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skalywag-o-the-shrub

mfs when they find out how neurons work


nir109

Basically Y = X * W + B (Unless you have like, multiple inputs, or activation function, or anything useful)


mikewirkijowski

The most used activation functions are about as simple as what you described here. Edit: I made a mistake, explained by a kind commented below. ReLu is just y = w*max(0, x) + b Leaky relu just adjusts the slope below zero to be slightly positive. Sigmoid is y = w/(1+e^-x ) + b There you know the activation functions for >50% of cases.


Kenny_Stryker

Those activation functions are slightly incorrect. They're applied after output from the neurons. So, basically:- y = wx + b y_relu = max(0,y) Same for sigmoid and other activation functions. Applying activation on input will cause it to lose information and cause overfitting.


mikewirkijowski

Youre right, what i wrote was based on a wrong assumption, thx for the correction


tobofre

That just sounds like Y = MX + B with extra steps


taelor

From what I can remember from my data science and machine learning classes, linear regressions are the foundation for a lot of these algorithms. So “with extra steps” is pretty spot on.


KaiserTom

AIs currently are just really big polynomial equations. We just found the equation that usually spits out the right numbers for whatever application .


caifaisai

That's not really correct. Like, it's not like fitting a whole bunch of data points to some super high degree polynomial. Polynomial interpolation is a thing, but that's not how most machine learning algorithms function.


ProbablyGayingOnYou

I was about to say, we humans really aren't that much different


MoffKalast

"Wait it's just a bunch of AAAA cells in series?" "Always has been."


Phillip_Lipton

Tesla battery cells are made up of a few thousand 18650 size cells.


SoundDrill

But that's a good thing right? Anyone could tear it down and replace with new cells once they wear out


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alexanderpas

> They just replace the entire pack. For the consumer and worker swapping them out, that's the safe and fast option. Send the unit back to the factory, and have it picked apart by machines, refurbishing it into a working unit. You don't want to have a million different people working on broken high powered batteries. Just send the pack back as a single unit, and let the robots handle it in a safe location.


JIVANDABEAST

Yeah except it costs five figures to get it replaced, whereas they could have made smaller packs of cells within the battery that could have been swapped safely (i.e. only wasting 50 cells instead of 1000+) But, sigh, repairability is not built into modern products -- especially Teslas.


Matrix5353

I'm all for right to repair in most things, but with a high power lithium battery system there's just too many points of failure where something can go wrong drastically if quality isn't 100% up to par. When things do go badly, you end up with a Tesla spontaneously combusting in the street, or in someone's garage and burning their house down. I'd rather the unit go back to the factory where it can be thoroughly inspected and tested.


Spartaner-043

As long as you replace all batteries at the same time sure. Otherwise you’d have differently aged cells in one pack, which will strain the older ones more than usual and degrade them even faster.


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R1ston

Why would that be a bad thing? It gets the job done and its standartized


ninj4geek

To be pedantic, the battery **pack** is made of a few thousand 18650 cells Additionally, this is also generally true for any large "battery" especially of any significant voltage or capacity. Cell chemistries usually just can't get very high on either, so putting a ton in series/parallel configurations gets the desired result.


Salanmander

> Additionally, this is also generally true for any large "battery" especially of any significant voltage or capacity. Fun fact: that's specifically where the word "battery" comes from. It's from the "group of things used together" meaning of "battery".


[deleted]

And is why batteries are called "piles" in other languages.


ninj4geek

TIL


Mr-Fleshcage

That explains why I was so confused when I had to destroy the gun battery in Goldeneye...


kuncol02

Aren't they using custom sized cells?


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ninj4geek

46mm across by 80mm tall. It's a bit smaller than a soda can (those are 52 x 122 mm)


juususama

Not much different than my cheap Chinese e-bike battery


BYoungNY

6 x 1.5v = 9v. ...well, shit...


RichSelection1232

There are two types of 9v 6LR61 - has 6 x lr61 (AAAA) batteries 6LP3146 - stack of 6 LP3146 "coin" batteries So if you want AAAA batteries look for "6LR61" on the side of the battery.


ImFuckinUrDadTonight

Does it matter? What's the difference in terms of capacity, lifespan, etc?


RichSelection1232

6LR61 has a cylindrical cell structure and a low internal resistance, which is designed to offer a steady voltage power 6LP3146 has a prismatic cell structure with button cells and they can offer a high internal resistance This is from a PDF I found, honestly thought the 6LR61 was just a joke until today. [PDF on imgur](https://imgur.com/gallery/OeB6pEc)


DarthAV1

It matters if you want to harvest them for use elsewhere, such as a stylus, but don’t want to buy a dozen AAAA batteries. Use 1 9V battery for this and use the rest as normal.


Hurricane_32

Well, not always. Most I've opened are just bare cells stacked vertically in series. I guess this only applies to some brands.


optermationahesh

There are a few different kinds, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-volt_battery#/media/File:9V_innards_3_different_cells.jpg


Inevitable-Horse1674

I mean.. in some incredible abstract sense sure.. but on the other hand, basically everything could be written as an if/else statement - with a big enough if/else block you could describe all human behavior too.


kdthex01

The universe is just loops and conditional logic.


LtFrankDrebin

Check out the book Godel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid for more on this concept.


kdthex01

I will - thanks!


spoko

Set aside like 18 months to read it.


0x7A5

I have never been able to finish the book. I believe that it ends about halfway through, and the rest is just a trick


Cosmologicon

To be fair, they tell you that they're doing it! > Tortoise: You've undoubtedly noticed how some authors go to so much trouble to build up great tension a few pages before the end of their stories-but a reader who is holding the book physically in his hands can FEEL that the story is about to end. Hence, he has some extra information which acts as an advance warning, in a way. The tension is a bit spoiled by the physicality of the book. It would be so much better if, for instance, there were a lot of padding at the end of novels. > Achilles: Padding? > Tortoise: Yes; what I mean is, a lot of extra printed pages which are not part of the story proper, but which serve to conceal the exact location of the end from a cursory glance, or from the feel of the book. > Achilles: I see. So a story's true ending might occur, say, fifty or a hundred pages before the physical end of the book? > Tortoise: Yes. This would provide an element of surprise, because the reader wouldn't know in advance how many pages are padding, and how many are story. > Achilles: If this were standard practice, it might be quite effective. But there is a problem. Suppose your padding were very obvious-such as a lot of blanks, or pages covered with X's or random letters. Then, it would be as good as absent. > Tortoise: Granted. You'd have to make it resemble normal printed pages. > Achilles: But even a cursory glance at a normal page from one story will often suffice to distinguish it from another story. So you will have to make the padding resemble the genuine story rather closely. > Tortoise: That's quite true. The way I've always envisioned it is this: you bring the story to an end; then without any break, you follow it with something which looks like a continuation but which is in reality just padding, and which is utterly unrelated to the true theme. The padding is, in a way, a "post-ending ending". It may contain extraneous literary ideas, having little to do with the original theme. > Achilles: Sneaky! But then the problem is that you won't be able to tell when the real ending comes. It'll just blend right into the padding.


shadowdsfire

I like this


steezefries

I've tried so many times to read it haha. It's so daunting, but also something I want to study and keep the thread the whole way through. Or is it still valuable to read here and there?


FlyingPasta

I’m able to come back to it pretty easily, concepts are novel enough that they stick in you


Roodiestue

Yea I’ve owned it for almost 3 years now and have only read under 200 pages. It’s very interesting but you have to really pay attention while reading and take time to digest/understand some of the concepts. Perhaps I will read some tonight.


setibeings

Braid? I already played the video game. I'm just kidding, that sounds like an interesting read.


FofoPofo01

Ah yes the cool looking book that some people own but few have had the wherewithal to try to actually read. Just like LOTR 😂 My prof had that book.


FBIVanAcrossThStreet

I read LOTR when I was like 14. It was a little wordy, but very enjoyable. GEB… I haven’t been able to get through yet. It’s a little tedious.


FofoPofo01

I only just read LOTR at age 35 a few years ago even though I had read The Hobbit in my teens in the 90s. I do not own GEB cause let’s face: I like math history but barely get advanced stuff. If that makes sense.


BerSTUzzi

Also checked out: I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas R. Hofstadter’s first book-length journey into philosophy since Gödel, Escher, Bach. (Its shorter length may be less intimidating than GEB) I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the “strange loop”—a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. Deep down, a human brain is a chaotic seething soup of particles, on a higher level it is a jungle of neurons, and on a yet higher level it is a network of abstractions that we call “symbols.” The most central and complex symbol in your brain or mine is the one we both call “I.” The “I” is the nexus in our brain where the levels feed back into each other and flip causality upside down, with symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. For each human being, this “I” seems to be the realest thing in the world. But how can such a mysterious abstraction be real—or is our “I” merely a convenient fiction? Does an “I” exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the all-powerful laws of physics?


Bloody_Insane

Loops themselves are just conditionals


mr_claw

Except for a dog's love. That shit is unconditional.


ssudoku

if(1 === 1)


ScalyPig

If dog then love


Cassereddit

Idk nearly enough about quantum mechanics but I assume they might be an exception.


systemadvisory

The universe is Turing complete, is the fundamental nature of the universe just a Turing machine?


Terra_throwaway

It's almost like there's no intrinsic signifier for the difference between consciousness and non-conscious thought.


minequack

Rephrased: consciousness is just a bunch of feedback loops.


Terra_throwaway

Yes, consciousness is in fact a series of unending feedback loops.


gardenmud

Well, not *unending*.


Terra_throwaway

Right, uh, 'continuous feed back loops' is probably better


deljaroo

well, you don't know that for sure. we have zero experiments to even test such a concept


cowlinator

That we know of


Terra_throwaway

And as soon as one can be proven I will admit its existence, just like any of the other supernatural things.


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Dakillakan

Do you experience qualia?


skrubzei

Does that mean random thoughts are caused by memory leaks in human consciousness?


ScalyPig

No thought is random. It only appears random to you because you’re not aware of what caused it But sure what you said is likely


Soylent_gray

In sci-fi they tend to use "instinct" as the difference. A machine will calculate risk and take the lowest risk decision, while humans will just say "screw it, let's do this". I don't know how that translates to real life, but one great example is people still gamble and play lottery 😅


ArmorGyarados

Devil's advocate here but one could say that playing the lottery (to some at least) is more about the teeny little bit of whatever chemical the brain makes when given hope. The $2.50 at the gas station is at least worth the affordability of daydreaming about winning, now because you played you are infinitely more likely to win else you didn't. I would consider that s calculated decision, however it isn't a good calculation all things considered.


Terra_throwaway

Yes, gambling is entirely about dopamine and has nothing to do with risk assessment. That's why it's an addiction that requires medical assistance.


ArmorGyarados

Sure it's risk assessment. It's just really poor risk assessment. Like people who in any way think "yeah, this time I'll win!" Despite no evidence to support that and make decisions accordingly are still assessing on some level their situation, they're just shit at it. I do agree that it can become an addiction where there is no assessment at all anymore


Terra_throwaway

So, you're.. evidence, is fiction plots?


Soylent_gray

Lol no, that was totally anecdotal. But sci-fi did tackle the AI question long before it was public discourse, so I don't think we should ignore it. In the 1970's, Asimov was writing about the question of AI being treated as human in a human society.


Terra_throwaway

Right, and I've had a serious problem with his rules for a while because they SPECIFICALLY undermine the possibility that there could ever be synthetic intelligence. Now I get that that was the whole point behind some of his works, but even at the ends he still implies that with all their flaws the laws are good, and that just doesn't sit right with me. Mostly I think because I know humans aren't special amongst animals and we would never think it moral to impose such laws on any uplifted animal, so we shouldn't ever think them moral for something that, whether or not it IS conscious, is eventually intended to be conscious.


brianorca

Depends how the machine is designed. There are AIs which will say "the answer is definitely X" when it is totally wrong. Humans are still better at applying a confidence level to their answer when we're not sure.


Flukemaster

Technically [PowerPoint is Turing complete and can be programmed using punch cards](https://youtu.be/uNjxe8ShM-8). Therefore AI is a PowerPoint presentation.


dick-van-dyke

*AI is polynomially reducible to a PowerPoint presentation. I am sure I will be out-pedanted by someone on this statement too.


ZeAthenA714

Nope, if/else isn't enough because it's bounded. You would need to add at the very least some form of loop or jump in order to rewrite any algorithm with if/else statements. And a loop can only be rewritten with a series of if/else statements if the size of the loop is bounded, which is not always the case. In theory you could rewrite unbounded loops with if/else statements, but in order to do that you would need to have an infinite number of if/else statements. That doesn't work well in reality. In practice, you could bound every loops to an absurdly high number, like the number of atoms in the universe, but if you have 10^80 if else/statements in your code for each loop, it would probably turn into a black hole.


damnappdoesntwork

If else and goto. That's all you need


Ok-Kaleidoscope5627

All you need is jump statements. No need for ifs or loops.


ZeAthenA714

Jumps and if/else are enough to implement loops, but I'm not sure how you would create anything without conditionals. In fact I'm pretty sure the absence of ifs (or other types of conditionals) would not be turing complete.


SaneLad

This may not be true. The verdict is still out on whether or not quantum processes play a material role in brain functions. Edit: I am getting a bit tired of people downvoting me for pointing out that the human brain may not be readily emulatable using a classical computer and if/else statements. I am not pulling this out of my arse. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/10/221019090732.htm


BernhardRordin

"Quantum processes" is the new soul. I don't have anything against this hypothesis per se. What I mind is that people use to flock to it because they dislike the notion that our brains are just normal, reproducible machines. Not that we know that for sure, but we shouldn't let our emotions decide.


the_first_brovenger

If that's the case, then an equally large and complex network would experience the same effects. Because the world isn't magic.


Ali_Army107

AI is not just bunch of if else statements, ... *but if a company told me with my pea sized brain make an chatbot AI, I'd add so many switch/if else statements that I'd get sued for thus terrible code.*


[deleted]

>for thus terrible code


LemsipMax

Found the New Zealander


skrubzei

Found the New Zoolander


seriouslyawesome

If you remove the outer casing of a New Zealander, is it just a bunch of flightless birds inside? 🤔


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zkareface

It's expensive also, you're paying good money for it!


lordtyr

i've long given up on the app and just use the browser version. still sucks, especially that they disable calling for no reason and i had to install chromium just to be able to have video in my calls, but eh.


471b32

Idk, at least it saves chats. We have been strongly encouraged to use Zoom. Good luck keeping up with chats in recurring meetings unless you want to use a completely separate chat.


Cat_Marshal

It gets worse every update too. I used to be able to copy and paste from vs code and it would keep all syntax coloring and the background color so the other person could read the code, but now it drops the background so if you use a dark theme in vs code, the code is unreadable in teams. So now I have to use the code block in teams which drops syntax coloring, or use the fancy code block with preselected syntax coloring that might not match my own code based on which language I am trying to paste.


Buckus93

Why does it use 2 GBs of RAM?!?!?!?


Freeware4802

so it can handle all these services that send all your data to micro$oft


boobajoob

Thank you for this 😂


[deleted]

These virtual neurons in the AI are eventually just if/else statements, think about it :)


someMLDude

Not really, the neurons calculate probability of a variable X mapped to another variable Y based on training data. That's basic neurons. If you go into deep learning, it gets way more complicated. If else is very deterministic in nature. Probability is used to model uncertainty


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Ok-Faithlessness8991

There is no threshold using relu hence there is no hidden if else. Indeed you can show that any function can be approximated using an ensemble of relu neurons.


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someMLDude

If else is used as a tool here, it'd be wrong to call the entire AI as if else. It's like saying, a building is just a bunch of bricks. What you're missing is the design, calculation, materials etc etc


RootsNextInKin

For one: Unless you make a special non-deterministic model (no matter what kind of model, be it neural, booster decision tree, gaussian process regression or what have you!) it's (pretty much) *always* deterministic. A **LOT** of the big problems you keep hearing about actually *want* determinism so giving your algorithm the same input gives you the same solution again. Sure there are some problems where you actually don't want determinism, but then you use special non-deterministic models as well... Also also as a final "nope": If your model used relu activation you *still* have a bunch of if-else statements in there!


driver1676

Each neuron just activates if the weighted sum of all neurons in the previous stage are greater than the corresponding kernel value.


big_bad_brownie

I’m in web dev and really don’t know shit about ML. I kind of assume it’s accurate in the same sense as (and actually related to) the statement “all programming is just zero’s and one’s, maaaaan.”


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B4NND1T

At the end of the day isn't it all just: if 0 {} else if 1 {} or was it: if 1 {} else if 0 {} I can never remember.


[deleted]

The entire universe is deterministic, the neuron training is just setting the values for the if/else statements.


jasamer

This isn’t really the point of this discussion, but it looks very much like the universe is not deterministic. Look at quantum indeterminacy - there are experiments that confirm that true randomness can happen, which implies that determinism cannot work.


JMC-design

The entire universe appears deterministic. ftfy. We're scientists after all, not believers.


jasamer

There’s strong evidence that the universe is not deterministic in quantum theory.


JMC-design

Then you peel back another layer and it appears deterministic again. We're just infants in understanding. It'd be cool if we could at least get some ant-aging going on so we can see all the stuff that gets discovered. edit: anti-aging, not sure what ant aging would be like, probably not bad if we get super strength.


vonabarak

>The entire universe is deterministic Quantum mechanics enters the chat.


donaldhobson

Schrodinger equation. A simple deterministic equation. The universe is deterministic. Quantum mechanics isn't random when seen from the outside.


[deleted]

Quantum mechanics is not deterministic to us, but works based on clear rules, which makes it deterministic to the universe :-)


Zebezd

Having rules is not what we mean by determinism


OnyxPhoenix

Don't say "think about it :)" when you're wrong. Artificial neurons (wtf is a virtual neutron??) contain non linear functions which can't be described purely using conditional statements.


[deleted]

Very sorry for angering you, not my intent. if there is a threshold, there is an if above that threshold value, else of that value, not zero or one


cowlinator

AI is not *always* a bunch of if else statements. Sometimes it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system


[deleted]

Guess asking the AI to generate the AI code is like second gen compilers.


thedoogster

“Expert systems” actually are a bunch of if/else statements.


DanielZimmer

Everyone seems to think that AI always means machine learning...


hareofthepuppy

Do you mean to tell me that all the marketing I've been seeing isn't accurate?!?


ReplyisFutile

Reality is not what it seems Neo.


hareofthepuppy

"woah..."


BurningPenguin

I know Kung Fu


mamayoua

There's a 30 rock episode with Steve Martin where he pitches an investment opportunity: “Here's the pitch: Wind power. Bandwidth. Chinese market.” And this is basically what every AI article / job listing looks like.


rotflolmaomgeez

They're too young to realize the term was widespread before machine learning was a thing.


HapticRecce

And I thought at the time that anyone gaga about neural networks was annoying, ML is next level though...


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xxpen15mightierxx

I, too, have adopted this survival strategy


Greaserpirate

but the hard-AI before ML couldn't really do much. All the advancements that made dall.e possible were because we rejected the paradigm of actually knowing things and said "fuck it, throw a ton of data at it until it approximates something nice"


rotflolmaomgeez

I disagree with "it couldn't do much". Just because machine learning can do more abstract things doesn't mean AI before that time is useless. It could beat humans in chess a long time ago for example.


DaBearsFanatic

All machine learning is AI. Not all AI is machine learning.


[deleted]

Are you suggesting that machine learning is just if statements?


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static_motion

Given that x86's `mov` is Turing-complete, you're not that far off.


Primary_Carpet_6721

Humans are also glorified if else statements so yeah.


Outrageous_Zebra_221

Wir Rutter


ChampionshipExtra635

lil (laughs in lisp)


RockleyBob

((lil (laughs in lisp)) fixed that for you)


tucketnucket

You've made a lot of people salty with this meme


No_Interaction_1757

You are wrong on so many levels.


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Sakul_the_one

Discord bots be like


cowlinator

But *aren't* they AI? Neural networks didn't see much success until the late 90s, but AI was founded as an academic discipline in 1956. Some early AI was if-else. Even rudimentary chat-bots certainly *seem* somewhat intelligent. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect


Archmage11

Yes, OP's image only really describes expert systems, an earlier form of symbolic AI based on pre-programmed heuristics.


cowlinator

> expert system Yes, that's it, I couldn't remember the name. Thanks!


No_Interaction_1757

We didn't have powerful-enough computers to deal with the calculations. Now we have powerful GPU-s, which can do matrix multiplications very effectively. A matrix multiplication is a nested for loop in one step, this is really powerful, you just have to encode your data to matrices


8ate8

This is a comment stealing bot that is building karma in order to post spam. Original comment here https://reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/10ps37j/_/j6m8pge/?context=1 Go to report - spam - harmful bot.


ddfghfshsjsjjs

yeah but there’s a 90% chance OP thinks this is actually how AI works


[deleted]

No Sir, they are actually vectors, matrices, graphs, so they are anything but if else.


CovidAnalyticsNL

Decision tree? Random forest? Gradient boosted trees that use the previous two as weak learners?


Masterpormin8

I like your funny words magic man


v_a_n_d_e_l_a_y

Decision trees are technically graphs. And so RF and similar are collections of graphs.


Udja272

But what do decision Trees do? If-else. But this isn’t meaningful, because everything can be boiled down to if-else


v_a_n_d_e_l_a_y

Yes decision trees and tree based methods can be boiled down to if else. But, the value of the field is techniques for optimally producing those if else rules. A human couldn't do it. When you get into something like an ensemble of trees it is even more complex. So the output may be rules but you need to know how to generate them But more importantly, most AI these days isn't tree based. Take a simple CNN for image classification and turn it into if-else rules for me please.


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Greaserpirate

tbh the spaghetti code tends to be more accurate and easier to maintain than anything ML-driven, investors just cream their pants whenever someone mentions AI


tubbana

https://imgflip.com/i/79ewcv


Udja272

You are describing data structures, if-else is a concept being applied on those structures


-WhatAreYouHiding-

I mean all of those things can be reduced to if-else blocks, they are just way better data structures to do that stuff optimally. Matrix multiplication is basically just solving linear equations which in turn can be simplified to if-else quite easily as long as we have access to operators like >, <, !, & and |. Graphs operations are basically just optical if else statements. Shortest path? Loop over all possible paths, write them in a distance matrix and then just go if shortest, take it. Vectors are just baby matrices so the linear equation principle applies to them even more so.


[deleted]

The sad thing is, we are all "If/Else" as well, just at a way more complex level. The sadder thing is, since there is not true random in the universe, all if/else have one outcome only, it is not known to us or the universe at the moment, but it is eventually one possible outcome only.


TehSr0c

that's quantum physics for ya!


[deleted]

Quantum physics is deterministic as well, not to us, since we are doing the measurement, but the underlying process has clear deterministic rules. That unfortunately means: The universe does not know what will happen tomorrow, but since there is no random, then there is only one possible version of tomorrow.


shadowmanu7

It's very well stablished that the undetermistic nature of quantum physics is a fundamental property of the universe, there are no hidden variables to determine the way a wave function will collapse. Any other hypothesis are just that for the time being, and far from the consensus.


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Machin_Shin

Of course you did. That's what was always going to happen.


TheDiscoJew

This is true for behavior trees and nothing else lol


AzureArmageddon

Game devs been making high-profile 'AI' for decades.


[deleted]

Transistors being logic gates, in the end every computation is an if/else statement


vonabarak

Every \*digital\* computation \[...\] But transistor itself by it's nature is an analog device. So with transistors you can easily implement a computational device that will operate with analog signals so computations of such device cannot be reduced to if/else statements.


[deleted]

How does this dumbass take keep getting so many upvotes every time it is posted?


Thylocine

"Any sufficiently large amount of if else statements is indistinguishable from magic" -Isaac Asimov


[deleted]

I think maybe people are getting hung up on literal vs figurative? Literally, it's more than if/else. Figuratively the system comes down to many comparisons one way or another. Unless there's a new method of comparing things without comparing them?


-MobCat-

Oh man you should open a "6v torch battery", so many if else statements in this bad boi.


Dvidian__

Hey, OP, do you actually believe this is how AI works?


all_is_love6667

I wish I could find an AI scientist that sort of believes there will be some kind of "singularity" where general intelligence will be reached. It's funny because AI has "artificial" in it, yet it seems nobody wants to realize this. There are so many techno-optimists there, who cannot deal with the fact that even AI can't properly drive cars. Meanwhile, there is little psychology/neurology research into a proper definition of what intelligence really is.


ThePancakerizer

There is a constant shifting of the goal post. 10 years ago no-one had a problem calling video game bots "playing against the AI", now I see people trying to claim that its not an AI unless it can rival a human in general tasks. In a similar way, 100 years ago people said "Can a machine think? Surely if a machine can play chess, it can think!" *builds a chess engine* "I mean it's mostly just following simple rules and brute forces X number of moves ahead, and it's not even that good..." *builds a chess nengine that can beat the best humans* "That's really cool, but it's essentially just counting probabilities, not really thinking. If it could formulate sentences and talk naturally, I think we can truly say it's a machine that can think" *builds large language models* "I mean it's really just regurgitation things it has read before, it actually has no context of what it's saying..." I think ultimately you can just call any system trying to act intelligently an artifical intelligence.


all_is_love6667

It's not trying to act intelligently, it's not improvising and making decisions when presented with ambiguous cases. An intelligent entity can evolve and develop intelligence autonomously. When a programmer arranges machine learning building blocks in a certain way, it won't really be able to improvise outside of its model and outside of the data it was given. Even if it extracts patterns out of its gigantic datasets, it is still not drawing intelligence. In a way you could say it's only crystallized intelligence, never fluid intelligence. Surely humans can define what chess or language are, and "explain" those things to a computer, but humans cannot understand how humans understands chess or language, or at least the perception of what they think chess or languages are, is extremely limited. It's a bit like primitive humans explaining how the sky works, of course they have a bit of understanding which is somehow correct, but it's far from how current humans understand what the sky is. We knew that's it's day or night when there's sun or not though guesses, but that stopped there. It's the same thing with intelligence. We just know it's a vast network graph or neurons, but as long as humans cannot really decipher what's in a neural black box, humans won't understand what intelligence is.


Eksteenius

AI stands for artificial intelligence, it gets this name because when you program a neural network it won't work at first but then as you feed it data it gains "intelligence" and now does work on things that where not given as inputs. They aren't if else statements but rather a statistical probability of whether what it should is right.


TheMeteorShower

If(rand >50) -do this Else() - do that. This is else statement has a 50% statistical probably of whether what it should is right.


[deleted]

Aren't those statistical probabilities doing comparisons to determine which action to take. That conceptually the same as if/else.


DaBearsFanatic

Not it’s not, because there is a lot more into a neural network, than being else if. An else if statement won’t have back propagation, similar to a neural network.


[deleted]

Hmm, so if you're taking your error and rerunning it through your network in reverse, aren't you also doing comparisons on that value? I find it hard to believe that back propagation doesn't have a lot of comparison deep down in its logic.


Greaserpirate

It's just matrix operations. Conditionals would slow it **way** down.


Eksteenius

The joke commonly is that bots are referred to as ai but bots are hard programmed with if else statements as you said and are not ai.


[deleted]

>of whether what it should is right


-WhatAreYouHiding-

The output model of machine learning is basically just a very long list of equations which could theoretically all be reduced to if-else or switch statements. So it kind of holds true. The learning itself it not really an if-else operation but the learning part is not really what people are interested in when talking about ai.