François Fleuret asserts AI exceeds philosophy in understanding knowledge
François Fleuret of Meta FAIR and the University of Geneva asserted that machine learning and artificial intelligence have illuminated knowledge and reality more than twenty centuries of philosophy. He voiced willingness to defend the stance. Research engineer Taco Cohen challenged the assertion for lacking definitions of terms like understanding and the nature of knowledge in the exchange.
@francoisfleuret How can you make such a claim without first defining “understanding”, “nature of”, and “hot take”??
François Fleuret@francoisfleuretHot take: machine learning and AI did more to understand the nature of knowledge, and our relation to reality than 20 centuries of philosophy. I am ready to kind of defend this hill.
#331François Fleuret@FRANCOISFLEURETHot take: machine learning and AI did more to understand the nature of knowledge, and our relation to reality than 20 centuries of philosophy.
I am ready to kind of defend this hill.
@TacoCohen Taco, the thing found the password of the bitcoins of that guy.
Taco Cohen@TacoCohen@francoisfleuret How can you make such a claim without first defining “understanding”, “nature of”, and “hot take”??
@TacoCohen Understanding would be low validation error, nature of would be the source code?
Taco Cohen@TacoCohen@francoisfleuret How can you make such a claim without first defining “understanding”, “nature of”, and “hot take”??
Hey @grok can you go through all the negative responses to / reposts of my post and estimate the proportion with (1) actual arguments, (2) ad hominem attacks?
François Fleuret@francoisfleuretHot take: machine learning and AI did more to understand the nature of knowledge, and our relation to reality than 20 centuries of philosophy. I am ready to kind of defend this hill.
#331François Fleuret@FRANCOISFLEURETAn alien having to define philosophy from the responses critical of my tweet would conclude it's "the field of nastiness and ad hominem".
François Fleuret@francoisfleuretHot take: machine learning and AI did more to understand the nature of knowledge, and our relation to reality than 20 centuries of philosophy. I am ready to kind of defend this hill.
#331François Fleuret@FRANCOISFLEURETI certainly did not mean that *LLMs* did more, I meant research in ML and AI did.
François Fleuret@francoisfleuretHot take: machine learning and AI did more to understand the nature of knowledge, and our relation to reality than 20 centuries of philosophy. I am ready to kind of defend this hill.
#1089Seth Lazar@SETHLAZARThis is a fun take. Obviously the only way to defend it would be to do philosophy! So the correct restatement is: “ML and AI make possible fundamental advances in epistemology and metaphysics”. I agree with that! I would add ethics too. Though of course one has to show, not tell.
François Fleuret@francoisfleuretHot take: machine learning and AI did more to understand the nature of knowledge, and our relation to reality than 20 centuries of philosophy. I am ready to kind of defend this hill.
@francoisfleuret @TMoldwin What do you mean by “knowledge”? 🙃
François Fleuret@francoisfleuretHot take: machine learning and AI did more to understand the nature of knowledge, and our relation to reality than 20 centuries of philosophy. I am ready to kind of defend this hill.
#1286Dan Shipper 📧@DANSHIPPERI think this is close to true, but you don’t get AI without 20 centuries of philosophy
Also you can rewrite the claim as “AI did more to advance philosophy than 20 centuries of people without AI did” and have the meaning be the same without the implicit dunk
New technologies change how we see the world and ourselves. Exciting time to be asking the biggest perennial questions
François Fleuret@francoisfleuretHot take: machine learning and AI did more to understand the nature of knowledge, and our relation to reality than 20 centuries of philosophy. I am ready to kind of defend this hill.