NOT GOOD AS GOLD: TODAY’S AI’S ARE DANGEROUSLY LACKING IN AU (ARTIFICIAL UNDERSTANDING)
By Doug Lenat
We would not be comfortable giving a severely neurologically-impaired person — say someone with no functioning left brain hemisphere — real-time decision-making authority over our family members’ health, our life savings, our cars, or our missile defense systems. Yet we are hurtling in that direction with today’s AI’s which are impaired in almost exactly that same fashion!
They — those people and those AI programs — have trouble doing multi-step abstract reasoning, and that limitation makes their decision-making and behavior brittle, especially when confronted by unfamiliar, unexpected and unusual situations.
Don’t worry, this is not one of those “Oh, woe is us!” AI fear-mongering articles as we have been graced with by such uniquely qualified AI researchers as Henry Kissinger, Stephen Hawking, and Elon Musk. Yes, we are moving toward a nightmarish AI crisis, but No, it is not unavoidable: there is a clear path out of this devil’s bargain, and I’m going to articulate exactly what it is and how and when it’s going to save us.
