Sorry, I was slow to read. Working on a thought is what makes it maybe one day a realtiy.
Nice post. Thanks. Anna:) On 2/19/07, John Scanlon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: >>John Scanlon wrote: >> Is there anyone out there who has a sense that most of the work being >> done in AI is still following the same track that has failed for fifty > >years now? The focus on logic as thought, or neural nets as the > >bottom-up, brain-imitating solution just isn't getting anywhere? It's > >the same thing, and it's never getting anywhere. >> > >The missing component is thought. What is thought, and how do human > >beings think? There is no reason that thought cannot be implemented in > >a sufficiently powerful computing machine -- the problem is how to > >implement it. >No, that's not it. I know because I once built a machine with thoughts >in it and it still didn't work. Do you have any other ideas? Okay, that was a nice, quick dismissive statement. And you're right -- just insert the element of thought, and voila you have intelligence, or in the case of the machine you once built -- nothing. That's not what I mean. I've read some of your stuff, and you know a lot more about computer science and science in general than I may ever know. I don't mean that the missing ingredient is simply the mystical idea of thought. I mean that thought is something different than calculation. Human intelligence is built on animal intelligence -- and what I mean by that is that there was animal intelligence, the same kind of intelligence that can be seen today in apes, before the development of language that was the substrate that allowed the use of language. Language is the manipulation of symbols. When you think of how a non-linguistic proto-human species first started using language, you can imagine creatures associating sounds with images -- "oog" is the big hairy red ape who's always trying to steal your women. "akk" is the action of hitting him with a club. The symbol, the sound, is associated with a sensorimotor pattern. The visual pattern is the big hairy red ape you know, and the motor pattern is the sequence of muscle activations that swing the club. In order to use these symbols effectively, you have to have a sensorimotor image or pattern that the symbols are attached to. That's what I'm getting at. That is thought. We already know how to get computers to carry out very complex logical calculations, but it's mechanical, it's not thought, and they can't navigate themselves (with any serious competence) around a playground. Language and logical intelligence is built on visual-spatial modeling. That's why children learn their ABC's by looking at letters drawn on a chalkboard and practicing the muscle movements to draw them on paper. I think that the key to AI is to implement this sensorimotor, spatiotemporal modeling in software. That means data structures that represent the world in three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. This modeling can be done. It's done every day in video games. But obviously that's not enough. There is the element of probability -- what usually occurs, what might occur, and how my actions might affect what might occur. Okay -- so what I am focused on is creating data structures that can take sensorimotor patterns and put them into a knowledge-representation system that can remember events, predict events, and predict how motor actions will affect events. And it is all represented in terms of sensorimotor images or maps. I don't have it all figured out right now, but this is what I'm working on. ----- Original Message ----- From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 9:12 PM Subject: Re: [agi] The Missing Piece John Scanlon wrote: > Is there anyone out there who has a sense that most of the work being > done in AI is still following the same track that has failed for fifty > years now? The focus on logic as thought, or neural nets as the > bottom-up, brain-imitating solution just isn't getting anywhere? It's > the same thing, and it's never getting anywhere. > > The missing component is thought. What is thought, and how do human > beings think? There is no reason that thought cannot be implemented in > a sufficiently powerful computing machine -- the problem is how to > implement it. No, that's not it. I know because I once built a machine with thoughts in it and it still didn't work. Do you have any other ideas? -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303 ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
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