[Skybird]

I do not buy that "AI becomes more human" argument. The machine, the software becomes more complex, due to engineer developement becoming more clever. It can be even programmed to train itself via so-called neural-network designs like Alpha-Go now: in autumn it already claimed first blood over the European champion, but now plays - according to Go players - unbelievably stronger: it spent the time since then to play against itself, "learning" by that. The international Go scene is absolutely in shock over what currently happens. But ir currently defeats the world champion by not playing human moves, but those moves that a human never would even consider, observers noticed.

I have observed and witnessed how software for chess has changed the way in which pro chess players train, prepare for tournaments and also play chess, the software availabole today has changed it all, and TBH, it has driven me away a bit. That is not my way of playing chess anymore. I predict something similar is about tio happen to Go now. Humans romanticise about robots too much, by that they artificially create a gap between what machine design is about, and what they emotionally want or dream it to be. This discrepancy imo will not do good. A machine will always be a machine, and a robot copying human behaviour always will be a machine running algorithms controlling its parts so that it appears to human senses as copying human behaviour. But it is no human behaviour.

A machine will always perform the better the more it does what machines excel in - and these often are traditionally humans' biological weaknesses. And copying human behavior might be pleasant to the human eye - but its not what is the essence of machines. Or their real nature. I can imagine vital, even life-threatening dangers in this human mis-perception of "human robots".

An interesting difference between computer Chess and Go: in chess it was easier to code a program to master opening and then midgame, with the endgame having been the toughest challenge to program (which in parts got solved by including tablebases: databases of preset optimal moves in any position of final endgame with only 5-6 pieces or so left: the conmpo0uter does not compute the next move, just calls it up from the database. In Go, it is the other way around: the opening is where AlphaGo is said to be weaker than in midgame, and in endgame it is even stronger. That is because. Compare that to that in chess the number of pieces is getting reduced and the "void" of the empty board opens up more and more, while in Go the number of places pieces increases, reducing the "void" of the open board.

All in all I agree with those saying that the term "artificial intelligence" should be deleted from the vocabulary of software engineering. We are talking about automats that do a specified, specialised task - for which a human mind has designed them - increasingly well. That's all.