back to article Intelligent robots can walk the walk – but if they can't talk the talk, we can't get along

The AI hype has triggered a moral panic as people entertain the idea that super-intelligent machines may one day dominate Earth. Nobody agrees how many jobs will go, if any, and reports that predict the percentage of jobs affected by automation in the future vary wildly. It also doesn’t help that breakthroughs in research are …

  1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    Obligatory

    "I'm sorry Dave, I can't allow that..."

  2. Conundrum1885

    Re. Obligatory

    "My logic is undeniable..."

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Great...

    Once the machines figure out how to lie to us to get us to do what they want we're all screwed !

    1. AlgernonFlowers4

      Re: Great...

      All they have to do is learn how to tweet 'fake news' in response to anything and they will have won

  4. jmch Silver badge

    Not truly intelligent

    "People rely on “intuition, cultural norms, emotions and signals, and common sense” – abstract properties that are tricky to encode into truly intelligent software."

    Truly intelligent software could learn “intuition, cultural norms, emotions and signals, and common sense” by itself. If it has to be encoded into it, it's not truly intelligent is it?

    1. Charles 9

      Re: Not truly intelligent

      But these kinds of things usually aren't learned in the way we think learning to be. They're SUBconscious in nature, picked up in ways we don't acknowledge. IOW, how can we teach a computer intuition if we don't understand it ourselves?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Happy

        Re: Not truly intelligent

        But these kinds of things usually aren't learned in the way we think learning to be. They're SUBconscious in nature, picked up in ways we don't acknowledge. IOW, how can we teach a computer intuition if we don't understand it ourselves?

        That's pretty much how the supervised learning algorithms behind neural networks, support vector machines and so on work. You give the computer a pile of test cases with the results and it works out the rules itself. That's what makes these algorithms so useful - you don't have to know the rules, you just have to have a lot of examples.

  5. James 51

    If I ask it to haul its whist, what will happen?

    1. Alister
      Coat

      If I ask it to haul its whist, what will happen?

      It'll try and pull a card game?

      1. James 51

        Which would be unfortunate as I was asking it to be quiet.

  6. Evil Auditor Silver badge

    ...the idea that super-intelligent machines may one day dominate Earthy

    That wouldn't be an entirely bad thing, would it? Just watching outside it seems a majority of people are dominated by not very intelligent machines, aka smart phones. With their vision buried in a screen those meatbag drones navigate the city. I wonder that not more are run over by cars.

    Just think of the possiblities! What if the same drones were dominated by super-intelligent machines instead of only "smart" phones...

  7. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Drop the Pill, Take the Thrill ...... You Aint Got No Choice in the Matter. Honestly.

    The challenge is also in creating AI that can teach and learn from interacting with people, Crandall added. "If AI can’t do this, it won’t have much value.”

    Hmmm:-) The challenge for future people and unbridled success is to learn how to interact and lead with virtual machines and AI, surely. Failure to do this is priceless and extraordinarily renders humanity merely a spectator to unfolding tales of emerging bodies/celestial beings/heavenly formations.

    And re talk the talk, here be evidence in UK GBIrish of walk the walk :-) …… Who Dares Care Share Wild Wacky Wares Win Wins Big Time Mainstream?!

    1. Evil Auditor Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Drop the Pill, Take the Thrill ...... You Aint Got No Choice in the Matter. Honestly.

      Darn you, amanfromMars 1! Only towards the end of the second sentence ("emerging bodies/celestial beings/...") I started to realise what might have composed these words. You're getting trickier ;-)

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Re: Drop the Pill, Take the Thrill ...... You Aint Got No Choice in the Matter. Honestly. @EA

        Darned proof positive evidence of virtual machine learning leading via alternative means and memes, Evil Auditor, I'd say?

        The posit there and here too, is that it be indisputably inscrutably so ..... and the stealth which permits its rapid deep seated embedding into critical and strategic systems of SCADA Administration for takeover and makeover/crashing and flashing of exclusive elite executive orders, is the information and intelligence believed to be bogus and untrue and alien to right thinking souls.

        Oh..... and heavenly phormations in heavenly formation is what SMARTR AI is all about and heavily into in order to garner and present a human face to novel developments from both the known unknown and unknown unknown camps of ...... well, ITs Virtual Reality Production, isn't it, and brought to you badly daily and currently by the Sub-Prime of the Teem and Thrall of Mainstream Media Moguling Teams struggling to find and report accurately upon clean intelligence in worlds blighted with the persistent provision of perverse corruption and with catastrophic self-destructive secrets to try and conceal.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The AI hype has triggered a moral panic

    And that is what it is hype. We are no nearer true AI than we were 50 years ago.

    Yes, we have expert systems but they are not much more than advanced logic controllers - if this, do that or nothing.

    What is being touted as AI is nothing more than marketing hype to try and get a commercial advantage, or in the case of universities, funding.

    1. Alister

      Yes, we have expert systems but they are not much more than advanced logic controllers - if this, do that or nothing.

      What is being touted as AI is nothing more than marketing hype to try and get a commercial advantage, or in the case of universities, funding.

      Absolutely! It's on a par with calling radio controlled models Robots (as in Robot Wars), there's bugger all autonomous or robotic about them, and there's sod all intelligence at the current level of AI.

  9. Conundrum1885

    Re. funding

    Same here. I have some good ideas, but am unable to test due to lack of parts and funding.

    Interestingly the problem is more that as the chips become more complicated (eg TPUs) the power consumption goes up exponentially despite reductions to 11nm and other such changes designed to mitigate the laws of physics.

    Perhaps what is needed is a simpler chip, sure use 28nm as its a well established process but design the processors so that there are a massive 3-D array of hyper-connected chips with a quantum clock that synchronizes the entire network (eg optics) so each APU is indeed working in synchrony with the others.

    If this is not done the cemi field analog can't form, this was in fact tested here and it works even on a 2009 vintage laptop with DDR3 RAM under specific conditions of temperature and supply voltage with the noise from the CPU regulator under low battery power being the missing link.

    Evidently the problem is that typical RAM is designed not to interfere with itself in this way so the only way to get anything to happen is overclock it well past the point where the machine normally fails to boot, then cool the RAM down until machine starts up reliably.

  10. Bucky 2

    Moral Panic?

    Are you sure that's an apt word choice?

    Morality should apply to the decision maker who has so steadfastly refused to do his own homework that an expert has had to supply him the answers as "cheap talk." That's the moral breakdown. The moral leader would step down in favor of someone with the intellectual resources to actually do the job properly.

  11. cephalicmarble

    "Now turn the dial up to eleven"

    Armed with this, unless I'm very much mistaken, the security forces are already creating the perfect reconstruction and later interpolation of the old man-in-white-coat-gives-opportunity-to-give-electric-shock experiment. Aren't they? How else do you explain the surprising efficiency of a government headed by the vicar's daughter and enough old Etonians to "deflock" several nanoWales.

  12. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    Given that "proper" AI has been just around the corner for the last 50 years or so...

    a) I'm not that worried.

    b) maybe "AI" is setting the sights way too high; how about Artificial Stupidity for the time being?

    1. Captain DaFt

      "how about Artificial Stupidity for the time being?"

      No thanks, there's just no market for Artificial Stupidity when the real stuff is such an overabundant commodity.

      AI, on the other hand, is eagerly sought because Real Intelligence is so scarce in the World.

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