At least seven patients in Beijing who doctors said had “no hope” of regaining consciousness were re-evaluated by an artificial intelligence system that predicted they would awaken within a year. They did.

submitted by magnora7 from scmp.com

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[–]Tom_Bombadil 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Isn't it s misnomer to describe machine learning as intelligence?
Machine learning is a set of brute force algorithms, which can gradually self-correct, and which eventually leads to an increased probability of success in a given predetermined programmed task/goal.
Intelligence inherently requires a sense of self-awareness. A sense of agency.
Insect Brains and Animal Intelligence.

a regular honey bee has ~1000000.

A bee with approximately 100k neurons is probably a century away from the current machine learning, because how will machine learning imbue a true sense of agency into a machine. Agency is a property only found life forms. Bees find food, navigate, eat, feel, communicate, see, remember locations of flowers/hive/prospective hives, they poo, fly better than any drone, defend the colony, sacrifice their lives... etc. With 100k units worth of networking.

Even mobile micro bacteria will try to escape other predatorial bacteria when threatened. These bacteria demonstrate agency to escape and survive that is obvious to an onlooker, but impossible to quantify to an program that doesn't have the agency of life.

Chinese programmers are high-fiving about some brute force algorithm results, but the machine didn't decide anything. It has no interest in it's purpose.
This is not really intelligence.

Edit: I'm not a programmer. I'm an engineer with some light programming experience. I'm also a fan of philosophy, so I like to stir shit up.

[–]magnora7[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I honestly don't think it's a misnomer. I don't think a sense of agency is required for intelligence. Intelligence is just finding the most relevant info, not necessarily doing anything with it or having a sense of agency with it. But I guess we're using different definitions.

I think your statements about micro bacteria only prove the point that computers have intelligence, rather than prov the opposite. If a flatworm with 300 neurons is intelligent, I don't see why a computer with 10 billion transistors isn't. They're about equally good at going through data and coming to conclusions.