Pei> (2) A true AGI should have the potential to learn any natural Pei> language (though not necessarily to the level of native Pei> speakers).
This embodies an implicit assumption about language which is worth noting. It is possible that the nature of natural language is such that humans could not learn it if they did not have the key preprogrammed in genetically. Much data supports, and many authors would argue, that humans have preprogrammed genetically a predisposition, what I would call a strong inductive bias, to learn grammar of a certain type. It is likely that they would be unable to learn grammar nearly as fast as they do without it, indeed it might be computationally intractable even were they given many lifetimes. Moreover, I argue that language is built on top of a heavy inductive bias to develop a certain conceptual structure, which then renders the names of concepts highly salient so that they can be readily learned. (This explains how we can learn 10 words a day, which children routinely do.) An AGI might in principle be built on top of some other conceptual structure, and have great difficulty comprehending human words-- mapping them onto its concepts, much less learning them. Moreover, it is worth noting the possibility that the amount of computation that might in principle be necessary for learning a "natural language" can't be bounded as one might think. Historically, natural language was a creation of evolution (or of evolution plus human ingenuity, but since humans were a creation of evolution, and in my view evolution may often work by creating mechanisms that then lead to ``or make" other discoveries, we can just consider this for some purposes as a creation of evolution.) Thus, you might posit that the amount of computation necessary for learning a natural language is bounded by the (truly vast) amount of computation that evolution could have devoted to the problem. *But this does not follow*. Evolution did not "learn" natural language; it created it. To the extent that language is an encryption system, evolution thus *chose* the encryption key, it did not have to decrypt it. Thus in principle at least, learning a natural language without being given the key could be a very hard problem indeed, not something that even evolution would have been capable of. This is discussed in more detail in What is Thought?, ch 12 I believe. Eric Baum ----- 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/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
