On Narrow AI

“And when we say narrow AI, the AI that’s optimizing, that’s really all it is. It is a machine. It is a tool. Even if it is driving us around in an autonomous vehicle, it is not intelligently thinking, and it is not at all able to reason with common sense. Even artificial intelligence is somewhat of a misnomer. When we think of intelligence, there are many types of things that aggregate to cause us to think someone is intelligent. If someone does only one thing extremely well, do we call that personal intelligent? If they can’t explain why they did what they did, other than knowing the most probable stock to buy today is this stock, or that we should not loan this person money because the default likelihood is 23 percent. Is that really intelligent? I don’t think so.”

Kai-Fu Lee, “We Are Here to Create,” https://www.edge.org/conversation/kai_fu_lee-we-are-here-to-create. Interesting conversation with a pioneer of artificial technology from March 26 2018. An engineer with a deep understanding of how AI works, Lee highlights the narrowness of AI and its key differences from human cognition, thinking and consciousness. His conclusion is also worth noting: “I don’t have the solutions, but if we want to come back to the question of why we exist, we at this point can say we certainly don’t exist to do routine work. We perhaps exist to create. We perhaps exist to love. And if we want to create, let’s create new types of jobs that people can be employed in. Let’s create new ways in which countries can work together. If we think we exist to love, let’s first think how we can love the people who will be disadvantaged.”