mariana on Nostr: kate crowford opens her “atlas of AI” with the parable of clever hans, a common ...

kate crowford opens her “atlas of AI” with the parable of clever hans, a common cautionary tale of machine learning circles. clever hans was a german horse who performed solving complex math and logic problems in the early 20th century. with time and investigation it was found that clever hans was not in fact solving math problems, but reacting to subtle involuntary cues from audiences and his trainer. he was still very clever for a horse: he was capable of performing under pressure, of social sensitivity and pattern recognition, and had outstanding communication capabilities. the finding is not that the horse was not intelligent, but that he just didn’t have the type of intelligence that people were hoping he had.