I think there are quite a few programs that give your computer a personal
identity - put some kind of personal assistant on the screen - or maybe give
it some kind of voice. Such programs obviously could be adapted or developed
to become your personal coach, mentor in the work struggle.
But I don't think they've caught on - though I don't know why. In broad
principle, it sounds like a good idea to use your puter to buck you on -
though nothing to do with AGI - but perhaps there are a lot of difficulties
in the details. Possibly one is that you have to first accept your mentor,
whether a computer or a person - and that may be as hard as accepting the
urgings of your own conscience.
-----Original Message-----
From: Russell Wallace
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 5:14 PM
To: AGI
Subject: [agi] Killer application
For those of you working on AI systems intended to be able to hold
conversations in English, I just figured out a killer application.
One of the biggest problems the developed world faces today is
akrasia. It's not something we are programmed to instinctively find
scary, but if you add up the cold numbers for the fraction of people's
lives wasted watching television or playing World of Warcraft, the
epidemic of obesity - now a health problem on the same order of
magnitude as cancer - the social problems of drug addiction, the
endless stories about broken resolutions and failed attempts to fix
one's life that get nearly everyone in the room nodding in recognition
- there aren't a whole lot of more serious problems short of death
itself, and it's going to keep getting worse decade by decade as the
world moves further from the environment in which our motivation
systems evolved.
The most powerful weapon against akrasia is social pressure. Our minds
are programmed to act based on encouragement and discouragement from
other people, not to operate autonomously; but the old social
institutions have largely broken down. One man went so far as to hire
someone to sit beside him and slap him every time he started goofing
off (1). His productivity quadrupled. But despite the demonstrated
success of this option, most people won't take it, because hiring
people is expensive and has social complications of its own.
The solution may lie in another quirk of the human mind: our tendency
to anthropomorphize; we instinctively attribute personhood to all
sorts of things - including, in some circumstances, computer programs
(2).
In other words, a companion AI program would not have to be good
enough to pass the Turing test. It would only have to be good enough
to *feel* like a person. To make your motivation system *feel* as if
it were a person encouraging you to stop reading reddit and get back
to work, to put down that cookie, to go to the gym. Leechblock doesn't
try. Microsoft Bob failed. But Eliza succeeded by accident, albeit in
a different domain, so it can be done.
One of the world's biggest problems is there for solving. We are now
at the point where a program capable of solving it could run on a cell
phone. I think there's a few billion dollars up for grabs by a team
that can deliver - and you'd be making the world a better place.
(1)
http://hackthesystem.com/blog/why-i-hired-a-girl-on-craigslist-to-slap-me-in-the-face-and-why-it-quadrupled-my-productivity/
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
-------------------------------------------
AGI
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/6952829-59a2eca5
Modify Your Subscription:
https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
-------------------------------------------
AGI
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-c97d2393
Modify Your Subscription:
https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-2484a968
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
