Discuss on HN: The State of Artifical Intelligence

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4710388

by davidkatz • 14 years ago

8 11 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Smart machines have been a promise of Computer Science for a while now. These days though I often find myself lost around what has actually been achieved.

Which problems have been solved, where has meaningful progress been made, and what do we desire but still seems far off?

Would someone care to start with an overview?

zuckmitnick6• 14 years ago

AI is not an explicit subject like math and physics, which has solid principles. It's just about searching for a way of providing the machines an ability to "think", whatever the way you choose.

Different people understand the word "think" differently. Eg, for most people, AI is about algorithms, while for me, it is about recreating a human brain.

So, an overview is too complicated and multifarious, at least for me.

davidkatz2• 14 years ago

I hear you. Perhaps not an overview then, but an example of a solved or unsolved problem?

zuckmitnick6• 14 years ago

Well, most AI techs that exists right now are built upon rules. A very early example may be the chess machine "deep blue", who defeated the world champion Kasparov. A recent one could be Google's virtual brain, who "understood" the concept "cat" by analysing 10 million random frames from YouTube. Another example may be the one S4M mentioned, I'm not familiar with that.

While Google's virtual brain "understood" something, it still doesn't has the ability of analysing. This is an example of unsolved problems.

S4M3• 14 years ago

I recall a discussion on HN [1] were a worm had been simulated, which might be a step forward to the long road of recreating a human brain as zuckmitnick mentions.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4208454

zuckmitnick6• 14 years ago

Yeah, that is surely a step forward. But simulating a worm is way too far from simulating a human brain. And also I'm not sure if this is a right path (Just IMHO).

Luckily, I've been working on the framework of simulating the human brain and I've got a theory. In the next few weeks I'll be working on realizing this framework and release a demo. If this works, I will post it on HN. :)

S4M3• 14 years ago

Looks good, good luck with that! That seems a really interesting and challenging project, do you have a background in neuropsychology or another field that helps you understand how the human brain work? If you need help, you can shoot me an email, and I will see what I can do (my background is more in applied maths).

Discuss on HN: The State of Artifical Intelligence

Related Stories