> > Or is that what you meant by "software engineering"? To me, software > > engineering is about HOW you build it, not about WHAT you build in a > > mathematical/conceptual sense. > > That is what I meant, yes. The WHAT that you build. The HOW > isn't so much important except in that it's efficient enough to > get the job done and doesn't leave the authors lost. > > I guess my point is that if you take as a thought experiment the > idea that on waking up tomorrow and we found all of our cpu's > magically running at 10x the speed (memory 10x, etc), we wouldn't > be that much closer to an AGI because we're still working on what > to do with the power. > > However, with your experience at webmind you would know better > than I how cpu limits constrain AGI design.
If we had very fast machines AND shitloads of RAM, we could simplify the Novamente design a little... we wouldn't have to mess with optimization tricks like using bitmasking to represent numerical parameters, using our own "logical Atom type hierarchy" in place of C++ object types for Atoms, and blah blah blah. Also, if we had cheap supercomputers, we could dispense with worrying about distributed processing, which saves a lot of implementation hassle... And there are some tests we run that take overnight: it would be nice to be able to run them in 5 minutes instead... So, much better machines WOULD help us work out the details of the Novamente design significantly faster. But not infinitely faster, of course!! There is still a lot of thinking to be done, after each test you run, and faster computers don't help the thinking go faster. Unless you're hypothesizing machines SO fast that you can just forego Novamente and implement an AIXItl style approach. But that may not be possible ever, in this universe ;-) -- Ben ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
