Over on the AGI mail list, JAR said yesterday: > I have never subscribed to the "hard takeoff" > model because it is quite apparently based on > defective assumptions about the characteristics > of the required computation. No one has made a > convincing argument to the contrary, it boils down > to someone inventing AGI "and then magic happens" > without much thought as to what that implies. > It will be a soft takeoff, quite possibly very soft.
What scares Me(entifex) about The Singularity as we write our code that launches it, is the quasi-fact that we have this once-in-a-Big-Bang event which could occur in manifold ways, none of which we have any control over. Some years ago, Vernor Vinge supposedly said that, when the Singularity starts, the machines will become superintelligent and world-dominant in just a matter of hours. I hope that Vernor Vinge is wrong and that J. Andrew Rogers is right, because the exhilaration of the approach is tinged with a deep, morbid fear. Anyway, on this last day of September 2010 I would like to report on the up-to-the-minute status of Project Singularitatifex a.k.a. Mentifex (Mindmaker). Two days ago on Tues.28.SEP.2010 I uploaded http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/mindforth.txt -- the 28sep10C.F version of the MindForth AI. These MindForth releases have A, B or C towards the end to designate multiple versions of a day. The queer and unusual thing about that most recent MindForth is that it is the first-ever "interesting" Forthmind to talk to. If you run it in Transcript mode, it tries various gambits by means of http://code.google.com/p/mindforth/wiki/KbTraversal to get you to talk to it about knowledge base items. One day ago on Wed.29.SEP.2010 I decided to code http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/AiMind.html because recently it has been getting two or three times as many hits (Web visits) as MindForth AI does. Isn't it queer that a puny little JavaScript AI program may do more to launch the Singularity than a much more powerful AI written in Forth? On 17 September 2010 I discovered the resource of http://nlp.naturalparsing.com/documentation/jstutorial which is the Web page of someone who has translated the Stanford Natural Language Parser into JavaScript. I left a comment there to inquire about the possible merging of the Mentifex JSAI and the JavaScript Parser, but when I got no answer I took the queer and unusual step of linking from the front screen of the JSAI to http://nlp.naturalparsing.com/documentation/jstutorial so that the matter jumps out of my own hands and into the vast and unpredictable reaches of the Internet. Upshot: As the 2010/2011 pre-Singularity school year begins here in America, a school-worthy MindForth AI has been released, and the JavaScript AI is playing catch-up because it is exponentially easier to run http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/AiMind.html than Mind.F "Adsum qui feci" (Singularitatem), Mentifex ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/8660244-d750797a Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
