Cory DoctorowThis profile of me in *The New Yorker* came out really well, if I do say so myself:
Gsoc@pluralistic All problems with AI raise from the sensitive applications these systems are blindly used for. AI is just a blanket term for "statistics-guided algorithm": AI is not "intelligent". AI algorithms (in particular deep learning) can encode correlations in data and therefore highlight such correlations in other data, but there is no magic behind it. We need to remember that *correlation does not imply causation*.
tolortslubor@gsoc @pluralistic This. #AI will not need what we know as #consciousness, or even will or agency, to have dramatic and permanent impacts on human society. Increasingly, decision-makers are trusting it. San Francisco PD just approved killer robots. WTF are the executives doing, besides front-running markets with their quants and high-frequency trading?
@tolortslubor @pluralistic AI does not have consciousness. As Federico Faggin (the inventor of the microprocessor) says, no (classical) computer have consciousness, regardless of the algorithm they run. Hearing about ""AI-empowered"" killer robots that work as policemen left me *literally* speechless.
areswhat if animal and human intelligence is also just a "statistics-guided algorithm"
@ares @pluralistic This is a very deep question that would require more than 500 characters to reply to. Federico Faggin (the physicist that invented the microprocessor) says that no computer can be conscious and the fact that living creatures are can be explained because our world is governed also by quantum laws. Moreover, if we were guided by statistics only we wouldn't have free will and we would be misled by spurious correlations (https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations). See also: http://www.fagginfoundation.org/articles/what-is-consciousness/
