Jun 27, 2023 12:13 AM
https://iai.tv/articles/ai-is-not-intell..._auid=2020
EXCERPTS (David J. Gunkel): Naming is anything but a nominal operation. Nowhere is this more evident and clearly on display than in recent debates about the moniker “artificial intelligence” (AI). Right now, in fact, it appears that AI—the technology and the scientific discipline that concerns this technology—is going through a kind of identity crisis, as leading voices in the field are beginning to ask whether the name is (and maybe already was) a misnomer and a significant obstacle to accurate understanding. “As a computer scientist,” Jaron Lanier recently wrote in a piece for The New Yorker, “I don’t like the term A.I. In fact, I think it’s misleading—maybe even a little dangerous.”
[...] Since the difficulty derives from the very name “artificial intelligence,” one solution has been to select or fabricate a better or more accurate signifier. The science fiction writer Ted Chiang, for instance, recommends that we replace AI with something less “sexy,” like “applied statistics.” Others, like Emily Bender, have encouraged the use of the acronym SALAMI (Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Inferences), which was originally coined by Stefano Quintarelli in an effort to avoid what he identified as the “implicit bias” residing in the name “artificial intelligence.”
Though these alternative designations may be, as Chiang argues, more precise descriptors for recent innovations with machine learning (ML) systems [...] the proposed alternatives would, at best, only describe a small and relatively recent subset of what has been situated under the designation “artificial intelligence.”
[...] As French philosopher and literary theorist Jacques Derrida pointed out, there are at least two different ways to designate a new concept: neologism (the fabrication of a new name) and paleonymy (the reuse of an old name). If the former has produced less than suitable results, perhaps it is time to try the latter.
The good news is that we do not have to look far or wide to find a viable alternative. There was one already available at the time of the Dartmouth meeting with “cybernetics.” This term—derived from the ancient Greek word (κυβερνήτης) for the helmsman of a boat—had been introduced and developed by Norbert Wiener in 1948 to designate the science of communication and control in the animal and machine.
Cybernetics has a number of advantages when it comes to rebranding what had been called AI. First, cybernetics does not get diverted by or lost in speculation about intelligence, consciousness, or sentience. It is only concerned with and focuses attention on decision-making capabilities and processes... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS (David J. Gunkel): Naming is anything but a nominal operation. Nowhere is this more evident and clearly on display than in recent debates about the moniker “artificial intelligence” (AI). Right now, in fact, it appears that AI—the technology and the scientific discipline that concerns this technology—is going through a kind of identity crisis, as leading voices in the field are beginning to ask whether the name is (and maybe already was) a misnomer and a significant obstacle to accurate understanding. “As a computer scientist,” Jaron Lanier recently wrote in a piece for The New Yorker, “I don’t like the term A.I. In fact, I think it’s misleading—maybe even a little dangerous.”
[...] Since the difficulty derives from the very name “artificial intelligence,” one solution has been to select or fabricate a better or more accurate signifier. The science fiction writer Ted Chiang, for instance, recommends that we replace AI with something less “sexy,” like “applied statistics.” Others, like Emily Bender, have encouraged the use of the acronym SALAMI (Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Inferences), which was originally coined by Stefano Quintarelli in an effort to avoid what he identified as the “implicit bias” residing in the name “artificial intelligence.”
Though these alternative designations may be, as Chiang argues, more precise descriptors for recent innovations with machine learning (ML) systems [...] the proposed alternatives would, at best, only describe a small and relatively recent subset of what has been situated under the designation “artificial intelligence.”
[...] As French philosopher and literary theorist Jacques Derrida pointed out, there are at least two different ways to designate a new concept: neologism (the fabrication of a new name) and paleonymy (the reuse of an old name). If the former has produced less than suitable results, perhaps it is time to try the latter.
The good news is that we do not have to look far or wide to find a viable alternative. There was one already available at the time of the Dartmouth meeting with “cybernetics.” This term—derived from the ancient Greek word (κυβερνήτης) for the helmsman of a boat—had been introduced and developed by Norbert Wiener in 1948 to designate the science of communication and control in the animal and machine.
Cybernetics has a number of advantages when it comes to rebranding what had been called AI. First, cybernetics does not get diverted by or lost in speculation about intelligence, consciousness, or sentience. It is only concerned with and focuses attention on decision-making capabilities and processes... (MORE - missing details)
