Day: June 28, 2023

How Intelligent Is AI?

The newest trend here the blogosphere is ChatGPT….it is being employed by many as a tool for posts and comments and that raises the question how intelligent is AI?

Data is the answer and it takes lots of work to make it so…..

Of all the stories about artificial intelligence that have emerged of late, a new one from Josh Dzieza in a collaboration for New York and the Verge is equal parts compelling and surprising. He explores a simple-sounding premise: In order for AI models to work, they need to be fed data—lots of data, almost unimaginable amounts of data. Enter the “annotators.” Meaning, millions of people around the world working for generally low pay toiling away at monotonous tasks such as labeling photos of clothes, all so the AI models get ever smarter. Behind “even the most impressive AI system are people—huge numbers of people labeling data to train it and clarifying data when it gets confused,” writes Dzieza.
In what he calls a rising “global industry,” they work for companies that sell this data to big players for a steep price, all of which fosters a culture of secrecy.

Annotators, in fact, are usually forbidden from talking about their work, though they typically are kept in the dark about the big picture anyway. (One big player is Scale AI, a data vendor in Silicon Valley.) “The result is that, with few exceptions, little is known about the information shaping these systems’ behavior, and even less is known about the people doing the shaping.” Dzieza interviewed two dozen annotators around the world, and he even worked as one himself to get the full picture. At one point in describing the entire human-machine feedback loop, he offers this mind-bending gem: “ChatGPT seems so human because it was trained by an AI that was mimicking humans who were rating an AI that was mimicking humans who were pretending to be a better version of an AI that was trained on human writing.”

The full story is well worth a read.

So again….just how intelligent is AI?

A good question that could have many answers and this is one of them.

If one looks, for example, at a rather common concept of what intelligence is – the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, and the ability to perceive or infer information – AI doesn’t seem to do all that well.

Worse, for AI, intelligence can also be seen as the ability to retain newly learned information – not misinformation and disinformation and not made up stuff generated by ChatGPT.

Intelligence is knowledge applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or context. From the standpoint of what intelligence actually is, AI seems to be miles away from actually being intelligent.

Given our understanding of intelligence, the allegedly so intelligent AI even failed to find a simple picture of me and to create a reasonably close approximation of me. Worse, the much famed ChatGPT – in another self-test – got four facts wrong about me. Rather than being intelligent, AI seems to just make stuff up.

Yet, despite this, the apostles of AI – including media capitalism – have a very serious incentive to diminish AI’s – known! – limitations. Hyped up by the media, AI has become big business in recent months.

Even thorough corporate media – and this is quite apart from ChatGPT failing the Turing-test and from other rather incapable AI image creation websites, AI is set to become increasingly dominant in our global online, and not so online, culture. To arrive where it is today, AI had to travel a long way.

While the term “artificial intelligence” may had been first used in 1894, the term “artificial intelligence” was turbo-charged in 1956. Today, AI continues to be popularized and most recently sensationalized. In reality, AI has no human-like intelligence. Its limited machine intelligence is radically different from what we know intelligence to be.

The prevailing myth of AI tells us that AI can – or will in the future – do almost everything. Yet, AI’s incredible success rests on narrow applications like board games It can also predict the next set of sleepwear purchased on Amazon. However, all this gets us not one step closer to general intelligence – an AI system that can do more than play games and sell things.

How Intelligent is Artificial Intelligence?

I have been told to embrace this technology for it is the way of the future….to that I say bunk.

That was the same crap I was told about the George Forman grill that I should use it instead of my charcoal grill….I will use what works for me.

And now your thoughts.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Abolish The Pentagon?

I write a lot about the abuses of the Pentagon and some to think that I would like nothing better than to see an end to the Pentagon.

That is not at all what I am calling for in my writings.

Yes the US has a duty to protect US shores….but for me they do not have a duty to fund and supply endless wars across the globe.

The Congress and the president’s admin is ass deep in the pockets of the arms industry….it is all about the cash in their wallets and  not what best and moral.

The Biden administration requested $886 billion for national defense for Fiscal Year 2024, a sum far higher in real terms than the peaks of the Korean or Vietnam wars or at the height of the Cold War.

That figure could go even higher under the terms of the debt ceiling deal reached by President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, as hawks in Congress push for an emergency package that could not only provide aid needed to defend Ukraine but also tens of billions of dollars in additional funding for the Pentagon’s regular budget.

This is a terrible idea. There is no reason to add funds to the Pentagon budget, as documented in a report released today by the Quincy Institute.

The enormous sums lavished on the Pentagon are being marshaled in support of a flawed National Defense Strategy that attempts to go everywhere and do everything, from winning a war with Russia or China, to intervening in Iran or North Korea, to continuing to fight a global war on terror that includes military activities in at least 85 countries. 

Note to Congress: there is no emergency that would require more military funding

The Defense Department must be re-named to  to what it was once called….its true calling….the War Department.

Do not worry…the Biden posse will use every opportunity to get more money for Ukraine (are they working that hard for you or your family?)

The recent ‘mutiny’ in Russia will help get all that lovely cash for Ukraine.

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s brief rebellion against the Russian government has given hawks in Congress more ammunition to argue for additional spending on the Ukraine war, POLITICO reported Tuesday.

…

The crisis in Russia came after House and Senate panels approved their versions of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA is capped at $886 billion under the debt ceiling deal reached between the White House and House Republicans, but the limit does not apply to emergency supplemental funds, which is how spending on the Ukraine war has been authorized.

Three arms industry lobbyists told POLITICO that they believe the Prigozhin uprising will help hawks argue for a supplemental spending package for the Pentagon and Ukraine.

The White House is expected to ask Congress to authorize more spending on Ukraine via supplemental funds, but it’s not clear when that will happen. The Pentagon claimed last week that an “accounting error” has freed up an additional $6.2 billion that can be spent on military aid for Ukraine, giving the administration more time before it needs to make the request. So far, Congress has authorized $113 billion to spend on the war.

(antiwar.com)

But not to concern yourself….we have a deal on spending, right?

Congress spared military-related programs any cuts while freezing all other categories of discretionary spending at the fiscal year 2023 level (except support for veterans). Indeed, lawmakers set the budget for the Pentagon and for other national security programs like nuclear-related work developing nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy at the level requested in the administration’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget proposal — a 3.3% increase in military spending to a whopping total of $886 billion. Consider that preferential treatment of the first order and, mind you, for the only government agency that’s failed to pass a single financial audit!

Even so, that $886 billion hike in Pentagon and related spending is likely to prove just a floor, not a ceiling, on what will be allocated for “national defense” next year. An analysis of the deal by the Wall Street Journal found that spending on the Pentagon and veterans’ care — neither of which is frozen in the agreement — is likely to pass $1 trillion next year.

Compare that to the $637 billion left for the rest of the government’s discretionary budget. In other words, public health, environmental protection, housing, transportation, and almost everything else the government undertakes will have to make do with not even 45% of the federal government’s discretionary budget, less than what would be needed to keep up with inflation. (Forget addressing unmet needs in this country.)

How a New Budget Loophole Could Send Pentagon Spending Soaring Even Higher

SO do not abolish the War Department….just rein in the spending of two bit leaders that are only in it for the ‘cash’.

This country needs rescuing from the arms of the fat cats that just want profit….could care less about you or your family.

Stop being an idiot!

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”