>> You seem to be thinking about Webmind, an AI company I was involved in >> during the late 1990's; as opposed to Biomind
Yes, sorry, I'm laboring under a horrible cold and my brain is not all here. >> The big-O order is almost always irrelevant. Most algorithms useful for >> cognition are exponential-time worst-case complexity. What matters is >> average-case complexity over the probability distribution of problem >> instances actually observed in the real world. And yeah, this is very hard >> to estimate mathematically. Well . . . . big-O order certainly does matter for things like lookups and activation where we're not talking about heuristic shortcuts and average complexity. But I would certainly accept your correction for other operations like finding modularity and analogies -- except we don't have good heuristic shortcuts, etc. for them -- yet. >> Saying a system is universally capable doesn't mean hardly anything, and >> isn't really worth saying. Nope. Saying it usually forestalls a lot of silly objections. That's really worthwhile. :-) >> I believe Richard's complaints are of a quite different character than >> yours. And I might be projecting . . . . :-) which is why I figured I'd run this out there and see how he reacted. :-) ----- Original Message ----- From: Benjamin Goertzel To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, November 12, 2007 5:14 PM Subject: Re: [agi] What best evidence for fast AI? On Nov 12, 2007 5:02 PM, Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I'm going to try to put some words into Richard's mouth here since I'm curious to see how close I am . . . . (while radically changing the words). I think that Richard is not arguing about the possibility of Novamente-type solutions as much as he is arguing about the predictability of *very* flexible Novamente-type solutions as they grow larger and more complex (and the difficulty in getting it to not instantaneously "crash-and-burn"). Indeed, I have heard a very faint shadow of Richard's concerns in your statements about the "tuning" problems that you had with BioMind. You seem to be thinking about Webmind, an AI company I was involved in during the late 1990's; as opposed to Biomind, a bioinformatics company in which I am currently involved, and which is doing pretty well. The Webmind AI Engine was an order of magnitude more complex than the Novamente Cognition Engine; and this is intentional. Many aspects of the NM design were specifically originated to avoid problems that we found with the Webmind system. I've got many doubts because I don't think that you have a handle on the order -- the big (O) -- of many of the operations you are proposing (why I harp on scalability, modularity, etc.). The big-O order is almost always irrelevant. Most algorithms useful for cognition are exponential-time worst-case complexity. What matters is average-case complexity over the probability distribution of problem instances actually observed in the real world. And yeah, this is very hard to estimate mathematically. Richard is going further and saying that the predictability of even some of your smaller/simpler operations is impossible (although, as he has pointed out, many of them could be constrained by attractors, etc. if you were so inclined to view/treat your design that way). Oh, I thought **I** was the one who pointed that out. Personally, I believe that intelligence is *not* complex -- despite the fact that it does (probably necessarily) rest on top of complex pieces -- because those pieces' interactions are constrained enough that intelligence is stable. I think that this could be built into a Novamente-type design *but* you have to be attempting to do so (and I think that I could convince Richard of that -- or else, I'd learn a lot by trying :-). That is part of the plan, but we have a bunch of work of implementing/tuning components first. Richard's main point is that he believes that the search space of viable parameters and operations for Novamente is small enough that you're not going to hit it by accident -- and Novamente's very flexibility is what compounds the problem. The Webmind system had this problem. Novamente is carefully designed not to. Of course, I can't prove that it won't, though. Remember, life exists on the boundary between order and chaos. Too much flexibility (unconstrained chaos) is as deadly as too much structure. I think that I see both sides of the issue and how Novamente could be altered/enhanced to make Richard happy (since it's almost universally flexible) -- Novamente is universally capable but so are a lot of way simpler, pragmatically useless system. Saying a system is universally capable doesn't mean hardly anything, and isn't really worth saying. The question as you know is what can a system do given a pragmatic amount of computational resources and life-experience. but doing so would also impose many constraints that I think that you would be unwilling to live with since I'm not sure that you would see the point. I don't think that you're ever going to be able to change his view that the current direction of Novamente is -- pick one: a) a needle in an infinite haystack or b) too fragile to succeed -- particularly since I'm pretty sure that you couldn't convince me without making some serious additions to Novamente I believe Richard's complaints are of a quite different character than yours. And, I don't know what additions you are suggesting, so I can't say if I would consider them useful or not. -- Ben ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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/?&; ----- 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=8660244&id_secret=64363398-c61489
