IN the final analysis, Ben, you're giving me excuses rather than solutions.
Your pet control program is a start - at least I have a vague, still v. vague idea of what you might be doing. You could (I'm guessing) say : this AGI is designed to control a pet which will have to solve adaptive problems like a) hide in surprising places within a complex environment and b) negotiate a complex environment strewn with obstacles and find new ways to destinations That more particular problem or type of problem, can then be generalised into vast classes of problems about agents finding new ways about complex environments - from searching buildings, to playing soccer or field games, to shopping in supermarkets or malls, etc. (In the end, you could probably generalise that class to include ALL problems period - including searching through information environments on the Net and in conversations). (Actually your mission statement should start the other way round - with the general class of problems/ activities you envisage - and then the particular examples that your AGI is going to concentrate on first.. and then indicate how you think it might progress). P.S. This is a truly weird conversation. It's like you're saying.."Hell it's a box, why should I have to tell you what my box does?" Only insiders care what's inside the box. The rest of the world wants to know what it does - and that's the only way they'll buy it and pay attention to it - and the only reason they should. Life's short. ----- Original Message ----- From: Benjamin Goertzel To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 2:39 PM Subject: Re: [agi] The role of incertainty However, reading your papers & Ben's, it's becoming clear that there may well be an industry-wide bad practice going on here. You guys all focus on how your systems WORK... The first thing anyone trying to understand your or any other system must know is what does it DO? What are the problems it addresses, and the kinds of solutions it provides? Hey Mike: What are the problems you address, and the kinds of solutions you provide? I could ask the same question about my 10 year old daughter ... or a newborn baby... My point is: an AGI system is by definition not restricted to a highly particular problem domain ... so the set of problems and solutions potentially addressable by any AGI system will be extremely broad.... Thinking in terms of incremental pathways to AGI, one may posit particular problem domains as targets for partial versions of one's AGI. But then there is a danger that people will see those "interim problem domains" and overgeneralize and believe that is what one's AGI system is all about. For instance, the first commercial manifestation of the Novamente AI Engine was the use of some of its learning routines inside the Biomind ArrayGenius product for gene expression microarray data analysis. So what? The next commercial manifestation may well be for controlling virtual pets operative within Second Life and/or other virtual worlds. Again, so what? This doesn't mean that Novamente is "basically a virtual pet controller" any more than it's "basically a bioinformatics analysis tool." Once the end goal of AGI is reached, AGI systems will be able to do anything humans can do plus way more. And what AGI systems happen to be used to do on the incremental pathway there, doesn't really tell you that much about the ultimate nature of the AGI systems. (Similarly, e.g., the early applications that the Internet was used for in the 1970's don't really tell you much about the ultimate nature of the Internet. They tell you something of course, but they leave a lot out, as anyone can see now....) -- Ben G ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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/?&; ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.6.2/782 - Release Date: 01/05/2007 02:10 ----- 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/?member_id=231415&user_secret=fabd7936
