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Posted by boomdaddy (Member # 2644) on 06-23-2019, 10:47 PM:

web page

My Iphone listens in on my conversations all time. I see ads pop up, based on conversations, not internet searches.

[ 06-23-2019, 10:49 PM: Message edited by: boomdaddy ]

Posted by Tiptree (Member # 844) on 06-23-2019, 11:23 PM:

That was really creepy about the 'suggestions' that Amazon made. I routinely delete those emails without looking at them... maybe I should pay more attention to what Alexa is hearing. [Eek!]

Posted by PaulCat (Member # 513) on 06-24-2019, 12:46 AM:

I don't know that I can believe this. Any time I search websites I usually get results for everything OTHER THAN what I actually want. I once searched Kmart's site for a "Yeti cup" and one of the top results was some type of feminine vaginal device (the device was called some type of cup).

As a computer programmer myself, I know that most computer systems aren't smart enough to work with this type of accuracy. Now if Amazon hired programmers away from NASA then I might give this the benefit of the doubt.

Posted by Tiptree (Member # 844) on 06-24-2019, 10:36 AM:

Paul,

I am also in IT, and this isn't just a computer running a program. Amazon's Alexa is a cloud AI system. AI systems start out stupid, but learn and improve with every bit of data and every iteration of the algorithm.

By now, Alexa is better than any room full of NASA programmers.

Posted by MountainMafia (Member # 2066) on 06-24-2019, 10:47 AM:

We are already at the mercy of technology...soon we may be asking for mercy.

Posted by handycat (Member # 2323) on 06-24-2019, 11:40 AM:

AI has always made me uneasy. By what I understand, the AI we have today is rather primitive. If you computer folks ever create a truly advanced AI, I hope you can somehow give it a little common sense as that seems to be lacking in today’s world.

That’s my deep thought for the year.

Posted by Tiptree (Member # 844) on 06-24-2019, 11:53 AM:

Handy,

"DeepThought" is actually a British AI company that is considered one of the most advanced. It was bought by Google... who is always listening to you on your Android phone <cue creepy music>.

Posted by MountainMafia (Member # 2066) on 06-24-2019, 12:04 PM:

HC

quote:
By what I understand, the AI we have today is rather primitive.

We're about one Nobel Prize winner away from changing all that.

Posted by handycat (Member # 2323) on 06-24-2019, 01:15 PM:

quote:

"DeepThought" is actually a British AI company that is considered one of the most advanced.

I know Tip. That is one of the British company’s I own.

Posted by MountainMafia (Member # 2066) on 06-24-2019, 01:25 PM:

He knows that, hc, 'cause I told him myself, ain't been a month...don't know what he's trying to pull?

Posted by PaulCat (Member # 513) on 06-24-2019, 01:29 PM:

I don't disagree that these Alexa devices are listening in, and I don't doubt that this type of programming is possible. I just doubt that any of us are gonna say we need a new pair of shoes and then, later that day, get an email about shoes. The guy in the article said he got one single email regarding four different things he talked about one day. I just don't buy that.

Also, the term "artificial intelligence" bugs me as well. A computer can only do what it's programmed to do. If a system can "think", then there's computer code behind it that's doing all the thinking. There's nothing artificial about that. And "the cloud" is simply someone else's disk space. There's nothing special about that. I hate all these new computer terms.
[Smile]

Posted by Tiptree (Member # 844) on 06-24-2019, 04:26 PM:

Oh, Paulcat, you need to brush up on AI.

"Old school" programming is as you describe -- processing information, usually transactionally, with the only 'intelligence' being how clever the programmer might have been.

But AI is very, very different. Machine Learning is the current rage (but not the only version of AI, nor the most promising). Systems that use ML start out as dumb as a rock, but they are given a desired goal, an end-state if you will. Let's say that goal is to have a robot learn how to walk. This is surprisingly difficult (humans can't do this until they are many months old, and by then they have acute self-awareness of how they are built, and visual models of how to walk by looking at others). The robot, in contrast, knows nothing about how it is shaped, nor does it have any visual clues as to how to move. So, naturally, it starts off looking really stupid, but then by repeated trial and error, it learn what works and what doesn't. VERY QUICKLY, it has the robot moving along.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNL5-0_T1D0

This is happening across the spectrum of "understanding" in many, many systems run by Google, Amazon, Facebook, and others... machines are learning from scratch how to recognize faces, translate languages, read texts, create new designs, categorize images, detect and understand road signs, drive your car...

And they are learning these things without any human teaching them. AI systems can now call your travel agent and book a flight for you using voices that sound human... so realistically that they travel agent doesn't even know they are talking to a machine. This is no longer programming, which is a human using specific coding languages to instruct a computer to do some task. No... that is not AI. This is a computer using things like neural networking to discover itself and its capabilities, and to quickly find the optimum solution for almost any task.

AI is very real, and could either be an unbelievable augmentation to us humans, or quickly surpass us and deem us ... unnecessary.

Posted by PaulCat (Member # 513) on 06-24-2019, 04:59 PM:

So you're saying I should be on the lookout for a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger robot falling out of the sky some time soon? [Big Grin]

Posted by Tiptree (Member # 844) on 06-24-2019, 05:03 PM:

If you are thinking like Elon Musk, then yes. AI is destined to be our enemy. If you are thinking like Jeff Bezos and others, then no. AI will always remain subservient to humans.

If you like old-school sci-fi, the "I, Robot" series by Isaac Asimov was very, very prescient...

Posted by MountainMafia (Member # 2066) on 06-24-2019, 07:04 PM:

When AI learns to cut off the cut off switch we're screwed!