Infants *start* with general learning skills - they have to extensively discover for themselves how to do most things - control head, reach out, turn over, sit up, crawl, walk - and also have to work out perceptually what the objects they see are, and what they do... and what sounds are, and how they form words, and how those words relate to objects - and how language works
it is this capacity to keep discovering ways of doing things, that is a major motivation in their continually learning new activities - continually seeking novelty, and getting bored with too repetitive activities obviously an AGI needs some help.. but at the mo. all projects get *full* help/ *complete* instructions - IOW are merely dressed up versions of narrow AI no one AFAIK is dealing with the issue of how do you produce a true "goalseeking" agent who *can* discover things for itself? - an agent, that like humans and animals, can *find* its way to its goals generally, as well as to learning new activities, on its own initiative - rather than by following instructions. (The full instruction method only works in artificial, controlled environments and can't possibly work in the real, uncontrollable world - where future conditions are highly unpredictable, even by the sagest instructor). [Ben BTW strikes me as merely gesturing at all this]. There really can't be any serious argument about this - humans and animals clearly learn all their activities with v. limited and largely general rather than step-by-step instructions. You may want to argue there is an underlying general program that effectively specifies every step they must take (good luck) - but with respect to all their specialist.particular activities, - think having a conversation, sex, writing a post, an essay, fantasying, shopping, browsing the net, reading a newspaper - etc etc. - you got and get v. little step-by-step instruction about these and all your other activities So AGI's require a fundamentally and massively different paradigm of instruction to the program, comprehensive, step-by-step paradigm of narrow AI. [The rock wall/toybox tests BTW are AGI activities, where it is *impossible* to give full instructions, or produce a formula, whatever you may want to do]. From: rob levy Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 3:56 PM To: agi Subject: Re: [agi] Of definitions and tests of AGI A "child" AGI should be expected to need help learning how to solve many problems, and even be told what the steps are. But at some point it needs to have developed general problem-solving skills. But I feel like this is all stating the obvious. On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 11:32 PM, Matt Mahoney <matmaho...@yahoo.com> wrote: Mike, I think we all agree that we should not have to tell an AGI the steps to solving problems. It should learn and figure it out, like the way that people figure it out. agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com