A layperson's guide to AI (and I don't mean artificial insemination)

The most important thing to know about AI is that it doesnā€™t exist yet. Machine learning does, but that will never result in a machine that will pass the Turing test.

Thatā€™s a very fair comment but I wonder does it really matter? Does the machine really have to think like a human or is its ability to sift data at a much faster rate than we can ā€œenoughā€.

I remember this breakthrough.

and if computational speed keeps growing.

And the amount of data stored keeps increasing exponentially it makes for interesting speculation on what decisions will be made without some element of machine input.

Surely itā€™s not simply a matter of number crunching power (Big Blue), for me ā€˜intelligence" should include the capacity to empathise (even though this appears to be lacking in many of the UK and other countriesā€™ politicians). If AI empathy can only be simulated, ie not arising from the shared experience of being human, how can it be authentic, genuine or indeed sincere?

This may well be the wrong forum for such a question, but when things are so far advanced, itā€™s no longer a wholly technological issue.

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Not sure whether it is AI ā€“ if, per NotALot, it exists at all ā€“ machine learning or whatever, but Iā€™m sure many folk here will be familiar with what I think is very clever computing: the DeepL translation program.

It ā€œunderstandsā€ context and even distinguises between formal and informal language. As a wordsmith, the first time I saw it, I was "ā€œgobsmackedā€ ā€“ which DeepL translates as abasourdi, stupĆ©fait. or [my favourite], bouche bĆ©e

Ken

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I like DeepL. I even have a subscription. It was courageous of them to decide to compete in a market with free alternatives.

I love DeepL - but they have a free service too, I think the paid is only for documents over 5000 words.

Part of my work involves technical and legal translation, and I find Deepl to have some of the most relevant suggestions in comparison to Google Translate, Bing, and Linguee, for example.

Free vs fee :slightly_smiling_face: Plus DeepL isnā€™t spying on you. Google remembers every word of everything you translate using either your Google ID or your IP address.

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I donā€™t like having to chop my longer stuff up Tory and I do like supporting the fee vs free (because nothing is free) business model :slightly_smiling_face:

After forty years of giving lectures to students, I quite like the idea of someone (or even some thing) remembering my every word.

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Too flippant Mark IMHO. I guess Iā€™m a lonely little petunia in the onion patch when it comes to calling out the FB/Google/Twitter risk but wtf. If you can all ignore Brexit, Trumpā€™s election, what FB facilitated in Myanmar against the Rohingya community, etc. etc. well tant pis.

There is a place for flippancy, yet I donā€™t necessarily disagree with your point, for instance I 've refrained from sharing with SF posters my recent composition (with apologies to Lonnie Donnegan) My Old Manā€™s a Taliban. Ultimately though I donā€™t really care how much commercial and other info Google has on me.

There are two reasons for this, firstly I donā€™t think itā€™s very acccurate because for several years, for some unknown reason, my Google profile was female - possibly due to my wife making online purchases (with my agreement!) with my UK Visa card. Iā€™m certainly not a secret shopper at Victoriaā€™s Secret

Secondly I donā€™t care about more accurate commercial info as my tastes evolve and I never respond to advertising spam, just as I would never buy something from someone who cold-called me. Although the products of these algorithms can be intrusive, I also find them reasssuringly imprecise, they donā€™t know my search criteria beyond what I input, and thatā€™s fairly basic.

Although Iā€™m being targeted more precisely than I would be by traditional advertising media, ultimately for me, itā€™s no different to walking through a city, or watching TV and seeing adverts for stuff that Iā€™ve no interest in buying.

Youā€™ve clearly not been reading many of my posts John :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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Mark, I donā€™t care about commercial profiling. I care about targeted political influencing of dimwits.

I really donā€™t understand the complacency here. This is THE big issue today. Views on all issues can be manipulated via these platforms. So, idiots (or bad actors) on FB have impacted vaccination uptake, idiots (or bad actors) have impacted the acceptance that we have the climate issue.

Do you guys not realise the idiot with the sandwich board on speakerā€™s corner " the end is neigh" and very clever bad actors now have access to 2.7B people via FB.

Gobbels would have been ecstatic.