Is there space within the charity world for another one related to intelligence but with a different focus to SIAI?
Rather than specifically funding an AGI effort or creating one in order to bring about a specific goal state of humanity in mind, it would be dedicated to funding a search for the answers to a series of questions that will help answer the questions of, "What is intelligence?" and, "What are the possible futures that follow on from humans discovering what intelligence is?" The second question being answered once we have better knowledge of the answer to the first. I feel a charity is needed to focus the some of the efforts of all of us, as the time is not right for applications, and we are all pulling in diverse directions. The sorts of questions I would like the charity to fund to answer are the following (in a full and useful fashion, my own very partial answers follow). 1) What sorts of limits are there to learning systems? 2) Which systems can approach those limits?And are they suitable for creating intelligences, depending upon their assumptions they make about the world around them. I am following this track, as a system that can make better use of the information streams to alter how it behaves, than other systems, is more likely to be what we think of as intelligent. The only caveat to this is that this is true as long as it has to deal with the same classes or quality of information streams as humans. Pointers towards answers 1) No system can make justified choices about how it should behave at a greater rate than the bit rate of their input streams. 2)A von Neumann architecture computer, loading a program from external information sources, approaches that limit (as it makes a choice to alter its behaviour by one bit for every bit it receives, assuming a non redundant encoding of the program). It is not suitable for intelligent systems though as it assumes that the information it gets from the environment is correct and non-hostile. How to make a system with the same ability to approach the limits to learning and deal with potentially harmful information is what I would like to focus on after these answers are formalised. I would be interested in other peoples opinion on these questions and answers, and also the questions they would get an intelligence research charity to fund. Will Pearson ----- 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=e9e40a7e
