68 | Melanie Mitchell on Artificial Intelligence and the Challenge of Common Sense

68 | Melanie Mitchell on Artificial Intelligence and the Challenge of Common Sense

Artificial intelligence is better than humans at playing chess or go, but still has trouble holding a conversation or driving a car. A simple way to think about the discrepancy is through the lens of “common sense” — there are features of the world, from the fact that tables are solid to the prediction that a tree won’t walk across the street, that humans take for granted but that machines have difficulty learning. Melanie Mitchell is a computer scientist and complexity researcher who has written a new book about the prospects of modern AI. We talk about deep learning and other AI strategies, why they currently fall short at equipping computers with a functional “folk physics” understanding of the world, and how we might move forward.


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Melanie Mitchell received her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Michigan. She is currently a professor of computer science at Portland State University and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Her research focuses on genetic algorithms, cellular automata, and analogical reasoning. She is the author of An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms, Complexity: A Guided Tour, and most recently Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans. She originated the Santa Fe Institute’s Complexity Explorer project, on online learning resource for complex systems.


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Welcome to the Mindscape Podcast!

Welcome to the Mindscape Podcast!

I've decided to officially take the plunge into the world of podcasting. The new show will be called Mindscape, and will mostly consist of me talking to smart people about interesting ideas. (Occasionally it will be me talking by myself about ideas of questionable merit.) I'm a grizzled veteran at appearing on other podcasts, and it's past time I sat in the director's chair here. [smart_track_player url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/seancarroll/episode-zero-audio.mp3" artist="Sean Carroll" social_gplus="false" social_email="true" tweet_text="Sean Carroll's Mindscape Podcast, Episode 0: Welcome!" hashtag="mindscapepodcast" ] Today I'm just releasing a short teaser podcast, in both audio (bottom of this post) and video (right here) form. Next week will be a more official launch, with several real episodes, all of which I had enormous fun recording. FAQ: It won't just be about physics, although physics will naturally appear. Indeed, the opportunity to talk about things other than physics is a large part of my motivation here. I have plans/hopes to talk to historians, psychologists, biologists, philosophers, artists, filmmakers, neuroscientists, economists, writers, theologians, political scientists, musicians, and more. The video above is just to lure you in. Almost all episodes will be audio-only. I don't have a strict release schedule, that will depend on other obligations. I would guess one every two weeks, perhaps weekly if things start going super-well. (So if you want more episodes, encourage others to subscribe!) Typical episodes will be an hour long, at least to start, though don't hold me to that. Right now you can both subscribe to the RSS feed, and/or to an email list, both available on the sidebar to the right. If you join the email list, you can choose to either get just the episodes as they are released, or just special announcements relevant to the podcast, or both. Soon I hope to be available on iTunes and Google Play and various other platforms, but I'm not sure how quickly that happens. There won't be any ads to start, but I am planning to monetize it if things go well. These microphones don't pay for themselves. I'm not really in it for the money, but if money starts rolling in, my incentive to keep going will be correspondingly boosted. Feel free to leave comments and discuss individual episodes as they appear. There is also a subreddit which might make a good conversation spot. Like everything else I do that isn't physics research, this is a hobby, and might have to take a temporary back seat if things get busy. But so far it's been a lot of fun, and I'm excited to see where it will go. Show notes for this episode: I mention a study of the different ways in which artists and regular people look at images, which you can read about here. And we're ready to go! Thanks to everyone who has helped me set this up, including Gia Mora (web and technical help), Julian Morris (prodding), Cara Santa Maria (podcasting wisdom), Jason Torchinsky (art), Ted Pyne (music), Robert Alexander (gear), and Jennifer Ouellette (patience, support, wine). Comment here if you have suggestions, for good ideas to talk about, good people to talk to, or format/technical wisdom. (As always, demands that I not talk about this or that will be summarily deleted; those are my choices to make, not anybody else's.) Still very new at this, mistakes both technical and judgmental are practically guaranteed to happen, but I'm optimistic that it should be a fun ride. Download Episode [smart_podcast_player permalink="https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/" hashtag="mindscapepodcast" ] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

1 Heinä 201816min

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