Josh, On 6/4/08, J Storrs Hall, PhD <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Well, Ray Kurzweil famously believes that AI must wait for the mapping of > the > brain. But if that's the case, everybody on this list may as well go home > for > 20 years, or start running rats in mazes.
It just isn't all that hard. Sure, "complete" mapping, complete with nonlinearities and all other parameters is a long way off, but just having a single brain as a wirelist in a database would answer countless questions. I personally think the "millions of years of evolution" argument is a red > herring. Technological development not only moves much faster than > evolution, > but takes leaps evolution can't. Note also that the reverse is true, because evolution needn't explain away its past failures, convince investors, do only small experiments that it can afford, etc., etc. And evolution is always, crucially, obsessed > with reproductive success. Is that any worse a measure than is economic success? Evolution would never build an airplane, because > airplanes can't reproduce. ... and industry would never build a bird because they couldn't make money on them. So what? > But we can, and thus capture the aspect of birds > that's germane to our needs -- flying -- with an assortment of kludges. And > planes are still NOWHERE as sophisticated as birds, and guess what: 100 > years > later, they still don't lay eggs. Neither do they just appear without the expenditure of large amounts of money. How much of the human mind is built around the necessity of eating, avoiding > being eaten, finding mates, being obsessed with copulation, and raising and > protecting children? Egg-laying for airplanes, in my view. Now, can you find some way of saying the above that would be convincing to prospective investors? If not, then it is like a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear. There are some key things we learned about flying by watching birds. But > having learned them, we built machines to do what we wanted better than > birds > could. We'll do the same with the mind. I like your bird analogy, but you got off track as you were going through it. The Wright Brothers put in over 100 hours of wind tunnel testing before they built their first flying machine. Learn from the mind as we learned from the birds - by dissecting, diagramming, simulating, etc., just as was done with birds. You want to fast-forward past all of this, to go from outward (and some anecdotal inward) observations to a finished product. This is great if it works (though it has failed for the last 40 years), but once you hit a stumbling block, there is no way to "debug" your approach to correct its shortcomings. You think that you can do a perfect job without such debugging, but having been in the computer business just as long as you have, I have seen WAY too many problems to ever believe in such miracles. Steve Richfield =================== On Wednesday 04 June 2008 03:15:36 pm, Steve Richfield wrote: > Josh, > > I apparently failed to clearly state my central argument. Allow me to try > again in simpler terms: > > The difficulties in proceeding in both neuroscience and AI/AGI is NOT a lack > of technology or clever people to apply it, but is rather a lack of > understanding of the real world and how to effectively interact within > it. Some clues as to the totality of the difficulties are the ~200 different > types of neurons, and in the 40 years of ineffective AI/AGI research. I have > seen NO recognition of this fundamental issue in other postings on this > forum. This level of difficulty strongly implies that NO clever programming > will ever achieve human-scale (and beyond) intelligence, until some way is > found to "mine" the evolutionary lessons "learned" during the last ~200 > million years. > > Note that the CENTRAL difficulty in effectively interacting in the real > world is working with and around the creatures that already inhabit it, > which are the product of ~200 million years of evolution. Even a "perfect" > AGI would have to have some very "imperfect" logic to help predict the > actions of our world's present inhabitants. Hence, there seems (to me) that > there is probably no simple solution, as otherwise it would have already > evolved during the last ~200 million years, instead of evolving the highly > complex creatures that we now are. > > That having been said, I will comment on your posting... > > On 6/4/08, J Storrs Hall, PhD <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > On Tuesday 03 June 2008 09:54:53 pm, Steve Richfield wrote: > > > > > Back to those ~200 different types of neurons. There are probably some > > cute > > > tricks buried down in their operation, and you probably need to figure > > out > > > substantially all ~200 of those tricks to achieve human intelligence. If > > I > > > were an investor, this would sure sound pretty scary to me without SOME > > sort > > > of "insurance" like scanning capability, and maybe some simulations. > > > > I'll bet there are just as many cute tricks to be found in computer > > technology, including software, hardware, fab processes, quantum mechanics > > of > > FETs, etc -- now imagine trying to figure all of them out at once by > > running > > Pentiums thru mazes with a few voltmeters attached. All at once because you > > never know for sure whether some gene expression pathway is crucially > > involved in dendrite growth for learning or is just a kludge against celiac > > disease. > > > Of course, this has nothing to do with creating the "smarts" to deal with > our very complex real world well enough to compete with us who already > inhabit it. > > That's what's facing the neuroscientists, and I wish them well -- but I > > think > > we'll get to the working mind a lot faster studying things at a higher > > level. > > > I agree that high level views are crucial, but with the present lack of > low-level knowledge, I see no hope for solving all of the problems while > remaining only at a high level. > > For example: > > > > http://repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/bitstream/1822/5920/1/ErlhagenBicho-JNE06.pdf > > > From that article: "Our close cooperation with experimenters from > neuroscience and cognitive science has strongly influenced the proposed > architectures for implementing cognitive functions such as goal inference > and decision making." THIS is where efforts are needed - in bringing the > disparate views together rather than "keeping your head in the clouds" with > only a keyboard and screen in front of you. > > In the 1980s I realized that neither neuroscience nor AI could proceed to > their manifest destinies until a system of real-world mathematics was > developed that could first predict details of neuronal functionality, and > then hopefully show what AI needed. The "missing link" seemed to be the lack > of knowledge as to just what the units were in the communications between > neurons. Pulling published and unpublished experimental results together, > mostly from Kathryn Graubard's research, I showed (and presented at the > first Int'l NN Conference) that there were more than one such unit, and that > one was clearly the logarithms of the probabilities of assertions being > true. Presuming this leads directly to a mathematics of synapses, that > accurately predicts the strange non-linear and discontinuous transfer > functions observed in inhibitory synapses, etc. It also leads to the optimal > manipulation of synaptic efficacies, etc. However, apparently NO ONE ELSE > saw the value in this. Without the units, there can be no substantial > mathematics, and without the mathematics, there is nothing to guide either > neuroscience, NN, or AI "research". Hence, I remain highly skeptical of > claimed "high level" views. > > Steve Richfield > > > > ------------------------------------------- > agi > Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ > Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?&; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=103754539-40ed26 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
