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from the that's-what-they-want-us-humans-to-think dept.
From TFA:
If you thought artificial intelligence was already overhyped to death, this week will have given you a heart attack. On Monday, excitement levels among hacks hit the roof amid claims Facebook had scrambled to shut down its chatbots after they started inventing their own language.
Several publications called the programs "creepy." Some journalists implied Facebook yanked the plug before, presumably, some kind of super-intelligence reared its head. The UK's Sun newspaper demanded to know: "Are machines taking over?" Australian telly channel Seven News even went as far as to call it an "artificial intelligence emergency." Newsflash: it isn't.
[...] Zachary Lipton, an incoming assistant professor of machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University in the US, told The Register this week: "The work is interesting. But these are just statistical models, the same as those that Google uses to play board games or that your phone uses to make predictions about what word you're saying in order to transcribe your messages. They are no more sentient than a bowl of noodles, or your shoes."
Previously:
AI is Inventing Languages Humans Can't Understand. Should We Stop It?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday August 06 2017, @12:39AM (4 children)
And the purpose of communication is to convey meaning between two or more parties.
If you change the semantics of a word and don't have a replacement word for the original meaning, you just lost a meaning.
You'll never be able to convey that concept.
If you don't care about that concept, your loss, be happy with it.
But don't expect all to be happy with the lost of the concept, you... you... vibrator**
--
** here, see what I've done? I just "rerouted" a term that designates "A FUCKING NON-SENTIENT THING".
Now, go to the sex-shop and ask for "one piece of me" - see what the shopkeeper has to say... you fucking non-sentient thing.
If you don't like it done to yourself, then don't do it to others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 06 2017, @04:34AM (3 children)
You're the one attempting to reroute a term. What is or is not standard is defined by popular usage. If I was e.g. writing a logical proof I would never use begging the question in the colloquial sense, since the implied vernacular of those who are going to read that paper would expect a different meaning. Simultaneously, I would never use begging the question in regular speech with the formal definition since plenty would be left wondering, 'What...? Begs what question?'
And our language is absurdly redundant. There are countless ways to state the same thing and that applies to nearly every phrase. Most succinct of course being, 'You're assuming the issue at hand.' And should the need for more grammatical flavor come about words and phrases can be invented by little more than public consensus. You'd probably love and hate Shakespeare. He added enormous flavor to language, yet did so by frequently ignoring all dogma of language at the time and simply using it as a tool instead of a rulebook.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday August 06 2017, @05:38AM (2 children)
I would say is defined by the tradition.
More or less, it gets to show that the "popular usage" is oblivious to the tradition (which is fine with me, their choice), but do you expect me to keep silent if, in their ignorance, they assign other meanings to words already having one?
(at least two persons saw my intervention as "Informative", so maybe it worth speaking in the defence of the tradition)
A confirmation for the ignorance of the tradition, wouldn't you say?
And your choice is to let them stay ignorant.
Perhaps is more conformable to do so but, if that's the reason, going down the easy path isn't without risks or consequences.
Maybe, maybe not. I'm not familiar with the English language as spoken before Shakespeare (is anyone?), but it seems safe to assume he didn't overwrite the old meaning of the words, he just added to them.
Besides, it's a bit of a stretch to put Shakespeare linguistic artistry along the obliviousness of the populus, who just accidentally tripped and toppled a traditional meaning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 06 2017, @01:55PM (1 child)
Shakespeare was not a refined artisan. He simply had disregard for the rules (or tradition as you may be want to say) of language. He did indeed butcher many words by the standards of the day - turning verbs into nouns, nouns into verbs, verbs into adjectives, attaching random prefixes, and even outright redefining words. For instance angel had nothing to do with beauty or appearance prior to Shakespeare. He decided to start using angel or angelic to refer to a person's appearance and now to this day we equate the two even though they have nothing to do with one another historically speaking.
Or course what he did was not awful. Or was it? Oh here we go again. It's not difficult to guess the historical meaning of awful. Yeah, inspiring of great awe. Of course not it means rather the opposite. Perhaps my favorite in this game however is the word 'nice.' "Oh thank you, you're very nice!" would have met a rather different response in the past. This is one I'd strongly recommend looking up the etymology of. It originally had a meaning of the Latin words from which it was derived - ignorant or stupid, in particular.
This is why though I know full well the meaning of begging the question, I choose to intentionally use it as I see fit. The implied meaning is clear and ultimately that is all that matters. And I have to admit I certainly get a bit of enjoyment ruffling the feathers of pedants, as I'm sure you appreciate the opportunity to display your learnedness.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday August 06 2017, @02:29PM
( :) +1 )
Not quite.
If I am to be rightly accused of a certain type of vanity, it'd be in relation with critical thinking - it just happen that the "Begging the question" overlaps on this area of knowledge and caused dissonance with its specific terminology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford