Dogs Backed Into Corners

Physicists and Statisticians Hating AI

Something you will notice about most physicists, statisticians and (some) mathematicians, the ones *who have not embraced current AI technology*, is their vehement disregard and denigration for AI’s obvious progress.

It is them who fight it more than anyone else.

The reason is that these fields have ridden the wave of reductionism, determinism and “smartness” more than others. It is their fields that are now being exposed as far too simplistic to solve categorically hard problems.

They are the dogs backed into corners, lashing out with their last breath, trying to convince us the strength of their glory days is the strength they still hold.

AI is alchemy. AI is trial and error. AI is nondeterminism. AI is everything they were told is a weaker form of analysis and rationality.

But of course the opposite is true. It has always been true. Nature has never created using fabricated symbols and deterministic formulae. Solving hard problems, which nature only does, has never involved chalkboards nor ostentatious displays of contemplation.

It has and will only ever involve the alchemy that accomplishes so much more than their paltry schemes.

The dogs will bark and snarl. But their time has come.

Best we not let them infect the herd.