News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:New AI tool calculates materials’ stress and strain based... by na85 on Thursday April 29, 2021 @01:15AM (#26977705)
>Humanity will start doing more and more things without understanding why, but because "the computer said so", and things work out when the computer says they will. Black boxes will explode in usage, and God forgive those that may be on the side where The computer says No.

That sounds like a hellish dystopia.

Re:New AI tool calculates materials’ stress and strain based... by PoignardAzur on Thursday April 29, 2021 @05:17AM (#26978961)
I don't have empirical evidence, but I think people are overstating the harm of opaque AIs.

On the one hand, opaque bureaucratic processes already exist today. It's not like the bank that refuses you a loan will tell you "oh, but we would totally have granted it if you were 20% richer and also not a woman, so come back after you've achieved that and we'll give you the loan"!

On the other hand, even opaque models can be studied and systematized. You can't run a simulation of a judge on 100 sample cases, then on the same 100 sample cases with names changed to sound like immigrants, and numerically measure the judge's bias. You can do that with a ML model, and compensate in various ways.

Re:New AI tool calculates materials’ stress and strain based... by dagw on Thursday April 29, 2021 @05:28AM (#26979010)
It's not like the bank that refuses you a loan will tell you

That's because they don't want to tell you, not because they don't know. The bank knows exactly why they refused to give you a loan and exactly which series of policy changes led to that outcome. They also know exactly how to change the policy to achieve a different outcome.

None of those things are true with AIs.