[HN Gopher] A DARPA Perspective on Artificial Intelligence [pdf]
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       A DARPA Perspective on Artificial Intelligence [pdf]
        
       Author : nulluint
       Score  : 90 points
       Date   : 2022-03-19 17:40 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.darpa.mil)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.darpa.mil)
        
       | alins wrote:
       | FYI the presentation is from December 2016.
        
       | jart wrote:
       | Wow I just read HDNW in a DARPA powerpoint. TSNE is nice BTW.
        
       | gone35 wrote:
       | (2016?)
       | 
       | Also:
       | 
       | > First wave: Handcrafted knowledge
       | 
       | > Second wave: Statistical learning
       | 
       | > Third wave: Contextual adaptation
       | 
       | I understood clearly enough the first two, but the slides become
       | increasingly ambiguous and fuzzy towards the end; and it seems to
       | me they are mixing up a bunch of not self-evidently related
       | desiderata.
       | 
       | It is not immediate, for instance, that small "generative" models
       | that are easy to interpret necessarily lead to better
       | "abstraction" (whatever that means). And whatever this all has to
       | do with "contextual adaptation" is to me anyone's guess.
       | 
       | Highly alarming (but sadly, from experience, unsurprising) to see
       | such fuzzy position document from such an important funding
       | agency for AI.
        
       | GWBullshit wrote:
        
         | GWBullshit wrote:
        
           | GWBullshit wrote:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzC4hFK5P3g
        
             | GWBullshit wrote:
             | https://imgur.com/a/Lk6KYmw
        
               | GWBullshit wrote:
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO_3Qgib6RQ
               | 
               | "When you got stuff teuxdeux"
               | 
               | https://tenor.com/view/super-milk-chan-anime-adult-swim-
               | gif-...
        
       | itsmefaz wrote:
       | Nice
        
       | bigcat123 wrote:
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | Khelouiati wrote:
       | 2016 ??????
        
       | ochicial wrote:
       | Here is the presentation in form of a blog post:
       | 
       | https://machinelearning.technicacuriosa.com/2017/03/19/a-dar...
        
       | jll29 wrote:
       | It's good to see a main funding agency's perspective.
       | 
       | As a researcher, I like their non-hype way of defining AI as
       | "programmed ability", which is accurate and realistic -- also
       | puts AI further apart from real intelligence, which means
       | unanticipated activities.
       | 
       | I would like to know more what they see as "abstracting", from
       | their perspective.
       | 
       | We haven't got much further in our scientific understanding of
       | intelligence - if you bought a psychology text book today and ten
       | years ago there wouldn't be much of a breakthrough change
       | detectable in terms of modeling cognition. And as impressive as
       | some computer science AI models perform certain tasks, I haven't
       | been taken by surprise by them asking me a question out of the
       | blue, which is one of my personal litmus tests for intelligence.
        
       | Khelouiati wrote:
       | 2016 ?????
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | "Contextual adaptation" is what they want, but that doesn't mean
       | it's coming in the near future. However, this does mean that
       | funding for research on it will be available.
       | 
       | As I've said for years, the big lack in AI is in the "common
       | sense" and unstructured manipulation area. Nobody can build
       | something with squirrel levels of manipulation and agility, even
       | in simulation. Robot manipulation in unstructured situations is
       | still very poor. The people trying to simulate C. elegans at the
       | neuron level can't get that to work, despite a full wiring
       | diagram and years of effort.
       | 
       | Something very low level is not understood. There's a Nobel Prize
       | waiting for whomever figures that out.
        
         | hans1729 wrote:
         | > Nobody can build something with squirrel levels of
         | manipulation and agility, even in simulation.
         | 
         | Isn't that what alpha go or the StarCraft league are? Organic
         | strategies in well-defined contexts (action options of the
         | squirrel at Tn)? "Squirrel" is a nice reference frame.
        
           | TaylorAlexander wrote:
           | Manipulation in the sense of being able to physically pick
           | things up and manipulate them. Which is a difficult problem.
           | StarCraft is moving a mouse pointer and clicking.
        
           | davidmanheim wrote:
           | No - those systems simulate "control" at the level of giving
           | commands, not actual motor control. So practically, current
           | AI can win at Go and play at superhuman levels, but still
           | cannot drive a car as well as most adults.
        
             | zardo wrote:
             | You can sit down for a game of Go or StarCraft against an
             | AI, and it will wipe the floor with you.
             | 
             | But if you want it control a robot that's going to bring
             | out a pot of tea while you play, you'll be wiping the
             | floor.
        
               | stuckkeys wrote:
               | This made me giggle like a dumbass. Thanks. I participate
               | on the SC2 AI community. It is a-lot of fun. I use Python
               | and CPP for my ML. The game matches are so unpredictable
               | which makes the project questionable because the AI
               | indeed smashes any opponent.
        
         | digitcatphd wrote:
         | Well said
        
       | hiddencost wrote:
       | I wonder who is trying to get what funded? "Second wave" is going
       | gangbusters, despite Gary Marcus' every-six-months rant; the
       | review of statistical learning is reasonable given a barely
       | technical audience, but the summary of "third wave" seems
       | designed to extract large amounts of funding from people who
       | aren't up to date on the state of the field.
        
         | gibsonf1 wrote:
         | Theranos got a great deal of funding too, and the truth about
         | how none of the "Second Wave" ML self driving car technology
         | comes even remotely close to safe self driving will be coming
         | out probably later this year. The issue is that ML has no
         | conceptual and causal understanding of anything. For
         | confirmation, I've been carefully watching the countless "self
         | driving" startups in San Francisco driving around, and I have
         | almost never seen a driver in those cars not actively steering
         | it.
        
           | akomtu wrote:
           | None of those self-driving MLs have a virtual world model in
           | their "head", right? They just react to the latest video
           | frame. If so, it's not even a fish level intelligence, it's
           | more like a house plant.
        
       | readhn wrote:
       | cool stuff. thanks for sharing!
        
       | MaxMoney wrote:
        
       | Ziggy_Zaggy wrote:
       | Very thought-provoking.
        
       | mooreds wrote:
       | Nice high level overview of the three waves of AI (two have
       | happened, the "Contextual adaptation" wave is yet to occur).
       | Includes examples and successes and failures. ("Young man holding
       | a baseball bat", indeed :) ).
       | 
       | "Systems construct contextual explanatory models for classes of
       | real world phenomena" is the next goal. That is, understanding +
       | being able to describe the reasoning for the understanding.
       | 
       | No technical depth, really, but lots of words to google if you
       | want to learn more.
        
         | davidmanheim wrote:
         | People may want to see the appendix to our RAND report on areas
         | related to DARPA's focus, for more depth on the relevant uses
         | of automation, ML, and AI
         | -https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2489.html
        
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