From: mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere   
      
   gaussianblue  writes:   
      
   > harley@yazzy.com writes:   
   >   
   >> As for this AI stuff, what the hell is it?  I can find on the Web   
   >> how to do Python, C++ and other languages. Where is the page   
   >> showing what in the hell this AI stuff is?  I'm rather inclined to   
   >> believe the whole AI thing is a hoax.   
      
   To get a clear picture of how the underlying computations work, have a   
   look at the "Parallel Distributed  Processing" books (Rumelhart,   
   McClelland et al, MIT Press, 1986).   
      
   For even further background, look at the "expanded edition" of   
   "Perceptrons", (Minsky & Papert, MIT Press, 1988) wherein the authors   
   confess to having gotten the future wrong in the 1969 1st edition.   
      
   Doing this stuff in 1986 was hard because the inherent notions far   
   exceeded couputing power of the era.  We/They have come a long way.   
   Now they're building the vast computation into dedicated hardware, so   
   vast that they're finding energy and heat nore critical than RAM   
   capacity and CPU speed.   
      
   That said, I understand the basic stuff from the 80s & 90s but I don't   
   inderstand at the same level how the current generation of   
   "generative" AI works, on top of that underlying tech/theory to   
   produce what spuriously appears to be creative, thoughtfull text,   
   audio & video and well-constructed natural language.  I don't know of   
   a similarly accessible book that explains this most recent advance.   
      
   But the lesson to take away is that the current, putaive AI is no more   
   "intelligent", in any meaningful sense, than the models found in   
   Rumelhart & McClelland 40 years ago.  It's the same pattern   
   recognition (a great success) overlain with a humongusly deceptive   
   trick to produce convincing, natural-sounding language.   
      
      
   >> I'll be 90 in a few months, and from what I observe of this   
   >> country, and the world in general, the entire human race has gone   
   >> insanely demented. "Progress" sucks.   
      
   I'm only 82 but I read the 1986 books, as well as a lot of other   
   background stuff (Minsky & Papert, Warren McCulloch) in the late 80s   
   when my brain worked better & faster than it does now.  I'd have a go   
   any readable book purported to fill in the gap between basic neural   
   nets and "generative AI" anyway if I could find one.   
      
   > You'll be 90? Wow! That's amazing! You've whitnessed things first hand   
   > and I haven't because I'm just a kid. For example you've whitnessed the joy   
   > at the end of WWII, but also the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.   
      
   Yeah, I was born right after Pearl Harbor and I only knew WW II from   
   some left-over rationing tokens and similar.  And the inexplicable (to   
   a little kid) appearance of Atomic This and Atomic That in marketing   
   and pop culture.   
      
   [ Remainder of Harley's excellent post left for the record.]   
      
   > The Human Rights Movement. The Cuba missile crisis. How man step by step   
   > became more familiar with getting into space and the first man on the moon.   
   > The Vietnam war and the protests against it. And the birth of the personal   
   > computer. I'm forgetting many of them, but there is the Commodore 64, the   
   > Apple II, the Macintosh. How it started as a hobby for a few nerds totally   
   > unknown to the greater public to reach the point where almost everyone   
   > had a personal computer. All these things, I only know them from tales.   
   > You also remember what your grandparents told you about their lives.   
   > I think you have something very valuable here   
   > and I hope you stick around on usenet.   
   >   
   > I just want to respond to your view of the world. You know in the era   
   > of globalization it's tough to survive as an economy. Globalization is   
   > described in the 1996 Samuel P. Huntington's book "The Clash of   
   > Civilizations". So not really new, but still relatively new. In   
   > the present era of globalization I see three types of economies.   
   > Those of countries like North Korea. North Korea wants to cut itself   
   > off from the rest of the world both as a country and as an econony.   
   > And to be fair to North Korea I must say the world has chosen to cut   
   > off North Korea too. The Country is unable to buy anything from any   
   > other country in the world and has to rely solely on what it is able to   
   > produce itself. Then there are countries like the US and the countries   
   > of the global north. UK, European Union, Australia, Japan and so on.   
   > These countries are not barricading themselves from the outside world   
   > like North Korea does. A company in Japan or China can invest in something   
   > that is located on the US soil and open a company there.   
   > For countries like the   
   > US it makes less and less sense to talk about the US economy. It's a global   
   > economy encompassing the whole world. Same for Japan and so on.   
   > So for example goods sold in the US are produced elsehwhere, where labor   
   > is cheaper. Clothes in Bangladesh. Sneakers in China. Consumer electronics   
   > again are assembled in China. And the third type of country would be   
   > countries like Brazil, Russia, the countries of South America,   
   > Africa, basically any country that doesn't cut itself off from the   
   > rest of the   
   > world like North Korea does. Well these countries participate in the   
   > global economy but are struggling as soon as they need to supply   
   > themselves on the world market because they don't produce something   
   > inside the country or the thing isn't avilable locally for whatever   
   > reason.   
   > They struggle because as soon as they have to buy foreign goods, the   
   > prices are high and their economies are not very strong. Ending here   
   > what I see as the three types of economies or countries in the world.   
   > So what should the US or any other country in the global north   
   > do if it wants to keep the high level living standard of its citizens   
   > relatively unchanged?   
   > Well it's the same as trying to remain   
   > a country of the second category. In other words to try to remain   
   > a country with a strong economy so it doesn't have to struggle   
   > when it has to buy foreign goods as countries from the third   
   > category mentioned above are.   
   > But if you compare the rate at which China's economy grows versus   
   > the US, you can see that China is going to catch and beat the US   
   > economy quite soon. And there is no way to stop China.   
   > On the other side cutting itself off from the world as a country   
   > is not really a solution. I don't see any real plans of the US   
   > cutting itself off from the rest of the world so I'm not   
   > talking about that any longer.   
      
   --   
   Mike Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)