Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 20.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2023-05-12 07:52:30+00:00
        From: Tim Smithers <tim.smithers@cantab.net>
        Subject: An AI that beats ChatGPT and its ilk . . .

Hello

Here, from Clarín, a newspaper published in Argentina, is,
for me, an example of an AI that easily beats ChatGPT and its
ilk.

     Berritxu, el loro que habla vasco y arrasa en las redes
     <https://www.clarin.com/viste/berritxu-loro-habla-vasco-arrasa-
redes_0_XJlrwh9zFb.html>

The text of the article is in Castellano [alias Spanish], but
your favourite machine translation tool will probably do a
good enough job to put this into a more convenient form.  To
understand the sound tracks of the embedded videos here you
will need to understand some Castellano and a little Euskara
[Basque], but some understanding of a Latin based language
will probably get you close enough, on the Castellano parts,
at least, the Basque not so much.

...  "But where's the AI?" do I hear you asking?

Right there, in what you're seeing and hearing, in the Animal
Intelligence (AI) on display here.


...  Sorry!  I just thought something lighter might balance
the "existential risk to Humanity" warnings we've been getting
from a steady trickle of from some high-up AI buffs these days.

Many of these public protestations remind me of what Drew
McDermott complained about in the then common naming practices
in AI, in his 1976 paper:

      Artificial intelligence meets natural stupidity
      ACM SIGART Bulletin, Issue 5701, April 1976, pp 4–9
      <https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1045339.1045340>
      also available here
      <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234784524_Artificial_Intelligenc
e_meets_natural_stupidity>

It's short and still worth a read, I think.  Here are the
opening three paragraphs, to see why ...

  "As a field, artificial intelligence has always been on the
   border of respectability, and therefore on the border of
   crackpottery.  Many critics <Dreyfus, 1972>, <Lighthill,
   1973> have urged that we are over the border.  We have been
   very defensive toward this charge, drawing ourselves up
   with dignity when it is made and folding the cloak of
   Science about us.  On the other hand, in private, we have
   been justifiably proud of our willingness to explore weird
   ideas, because pursuing them is the only way to make
   progress."

  "Unfortunately, the necessity for speculation has combined
   with the culture of the hacker in computer science
   <Weizenbaum, 1975> to cripple our self-discipline.  In a
   young field, self-discipline is not necessarily a virtue,
   but we are not getting any younger.  In the past few years,
   our tolerance of sloppy thinking has led us to repeat many
   mistakes over and over.  If we are to retain any
   credibility, this should stop."

  "This paper is an effort to ridicule some of these
   mistakes.  Almost everyone I know should find himself the
   target at some point or other; if you don't, you are
   encouraged to write up your own favorite fault.  The three
   described here I suffer from myself.  I hope self-ridicule
   will be a complete catharsis, but I doubt it.  Bad
   tendencies can be very deep-rooted.  Remember, though, if
   we can't criticize ourselves, someone else will save us the
   trouble."

And, we, I suggest, should be amongst these "someone else"s
who should be sharply criticising current practices in
Artificial Intelligence, and in particular, the wide spread
tendency to blame the AI systems for the always vaguely, or
daftly described [think of paper clip manufacturing run wild],
dangers and threats, when, of course, these dangers and
threats really come from the Humans who develop, control,
promote, use, sell, and rave about, this stuff.

This common "blaming the AI" is an example of what's sometimes
called 'parroting', but this is unfair on parrots like
Berritxu.  Parrots may well be less stupid than us humans.

-- Tim


_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted
List posts to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
List info and archives at at: http://dhhumanist.org
Listmember interface at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted/
Subscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/membership_form.php