"According to Pearl and Mackenzie the root of the problem is that computers do not have a model of reality. However, the problem is that nobody can have a model of reality. Any model can only depict simplified aspects of reality. The real problem is that computers are not in the world, because they are not embodied."
#RagnarFjelland, 2020
"The problem facing the development of expert systems, that is, systems that enable a computer to simulate expert performance ... is that an important part of the expert knowledge is tacit. If experts try to articulate the knowledge they apply in their performance, they normally regress to a lower level. Therefore, according to Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus, expert systems are not able to capture the skills of an expert performer."
#RagnarFjelland, 2020
"However, the important thing in Polanyi’s contribution is that he argued that skills are a precondition for articulate knowledge in general, and scientific knowledge in particular. For example, to carry out physical experiments requires a high degree of skills. These skills cannot just be learned from textbooks. They are acquired by instruction from someone who knows the trade."
#RagnarFjelland, 2020
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0494-4
(1/2)
(1/?)
@lightweight I was reminded of our debates about the science of renewable energy tech when I read this, and the explanation that follows;
"Western philosophy has by and large followed Plato and only accepted propositional knowledge as real knowledge. An exception is what Dreyfus called the 'anti-philosophers' Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. He also referred to the scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi."
#RagnarFjelland, 2020
(3/3)
"... the belief that AGI can be realized is harmful. If the power of technology is overestimated and human skills are underestimated, the result will in many cases be that we replace something that works well with something that is inferior.."
#RagnarFjelland, 2020
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0494-4
This is what's happening, eg government thinking that replacing human judges with Trained MOLEs allows them to cut costs *and* get more "rational" judgments. It doesn't do either.
(2/3)
"... when it is argued that computers are able to duplicate a human activity, it often turns out that the claim presuppose an account of that activity that is seriously simplified and distorted. To put it simply: The overestimation of technology is closely connected with the underestimation of humans."
#RagnarFjelland, 2020
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0494-4
#AI hype is like blockchain hype. It's not as useless as critics think, but way less transformative than boosters think.
"... one of the pioneers in the field, Marvin Minsky, defined AI as: '… the science of making machines do things that would require intelligence if done by men' (quoted from Bolter, 1986, p. 193). This is sometimes called weak AI. However, many AI researcher have pursued the aim of developing AI that is in principle identical to human intelligence, called strong AI."
#RagnarFjelland, 2020
@billbennett's 2021 piece on AI hype references a paper by Ragnar Fjelland entitled Why general artificial intelligence will not be realized. Here's a permanent link to it;
Strypey