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From Bill Dembski: Automated driving and other failures of AI

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In connection with a new book, The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do (2021) by Erik J. Larson, Bill offers some thoughts on how human intelligence isn’t being — and can’t be — duplicated:

… it would be interesting to see what fully automated driving would look like in a place like Moldova. A U.S. friend of mine who happened to visit the country was surprised at how Moldovan drivers managed to miss hitting each other despite a lack of clear signals and rules about when to take an opportunity and when to hold back. When he asked his Moldovan guide how the drivers managed to avoid accidents, the guide answered with two words: “eye contact.” Apparently, the drivers could see in their eyes who was willing to hold back and who was ready to move forward. Now that’s a happy prospect for fully automated driving. Perhaps we need “level 6” automation, at which AI systems learn to read the eyes of drivers to determine whether they are going to hold back or make that left turn into oncoming traffic.

This example suggests to me that AI is hopelessly behind the full range of human intellectual capabilities. It also suggests that we, in the cossetted and sanitized environments that we have constructed for ourselves in the U.S., have no clue of what capabilities AI actually needs to achieve to truly match what humans can do. The shortfall facing AI is extreme.

William Dembski, “Automated driving and other failures of AI” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: In cossetted and sanitized environments in the U.S., Dembski says, we have no clue of what AI must achieve to truly match what humans can do.

You may also wish to read:

Artificial intelligence: Unseating the inevitability narrative. William Dembski: World-class chess, Go, and Jeopardy-playing programs are impressive, but they prove nothing about whether computers can be made to achieve AGI. In The Myth of Artificial Intelligence, Erik Larson shows that neither science nor philosophy back up the idea of an AI superintelligence taking over.

Comments
Automated driving... poor engineers... they should talk to Darwinian biologists how to design automated driving... just wait few millions of years, and it will design on its own... no knowledge needed ... no engineers needed... water, fire and wind will make it... just be patient and give it enough time... As a bonus, you will get automated driving - under water, in the air, and on the ground... and even under ground... In Darwinian fantasy world - time solves all the huge engineering challenges with automated driving ...martin_r
April 22, 2021
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Chuckdarwin states, "Never say never or it can’t be done, because the minute you say it can’t, someone inevitably will….." That is the entire point Chuck, there is always a someone, not a something, that is required to get it done. I can guarantee you that unguided Darwinian processes will NEVER get it done. You yourself, a Darwinist, didn't even entertain the thought that Darwinian processes could do as such when you wrote your sentence. Even though you claim Darwinian processes can write better programming than our best computer programmers when you claim that Darwinian processes wrote the unfathomably complex coding that is now being discovered in DNA.bornagain77
April 21, 2021
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Never say never or it can’t be done, because the minute you say it can’t, someone inevitably will.....chuckdarwin
April 21, 2021
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The Moldova video is mainly the sort of thing that AI can handle relatively well. Cars parked wrong, stopping when they shouldn't, pulling in when they shouldn't. In each case the obstacle is large and appropriately sized, and appears with enough time to see it and stop. Southeast Asia would be a far harder test, with a mix of walkers, bicycles, motorscooters, three-wheelers, cars, trucks, rickshaws, horses and oxen, all moving in every direction at once. No lanes, no boundaries between street and store, no rules. Just constant negotiation with all the intelligent beings on all sides.polistra
April 21, 2021
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