Mike,
There is something fascinating going on here - if you could suspend your
desire for precision, you might see that you are at least half-consciously
offering contributions as well as objections. (Tune in to your constructive
side).
I remember thinking that you were probably undercutting yourself with the
example of the elephant and the chair. Here you certainly are.
What you offered was a fine example of human adaptivity. Your wife took a
fairly straightforward sentence "How would you feel about fencing in our
yard?" and found a new kind of meaning for it - a new and surprising kind
of way of achieving the goal of understanding it - switched from the obvious
meaning of fencing to the fighting meaning. That's classic adaptivity.
Jokes do this all the time - see Arthur Koestler's The Ghost in the Machine.
They are another form of adaptivity/ creativity.
[Another comparable example would be the Airport-type joke:
A: You can't mean: go to the hospital, surely?
B; Yes I do. And don't call me Shirley.]
The reality of human communication is that we are always open as we are with
jokes - for doubles entendres, double triple meanings. It is an inevitable
part of using language.
There is absolutely no way of using language with the precision you require.
It's a long discredited philosopher's dream.
So an AGI machine - that is to use language - must be prepared for
ambiguities all the time.
A reasonable response of an AGI machine to my "A to B or D" sentence would
be like yours - "do you mean this or that?" To try and resolve the
ambiguity. Although I wouldn't call that adaptivity, more a standard,
algorithmic response.
A more reasonable - and perhaps somewhat adaptive - response, however, would
I suggest have been along the lines of: "does it matter which is the
meaning? - the problem he's setting (finding another kind of way to move to
a goal) remains the same with either meaning." There would have been a
certain minimal adaptivity in then suspending/ varying the normal response.
(In my adaptive examples for new ways of getting from A to B - I tried to
use striking examples - like wheelbarrows etc - but of course the borderline
between what is a standard, algorithmic way of achieving a goal and an
adaptive way, may be much shadier).
P.S. Another interesting question that comes back to the issue of : how does
the human brain connect up these very different alternative ways of
achieving goals - is: how did your brain jump from the "do you mean A to B
or D ?" etc question/ objection to the "fencing in the yard" example?
The thought occurs to me that your objection may have been trying to "fence
me in" (by asking actually for the impossible re language precision) - &
that led to the joke connection (which may actually have been the other side
of your mind demonstrating that there is always another way to understand
language sentences).
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Dougherty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 2:44 AM
Subject: Re: [agi] HOW ADAPTIVE ARE YOU [NOVAMENTE] BEN?
On 4/29/07, Richard Loosemore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The idea that human beings should constrain themselves to a simplified,
artificial kind of speech in order to make life easier for an AI, is one
of those Big Excuses that AI developers have made, over the years, to
cover up the fact that they don't really know how to build a true AI.
It is a temptation to be resisted.
No retreat to hard-coded blocks world programs.
You're right - we should continue to use language poorly as is our
right as humans to communicate past each other without identifying the
failure of either the sender or the recipient for message integrity.
I see now how that makes much more sense for email lists, so it should
apply well to "true AGI"
I'm not exactly clear on "true AGI" - do any humans possess this trait?
ok, I know there's a snarky tone here, but I thought I had a valid
point (I'm sure I'll be shown my error soon enough)
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