The Hype of Artificial Intelligence
This blog looks at the conversation between 60 Minutes and Sundar Pichai on the topic of Artificial Intelligence, discussing the importance of understanding the training data and the concept of a 'black box'. It also provides a partial transcript of the conversation.
@emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon
Professor, Linguistics, UW // Faculty Director, Professional MS Program in Computational Linguistics (CLMS) // she/her // @emilymbender@dair-community.social
-
This is so painful to watch. @60Minutes and @sundarpichai working in concert to heap on the #AIHype. Partial transcript (that I just typed up) and reactions from me follow: https://t.co/GE8nIWsmvg
— @emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon (@emilymbender) April 17, 2023 -
As @mmitchell_ai points out (read her whole thread; it's great) if you create ignorance about the training data, of course system performance will be surprising.https://t.co/yicVGv1asv
— @emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon (@emilymbender) April 17, 2023
>> -
Later in the clip @sundarpichai says: "There is an aspect of this which we call, all of us in the field, call it as a black box. You know, you don't fully understand, and you can't quite tell why it said this or why it got wrong. [...]"
— @emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon (@emilymbender) April 17, 2023
>> -
The rhetorical move @sundarpichai is making here invites the listener to imagine Bard as something like a person, whose behavior we have to live with or maybe patiently train to be better. IT. IS. NOT.
— @emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon (@emilymbender) April 17, 2023
>> -
Pichai responds: "I've had those experiences talking with Bard as well. There are two views of this. You know there are a set of people who view this as Look, these are just algorithms. It's just repeating what its seen online.
— @emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon (@emilymbender) April 17, 2023
>> -
Pichai cont: "Then there's the view where these algorithms are showing emergent properties: to be creative, to reason, to plan, and so on, right? And personally, I think we need to be, we need to approach this with humility."
— @emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon (@emilymbender) April 17, 2023
>> -
You know what approaching this with humility would mean @sundarpichai ? It would mean not talking about "emergent properties" which is really a dog whistle for "AGI" which in turn is code for "we created a god!" (Or maybe "We are god, creating life").
— @emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon (@emilymbender) April 17, 2023
>>