Learnlets

Secondary

Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

AI Reflections

15 September 2017 by Clark Leave a Comment

Last night I attended a session on “Our Relationship with AI” sponsored by the Computer History Museum and the Partnership on AI. In a panel format, noted journalist John Markoff moderated Apple‘s Tom Gruber, AAAI President Subbarao Kambhampati, and IBM Distinguished Research Scientist Francesca Rossi. The overarching theme was:  how are technologists, engineers, and organizations designing AI tools that enable people and devices to understand and work with each other?

It was an interesting session, with the conversation ranging from what AI is, to what it could and should be used for, and how to develop it in appropriate ways. Addresses were concerns about AI’s capability, roles, and potential misuses.  Here I’m presenting just a couple of thoughts triggered, as I’ve previously riffed on IA (Intelligence Augmentation) and Ethics.

One of the questions that arose was whether AI is engineering or science. The answer, of course, is both. There’s ongoing research on how to get AI to do meaningful things, which is the science part. Here we might see AI that can learn to play video games.  Applying what’s currently known to solve problems is the engineering part, like making chatbots that can answer customer service questions.

On a related note was what  can AI do.  Put very simply, the proposal was that AI could do what you can make a judgment on in a second. So, whether what you see is a face, or whether a claim is likely to be fraudulent.  If you can provide a good (large) training set that says ‘here’s the input, and this is what the output should be’, you can train a system to do it.  Or, in a well-defined domain, you can say ‘here are the logical rules for how to proceed’, and build that system.

The ability to do these tasks, was another point, is what leads to fear. “Wow, they can be better than me at this task, how soon will they be better than me on many tasks?”  The important point made is that these systems can’t generalize beyond their data or rules.  They can’t say: ‘oh I played this video driving game so now I can drive a car’.

Which means that the goal of artificial  general intelligence, that is, a system that can learn and reason about the real world, is still an unknown distance away.  It would either have to have a full set of  knowledge about the world,  or you’d have to have both the capacity and the experience that a human learns from (starting as a baby).  Neither approach has demonstrated any approach of being close.

A side issue was that of the datasets.  It turns out that datasets can have or learn implicit biases. A case study was mentioned how Asian faces triggered ‘blinking’ warnings, owing to the typical eye shape. And this was from an Asian company!  Similarly, word recognition ended up biasing woman towards associations with kitchens and homes, compared to men.  This raises a big issue when it comes to making decisions: could loan-offerings, fraud-detection, or other applications of machine learning inherit bias from datasets?  And if so, how do we address it?

Similarly, one issue was that of trust. When do we trust an AI algorithm?  One suggestions was that it would come through experience (repeatedly seeing benevolent decisions or support).  Which wouldn’t be that unusual. We might also employ techniques that work with humans: authority of the providers, credentials, testimonials, etc. One of my concerns then was could that be misleading: we trust one algorithm, and then transfer that trust (inappropriately) to another?  That wouldn’t be  unknown in human behavior either.  Do we need a whole new set of behaviors around NPCs? (Non Player Characters, a reference to game agents that are programmed, not people.)

One analogy that was raised was to the industrial age. We started replacing people with machines. Did that mean a whole bunch of people were suddenly out of work?  Or did that mean new jobs emerged to be filled?  Or, since we’re now doing human-type tasks, will there be less tasks overall? And if so, what do we do about it?  It clearly should be a conscious decision.

It’s clear that there are business benefits to AI. The real question, and this isn’t unique to AI but happens with all technologies, is how we decide to incorporate the opportunities into our systems. So, what do you think are the issues?

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Clark Quinn

The Company

Search

Feedblitz (email) signup

Never miss a post
Your email address:*
Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide

Pages

  • About Learnlets and Quinnovation

The Serious eLearning Manifesto

Manifesto badge

Categories

  • design
  • games
  • meta-learning
  • mindmap
  • mobile
  • social
  • strategy
  • technology
  • Uncategorized
  • virtual worlds

Blogroll

  • Charles Jennings
  • Christy Tucker
  • Connie Malamed
  • Dave's Whiteboard
  • Donald Clark's Plan B
  • Donald Taylor
  • Harold Jarche
  • Julie Dirksen
  • Kevin Thorn
  • Mark Britz
  • Mirjam Neelen & Paul Kirschner
  • Stephen Downes' Half an Hour

License

Previous Posts

  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • June 2006
  • May 2006
  • April 2006
  • March 2006
  • February 2006
  • January 2006

Amazon Affiliate

Required to announce that, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Mostly book links. Full disclosure.