Company Claims Development of True AI 512
YF 19 AVF wrote to mention a press release on Yahoo from company GTX Global. They think they've got a good thing on their hands, going so far as to claim they've developed the first 'true' AI. From the release: "GTX Global Cognitive Robotics(TM) is an integrated software solution that mimics human behavior including a dialogue oriented knowledge database that contains static and dynamic data relating to human scenarios. The knowledge further includes translation, processing and analysis components that are responsible for processing of vocal and/or textual and/or video input, extracts emotional characteristics of the input and produces instructions on how to respond to the customer with the appropriate substantive response and emotion based on relevant information found in the knowledge base." Somehow I think there is a littler hyperbole here. In your estimation, how close are we to the real thing?
True AI (Score:5, Insightful)
How do they know? (Score:5, Insightful)
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But... will it pass the turing test? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think this is just a snake-oil press release.
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too generous (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:True AI (Score:1, Insightful)
The Soviets had a military command style of the type your describing. The smallest decisions, outside of SOP, had to be bumped up the line to an extreamly high level, taking a large amount of time.
Why worry about AI ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:True AI (Score:2, Insightful)
Why does the military brainwash soldiers? Simple, to render them compliant, and no free thinking. "Just following orders" is the goal, sad to say. This might not be true of officers and specialists this is less true, but for your average grunt, then yes it is ideal to be nonthinking.
Do you think bootcamp exists only to bread skill? That is what the schooling afterwards is for.
Same thing with police forces having IQ caps, you don't want people to question their job.
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Like Always (Score:2, Insightful)
Fifteen years.
Just like always.
-Peter
Re:True AI (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How about (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:True AI (Score:1, Insightful)
Atleast with the combat robots you can deactivate them after the fighting is over. With humans, it's either lock em up for life or attempt to reintegrate them into society. I'd rather have a machine sitting deactivated in a warehouse somewhere than a biological killing machine living nextdoor.
Re:True AI (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd also expect it to be involved in negotiations with bidders. However as this is just a database with "dynamic and static data" based on human scenarios, and it runs on bog standard computers, I don't see exactly how it can be construed as AI - it has no random element nor cognitive ability to think for itself outside of what it's told in its scenarios.
Re:My Heuristics (Score:5, Insightful)
"No. You're making a judgement about an individual without knowing them at all."
I don't need to know you in order to make inferences about you.
I just need to know things are correlated with other things I know about you. E.g. if you read Slashdot, you are probably a white male between the ages of 18-35. The odds that you are a black woman over 50 are very, very low.
In my case, I've researched what webservers technically competent companies run. Besides Microsoft and Godaddy, I can't think of one that does. I can think of tons of technically savvy companies that run Apache and Linux/*BSD, and a few that run Solaris. On the other hand, there are a lot of technically un-savvy companies that use Windows.
If something looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, and I say it is a duck, are you really going to argue that I'm prejudging the thing that looks, walks and quacks like a duck?
Because that's what's going on here.
This is not news, it's PR! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:True? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:True AI (Score:3, Insightful)
Regarding the police, the IQ cap is there merely to prevent people getting bored with their jobs, because it takes a special kind of intelligent person able to deal with sitting around most of the day and filing paperwork. Most of police work is BORING.
Re:True AI (Score:3, Insightful)
A.I. will be vaporware... (Score:2, Insightful)
Turing Test Passed
The passing agent, 'Machisimo,' was quoted as saying "It was easy really, I just needed to imagine what it would be like thinking in slo-mo." Joking aside, Machisimo has stated that he is filing a request with the ACLU and the UN asking their respective bodies to investigate whether the test contains a bias towards non-gray matter thought matrix based lifeforms.
In other news the new digital overlords have proposed the Binary Test, which they say will be designed to determine a non-positronic matrix system's ability to legimately perform tasks as well as a P.M.S.
Re:True AI (Score:5, Insightful)
It's no different for the AI. It is born with whatever desires we choose to program into it, and has to live with that. We could choose to program an AI to desire self-perpetuation and procreation, but it would have no more free will for that.
Re:True AI (Score:5, Insightful)
How close? (Score:5, Insightful)
We are climbing trees to try to reach the moon.
Re:No farther away than 5 years after fusion. (Score:4, Insightful)
I often tell young programmers to remember: everything's flim-flammery. You can use absractions that make it seem like you are dealing with, for example, a "window", but you shouldn't lose sight of the fact that what you are dealing with somewhat arbitrary data structures that are designed to create a certain effect in a certain context. Your job is not to create anything that is true, but to achieve certain effects. If you do it efficiently, you end up with a toolkit for achieving whole classes of effects.
I seems to me that the claim of "true AI" is an inherently empty one, because if we knew what "true AI" actually is we'd be more than half-way there. Consequently I would regard any such claim as somewhat suspect. If you think about the Turing test, while it is profound, it is a form a casuistry [wikipedia.org]; it is a tool for making it possible for us to come to agreements on things we don't know how to define.
Consequently, I'd automatically regard any claim of "true AI" to be either naive or dishonest -- or perhaps marketing speak. What they might conceivably have achieved is a toolkit that allows them to solve a large number of apparently loosely related problems with relatively little effort. Underneath they may take some particular mechanism like an expert system, and make it do all kinds of contortionist gymnastics, as you say. But that I don't regard that as dishonest. That's what programmers do, at least the good ones.
However, I doubt they've done even that much.
Marketing gobbledygook? (Score:4, Insightful)
Overheard in high level meeting of Big Consumer Tech Corp:
Marketing: So what's the dealio with this new AI thingy I heard about?
IT: It's just a bunch of hot air. That "AI" isn't really all that capable. They claim it can pick up on the emotional state of people on the phone and switch their response script accordingly. No real intelligence involved there of either the real or artificial kind
Customer Relations: Hey! Pull your head out of your Beowulf cluster. Let me provide you with a few numbers on our customer satisfaction ratings with regards to our call centers...
(several snore inducing minutes later)
CEO: Enough already! IT, go get us a couple of gross of those Dual Pentagram Servers you have been salivating over. Install 20 copies of these Virtual Call Center employees on each one. We will set up the "server ranchette" in our North Austin offices. HR, get some H1-Bs for the network administration staff in Bangladore.
Later that week in a press release:
"Big Consumer Tech Corp is pleased to announce that in these times of increased outsourcing of American jobs we at BCTC are shutting down our call centers in Bangladore. The services provided by 6000 employees in India will now be provided here in America."
Re:How would we know when it happens? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bzzt! Wrongo. You just conflated having a stressed out organic body with intelligence. As for mistakes, they exist in humans and computers, so that's a push.
People conflate other things all the time too. Like being able to imagine a computer taking over the "world's computers" with the actual possibility. We have that now with viruses and we haven't had 100% infection, much less permanent capture, yet. A computer-based AI would face the same likelyhood of success.
Re:How would we know when it happens? (Score:5, Insightful)
The strain of being overworked is a physical trait - there is no reason why a computer would have to be subject to that in order to achive true "AI"
I also think you're mixing in chemical balances in the human mind
Just imagine yourself if you were able to be removed from your physical body. You wouldn't have urges to mate, eat, wouldn't get up on the wrong side of the bed, etc. You'd still have intelligence, but your motives would be different and you wouldn't be subject to so much outside interference.
Re:True? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't count the chickens just yet... (Score:2, Insightful)
"This press release includes "safe harbor" language pursuant to the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended, indicating that certain statements about the Company's business contained in the press releases are "forward-looking" rather than "historic."
Re:Military brainwashing. Re:True AI (Score:2, Insightful)
It makes your comrades in arms potentially a threat against you. I was beginning to register all of them as enemies. The military brainwashing affects me, but not in the way intended.
My brother, on the other hand, is highly resistant against the military brainwashing.
Re:True AI (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree, and the first applications will be jobs that are (a) easily automated, or (b) push the current limits of the abilities of humans to perform them. Under (a), you will have AI for things like navigation and logistics. Under (b), you will have semi-autonomous UAV, which will largely replace the use of fighter aircraft for reconnaisance, escort, and patrol duties, being able to far outperform any human pilot due to the biophysical limits of human pilots. You probably will also have smart bombers, which can be programmed with mission parameters and intelligently make flight and evasion decisions. The ultra-hazardous nature of this job would make it desirable to remove the need for human pilots.
Re:True AI (Score:5, Insightful)
With people, we convince ourselves that we understand why they do what they do. If Spc. Bob just fragged the el-tee, we can make up a story that--to us--explains why he did it, and give us a feeling of control over any similar future events. If the A.I. frags Spc. Bob, because its imaging software got confused, how do you control that?
AI...An Irrelevant relic from the `50's (Score:2, Insightful)
I am of the opinion that AI will never achieve true intelligence. Consider the "definitions" we have of AI. Basically, if it emulates a human, then it's AI. Well sometimes ELIZA on AOL makes more sense than the president, but does that make me think ELIZA is intelligent and Bush isn't? No way! ELIZA is coded to respond to certain things. If you type in some sort of complex sentence, ELIZA will respond that "I didn't understand that last part." Human intelligence isn't programmed, it's the function of our brains. When the original AI theories were developed, computers were very very very new. Alan Turing, one of the fathers of digital computers (for whom "Turing-complete" is named), was so stumped that he came up with a test as subjective and unscientific as the process outlined above. He said that if it fools people into thinking it is intelligent, then it must be intelligent. Today this seems absurd. But in the 1950's, psychology was focused on behaviorism. The brain was considered a "black box" and the only measure of people could be taken from their behavior. This was actually sort of a reaction to the psychoanalysts (such as Freud), who believed that the analysis of one's life could reveal the answers to problems. Behaviorists are best exemplified through such experiments as Pavlov's dog. This, in fact, is very much of a program. "if (time == 1700){feed(dog);}". Though behaviorism has some merits, its basic philosophy boils down to analysis only of the exterior at a certain time. Today psychology has moved far beyond behaviorism and we now even have new theories of intelligence (such as multiple intelligences, and so on). Also, psychology gave up on the whole "black box" idea, which it deemed rather stupid. Remember that in the 1950's, they also believed that weather could be easily predicted years into the future once computers of sufficient power were devised. The 1960s and its Chaos and Fractals really disproved this, but this is beyond my scope.
Today we no longer view psychology the same way. The brain is actually at the forefront of modern psychology. Unfortunately, the studies on the brain really focus on specific areas of the brain. No real theories* have been made about the human brain. It's just sort of like "well, if we poke this area and then ask Mr. Fox to move his arm, he won't be able to." I respect these doctors for such diligent research and experimentation, and above all the saving of many many lives. But, theory is still lacking. To truely make intelligence, we would need to understand a few aspects of intelligence. These may include prediction, understanding, association, sensory functions, and learning, among others. To these ends, "AI" is absolutely useless, and a gross misnomer. If a computer or peice of hardware were to become fully intelligent, it would need just a very simple base algorithm, with ability to build onto itself. That is how we learn: we take in new information and the brain adds the new information to itself. This is not how computers work. A computer will take the new information and overwrite the old. In fact, the information is stored simply in arbitrary aggregations of 0s and 1s. Not only this, but certain areas of computer memory are reserved for certain functions. A basic brain would have no such "allocation" built in. Computer memory has the ability to be "defragmented", but the brain has no need to do this. You see, the brain is not a "permanent storage" model like the hard drive or anything in a present-day computer. The brain take in inputs, creates memories and functions associated with the inputs, and then links them all together. Effectively, a brain is like a computer that continuously is adding to its code and relinking itself. Compilation is not necessary. In some cases, the brain actually subtracts from itself to make itself more efficient. If you look at brain inputs on MRI scans, different parts of the brain are activated by hearing and vision, but extremely similar patterns are propogated through the neurons. In fact,
Laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Laden with customer-oriented marketing BS. What does AI have to do with customers? Shouldn't it be purely a research thing?
2. What is "True AI"? I thought it had more to do with learning than with interacting with humans based on some database. And I have no fscking idea what emotions have to do with AI.
I think they just came up with another silly chatbot that works harder to simulate emotion but has no AI beyond what the programmers have given it.
"True AI" in my opinion would be something autonomous that has learned how to interact with the real world on its own and can make complex decisions, assimilate complex ideas, discuss complex topics (with humans or other AIs) and show other signs of intelligence. A program spewing random phrases and then winking at you, all generated by data from a database, is not anything I'd write home about.
Not AI (Score:2, Insightful)
mimics human behavior including a dialogue oriented knowledge database that contains static and dynamic data relating to human scenarios
This is clearly not true AI. This is just a machine that has a lot of data on what to say to sound human. Although it will likely fool some people, it's just not the same thing. True AI would most likely learn or develop interaction like that. This can't even learn...
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Re:How would we know when it happens? (Score:2, Insightful)
Uh... no? Where in the definition of intelligence does it say something is required to get tired? We are trying to replicate intelligence, not create robotic humans. Being fallible has nothing to do with being intelligent, it has to do with being human.
The question of whether AI can be truly self-aware is pretty debatable. For one thing, I can't be certain you're even actually self-aware. Intelligence also has nothing to do with being self-aware. Most of you arguments about AI really have nothing to do with actual AI.
Re:Not nquite it (Score:3, Insightful)
You're barking up the wrong tree. People use citations for two purposes, for authority or to provide more detailed information. Sometimes it's both, somtimes it's just one or the other.
Wikipedia doesn't have much authority, but it's a great source for providing detailed information in a concise format that almost everyone will have direct access to (unlike most references where you have to take it on faith that the person has made a reasonable interpretation of the source material and you don't actually go yourself to the primary sources to digest everything there). Especially for a topic such as this where you would never find much detailed information if any at all in an encyclopedia or dictionary that has a high authority value. Nor is there much need for it in this case regardless.
For example, if you were curious about the different treatments and their success rates for treating a particular disease, you'd want high authority sources. But what high value facts are on the table in knowing more about a type of chatbot and how and where it's been used. It's just descriptive information.
Re:True AI (Score:2, Insightful)