I love the way the Discovery Institute’s Evolution News and Views blog takes down new artificial intelligence hype from the pop-science New Scientist’s website. The post is titled Is Google a Step Away from Developing a Computer that Can “Program Itself”?. The New Scientist article in question is sensationalistically titled Computer with human-like learning will program itself. In the introduction to the ENV post, author, Erik J. Larson says:
“Human-level learning” and “self-programming” (more generally: self-replication) are central memes in the latest Sci-Fi fad hyping smart machines becoming smarter and smarter, imminently overtaking mere humans. But, predictably, the scientific merit of the purported “breakthroughs” is paltry at best. Notwithstanding the fad and the hype, there’s, well, no news here.
It kind of gives one pause (again) about a lot of the stuff reported in New Scientist.
