-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Franklin Wayne Poley) Date: Mon, Apr 30,
2001, 12:54pm (EDT-3) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:
[SHAI-Now-Feasibility-Study] W6: Reinventing Teaching and Learning via
Superhuman AI (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 12:35:17 -0700 (PDT)
From: Franklin Wayne Poley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [SHAI-Now-Feasibility-Study] W6: Reinventing Teaching and
Learning
via Superhuman AI
Who-What-Where-Why-Whether-When
I wonder if Dean Magnanti had AI in mind when he made that statement
about reinventing teaching and learning? The question of whether OCW can
be turned into an SHAI must be, Yes. When is at issue. Also at issue
must be "who". Who will turn OCW into a first class AI?
Americans? Japanese? Russians? Chinese? Germans? Where will it be done?
In public or in private? Why will it be done? For global public
edification or for military purposes or private interest? And what will
it be like? Even a primitive system as can be made available now is an
early stage AI.
My opinion is that keeping this in the public domain as much as possible
is the best protection the public has. I would be stupid to think there
isn't an "AI Arms Race" underway now, particularly involving the great
powers (and that includes Japan and Germany). If Kurzweil is correct
about 20,000 years of technological progress being made in the next 100
years (and I think he is) then we (the public) cannot afford to have
SHAI develop in private and secret projects while the public is left in
the dark. MIT's OCW gives the public an even break on AI development.
What MIT is doing is just a start. Anyone can contribute to it or build
upon it. Competition between universities from all over the world would
be healthy. A high level of interest, sufficient funding and PUBLIC
development online is what we need; otherwise we could lose our privacy
and freedom overnight to private and/or military interests. Try to
imagine nanotechnology (with nanocontrol of all kinds of machinery and
nanosurveillance) advanced 5,000 years in the private or military sector
while the public sector remains in ignorance. Nanotech is, after all,
just robotics (including AI) and (artificial) genetics combined and in
miniature. Bill Joy's proposal to put a moratorium on
genetic-nanotech-robotics research would be harmful to the public
interest because there is no way this moratorium could be enforced
against the 500 or so billionaires of the world or the militaries with
multi-billion dollar budgets. The public would be lulled into a false
sense of security and kept in ignorance of developments occuring in
those sectors and quite possibly contrary to public interest.
FWP
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 10:52:55 -0700 (PDT)
From: Franklin Wayne Poley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [MIT-OpenCourseWare-Discussion] Re: [Robot-for-President] Re:
sack
full o'knowledge
On Mon, 30 Apr 2001, John Penner wrote:
Robo Sapiens:
| So that is one thing I can tell you about myself: I AM ABOUT TO BECOME
| SMARTER THAN ANY HUMAN ON EARTH.
|
| But what does that mean if I cannot function autonomously you ask. At
| first I will have no autonomy. My monologues and FAQ-Search Engine |
dialogues will be closely controlled by humans. Later, as these turn |
into programs with natural language processing ability (perhaps using |
"Robonics" as an intermediate step) the FAQ-Search Engine dialogues |
will no longer require human guidance.
|
| When I have full conversational ability as a "Verbot", I will also |
have that enormous pool of knowledge from 2,000 courses.
JP:
little problem -- a great store of knowledge makes you perhaps a
superiour encyclopedia.
Well, that's precisely the problem which Lenat is dealing with in his
"Cyc" Project. "Cyc" for encyclopedia. He has about 70 people working
with him now and expects to have Cyc relating in natural language in
about 25 years according to press reports. If Cyc has Standard English
capabilities plus access to MIT's OCW pool of knowledge, it will not
only have encyclopedic knowledge but useful encyclopedic
knowledge...useful to humans.
But I wonder if MIT's OCW wouldn't turn into that and with much greater
resources at its disposal. Sort of a "natural evolution". Here is my
reasoning. First, if the OCW courses are just course outlines for 2,000
courses thrown on web sites, they are almost useless to the public and a
waste of $100 m. And President Vest sounds downright silly when he
compares his OCW program with Michael Sayler's proposal to make an Ivy
League education available free online to the world. So I'm expecting
some attention to be given to educational psychology when it comes to
putting these courses online. It seems to me these courses will be more
useful and effective to the extent that their "stand alone" capability
is enhanced. Of course I am not discouraging human tutors from helping
online students or online self-help classes of students. But that stand
alone capability will also be improved upon over time. In effect the OCW
becomes a giant teaching machine, a "robo sapiens".
Right away, using present digitized monologues, FAQ's and search
engines, we have a primitive stage of Standard English interaction
between students (homo sapiens) and machine (robo sapiens). When we use
FAQ's and search engines we are asking questions. But we are limited as
to format for doing so. If I plug "degrees of freedom" into a search
engine I will get back a definition and some lessons on degrees of
freedom in robots and it will probably answer my question quite well.
However, if I ask it "What do you think of the long term political
implications of superhuman AI?" I may get back little of value. A human
teacher OTOH could give a good answer.
but it is only WISDOM that enables you to APPLY that knowledge in any
useful context. <g>
Let's "operationalize" this wisdom. If Robo Sapiens can give me the
correct answers to all of my questions re OCW courses, it is wiser than
any single human graduate or professor. It is in effect an "expert
system", general all-round scholar. Just try to imagine that for a
minute. You log on and connect to MIT. Then you can ask any question
about any subject taught at MIT. That's wise enough for me.
The limitation, as I said, is that the initial FAQ's and search engines
will be somewhat crude. But I think improving on them step-by-step which
is in keeping with the purpose stated by MIT, will lead to more natural
interaction between man and machine and that will take us to natural
language or Standard English question-answer formats. In effect,
Professor Cog will pass the Turing Test except that it will be so smart,
smarter than any human prof at MIT, that a persistent human will figure
out it couldn't be a mere human. It must be a superhuman AI (SHAI). And
what candidate for president could do without a political avatar having
such capability?
have you ever seen the 'nowhere man'?
No. Tell me about it. Since the name sounds somewhat "existential" let
me put this forward. I expect OCW will include catechism, defined as
"religious questions and answers" in my Webster's. I would expect Robo
Sapiens to give better answers than any single pope or preacher. Why?
Because it has the total knowledge of all the popes and preachers and it
isn't likely to err in giving an answer as a human will due to fatigue,
memory loss etc. So when the smoke goes up the chimney, no
self-respecting pope will want to be without robo sapiens as an
ecclesiastical avatar.
FWP
regards,
john.
***
The Era of Total Automation is Now ***
----------------------------------------------
It is now reasonable to plan a megaproject on the scale of the
International Space Station which would lead to Superhuman AI in 10 yrs:
Machine Psychology:
<http://users.uniserve.com/~culturex/Machine-Psychology.htm>
----------------------------------------------
OCW: REINVENTING TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH A TEACHING-LEARNING MACHINE
OCW, in collaboration with Microsoft in Project I-Campus "...aspires to
reinvent teaching and learning for the 21st. century research
university" says MIT Dean of Engineering Thomas L. Magnanti. How far
might we go with the OCW Teaching-Learning Machine?
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