That's very interesting. As I read it, tt came up with state variables that we couldn't understand. So it had located things that were not within its existing concept set. Since it's existing concept set was supplied to it by us. But maybe dyqik would interpret that differently.monkey wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 7:13 pmThey've tried getting of AI to do physics at least once. I remember this story from a couple of years back - clicky.
They got a neural net to model dynamic systems like a double pendulums of various types. The neural net came up with models that worked - it identified patterns, worked out how to describe them in maths, and made good predictions.
The trouble was, there was no explanation of what the variables mean, and in meat physics variables have meaning so's you know what's going on. So the researchers had no idea if what was is doing is useful or not. All they knew is that it was doing things differently to how a meat physicist would do it.
I think this was one of Dyqik's points.
(link to actual paper - clicky)
In a sense, this is what we need, something that is not hidebound by our lived experience, and so can come up with descriptions we overlook due to the inevitable narrowing of view that comes with that.
Clearly there is a problem when we can't actually unravel what its state variables are. They are doubtless some curious composite that is hard to untangle. It isn't actually useful.
I've had to examine some AI data analysis forecasting model recently, and it was non-transparent in a similar way. And researching it, this is just what this class of AI data analysis model does. It's doubtless great if you don't care how it makes its forecast. But we do care. It's no use that it combines the input variables in highly contingent ways that leaves no transparency on how it came to its forecast. We do actually need to know what effect certain parameters were having. We do need to know that its methods are consistent with the known laws of physics, etc. Whilst it is doubtless to some extent true that various things are contingent on everything else, i practical reality it in many cases it was implausible that it they were as highly contingent on everything else as it appeared to indicate. You ought to be able to say within quite narrow bounds what effect these factors are having, everything else held constant.
But whilst these do suffer from lack of transparency, I gain from this some sort of partial optimism that maybe with time and experience we could devise and train them to produce more useful outputs, by helping them to recognise the difference.