{"id":1308,"date":"2019-02-15T10:32:03","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T10:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kusuaks7\/?p=913"},"modified":"2021-05-26T14:51:27","modified_gmt":"2021-05-26T14:51:27","slug":"artificial-sentience-vs-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/ai-ml\/artificial-sentience-vs-artificial-intelligence\/","title":{"rendered":"Artificial Sentience vs Artificial Intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ready to learn Machine Learning? Browse courses<\/a>\u00a0like\u00a0Machine Learning Foundations: Supervised Learning<\/a> developed by industry thought leaders and Experfy in Harvard Innovation Lab.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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In my recent essay,\u00a0AI Is Fire<\/a>, I wrote that AI wouldn\u2019t suddenly race far ahead of human beings when it one day achieves sentience. We have nothing to fear from a super-advanced AI like\u00a0Skynet<\/a>\u00a0or the\u00a0Matrix<\/a>\u00a0in the far future. However, we should be concerned over the potential of simple AIs in the near future to unemploy large numbers of people.<\/p>\n

There are really two meanings of \u201cAI\u201d and they are routinely conflated. One is the idea popularized by the likes of\u00a0Kubrick<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Spielberg<\/a>, and warned about by\u00a0Musk<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Hawking<\/a>, that AI will one day achieve conscious, sentient, self-aware thought, and will thenceforth improve itself at the speed of light and leave humankind, which improves at biological speed, in the dust. To un-conflate what people mean by \u201cAI,\u201d I\u2019m going to refer to this as \u201cArtificial Sentience.\u201d Musk calls it \u201ca deep intelligence in the network.\u201d Hawking believes, \u201cIt would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn\u2019t compete, and would be superseded.\u201d The human race is nowhere near producing AS and doesn\u2019t even have any clear sense of how we would do so.<\/p>\n

Then there is what people call \u201cAI\u201d today\u2014basically, a variety of software that tries, tests, and auto-corrects its strategies for a given task. Such applications, and the available\u00a0tools<\/a>\u00a0to build them, are increasingly common. They are not much different in theory or kind from the original use of computers: to calculate complex math problems. Their foundation is still the crunching of lots of numbers at great speed toward a specified goal, upon which is added algorithms to sample data, try strategies, observe and remember consequences, and adjust future strategies accordingly.<\/p>\n

Toasters vs calculators<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The threat people fear from AS is existential. The problem with AI is merely economic\u2014it will take jobs away from people.<\/p>\n

There is nothing truly intelligent about artificial intelligence software, any more than any other kind of software, so it is perversely named. Electronic machines are better than human beings at any number of tasks. Toasters can warm bread via heat coils better than humans can by blowing on it. Calculators have long been better than humans at calculating math. AI is better at sampling, testing, and optimizing over a huge set of data.<\/p>\n

There is no essential difference between electronic machines and computer software. But there are some superficial differences that explain why we put them in different categories. Toasters are old technology that do something we\u00a0don\u2019t associate with intelligence<\/em>. Calculators perform tasks we\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0associate<\/em>\u00a0with intelligence<\/em>, but they are still an\u00a0old technology whose underlying mechanics are easy to understand<\/em>. So we think it\u2019s ludicrous to think of calculators as intelligent, independent beings. AI is a\u00a0new technology<\/em>whose underlying mechanics are\u00a0not easy to understand<\/em>. Based on reliable trends in the computer industry, we anticipate AI becoming dazzlingly more powerful and complex in the future. Since it\u2019s hard to predict the future, it\u2019s very difficult to imagine what these complex systems could turn into.<\/p>\n

But why should we think that improved, future AI will magically become truly intelligent? AI, like calculators and toasters, like animals and even humans, can perform marvelously at certain tasks without understanding that it is doing so\u2014it\u2019s what philosopher\/cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett calls \u201ccompetence without comprehension<\/a>\u201d When machines do something that outperforms us mechanically, we take little notice. When AI outperforms us at a mental task,\u00a0it seems smart<\/em>. But that\u2019s just a cognitive trick.\u00a0Cognitive tricks can be very convincing\u2014there\u2019s a\u00a0great TV show<\/a>\u00a0entirely devoted to them\u2014but they aren\u2019t real.<\/p>\n

AI is not smarter than humans and never will be<\/strong><\/h3>\n

It\u2019s a dumb machine, doing tedious calculating tasks better than we can or care to do ourselves. Human intelligence doesn\u2019t work this way\u2014we\u2019re not even particularly good at simple calculating tasks. So it stands to reason that making AI ever better at calculating an ever wider array of tasks is not going to make it spring to life one day and become self-aware.<\/p>\n

A great many people in science and technology fields seem to think that merely improving the power of AI will cause some mystical emergence of consciousness from its underlying programming. Why? Consciousness does not result from computing power in the human brain; in fact, it\u2019s vice versa. So why would computing power perforce lead to consciousness in the electronic brain?<\/p>\n

Talk to anyone on the cutting edge of AI today and they will concede that a lot of what\u2019s called AI is pretty dumb, but they will insist that some of it is really impressive. But in my experience this group of people is easily impressed, especially by themselves. There is no basis upon which to believe that anything currently being worked on in AI will ever spring to life. Over time, AI chatbots and call center programing will increasingly be able to trick humans into thinking they\u2019re talking to another human, but that\u2019s not the same as actually being AS.<\/p>\n

A very long way off<\/strong><\/h3>\n

All that said\u2014one day, if we don\u2019t destroy ourselves first, we will indeed create Artificial Sentience. But the deep intelligence in the network is still a very long way off. Meanwhile, we have simple AI to worry about. Could it fundamentally alter the human labor market in a way never seen before? Or will labor markets respond as they always have\u2014by finding new, more productive tasks for displaced workers to do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are really two meanings of “AI” and they are routinely conflated. To un-conflate what people mean by “AI,” I’m going to refer to this as “Artificial Sentience.” Then there is what people call “AI” today—basically, a variety of software that tries, tests, and auto-corrects its strategies for a given task.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":14348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-post-2.php","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[183],"tags":[97],"ppma_author":[2852],"class_list":["post-1308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai-ml","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"authors":[{"term_id":2852,"user_id":206,"is_guest":0,"slug":"jose-ferreira","display_name":"Jose Ferreira","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","user_url":"","last_name":"Ferreira","first_name":"Jose","job_title":"","description":"Jose Ferreira<\/a> is the Co-Founder & CEO of Bakpax<\/a>, an ed-tech startup using AI and Big Data to improve the lives of teachers and students. He previously founded the adaptive learning company Knewton, where he served as CEO from 2008-2016."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1308"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24135,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308\/revisions\/24135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1308"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}