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Yes Arne

I totally agree adapting, as you describe, can be viewed as "learning".

It is why I can just about accept the term "Machine Learning". But it is generally used in conjunction with the term "AI" and this I cannot accept. i.e. Human Learning.

It is the imprecision of the English language that leads to discussions such as this.

I should have said "Do your machines learn in the way humans do"?

The progressive adapting you describe ties in very well with how comprehensible logic (in human terms) can be transformed to non-intelligent non-ambiguous algorithms.

Terry

Hi Karl

I've just looked at the topic title - Playing Chess.
Whist I can't give you a complete algorithm to do it, if you do not start off on the right basis you'll never achieve you goal. It serves as a good example of transferring thought to an unambiguous algorithm. And illustrates the likely complexity of that algorithm.

If you approach the task from the point of view of playing a game of chess as humans do you are on a geometrical progression leading to an infinite range of outcomes. Ugh!

However if you approach it from the point of view of outcome and work backwards you are on a converging sequence which ends in zero. By this I mean zero displacement of the chessmen from their initial places on the board.

You know the losing King will be on the board at the end. Put it on each of the 64 squares in turn working out for each opponent piece how it could be positioned to "take" the King.

You can see how this would become complex pretty quickly. But it is a logical converging progression. (I'll leave you to think it through).

The point is it is a converging progression. It is just the same principle as is used by visual studio when it shows which functions can instantiate a type. Look at the result and work back to the beginning!

Hope that makes some sense

Terry

Chess? You didn't read exactly enough AlphaZero plays Chess, Go and another sort, and NOONE provided "human knowledge", the prog knew only the rules...

Karl
I'll take another look, but my guess is that the human intelligence of the programmer "told" the program the rules. If that were not the case you'd have programs manifesting themselves out of nowhere and we'd all be redundant.

Terry

Hi Chris

You posed the question "What does real intelligence do differently"

I'd say it was the difference between a guess and certainty.

I look at it like this:

When developing software, except for the most trivial program, I tend to "guess" a way of coding things, a fairly educated guess maybe, but still a guess. I try it, horror - it fails, so I try it again until I get it right.

Now the future is always unpredictable, the past is certain. When I get the program right and it does what I want, all the development machinations have moved relatively into the past. Correct logic is now embedded in the program.

From a users point of view, the correct logic is already in the past.

Computer logic only works on certainty; it cannot guess because there will inevitably come a time when the guess is wrong.

So I tend to think of Intelligence as "pulling" towards an uncertain outcome until the future transitions into the past, uncertainty has transitioned into certainty, and logic "pushes" forwards under user action.

Hope that warped way of thinking helps rather than hinders.

Terry

Hi Arne – a more considered reply:
I would think of what you describe as “Product Development”.

“Adaptation” is what the computer hardware does – it would not be able to run different programs if it did not.
But different programs are produced by man – in this case the programmer.
Car motion adapts when we change gear.
Try taking man’s intelligence out of the loop in either situation.

There is also another point to note: the mechanics of your analogous machine(s) are constrained to work within the bounds of physical constraints, if they did not they would throw an exception – blow up?
So too, the computer would not work unless it were constrained to operate within certain constraints, or limits. In the computer case these limits are set by time. Within a few nano-seconds it cannot do anything other than what it was programmed to do. Timing, or relative timing is ensured by locking everything to a master oscillator.
Product Development is similar, I agree. But the timescales are totally different: years rather than nano-seconds, and the PRECISE outcome cannot be known in advance – it can only be guessed at.

Terry

Two Microsoft collaborators now have published an interesting book: The future computed.
It can be downloaded from here:
https://msblob.blob.core.windows.net/nc ... mputed.pdf

They do not discuss the technology. They think about the future social changes that AI may bring us and what we will have to do.

Arne

Thanks Arne.

Interesting points/thoughts.

Clearly I am wrong. Computers are intelligent. They must be if they join the AI Lawyers bandwagon.

On a serious note: there are some good points made, worth thinking about.

I can't criticise anyone who wants to think about computers as "thinking machines". Everyone should think of things in a way they can best understand.

Our natural way of building up understanding is for new facts to be absorbed and combined with what we already know. This forms a natural or exponential growth of comprehension.

But for that to lead to the idea that a machine (computer) can itself think is totally WRONG.

And I think that is what is implied in the chapter entitled "Can Computers Think?" or have I misread it?

Terry

FWIW, i stopped reading, when i had absorbed the start - the necessity for an "intelligent" coffee-maker - firstly, there's already one (my wife)- nope, in reality it's me
Second, some folks should consider reading the at least the essential part of St. Exupery's Little Prince - specially when the prince tells him, what he would do with all the time saved by swallowing a pill instead of drinking water.


Karl