[HN Gopher] Artificial Intelligence in the Cockpit
___________________________________________________________________
Artificial Intelligence in the Cockpit
Author : ur-whale
Score : 85 points
Date : 2021-12-09 10:27 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (daedalean.ai)
(TXT) w3m dump (daedalean.ai)
| goodpoint wrote:
| A lot of accidents have been caused by the almost complete lack
| of automated monitoring and good alerting on airplanes.
|
| I find it very surprising that there isn't at least non-AI
| software to monitor what the pilots are doing.
| cjrp wrote:
| On airliners? There's tons of them.. TCAS (you're about to hit
| someone), GPWS (you're about to hit something), EICAS (your
| engine isn't doing so well), etc.
| goodpoint wrote:
| That's exactly the problem. There's a ton of single-purpose
| and "relatively dumb" systems that need to be enabled and
| disabled as needed.
|
| Plenty of accidents follow similar patters: pilots forgot to
| enable some warning system, or ignored a warning because it
| came up in the wrong context, or where overwhelmed by the
| amount of checklists they had to do or by multiple alarms
| coming up at the same time.
|
| There is no monitoring system that is aware of the full
| context, including the state of the plane, the history of
| previous warnings or malfunctions and the intentions of the
| pilots.
| kube-system wrote:
| > That's exactly the problem. There's a ton of single-
| purpose and "relatively dumb" systems that need to be
| enabled and disabled as needed.
|
| Avionics: the original microservice infrastructure
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| > There is no monitoring system that is aware of the full
| context, including the state of the plane, the history of
| previous warnings or malfunctions and the intentions of the
| pilots.
|
| Its called the pilot. We even include a second system,
| fully programmed and built entirely by a separate team, to
| double-check and challenge the primary system: the copilot.
|
| > Plenty of accidents follow similar patters: pilots forgot
| to enable some warning system, or ignored a warning because
| it came up in the wrong context, or where overwhelmed by
| the amount of checklists they had to do or by multiple
| alarms coming up at the same time.
|
| And yet, commercial aviation is by far safer than driving.
| General aviation, with fewer of these systems is roughly
| the same as driving.
|
| You also day plenty of accidents, but I'd be willing to bet
| that just as many if not more were situations beyond the
| pilots control.
|
| You're also not comparing it to the number of times that
| pilots got out of sticky situations by following checklists
| and/or not having warnings suppressed.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Its called the pilot.
|
| Can you please spare the patronizing tone?
|
| > And yet, commercial aviation is by far safer than
| driving.
|
| So what? It could be safer than what it already is.
|
| > but I'd be willing to bet that just as many if not more
| were situations beyond the pilots control.
|
| Then you should review a good number of accidents.
|
| > You're also not comparing it to the number of times
| that pilots got out of sticky situations by following
| checklists and/or not having warnings suppressed
|
| That's an incorrect comparison. I never said that the
| checklists should not be followed or anything like that.
| carabiner wrote:
| GA is about as safe as riding a motorcycle, which is what
| this article and the EAA say:
| https://inspire.eaa.org/2017/05/11/how-safe-is-it/
|
| This is much less safe than driving a car.
| dfsegoat wrote:
| > I find it very surprising that there isn't at least non-AI
| software to monitor what the pilots are doing.
|
| For a multi-crew aircraft, I believe this is the entire point
| of Crew resource management [1].
|
| > "Specifically, CRM aims to foster a climate or culture where
| authority may be respectfully questioned. It recognizes that a
| discrepancy between what is happening and what should be
| happening is often the first indicator that an error is
| occurring"
|
| For commercial aviation, I'd rather take my chances with the
| crew with 60+ years of combined experience vs. an AI model.
|
| 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management
| goodpoint wrote:
| > I believe this is the entire point of Crew resource
| management [1].
|
| Not at all, CRM is about cognitive and interpersonal skills.
|
| It's completely orthogonal to having some software that
| monitors the plane for (subtle) faults and unexpected
| behaviors and provides good contextual information.
|
| > I'd rather take my chances with the crew with 60+ years of
| combined experience vs. an AI model.
|
| That's a false dichotomy and also I did not talk about AI.
|
| I'd rather take my chances with the crew with 60+ years of
| combined experience TOGETHER with a all-seeing monitoring
| system.
| cnqyx wrote:
| Why would one name an aerospace company after Dadedalus, who
| crashed after flying too close to the sun?
| jollybean wrote:
| Icarus crashed after flying too close to the sun after
| Daedalus' warnings.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > [...] _Dadedalus, who crashed after flying too close to the
| sun?_
|
| It wasn't Dadedalus [sic] who flew towards the sun, but his son
| Icarus:
|
| > _In Greek mythology, Daedalus ( /'ded@l@s 'di:d@l@s
| 'deId@l@s/; Greek: Daidalos; Latin: Daedalus; Etruscan:
| Taitale) was a skillful architect and craftsman, seen as a
| symbol of wisdom, knowledge and power. He is the father of
| Icarus_ [...]
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daedalus
| mometsi wrote:
| In any case, he manufactured some critically flawed aviation
| equipment, which resulted in a fatality.
| throw0101a wrote:
| IIRC, it was the operator's (Icarus) fault.
| namdnay wrote:
| That's what Daedalus says, he's trying to shift the blame
| on the operator. But he's the one who made a wing with
| wax whilst pretending it could be flown under the
| previous "bird" certification
| dotancohen wrote:
| The -MAX? Or are we calling it the -8 now?
| fhd2 wrote:
| I think I figured out why they called themselves that at
| this point :P
| zeckalpha wrote:
| Since weather balloons pop before returning to the earth, at
| one point I was on a weather ballooning project named Icarus.
| cjrp wrote:
| There's an (ex-) Navy air base called HMS Daedalus, better than
| HMS Icarus
| dotancohen wrote:
| I seem to remember a space station with that name too.
| scarier wrote:
| I think this lecture (https://youtu.be/5ESJH1NLMLs) should be
| mandatory for anyone trying to improve flight safety with more
| automation. I think we're already at diminishing returns, and the
| only way to eliminate accidents caused by over-reliance on
| automated systems is to cut the pilot out of the loop entirely.
| Even in general aviation, the low-hanging fruit is elsewhere.
|
| That said, this is still pretty cool, and I could see something
| like it being one component of a much larger fully automated
| flight management system.
|
| Edit: link should be fixed. If I'm still crushing it, the title
| of the lecture is "Children of the Magenta Line."
| Animats wrote:
| Wrong link? That's an ad for a book on graph algorithms.
| scarier wrote:
| Thanks! Should be fixed now.
| mannykannot wrote:
| This article attempts to conflate two very different levels of
| capability.
|
| On the one hand, the author discusses what they have achieved so
| far - a machine-vision based system that can fly reasonably
| competently in good visibility and low traffic density,
| comparable, they say, to aviation 80 years ago (actually, as I
| mentioned in another comment, aviation in 1941 had already
| advanced significantly beyond that.)
|
| A little later, they write this;
|
| _There is no reason to believe computers will always be worse at
| that than you are. There is no reason the machine can't reliably
| make the call to land in the Hudson when all engines are out and
| to do so in adversarial conditions safely._
|
| True enough, as far as it goes, but there is also no reason to
| suppose that the technologies the author is discussing here will
| deliver that level of performance. The good judgement
| demonstrated by Sullenberger that day (and by many pilots in many
| other dire situations) depended on an extensive understanding of
| how the world works, and to reason about outcomes outside of the
| rules of the game, so to speak (for example, short-cutting the
| checklist in order to ensure the aircraft continued to have
| auxiliary power.) Current machine-vision systems, on the other
| hand, lack the ability to reason about how things ought or might
| be, and so can make utterly bizarre-seeming judgements about what
| they are "seeing."
|
| Personally, I believe fully-automated aviation will become both
| feasible and acceptable, but with arguments like the one quoted
| above, this article is glossing over the challenges that remain.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| Is it AI or just a lot if then else?
| throwawaygh wrote:
| What's a neural network made of?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, in good weather at ILS equipped airports automated
| landings are possible. Flight is done with autopilot more often
| than not.
|
| You have pilots for the situations the available automation
| doesn't work.
| fho wrote:
| I am not exactly knowledgeable about airplane safety, but I
| feel like safety checklists are something that could be, and
| probably are, handled by a machine more efficiently?
|
| I would guess that there are probably enough things on there
| that are constantly monitored theses days so the plane could
| just give you a big green "all systems nominal" light?
|
| Maybe I am just naive :-)
| quest88 wrote:
| Pilots still miss the light for "all systems not nominal",
| they only have so many brain cycles to interpret.
|
| One example that comes to mind is visual and audible alerts
| when you haven't put the landing gear down and the system
| thinks you're going to land (speed low, flaps extended,
| descending). Yet gear-up landings are still common in single-
| pilot general aviation aircraft.
| mannykannot wrote:
| I feel that there are definitely some areas where currently-
| available technology is not being fully exploited - things
| like calculating the weight and center-of-gravity position
| (would it measurably increase any sort of risk to put a load
| cell in each strut of the undercarriage?), checking the
| parking brake is off when accelerating above taxiing speed,
| and calling for an abort, before it is too late, if the
| acceleration on takeoff is insufficient.
|
| The inverse of your "all systems nominal" light exists, in
| many if not all commercial airplanes of any size, in the form
| of the master caution and master warning lights, but you also
| need to know what, specifically, is going wrong.
| taneq wrote:
| > The good judgement demonstrated by Sullenberger that day (and
| by many pilots in many other dire situations) depended on an
| extensive understanding of how the world works
|
| Tree bad, river pretty?
| leaded_syrinx wrote:
| This is really cool and I overwhelmingly agree with the risk
| stats they mention in their brief intro.
|
| That said, the reason pilots are paid to fly dangerous whirlybird
| machines is primarily for take-off and landing. Takeoff and
| landing are operations that require the most concentration,
| coordination with air-traffic controllers and other aircraft and
| regardless of weather carry the most risk. Takeoff and landing
| are likely to be some of the last functions to be automated, I'd
| argue this even further with take-off. Another important aspect
| here is the pilot should be able to act independently of multiple
| systems failing - as the moniker goes... "fly the plane until its
| on the ground or stopped".
|
| The coolest pilot safety automation tool to improve safety I've
| seen thus far is an iPad app developed by the OG developer of the
| X-Plane flight sim Austin Meyer[0] (definitely check out his
| blog) called Xavion [1]. Basically, it's an app that with decent
| GPS will calculate a glide plane to the nearest airport in
| seconds. Austin is an avid pilot and clearly a brilliant guy -
| I'm eager to see if he starts commenting on autopilot ai
| initiatives like that of Deadalean.
|
| 0 - https://austinmeyer.com/
|
| 1 - https://xavion.com/
| Animats wrote:
| There's already a system that does the whole job of flying, for
| emergency use only - Garmin Safe Return.[1] In the plane, there's
| one big red button. If pushed, the plane finds an airport and
| lands, all by itself. It picks the nearest suitable destination
| airport, using info about fuel state, weather, and airport
| status. It starts squawking with the emergency transponder code.
| It plays emergency messages to ATC. There's also pilot
| incapacitation detection. If the pilot doesn't do anything for a
| long time, the system sounds warnings, then takes over.
|
| Everybody else has to get out of the way, though, when it
| declares an emergency. It can't really communicate with ATC. So
| it's strictly an emergency system, for now.
|
| This is really just integrated control of the existing avionics.
| The existing systems are good enough that you can input waypoints
| and have them followed, and do an automatic instrument landing on
| a designated runway. This mostly sets up a flight path. It can't
| deal with traffic. There are no new sensors. The additional
| hardware just lets it lower the landing gear, apply the wheel
| brakes, and shut down the aircraft after landing. After which
| you're blocking the runway until someone comes out and moves the
| aircraft. Again, emergency use only.
|
| It's intended for the "sick pilot, healthy airplane" case - the
| pilot is out of action, but the hardware is fine. It's not
| helpful in making hard decisions when the aircraft is having
| problems.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/d-ruFmgTpqA
| t0mas88 wrote:
| It's a great system, but it is very far from replacing pilots
| in any useful way. As you said it's mostly a nice integration
| of the existing autopilot functions.
|
| Real world flying with the 10^7 or 10^9 kind of scale for
| safety isn't in need for a better autopilot. That would be like
| making a more precise cruise control while you want a self
| driving car. What it needs is better decision making and
| problem solving skills. And those are very much lacking from
| these current systems.
|
| I have an instructor rating. We can teach an average human in 5
| to 10 hours how to control a plane. Then we spend an additional
| 40 to 60 hours on how to make the right decisions, solve
| problems, deal with weather, traffic etc. And humans are really
| good at that.
|
| What is needed if you want autonomous flight is really good AI
| decision making, not aircraft control.
| Animats wrote:
| Right. Good decision making when in trouble is a hard
| problem. AI is still very bad at "common sense", which I
| sometimes define, for robotics, as "getting through the next
| 30 seconds without screwing up".
| coredog64 wrote:
| Allegedly the B-2 bomber has had "go to war" and "return to
| base" buttons for 30 years. The latter is for exactly the same
| reason you note: Plane is good, pilots are not. Not quite sure
| about the value of the former.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I'm not sure I buy the existence of such buttons, but if the
| pilots are incapacitated in a nuclear bomber with a target in
| mind, then I can think of a use for the go to war button.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| So the modern remake of those "pilot incapacitated, help me
| land" shows can be shortened to "push the big red button, then
| have a snack"?
| verisimi wrote:
| I'm genuinely a little bored of hearing about how AI has any
| actual 'intelligence'. It doesn't. Its not akin to people.
|
| The better analogy, IMO, is how people are being pushed into a
| computing model and adopting computing attributes as
| characteristics. We are becoming like "semi-autonomous
| computers". And worse, it is a client-server model, with
| corporations and governance taking the executive decisions!
|
| Rather than describing some software as intelligent, we would be
| better describing the change that this idea (and the idea of
| collectivisation - as opposed to individuation) has had on
| people. It is people that are changing, machines are still
| inanimate.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I think it has some kind of intelligence. The word isn't well
| defined enough for you to just declare that it doesn't.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Right. Every epoch shows a tendency to model intelligence in
| terms of some favored technology. It's a mistake to take these
| beyond very casual and loose metaphors. It's a very difficult
| habit of thought to break for some people because they've
| tacitly committed to a particular (sloppy and half-baked)
| metaphysical view of the world and haven't yet learned to
| examine those presuppositions and learned how they fail
| spectacularly.
|
| I would prefer we use "automation" instead of "AI". That way,
| we are forced to speak specifically ("automation of _what?_ ;
| it's always specific) and say things like "machine-automated
| aviation" because that's what this is. It's clear, faithful to
| the truth, and obvious what we're talking about and what's
| happening at a general level, and we aren't reifying some vague
| bullshit fantastical term like "artificial intelligence" which
| only leads to romanticized mystification and projection. There
| is no artificial intelligence. Machines doing so-called AI are
| the same kinds of machines we use to write email and make phone
| calls. We've just configured them in a way that makes them
| useful in different situations in different ways _for specific
| ends_ , even if the applicability _appears_ general; _we 've_
| done the generalization which is then represented in concrete
| ways which are not themselves general.
|
| (N.b. central to intelligence is the ability to _abstract_ (not
| the lambda calc /CS meaning) from particulars. I have the
| concept Circularity which is not just an image (there are
| potentially an infinite number of circular objects), but based
| on experience of particular circular things, my intellect has
| abstracted from this experience the universal concept of
| Circularity. I understand Circularity, apart from any given
| circle, and yet what is true of it is true of all circles. I
| can analyze the concept to infer that _any_ circle 's
| circumference is twice its radius times pi or that its area is
| the square of its radius times pi. Computers don't do this and
| cannot do this _even in principle_ because all physical things
| are always concrete. There is no physical Circularity, only
| physical, concrete circles. And abstraction is not regression.
| Indeed, all the abstract values in your computer aren 't really
| abstract except in the mind of the observer. Those in your
| computer are representations only, devoid of denotation except
| what's in the programmer's head.)
| andreyk wrote:
| FYI, there are a ton of definitions of 'intelligence', some fit
| with what AI algorithms can do, some don't.
|
| I found reading 'A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence'
| quite interesting myself https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3639
| the-dude wrote:
| > we have built a system that uses nothing but visual input, just
| like the human pilot in that almost-uninstrumented aircraft from
| 80 years ago, to see where you are without GPS or
| radio or inertial navigation see where you can fly without
| ADS-B or RADAR or ATC see where you can land without ILS or
| PAPI
|
| Isn't this the 'Tesla' approach?
| mannykannot wrote:
| When I read that second claim, "see where you can fly without
| ADS-B or RADAR or ATC", my first thought was "Really? this
| system is reading sectional charts?" as there are quite a few
| places where you cannot fly without some of the technologies
| they are doing without, and those regions are not marked out on
| the ground.
|
| The choice to focus on purely visual systems seems an odd one,
| given that aviation did not really get going until it advanced
| beyond that stage. Even by 80 years ago, instrument flying with
| radio navigation in conditions that did not permit visual
| flying was a routine practice, and this, together with the
| increasing number of aircraft in the sky, necessitated the
| development of air traffic control.
|
| While one can very plausibly argue that we are approaching the
| point where ATC as we know it could be largely dismantled (not,
| by the way, through the use of AI), that will not be achieved
| by reverting to purely visual methods, which can only function
| safely in fair weather with good visibility, and also only
| where the traffic density and speed are low.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > those regions are not marked out on the ground
|
| There isn't anything in the article that suggests that the
| system does not have sectional charts in a database...
|
| Once you know where you are in the world in VFR mode, it's a
| fairly simple affair (eg landmark detection) to register that
| positons on a sectional map, however invisible it may be in
| the real world.
|
| > that will not be achieved by reverting to purely visual
| methods
|
| Another extrapolation on your part: they never said "purely",
| did they?
|
| The visual part of the system is nowhere listed as being the
| "only" way for the plane to know where it is.
|
| It's very likely their system with gulp in whatever signal
| they can get their hands on (GPS, etc...) and integrate it
| into a final solution.
|
| The final system will be much more robust than either of the
| existing components use on an airplane to "know where you
| are".
| mannykannot wrote:
| I should have known better than to just write "my first
| thought" without further qualification...
|
| While the author may not have written "purely visual",
| there is this quote, immediately preceding the claims
| quoted at the root of this thread:
|
| "At Daedalean, we have built a system that uses _nothing
| but visual input_ , just like the human pilot in that
| almost-uninstrumented aircraft from 80 years ago, to..."
| [my emphasis.]
|
| So, while the author does not use "purely", he states
| something equivalent to doing so. Furthermore, the entire
| tenor here is that they are not using any of the modern
| technologies that are currently central to commercial
| aviation (why he wishes to stress this fact is another
| issue altogether.)
|
| My point here is a bit more subtle that pointing out the
| obvious: that automating VFR flight will not cut it (with
| or without GPS and other aids, for that matter.) It is,
| rather, that there remains a huge gap between what they
| have achieved so far (or could be achieved just by
| integrating GPS and similar aids) and what will be required
| to achieve the level of performance blithely suggested in
| the comment about landing on the Hudson river.
|
| UPDATE: I made that last point in a different comment; what
| I was wondering here was why the author seems determined to
| point out that their current system does not use GPS etc. -
| perhaps because any of that would make it look less like
| AI?
| triplelll wrote:
| Paraphrasing the article: If you connect a GPS to your
| small or large aircraft's autopilot and you use it to fly
| from A to B without having a human pilot ready to take
| over at any point you are a) breaking the law and b)
| going to die sooner or later (well, we all do but you
| know what i mean). To make GPS a system that is
| aerospace-grade safe is not possible today. But everyone
| with a pair of eyes can legally and safely pull off the
| same feat. So to replicate that feature you have to
| somehow bring computer vision to the level of aerospace-
| grade reliabilty. I think that's what the author was
| going for here.
| jcims wrote:
| It kind of sounds like they are targeting general aviation,
| where VFR still has a pretty strong presence. If they can
| create a bolt on autopilot that can also take off and land
| that might be marketable.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| An autopilot that fails as soon as you end up in a low-
| visibility situation sounds like a really, really bad idea,
| especially with pilots who don't know how to fly by
| instruments.
|
| We have better technology than that now.
| jcims wrote:
| Totally agree, we know what happens when pilots lose
| visual reference and don't trust their instruments. I
| think I'm biasing my opinion on finding it impossible to
| believe they won't incorporate basic things like an IMU
| (or three) into the product so that simple flight
| coordination is impossible when there is a loss of vision
| data.
|
| Strictly speaking that wouldn't be vision only though, so
| who knows.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| If you haven't seen it, Garmin has an emergency automatic
| landing system that's installed in a few planes already:
| https://discover.garmin.com/en-US/autonomi/#autoland
|
| Limitations: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/legal/ALuse/
|
| Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-ruFmgTpqA
| jcims wrote:
| Very nice!!! Thanks for the links...that Piper is a sexy
| beast.
| cjrp wrote:
| Seems like a weird selling point "we're as good as the pilots
| from 80 years ago!"
| [deleted]
| triplelll wrote:
| Teslas don't land or fly. In what sense do you mean?
| [deleted]
| throw0101a wrote:
| In the sense of (possibly) overselling what the system is
| capable of doing.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I think it was meant in the sense that it has (mostly) a
| single source of information.
|
| A big part of safety critical systems is having redundancy
| and often voting systems, or sensor fusion. So having a
| single source of information means that you can potentially
| go down with a single-fault condition.
|
| (e.g. If your vision system is in the visible spectrum,
| things like sun glare, snow, bird poops on your
| lense/windshield, one of your cameras fails and you lose
| stereo vision etc)
| hoseja wrote:
| Trying to achieve self-driving with only optical cameras.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I believe Tesla's problems basically stem from irresponsible
| decisions made on dubious technical basis. They're not always
| architecturally wrong.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Autopilot was invented in 1914. It is clearly a form of
| artificial intelligence. That AI doesn't require computers should
| be a conceptual shock-- one that can help us better understand
| what AI really is.
| throw0101a wrote:
| I'm not sure a feedback loop is "clearly" AI:
|
| * https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/systems/negative-
| feedba...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback
|
| There are no heuristics involved:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_(computer_science)
| bencoder wrote:
| Seems like an example of the AI effect:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect
|
| although I think when autopilot was invented, the concept of
| "AI" didn't exist, so maybe not a perfect example
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Autopilot is clearly AI. If I didn't mention 1914, you
| wouldn't doubt it.
|
| A feedback loop -- namely between a system and its measure of
| its own performance-- is _central_ to the idea of AI. At
| least according to Peter Norvig, the director of research at
| Google, who defines intelligence as 'the ability to select an
| action that is expected to maximize a performance measure'
| (Russell & Norvig, 2016, p. 37).
| HPsquared wrote:
| That definition sounds more like a definition of control
| systems.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Note the author alluding to the steam governor as the
| start of AI. Norvig points to the convergence of control
| systems, cybernetics and AI
| fault1 wrote:
| many formulations of RL systems and optimizing feedback
| control both have origins in for example, in optimal
| control theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontryagin%
| 27s_maximum_princip...
| tomrod wrote:
| Respectfully, while the optimization functions and
| constraint handling may have overlap, they differ in their
| intended applications. For optimal control there is no
| adaptation outside the initial ruleset, which is the core
| of AI. Optimal control is "keep things on path"
| fault1 wrote:
| But in many industrial control systems, there is inherent
| adaptation required to deal with exogenous shocks or
| noise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-
| driven_control_system
|
| see also the last few chapters here;
| http://lavalle.pl/planning/book.html
|
| i would say relative to classical control, fast gpus have
| replaced the need to have certain closed form solutions
| that are easily analyzable.
| tomrod wrote:
| My working model here: rocket science and mining use
| integrals, yet are different.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _A feedback loop -- namely between a system and its
| measure of its own performance-- is central to the idea of
| AI._
|
| A feedback loop may be _necessary_ for AI (or even
| "natural" intelligence, and sentience (nevermind sapience))
| to happen, but is simply having it _sufficient_?
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| This is a well-phrased question. Is a reward feedback
| loop sufficient to create intelligence? DeepMind claims
| "yes" in their 2021 paper "Reward is Enough":
| https://deepmind.com/research/publications/2021/Reward-
| is-En...
| mikro2nd wrote:
| I am forced to wonder, though, whether Norvig's definition
| is a useful one. By this measure we'd have to consider
| bacteria to be intelligent. Corporations, too, for that
| matter.
|
| (I do go along with author Charles Stross, occasionally
| seen here on HN: that Corporations are Old Slow AIs, in
| which case we've already had AIs around for centuries.)
|
| Personally I'm happy to grant a degree of intelligence to
| plants (and probably even bacteria, if I squint hard
| enough) though it's of a quite different nature to our own.
| Certainly feedback loops are _central_ to the _idea_ of
| intelligence, but there 's a whole lot more wanted/needed
| than merely feedback. And so, I find Norvig's definition a
| tad wide of the sort of intentionality and sentience we'd
| want flying a plane, and certainly far, _far_ short of the
| sort of thing we 'd call AGI.
| fho wrote:
| Some trivia about plant "intelligence":
|
| 1. Venus fly traps detect if an insect is on the trap and
| close the trap. So far so known, but less people know
| that the trap will open again after a while if there is
| no movement detected (ie if a stone fell in). Likewise
| digestion will only start if there is movement detected
| for a while.
|
| 2. Mast years
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mast_(botany)) ... somehow
| trees communicate when to produce seeds on mass ... from
| what I gathered we have no idea how they do that.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| It seems that quite a lot of tree-to-tree networking is
| done via mycorrhizal networks. Without doubt there are
| mutually beneficial interactions between plant roots and
| fungi for extracting nutrients, and quite a lot of good
| evidence that those networks are informational in nature,
| too. Whether that's related to seed-dispersal patterns...
| I have no idea.
|
| Alternately, I have also read of trees exuding pheremones
| via their leaves as a warning to other trees in the
| vicinity when predators (antelope) come around to munch
| on the leaves, resulting in surrounding trees rapidly
| increasing tannin content in their own leaves to make
| them unpalatable to the browsers.
|
| There's a whole lot of shit going on out there that we're
| scarcely aware of...
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| The discussion is not about AGI.
|
| Is it _useful_ to view corporations as old, slow AI? I
| certainly think so. Otherwise we get really confused
| about AI. Look at Zillow. That was a deep
| misunderstanding of AI-- the product isn't done until we
| take the humans out of the equation. No. What is
| intelligent is to have a system that uses its own
| measures of success to improve. This, by the way, is why
| cybernetics is so critical to understand in the context
| of AI design.
| mannykannot wrote:
| I cannot help but feel that this is just extending the
| confusion to Zillow. It seems utterly implausible that
| Zillow's ill-advised zeal for removing people out of the
| process was driven by a overarching desire to develop AI,
| as opposed to, say, for making more money.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I would yield to better evidence, but my suspicion is
| that it stemmed directly from executive-level confusion
| about AI. Consider: how many investor pitches have you
| seen that claim "AI" technology as a mechanism to
| increase perceived IP value? They were telling their
| investors that they had AI, and AI means people aren't
| involved (fallacy).
| mannykannot wrote:
| No doubt some pitches do claim that AI will increase
| perceived IP value, but for an investor to go from
| perceived IP value to the conclusion that people are not
| involved seems to be a completely unjustified conclusion,
| and I see no evidence that people are actually thinking
| this way. Furthermore, I have no idea how you think this
| line of thought justifies calling 1913's very primitive
| autopilot technology AI.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I have encountered CEO boardroom thinking that, for
| instance, suggested that data scientists were not
| necessary because AI would replace them.
|
| I have experience in adaptive education where massively
| expensive teams of engineers missed the point that the
| "smartness" of the system needs to be based on improving
| outcome measures (namely, learning outcomes) and instead
| focused on massive, complex modeling initiatives with no
| feedback loops to indicate whether the models were doing
| anything useful.
|
| If more people understood why a steam governor or a 1914
| autopilot or a corporate bylaw were primitive forms of
| AI, they wouldn't be looking for magic. "If I can
| understand it, it must not be AI"
| mannykannot wrote:
| > If more people understood why a steam governor or a
| 1914 autopilot or a corporate bylaw were primitive forms
| of AI, they wouldn't be looking for magic. "If I can
| understand it, it must not be AI"
|
| By the same argument, a person could say "AI is like a
| steam governor. I understand completely how steam
| governors work, and I know they cannot possibly translate
| from one language to another or recognize faces, so any
| claim that AI can do so is nonsense." This, of course,
| would a completely fallacious argument - and where it
| goes wrong is precisely with the assumption that AI is
| anything like a governor, except in the broadest possible
| way that gives precedence to a commonplace resemblance
| over all the substantive ways in which they are almost
| completely different.
|
| I understand your desire to persuade people to not regard
| AI as magic, but I do not think this is helping.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| See the paper from DeepMind on "reward is enough" and
| Alfred Russel Wallace on the relationship between steam
| governors and evolution. From that perspective, systems
| like steam governors can eventually recognize faces.
| mannykannot wrote:
| _Eventually_ - after they have evolved to the point that
| they are more unlike steam governors than they are like
| them, and become something else in the process (a
| different species, for example.) To the best of my
| knowledge, no steam governor has ever recognized a face -
| or evolved into something that has, for that matter.
|
| I am also curious as to how you reward a steam governor -
| does it get more sex, with better governors? You might
| reward the inventor of a particularly effective governor
| with orders, but that isn't rewarding the governor.
| mannykannot wrote:
| It does not help to call that technology AI. If we do so, now
| we have to invent some new term to distinguish between that
| sort of "AI", and the sort of AI that could possibly replace
| pilots, as the former sort obviously cannot.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Some AI are more intelligent than others.
| tomrod wrote:
| AI-augmented flight.
|
| We should not remove humans from the loop until the system
| passes the Turing test and solves the Trolley program
| concurrent to acceptable ethical standards.
| mannykannot wrote:
| While I share your caution, I feel your requirements are a
| little too stringent. For one thing, no decent trolley
| problem has a solution that humans are all satisfied with.
| Also, quite a few commercial flying accidents have resulted
| from poor and even bizarre decisions made by their
| presumably Turing-test passing crew.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| "Replacements for people" is a terrible definition of AI, in
| theory and in practice.
|
| Alexa, Tesla autopilot, Google search, speech to text,
| recommendations-- any practical example of AI-- these are
| tools. Not human replacers.
| mannykannot wrote:
| The author is not defining AI as such; he is proposing it
| as an application thereof.
|
| Is it your position that commercial flying can never be
| automated, or only that, if it is automated, it would not,
| by definition, be AI?
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| When you say "position that commercial flying can never
| be automated," I'm assuming this to mean "fully
| automated."
|
| My position is that "fully automated" is a logically
| inconsistent human objective. It means that there is no
| possibility of human control, because if there is human
| control / supervision, the system is not fully automated.
| And, so long as there is human control, you are designing
| tools for people to use. No one wants anything to be
| fully automated. It's the biggest fallacy of AI in
| design.
| mannykannot wrote:
| I wasn't asking about what you think of it as an
| objective, but whether you think it is possible.
| Furthermore, when being considered as an objective,
| whether it is done by anyone's definition of AI seems
| utterly beside your point. Neither the feasibility of
| automating the pilot's job, nor whether it is desirable
| to do so, depends on whether 1st. generation autopilots
| are considered to be AI.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Fully automated commercial flight is impossible. There,
| I've said it.
| mannykannot wrote:
| I think so too - but it is inconceivable to me that this
| could be accomplished without feedback mechanisms or
| processes, which would, by your definition, qualify it as
| AI.
| mannykannot wrote:
| I see that I completely misread your post, which was
| quite an mistake, given that it is just one sentence of
| only ten words!
|
| If your basis for so believing is the same as you
| expressed a couple of posts back - that "fully automated"
| means that there is no possibility of human control,
| because if there is human control / supervision, the
| system is not fully automated - then you are simply
| avoiding the issue by using a pedantic definition of
| automation. It would seem that, to you, full automation
| of anything is a logical impossibility as there is no
| such thing as automation in your dictionary.
|
| If this is your argument then, by your definition, even
| that task of governing the speed of a steam engine cannot
| be fully automated, as someone sets the desired speed.
| This sort of reasoning is not insightful; it merely turns
| your participation in a discussion into a statement of
| your private lexicon, and avoids engaging any substantive
| issue.
| peter303 wrote:
| The term cybernetics was used for both analog and digital
| feedback automation systems. There is overlap with AI.
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