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  1. Just to say that there is NO SUCH THING as “artificial intelligence”.

    There is machine learning, which may be of itself pretty impressive, but it is not intelligence and it is not artificial – it is programmed by people.

    AI is just shorthand for some stuff which journalists can rabbit about all over the place without having any clear idea of what it is they are describing.

    /nerd mode

    As you were.

    • Yes maybe, but the term wasn’t coined by simple-minded journalists. It is an engineering specialisation with a large professional community. AI is what they call it.

      • I know. I am currently working for an engineering company that wishes to boast of AI as one of its specialisms. They are talking bollocks*, the same as the lazy journalists (and the PR berks and the marketing departments).

        *technical engineering term

    • Hmmmm, not sure about that, Vulpes old chap. Surely by taking this stance you are begging the question and ignoring the actual philosophical dilemma that the term “AI” brings up?

      That is, if we, as humans, create and program a machine to mimic human thoughts and emotions as closely as possible (I think you could reasonably say this is “artificial”), are we potentially actually creating a “consciousness” or “intelligence”? I think it’s a question worth exploring. And so did Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and a load of other grand old sci fi peeps.

      /pedant mode

      • er, ‘cos the first two words of the OP are “Artificial Intelligence”?

        And in any case, I didn’t say there was “no such thing”, I said it couldn’t be satisfactorily defined.

        Doh.

        • ‘Doh’ no doubt meaning silly, UNINTELLIGENT you.

          And furthermore, satisfaction may turn out to exist only in the intelligent/non-intelligent mind of the beholder. Of course it may well be that ‘mind’ cannot be satisfactorily defined either. In which case we might be able to GET no satisfaction. No, no, no, no — not with any definitions whatsoever. What if that were indeed the case?

          Are you still with me or are you … er no, never mind.

          • Probably! Arf! How should I know? Whadya think I am, smart or something? I’m as dumb as the next guy trying to make sense of it all. Hell, I get up in the morning and I don’t even recognise my own feet.

  4. Sorry we’ve veered so far off the subject, it’s like a really deep Coltrane solo.

    Has anyone actually read the article yet, or, worse still, listened to the stream? To my ears it sounds like a bunch of year 2 kids rammed full of artificial E-number colourants and gallons of Red Bull let loose in a music shop without adult supervision. Entertaining for about 30 seconds or a minute, then just irritating. The little twerp with their hands on the hi-hat needs throttling. The kid on the sax must have had a lung transplant from a Blue Whale. Amusing waste of bandwidth. I don’t wish to scorn any art, but one has to ask oneself, “Why?”.

    • Back to ‘AI’ – I’d say ‘Machine Learning’ comes a bit closer to describing it but AI is what sticks in the poorly-science-educated media.

      Years ago, the Institute of Electrical Engineers got themselves worked up when washing machine repair men started calling themselves ‘Service Engineers’. “They can’t do that unless they are IEE members”.

      I suggested rather than pushing water uphill, they rebranded as Electrical Scientists. They settled on Institute of Technology.

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