Everyone involved in AI should have read The Library of Babel [1].
It's about many things, but perhaps the most relevant idea here is that no information matters without understanding. We could generate all possible knowledge, but unless someone--a human--can verify and understand it, it doesn't count. The cure for mortality could be written on the moon, but if no one reads it, it hasn't really been discovered.
I don't think this necessarily follows. The point of the Library of Babel is more one of permutations/combinatorics than of knowledge accumulation itself. In 'our' Library of Babel, each book would be informative, if not perhaps flawed in some ways. That's quite different from one in which in which the number of books that contain anything coherent whatsoever cleanly rounds to zero.
Planktonne · · focus · HN ↗
It's about many things, but perhaps the most relevant idea here is that no information matters without understanding. We could generate all possible knowledge, but unless someone--a human--can verify and understand it, it doesn't count. The cure for mortality could be written on the moon, but if no one reads it, it hasn't really been discovered.
[1] <a href="https://maskofreason.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/the-library-of-babel-by-jorge-luis-borges.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://maskofreason.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/0...
somenameforme · · focus · HN ↗