I have not been that interested in combinatorics, graph theory, weighted reasoning, Bayesian methods and so on because I felt that these were all logic based and that the simplest way to develop an AGI application would be to stick to basics and only use simple forms of these methods if I needed them. I believed that there are certain discreet obstacles to advancing AGI at this time and solutions to these problems really needed to be found before any substantial advances could be made. However, now that I am starting to appreciate how combinatorics can help with discreet based systems and may even be essential to using logic effectively, I am, unsurprisingly, changing my view about this.
So I recommend that anyone in this group who feels as I felt should start brushing up on combinatorics, graph theory and so on. Many of us know that computers are good at working with narrow results and this has produced major advances in ‘narrow AI’. Developers who worked with probability reasoning thought that their methods should be sufficient to overcome the narrow AI dilemma, but I haven’t seen that. (I do appreciate the many advances that AI has made and I do not totally accept the narrow AI dismissal, but on the other hand I am still amazed that AI programs do not seem to exhibit the ability to learn even in the simple ways that we would expect from toddlers.) So why are combinatorics so important for discrete symbolic AGI? Using logic as an example of a tightly defined discrete system, you can see that multiple solutions can be held in a tightly compressed formula string. What is more, subclasses of these different solutions can often be derived from a portion of the formula or from a simple analysis and rearrangement using portions of the formula. Combinatorics is one way we can get to this logical multiplicity as it may relate to logical sub-relations. Right now these methods are limited but there is no reason to expect that this method will be stuck with its current limitations. Jim Bromer ------------------------------------------- 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
