#thatsnotwhatyouasked

Pet peeve – use of “literally.”

If you don’t understand literally vice figuratively, #artificialintelligence can set you straight. Rule#2 of #AI is everything is literal. AI does exactly as you tell it.  That can be annoying from a child or spouse or customer service chatbot. AI doesn’t have the contextual preferences of humans – which emotes angst and joy in the uncovering. Given a problem, AI is going to take the tasking literally. For example:

I hooked a neural network up to my Roomba. I wanted it to learn to navigate without bumping into things, so I set up a reward scheme to encourage speed and discourage hitting the bumper sensors. It learnt to drive backwards, because there are no bumpers on the back. – @smingleigh

This is an interesting concept because the “bugs” that you deal with your computer, your phone, your network, your business are likely a synergy of literal translation. Code knows 0 or 1, and coders get that.  The rest of us are swimming in “why the hell is this broken” when the answer is a literal question return.

#saywhatyoumean #meanwhatyousay