AI is about solving problems that you can't solve yourself. You can program a computer to beat you at chess. You understand the search algorithm, but can't execute it in your head. If you could, then you could beat the computer, and your program will have failed.
Likewise, you should be able to program a computer to solve problems that are beyond your capacity to understand. You understand the learning algorithm, but not what it has learned. If you could understand how it arrived at a particular solution, then you have failed to create an AI smarter than yourself. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ---- From: Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 1:25:33 PM Subject: Re: Re: Re: [agi] A question on the symbol-system hypothesis > A human doesn't have enough time to look through millions of pieces of > data, and doesn't have enough memory to retain them all in memory, and > certainly doesn't have the time or the memory to examine all of the > 10^(insert large number here) different relationships between these > pieces of data. True, however, I would argue that the same is true of an AI. If you assume that an AI can do this, then *you* are not being pragmatic. Understanding is compiling data into knowledge. If you're just brute forcing millions of pieces of data, then you don't understand the problem -- though you may be able to solve it -- and validating your answers and placing intelligent/rational boundaries/caveats on them is not possible. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Philip Goetz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 1:14 PM Subject: Re: Re: Re: [agi] A question on the symbol-system hypothesis > On 11/14/06, Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> > Even now, with a relatively primitive system like the current >> > Novamente, it is not pragmatically possible to understand why the >> > system does each thing it does. >> >> Pragmatically possible obscures the point I was trying to make with >> Matt. If you were to freeze-frame Novamente right after it took an >> action, >> it would be trivially easy to understand why it took that action. >> >> > because >> > sometimes judgments are made via the combination of a large number of >> > weak pieces of evidence, and evaluating all of them would take too >> > much time.... >> >> Looks like a time problem to me . . . . NOT an incomprehensibility >> problem. > > This argument started because Matt said that the wrong way to design > an AI is to try to make it human-readable, and constantly look inside > and figure out what it is doing; and the right way is to use math and > statistics and learning. > > A human doesn't have enough time to look through millions of pieces of > data, and doesn't have enough memory to retain them all in memory, and > certainly doesn't have the time or the memory to examine all of the > 10^(insert large number here) different relationships between these > pieces of data. Hence, a human shouldn't design AI systems in a way > that would require a human to have these abilities. > > The question is all about pragmatics. If you dismiss pragmatics, you > are not part of this conversation. > > ----- > 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/?list_id=303 > ----- 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/?list_id=303 ----- 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/?list_id=303
