On Wednesday 03 October 2007 06:21:46 pm, Mike Tintner wrote: > Yes there are bright people in AGI. But there's no one remotely close to the level, say, of von Neumann or Turing, right? And do you really think a revolution such as AGI is going to come about without that kind of revolutionary, creative thinker? Just by tweaking existing systems, and increasing computer power and complexity? Has any intellectual revolution ever happened that way? (Josh?)
Yes, I think so. Can anybody name the von Neumanns in the hardware field in the past 2 decades? And yet look at the progress. I happen to think that there are plenty of smart people in AI and related fields, and LOTS of really smart people in computational neuroscience. Even without a Newton we are likely to get AGI on Kurzweil's schedule, e.g. 2029. As I pointed out before, human intelligence got here from monkeys in a geological eyeblink, and perforce did it in small steps. So if enough people keep pushing in all directions, we'll get there (and learn a lot more besides). If we can take AGI interest now vis-a-vis that of a few years ago as a trend, there could be a major upsurge in the number of smart people looking into it in the next decade. So we could yet get our new Newton... I think we've already had one, Marvin Minsky. He's goddamn smart. People today don't realize just how far AI came from nothing up through about 1970 -- and it was real AI, what we now call AGI. BTW, It's also worth pointing out that increasing computer power just flat makes the programming easier. Example: nearest-neighbor methods in high-dimensional spaces, a very useful technique but hard to program because of the limited and arcane datastructures and search methods needed. Given enough cpu, forget the balltrees and rip thru the database linearly. Suddenly simple, more robust, and there are more things you can do. Josh ----- 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/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=49568162-324646
