Why AI is harder than we think
This paper is written by a non-technical author, criticising AI based on predictions made by non-technical pundits.<p>By concentrating on binary outcome predictions (<i>Do we have &quot;full self driving cars&quot; available to the general public?</i>) it misses the real progress made in a huge number of areas.<p>For example, one of the claims this paper claims to be false is Zuckerberg&#x27;s 2015 declaration that:<p><i>One of [Facebook’s] goals for the next five to 10 years is to basically get better than human level at all of the primary human senses: vision, hearing, language, general cognition</i><p>There&#x27;s little doubt that AI systems are already better than humans in vision and hearing and there is very clear progress in language. Cognition is ill-defined, but on most benchmarks attempting to measure this there is steady progress too.<p>I think the real reason AI is harder than we think is because any time progress is made, humans redefine AI as &quot;not that thing we just solved&quot;<p>Take Marcus&#x27; claim that charades is too hard for AIs. I think models like Open AI&#x27;s Dall-E show clear progress towards developing the kinds of techniques needed to solve this, and if there was a benchmark for it I bet computers would out-perform humans in less than 5 years.