Laws concerning the way people behave around numbers mean that quantification itself invites certain types of corruption.
Tag: Robert J. Marks
Robert J. Marks: What do AI and evolution have in common?
Many biologists claimed to have written code to simulate evolution. But the popularization of the No Free Lunch theorems showed that the computer programmer must infuse guiding information into the evolutionary program to make it work. To explain the diversity of creativity, an evolution process must be directed.
Simpson’s Paradox: Numbers are stranger than we think
One outcome of Simpson’s Paradox is that machines cannot replace statisticians in analysing results. A great deal depends on interpretation, as Marks shows. “Clustering remains largely an art.”
Robert J. Marks: Things Exist That Are Unknowable
The mathematically provable idea that something exists but is unknowable has clear philosophical and theological implications.
Robert J. Marks: The mathematics underlying our world is fascinating and full of surprises
He offers some here: When I teach a course, I too like to sell the sizzle at the beginning of each lecture. For a graduate course in information theory I teach, the students are told that they will learn why their cell phones use recently discovered coding that pushes the boundaries of what is mathematically […]
2018 AI Hype Countdown 5: Robert J. Marks on the claim, AI Can Fight Hate Speech!
AI help, not hype, with Robert J. Marks: AI can carry out its programmers’ biases and that’s all: Some people may be under the illusion that AI detection of hate speech will be disinterested and fair. After all, the assessment is being done by a computer, which has no ideology or political leanings. An added […]
2018 AI Hype Countdown 6: Robert J. Marks on the claim, AI Can Even Find Loopholes in the Code!
AI adopts a solution in an allowed set, maybe not the one you expected:. In the same paper in which researchers purported to find examples of AI creativity, we also read the following statement about problems with performance: “Exacerbating the issue, it is often functionally simpler for evolution to exploit loopholes in the quantitative measure […]
Proven: If you torture a Big Data enough, it will confess to anything
In his fascinating new book The AI Delusion, economics professor Gary Smith reminds us that computers don’t have common sense. He also notes that, as data gets larger and larger, nonsensical coincidences become more probable, not less.
Robert Marks Talks Computers with Michael Medved
Robert J. Marks is one of the authors of Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, with design theorist William Dembski and Winston Ewert. There’s little danger, he thinks, in computers ruling us but considerable danger that we can use them to magnify the impact of our errors. More. Here’s the podcast. See also: Human consciousness may not […]
AI That Can Read Minds? Deconstructing AI Hype
From computer engineering prof Robert J. Marks at Mind Matters Today: Fake and misleading AI news is everywhere today. Here’s an example I ran across recently: A headline from a large-circulation daily’s web page screams: “No more secrets! New mind-reading machine can translate your thoughts and display them as text INSTANTLY!” Not just “instantly,” notice, but […]