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It's Time to Investigate the AI Labs

629 points · 277 comments · ibobev

  1. jimmyjazz14 · · focus · HN ↗
    > We must move past vague discussions of “AI” and instead isolate the specific types of systems that are creating problems.

    This is absolutely correct and its surprising how rarely you see commenters in the media push to go into the specifics on this. AI is just matrix math and its what you connect that math to that matters, we should talk a little more about what we are willing to connect AI to and little less about how scary or capable the models appear.

    1. yodsanklai · · focus · HN ↗
      A point that Yann LeCun has been making for a while is that it's meaningless to regulate AI, but we want to regulate applications. For instance, you don't want autonomous vehicles to hit people, whether they use AI or not. In practice, most applications of AI are already regulated.
      1. thaumasiotes · · focus · HN ↗
        > For instance, you don't want autonomous vehicles to hit people, whether they use AI or not.

        What would it mean for a vehicle to be "autonomous", but to "not use AI"?

        1. ehe78qhe · · focus · HN ↗
          Trains are often highly automated without AI, for example. Aircraft are often automated for most of their flight without AI.
          1. thaumasiotes · · focus · HN ↗
            > Aircraft are often automated for most of their flight without AI.

            What do you mean? I can just as easily say that Claude Code operates "without AI". It would make about as much sense.

            1. maddie0 · · focus · HN ↗
              look, there's a lot of room to complain about moving the goalposts of what counts as AI, I get it

              but I don't think a simple PID controller in the autopilotnmanaging altitude, heading, and the like has ever been categorized as "AI." Cybernetics, maybe.

              even the rules managing the flight envelope and MCAS on the 737 Max, or the Airbus implementations of flight law, sure seem to have relatively few of the attributes that tend to get the label these days

            2. KaiserPro · · focus · HN ↗
              It means you are out here autonomously dropping logical fallacies.

              Autopilots are autonomous, without AI. lane following and collision avoidance in most cars, don't use "AI" they use classic computer vision and good old fashioned radar.

              The difference here is that claude code fails to perform what it's intended to do without a model attached, a plane/car doesn't.

              1. ozgung · · focus · HN ↗
                Classical Computer Vision is AI. Computer Vision is a subfield of AI since the beginning.

                People may confuse AI with Machine Learning. “Classical” computer vision generally means non-learning based techniques. But ML is also not new to computer vision. So non-classical actually means using Deep Learning.

                So today when people say AI they actually mean Deep Learning.

              2. LtWorf · · focus · HN ↗
                Computer vision is not AI? This is complete news to me.
                1. [deleted] · · focus · HN ↗

                  [deleted]

            3. amelius · · focus · HN ↗
              You could also say that a human is just a bunch of atoms.

              Thankfully, courts will look at it differently.

            4. ehe78qhe · · focus · HN ↗
              After staring at your comment for a while I think what's happened is you've confused the non-AI autopilot and flight control systems used in an airliner with the AI-driven autonomy being used in military drones.
              1. Sharlin · · focus · HN ↗
                GP's point is that the goalposts of what counts as "AI" have been constantly shifted for decades, and right not it seems that even many HN commenters seem to have somehow gotten the idea that "AI" strictly means "deep learning neural networks" (or something even more specific like "generative transformers"). GP just went a bit too far in the opposite direction, being too inclusive in their definition.

                FWIW, my working definition of "AI" is "anything discussed in the latest edition of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach". It seems to work well.

                1. thaumasiotes · · focus · HN ↗
                  > GP just went a bit too far in the opposite direction, being too inclusive in their definition.

                  > FWIW, my working definition of "AI" is "anything discussed in the latest edition of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach". It seems to work well.

                  You're kidding, right? It's never been an obscure term. If a computer is making decisions, that's AI.

                  Here&#x27;s a pretty common usage: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;broodwar&#x2F;comments&#x2F;ixzwl4&#x2F;are_there_better_ai_options_for_remastered&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;broodwar&#x2F;comments&#x2F;ixzwl4&#x2F;are_there_...

                  &gt; I&#x27;m getting back into [Starcraft: ] Brood War after a long break. Don&#x27;t have the time to play ladder, but want to be able to play 1v1 against AI, however, the stock AI in remastered is terrible

                  Game AI is invariably called by that term and generally implemented as a fairly simple if-else ladder. In a taxonomy I guess it would be called an &quot;expert system&quot;; I can find them mentioned in the detailed table of contents to AIMA (3rd edition), but not in the simplified table of contents to AIMA (4th). They might still be in there, in the same section titled &quot;Making Simple Decisions&quot;. Norvig doesn&#x27;t really bother to consider expert systems with probabilities constrained to 1 or 0, though.

                  1. Sharlin · · focus · HN ↗
                    No, I’m not kidding when I say that some people even in this thread are claiming that AI = DLNNs, essentially.
            5. Tanjreeve · · focus · HN ↗
              The fact this thread descended into a load of philosophical chin stroking about what is truly AI perfectly illustrates the core point that all regulation should just be targeted at use cases and what people are doing with the software.

              If a plane could run on some sort of local LLM it should still be governed by the same laws and damages when something goes wrong same as people don&#x27;t spend time quibbling about the implementation language of software they care about demonstrating capabilities.

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