Is AI the New Alchemy?

[tangor]

The "adoption of artificial intelligence is growing worldwide," IDC declared in June. "Over a quarter of all AI initiatives are already in production and more than one third are in advanced development stages. And organizations are reporting an increase in their AI spending this year."

But how much of it is actually artificial intelligence? Is today's intelligent tech just the same old algorithms from previous versions with better marketing, or is real innovation happening? And if proper machine learning really is being deployed, what are the business advantages given ML's strengths and weaknesses?

[theregister.com...]

While I believe there have been some advances in coding, I personally don't believe AI (as touted) is nothing more than the old stuff buffed up with new buzzwords.

What's your take? Examples?

[brotherhood of LAN]

Your thread title reminds me of Paris in the the Spring :-)

I loosely follow headlines on AI. Apparently GPT-3 is causing a lot of noise. I've seen examples where the output looks impressive but sometimes it's not all clear whether there's practical use or whether a non-free dataset was used etc etc.

Always enjoyed a video by Dan Dennett (the philosopher) entitled "from Bacteria to Bach and back" where he talks about design from the bottom-up and top-down. He wraps up by warning technologists to avoid having AI as a black box that is not explainable by someone. It's on YT if anyone is interested.

My somewhat naive understanding of it is pretty much how he talks about it. There's definitely working/useful cases of AI but also an overuse of it as a buzzword or unsubstantiated claims of its use. Maybe the term is a bit loose or just used too loosely.

[iamlost]

Yes, AI is still solidly in the alchemy realm.
<aside>SEO is still largely in the astrology realm</aside>

I am an ML hobbyist who has incorporated some ML into my sites backend to good effect using TensorFlo. It is as good as the algorithms, the assumptions, and the training data. All and each of which are human intelligence (and error).

Most of the AI hype is because the ‘neural’ networks are often ‘black box’ aka the processes between input and output are non transparent algorithm decisions. Our ignorance is not evidence of device intelligence.

That AI is hype and even ML teeters between alchemy and chemistry, magic and science, is regularly illustrated not so much by its failures as by the reasons for those failures.

[ronin]

As I understand it, the difference between an algorithm and machine-learning-based Artificial Intelligence is that with the former, a human gives a machine:

- an input
- a decision making tree

and the machine returns an output.

Whereas, with the latter, a human gives a machine:

- many inputs
- many outputs (each one corresponding to an input)

and the machine devises, finesses and returns a decision-making tree.

A lot of the time in popular journalism a machine which makes decisions is referred to as AI (ie. an example of the latter).

But, it isn't. The decision tree is supplied to the machine, rather than created by it, so, no matter how sophisticated and complex the decision tree may be, it's still an example of the former.

[graeme_p]

@ronin right in principle, but its rarely anything as simple as a tree (although they are used).

A big difference is that with most AI systems (like large neural networks which are currently very popular - "deep learning") its impossible to understand how the system works so you cannot explain why it came up with a particular output.

People want silver bullets and love new and shiny stuff.

I like the parallel with magic. Think of the history of sympathetic magic in Europe: believed in in ancient times (as it was globally), when belief in magic started dying out in early medieval it got reinvented by herbalists as the "doctrine of signatures" and when that lost its credibility it got reinvented with a scientific facade.

[blend27]

IF AI was a thththinngy....

Grandma would for sure have a .... and we would have a scraper free world, and then we would vote her in. Some countries do that, you know?

Internet is the largest country with silver bullets, many inputs, buzzwords tags and at's. S... hash tags.

Keep that bird off your fig tree and lets see what happens later on.

[tangor]

Figs make great preserves for hot biscuits! Internet is transnational/global but it all comes down to user and webmaster. :) One on one. Happy results. Communication. Still trying to figure out how a third party machine/algo got involved.

YMMV

(One reason why I don't pay attention to polls.) Math is a science, but it is, for all its absolutes, easily manipulated by HUMANS providing the input channels. Every AI out there, in any version, is coded by humans. I'm waiting for the machines to wake up!

[ronin]

I'm waiting for the machines to wake up!

After 11,000 years or so, I'm still waiting for the humans to wake up.

[tangor]

^^^^ EXACTLY! :)