Re: [agi] The Grounding of Maths
Benjamin Goertzel wrote: Well ... going beyond imaginary numbers... how do *you* do mathematics in quaternionic and octonionic algebras? Via visualization? Personally, I can sorta visualize 4D, but I I suck at visualizing 8-dimensional space, so I tend to reason more abstractly when thinking about such things... Just visualize it in N-dimensional space, then let N go to 8. -- 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/?member_id=8660244id_secret=53003544-daa2f4
Re: Self-improvement is not a special case (was Re: [agi] Religion-free technical content)
Tim Freeman wrote: My point is that if one is worried about a self-improving Seed AI exploding, one should also be worried about any AI that competently writes software exploding. There *is* a slight gap between competently writing software and competently writing minds. Large by human standards, not much by interspecies standards. It does involve new math issues, which is why some of us are much impressed by it. Anyone with even a surface grasp of the basic concept on a math level will realize that there's no difference between self-modifying and writing an outside copy of yourself, but *either one* involves the sort of issues I've been calling reflective. -- 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/?member_id=8660244id_secret=53161697-a947ab
Re: [agi] Nirvana? Manyana? Never!
Jiri Jelinek wrote: Let's go to an extreme: Imagine being an immortal idiot.. No matter what you do how hard you try, the others will be always so much better in everything that you will eventually become totally discouraged or even afraid to touch anything because it would just always demonstrate your relative stupidity (/limitations) in some way. What a life. Suddenly, there is this amazing pleasure machine as a new god-like-style of living for poor creatures like you. What do you do? Jiri, Is this really what you *want*? Out of all the infinite possibilities, this is the world in which you would most want to live? -- 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/?member_id=8660244id_secret=60221250-a74559
Re: [agi] Nirvana? Manyana? Never!
Jiri Jelinek wrote: Is this really what you *want*? Out of all the infinite possibilities, this is the world in which you would most want to live? Yes, great feelings only (for as many people as possible) and the engine being continuously improved by AGI which would also take care of all related tasks including safety issues etc. The quality of our life is in feelings. Or do we know anything better? We do what we do for feelings and we alter them very indirectly. We can optimize and get the greatest stuff allowed by the current design by direct altering/stimulations (changes would be required so we can take it non-stop). Whatever you enjoy, it's not really the thing you are doing. It's the triggered feeling which can be obtained and intensified more directly. We don't know exactly how those great feelings (/qualia) work, but there is a number of chemicals and brain regions known to play key roles. I didn't ask whether it's possible. I'm quite aware that it's possible. I'm asking if this is what you want for yourself. Not what you think that you ought to logically want, but what you really want. Is this what you lived for? Is this the most that Jiri Jelinek wants to be, wants to aspire to? Forget, for the moment, what you think is possible - if you could have anything you wanted, is this the end you would wish for yourself, more than anything else? -- 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/?member_id=8660244id_secret=60231781-e47c04
Re: [agi] Nirvana? Manyana? Never!
Jiri Jelinek wrote: Ok, seriously, what's the best possible future for mankind you can imagine? In other words, where do we want our cool AGIs to get us? I mean ultimately. What is it at the end as far as you can see? That's a very personal question, don't you think? Even the parts I'm willing to answer have long answers. It doesn't involve my turning into a black box with no outputs, though. Nor ceasing to act, nor ceasing to plan, nor ceasing to steer my own future through my own understanding of it. Nor being kept as a pet. I'd sooner be transported into a randomly selected anime. -- 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/?member_id=8660244id_secret=60516560-38feaf
Re: [agi] Nirvana? Manyana? Never!
Jiri Jelinek wrote: On Nov 2, 2007 4:54 AM, Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You turn it into a tautology by mistaking 'goals' in general for 'feelings'. Feelings form one, somewhat significant at this point, part of our goal system. But intelligent part of goal system is much more 'complex' thing and can also act as a goal in itself. You can say that AGIs will be able to maximize satisfaction of intelligent part too, Could you please provide one specific example of a human goal which isn't feeling-based? Saving your daughter's life. Most mothers would prefer to save their daughter's life than to feel that they saved their daughter's life. In proof of this, mothers sometimes sacrifice their lives to save their daughters and never get to feel the result. Yes, this is rational, for there is no truth that destroys it. And before you claim all those mothers were theists, there was an atheist police officer, signed up for cryonics, who ran into the World Trade Center and died on September 11th. As Tyrone Pow once observed, for an atheist to sacrifice their life is a very profound gesture. -- 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/?member_id=8660244id_secret=60544283-64b657
Re: [agi] Questions
Monika Krishan wrote: 2. Would it be a worthwhile exercise to explore what Human General Intelligence, in it's present state, is capable of ? Nah. -- 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/?member_id=8660244id_secret=61467350-a90b30
[agi] Re: What best evidence for fast AI?
Robin Hanson wrote: I've been invited to write an article for an upcoming special issue of IEEE Spectrum on Singularity, which in this context means rapid and large social change from human-level or higher artificial intelligence. I may be among the most enthusiastic authors in that issue, but even I am somewhat skeptical. Specifically, after ten years as an AI researcher, my inclination has been to see progress as very slow toward an explicitly-coded AI, and so to guess that the whole brain emulation approach would succeed first if, as it seems, that approach becomes feasible within the next century. But I want to try to make sure I've heard the best arguments on the other side, and my impression was that many people here expect more rapid AI progress. So I am here to ask: where are the best analyses arguing the case for rapid (non-emulation) AI progress? I am less interested in the arguments that convince you personally than arguments that can or should convince a wide academic audience. All the replies on SL4 as of 10:40AM Pacific seem pretty good to me. Why are you asking after rapid progress? It doesn't seem to be the key question. Kahneman's Economic preferences or attitude expressions? An analysis of dollar responses to public issues makes the point that in many cases, people have no anchors, no starting points, for questions like How much should this company be penalized for crime X? and so they substitute judgment of How bad was this company, on a scale of 1 to Y?, where the actual scale Y varies depending on the person, and then tack million dollars onto the end. On one memorable occasion, an AI researcher said to me that he thought it would take 500 years before AGI. 500 years? 500 years ago we didn't even have *science*. So what's going on? I suspect that, especially among AI researchers, the question How long will it be before we get AGI?, is more of an attitude expression than a historical estimate - On a scale of 1 to Y, how hard is it to build AGI? - where Y varies from person to person, and then they tack on years at the end. Naturally, building AGI will seem *very* hard if you can't imagine any way to do it (the imaginability heuristic) and so they'll give a response near the upper end of their scale. The one responded as if I had asked, On a scale of 1 to 500, how hard does building AGI *feel*? The key realization here is that building a flying machine would also *feel* very hard if you did not know how to do it. But this reflects a knowledge gap, rather than solid knowledge of specific implementation difficulties. We know how stars work, therefore we know it would be difficult to build a star from hydrogen atoms. Some magazine or other, in 1903, said that future flying machines would be built by the work of millions of years(!) of mathematicians and mechanists. They didn't know how to do it, and they confused this feeling of difficulty for the positive estimate that doing it *with* knowledge would be very difficult. As for knowledge itself, that is a matter of pure basic research, and if we knew the outcome we wouldn't need to do the research. How can you put a time estimate on blue-sky fundamental research delivering a brilliant new insight? Far or near? It's also possible that AI researchers are substituting judgment of How long would it take to create AGI *using the techniques you know*? in which case 500 years might well be an underestimate, if it could be done at all, like trying to carve Mount Rushmore using toothpicks. Others may substitute judgment of How good do you feel about AI? and give a short time estimate, reflecting their general feelings of goodwill toward the field. We have no reason to believe that timing is predictable even in principle - that it will be a narrow distribution over Everett branches - let alone that we can predict it in practice with knowledge presently available to us. -- 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/?member_id=8660244id_secret=63880401-d5511d
[agi] OpenMind, MindPixel founders both commit suicide
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-02/ff_aimystery?currentPage=all I guess the moral here is Stay away from attempts to hand-program a database of common-sense assertions. -- 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/?member_id=8660244id_secret=87836028-f6311f
Re: [agi] OpenMind, MindPixel founders both commit suicide
Joshua Fox wrote: Turing also committed suicide. And Chislenko. Each of these people had different circumstances, and suicide strikes everywhere, but I wonder if there is a common thread. Ramanujan, like many other great mathematicians and achievers, died young. There are on the other hand many great mathematicians and achievers that lived to old age. I dare not say whether it is dangerous to be a genius without access to more complete statistics. -- Kai-Mikael Jää-Aro - http://www.nada.kth.se/~kai/lectures/geb.html -- 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/?member_id=8660244id_secret=87869011-a6e042
