Comments on: AI Primer from the New York Times

By: FoolsGold

FoolsGold — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:45:07 +0000

Actually, AI will be marvelous.
Its already making inroads in the consumer marketplace.
Some of this is a little like a coin that says King George the First. Its clearly counterfeit because such a coin would have said King George. Its the same way with the term “set”. Originally ALL sets were what is now know as Crisp Sets. Lofti Zadeh created the concept of ‘fuzzy sets’ wherein members of a set had a probability of being in the set rather than a distinct yes or no. So a set became a more real-world way of dealing with situations. A crisp set of the people in a room would include simply the people in a room whereas a fuzzy set would include people in the doorway, people listening to the lecture in an overflow room, people who had just left but were about to re-enter the room, etc. This Fuzzy Set and Fuzzy Logic for the basis of advances in artificial intelligence and what has become known as Soft Computing.
Washing machines that sense how dirty the water is and don’t require a human being to press some selector button use artificial intelligence. Self adjusting toasters, traffic grids that adjust themselves, … there are many advances. The problem is that those who want to deal with the frontiers of artificial intelligence have to remember that a robot should never try to tie its master’s shoelaces in the middle of an intersection.

By: JoeDuck

JoeDuck — Tue, 26 May 2009 07:17:47 +0000

Hey, are you guys just AI party poopers? After the Terminator Movie I’m wondering if funding for AI projects might be viewed with a little more … hostility?

By: horatiox

horatiox — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:22:09 +0000

The Braingate technology appears to be a genuine AI-cog-sci. advance–not merely simulation, or sophisticated robotics (like DARPA, though I haven’t heard that DARPA vehicles are allowed in normal traffic). The neuro-kinetics gear also suggests something philosophical in a sense: the brain’s neurological hardware can be encoded, and translated into commands, and interfaced with a CPU. That provides fairly conclusive evidence of the bio-dependency of mental events–Mind is Brain, more or less. Not great news for Notre Dame, or for suburban mystics, for that matter.

That said, the new AI-cogsci gear also lends itself to Matrix-like or Blade Runner scenarios. Sinister governments or corporations could put AI and robotics to malevolent uses: in fact they already do, arguably. Drones were used fairly extensively in IWE, and on occasion one sees a strange small craft out in the high desert (the Dark star project, and others). Police departments also now make use of all sorts of AI gear, GPS stuff, very advanced surveillance gear. Watching a LAPD raid–tanks, ‘copters, goons in kevlar, semis, dozens of squad cars all outfitted with the sector-ware, etc–on some neighborhood gangstas or drug dealers one may detect the wrong side of the Brave New AI World (and let’s not forget that most cop and guard unions are solidly democratic).

By: FoolsGold

FoolsGold — Sun, 24 May 2009 13:58:33 +0000

Perhaps amongst the SuperHumanIntelligentComputer posts you might remember to include a few of those recent articles about GPS navigation systems sending motorists over steep cliffs or across non-existent bridges.