Mike, You are 100% correct. The BIG problem for COBOL doing things like serious AI has been a lack of imagination in producing language extensions that are grammatically correct English.
Here, we have all of the imagination needed to do ANYTHING, so let's come up with some proposed language extensions/changes so that people can write their AI code in something that is readable as English. It is a little cumbersome to write this way, but it DOES chase out most of the bugs before ever running the code, and it makes it easy to manage HUGE programs. Perhaps something like the Matrix extensions that were in the original Dartmouth BASIC but were later dropped by almost everyone. There, a statement like: MAT A = B + C added the elements of the B matrix to the elements of the C matrix, and stored the results in the A matrix. An extended COBOL to do the same might be Add matrix B to matrix C giving matrix A. This worked for most statements, e.g. MAT INPUT A input the elements of matrix A Of course matrices were brought to great refinement in APL, whose semantics would probably be much better than BASIC's simplistic semantics. Much more would be needed. On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 10:19 PM, Mike Archbold via AGI <[email protected]> wrote: > I spent ten years writing COBOL code. Everybody makes fun of COBOL > but if you are doing bread and butter stuff, it's fine. I mean, you > don't need no fancy graphics or fancy anything, no big data, no neural > nets, no Tononi, no chaotic dynamics,.... for most business > transactions. COBOL is simple, like rock and roll. Three chord > stuff. > > On 10/15/14, Ben Goertzel via AGI <[email protected]> wrote: > > I can't remember where I was the 97% figure > > > > However, Linux dominates mobile, and has a clear majority of webservers > as > > well > > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Servers_on_the_Internet > > > > -- Ben > > > > On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 11:43 AM, Matt Mahoney via AGI <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > >> On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 9:26 PM, Ben Goertzel <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > Would you be surprised if a ragtag group of OSS developers made a > >> > better > >> OS > >> > than Microsoft, IBM or Apple -- one used to power 97% or so of the > >> Internet > >> > ? > >> > >> Actually the market share for Linux is 1.64%. > >> > >> > http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0 > >> > >> And the total development effort is quite substantial, similar to > >> Windows. The difference is in how the work is funded. In the open > >> source model, information has negative value. You sell yourself by > >> giving away your work. > >> > >> I think a distributed AGI can be funded this way too. But only if > >> there is some compelling reason to use it before it is fully > >> developed. > >> > >> > I don't think an AGI has to pretend to be human ... > >> > >> Yes, we agree on that. Unless we are talking about applications like > >> uploading or identity theft. But once we solve the problem of modeling > >> human minds, it is a simple matter to program them to carry out their > >> predictions of your actions in real time. > >> > >> -- > >> -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] > >> > >> > >> ------------------------------------------- > >> AGI > >> Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > >> RSS Feed: > https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/212726-deec6279 > >> Modify Your Subscription: > >> https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > >> Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > >> > > > > > > > > -- > > Ben Goertzel, PhD > > http://goertzel.org > > > > "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one > > persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress > > depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------- > > AGI > > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > > RSS Feed: > https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/11943661-d9279dae > > 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/303/10443978-6f4c28ac > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > -- Full employment can be had with the stoke of a pen. Simply institute a six hour workday. That will easily create enough new jobs to bring back full employment. ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
