Machina?
We are absolutely nowhere near, nor do we have any idea how to bridge the gap between what we can currently do and what is depicted in these films.
The current trend for DL approaches (coupled with ...
- 7,176
19
votes
Can digital computers understand infinity?
I think your premise is flawed.
You seem to assume that to "understand"(*) infinities requires infinite processing capacity, and imply that humans have just that, since you present them as the ...
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19
votes
Is the "Chinese room" an explanation of how ChatGPT works?
Yes it is a good analogy, as explained nicely by Neil.
Regarding your second question:
how far is AI from models that can actually understand (for some
definition of "understand") textual ...
- 1,056
18
votes
Accepted
Why do we need common sense in AI?
Commonsense knowledge is the collection of premises that everyone, in a certain context (hence common sense knowledge might be a function of the context), takes for granted. There would exist a lot of ...
- 37k
16
votes
Is the Turing Test, or any of its variants, a reliable test of artificial intelligence?
The rhetorical point of the Turing Test is that it places the 'test' for 'humanity' in observable outcomes, instead of in internal components. If you would behave the same in interacting with an AI as ...
- 4,222
16
votes
Accepted
Why would an AI need to 'wipe out the human race'?
It's a possible side effect
Any goal-oriented agent might, well, simply do things that achieve its goals while disregarding side effects that don't matter for these goals.
If my goals include a tidy ...
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16
votes
Accepted
Could an AI think laterally while avoiding "ethically suboptimal" choices?
No, with a but. We can have creative yet ethical problem-solving if the system has a complete system of ethics, but otherwise creativity will be unsafe by default.
One can classify AI decision-making ...
- 4,222
16
votes
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Why is reinforcement learning not the answer to AGI?
Some AI researchers do think RL is a path to AGI, and your intuition about how an agent would need to be proactive in selecting actions to learn about is exactly the area these researchers are now ...
- 9,037
15
votes
How does one prove comprehension in machines?
This is one of the most important issues in the philosophy of artificial intelligence.
The most famous philosophical argument that attempts to address this issue is the Chinese Room argument ...
- 37k
14
votes
Accepted
Is AlphaZero an example of an AGI?
Good question!
AlphaZero, though a major milestone, is most definitely not an AGI :)
AlphaGo, though strong at the game of Go, is narrowly strong ("strong-narrow AI"), defined as strength in a ...
- 6,177
14
votes
Accepted
Problems that only humans will ever be able to solve
Informally, AI-complete problems are the most difficult problems for an AI. The concept is not mathematically defined yet, as e.g. NP-complete problems. However, intuitively, these are the problems ...
- 37k
13
votes
What limits, if any, does the halting problem put on Artificial Intelligence?
The halting problem is an example of a general phenomenon known as Undecidability, which shows that there are problems no Turing machine can solve in finite time. Let's consider the generalization ...
- 1,144
13
votes
Accepted
Are neural networks the only way to reach "true" artificial intelligence?
If by true AI, you mean 'like human beings', the answer is - no-one knows what the appropriate computational mechanisms (neural or otherwise) are or indeed whether we are capable of constructing them.
...
- 7,176
12
votes
Can digital computers understand infinity?
TL;DR: The subtleties of infinity are made apparent in the notion of unboundedness. Unboundedness is finitely definable. "Infinite things" are really things with unbounded natures. Infinity is best ...
- 1,076
12
votes
Accepted
How can an AI freely make decisions?
Neural networks, deep learning and other supervised learning algorithms do not "take actions" by themselves, they lack agency.
However, it is relatively easy to give a machine agency, as far as ...
- 26.5k
11
votes
Accepted
What limits, if any, does the halting problem put on Artificial Intelligence?
Does the halting problem imply any limits on human cognition?
Yes, absolutely--that there are pieces of code a human could look at and not be sure whether or not it will halt in finite time. (...
- 4,222
11
votes
Accepted
What is the most sophisticated AI ever made?
In my opinion, this would be Phaeaco, which was developed by Harry Foundalis at Douglas Hofstadter's CRCC research group.
It takes noisy photographic images of Bongard problems as input and (using a ...
- 7,176
11
votes
How to reinvent jobs replaced by AI?
With AI technology at its current stage (or at least reasonably close to this stage), the jobs you proposed may very well be openings created by AI automation. However, sufficiently advanced AI ...
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11
votes
Is the "Chinese room" an explanation of how ChatGPT works?
Searle's Chinese room is not intended as a functional description of any real-world machine. Searle was a philosopher who created the Chinese room as a thought experiment to show what he considered an ...
- 211
10
votes
Can artificial intelligence be thought of as optimization?
A good answer to this question depends on what you want to use the labels for.
When I think about "optimization," I think about a solution space and a cost function; that is, there are many possible ...
- 4,222
10
votes
Is the Turing Test, or any of its variants, a reliable test of artificial intelligence?
The problem of the Turing Test is that it tests the machines ability to resemble humans. Not necessarily every form of AI has to resemble humans. This makes the Turing Test less reliable. However, it ...
- 1,481
10
votes
What kind of education is required for researchers in AI?
As a full-time AI researcher myself, I'd say that a PhD in machine learning would certainly be one useful option.
However, in order make much-needed progress, AI needs avoid falling into the trap of ...
- 7,176
10
votes
Why do we need common sense in AI?
We need this kind of common sense knowledge if we want to get computers to understand human language. It's easy for a computer program to analyse the grammatical structure of the example you give, but ...
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10
votes
What is the idea called involving an AI that will eventually rule humanity?
I believe the term you are looking for is "(technological) singularity".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
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10
votes
Accepted
What are some online courses on artificial general intelligence?
As far as I know, no AGI system has yet been created, so that's why there aren't yet many courses on AGI. However, there are a few courses that attempt to address AGI as the main topic but from ...
- 37k
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