Item — HN Reader

The only times I've heard him mentioned the impression was negative and that he didn't understand any of the actual science.

People hear "machine learning" and they think it is about machines that know how to think. Machine learning is actually just optimization of high dimensional functions. If this language were used it wouldn't sound as sexy, but no one would think machines are going to take over the world.

AI isn't magic. It's really just clever search techniques and mathematical optimization.

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Yes, but intelligence isn't magic either.

There are still many, many things that we don't understand about the brain. Even the things we think we understand, we're not always 100% sure of. Recreating an actual intelligence will be difficult.

> Yes, but intelligence isn't magic either.

What's your point? Nobody said it's magic. The fact that it isn't magic (and that its tremendous complexity far surpasses our current ability to understand it) supports the notion that it won't suddenly spring into existence. If we placed some primordial sludge in a petrie dish overnight, we wouldn't worry that a sentient creature will have materialized. And if we program a computer to optimize numerical functions, there is just as little evidence (perhaps less), to suggest that the computer will somehow gain sentience.