Steve,
Yes it's good to acknowledge that you recognize the importance of in-the-field
investigation and hands-on experimentation to creative problem-solving.
But you have yet - and, as you more or less indicate, everyone in AI and AGI -
has yet to show me (or, I think, the world), that they have gone any way to
producing a general/creative intelligence.
For example, how is it going to be able to completely redefine the problem - a
fairly standard requirement for an awful lot of creativity - say in relation to
disease-diagnosis. How is it going to have the capacity to question whether
what looks like the result of a potential virus, may actually be due to
lifestyle, and life style in a sense that no one has yet defined it? (I'm being
really cussed here :) but it's valid)
How is it going to have the imagination to conceive of an altogether new kind
of invasive organism, or a standard organism behaving in a way never thought
of before? How is it going to be able to say - wait a minute, what if neuronal
memory works something like that funny metal that can remember its old shape
when heated?
A truly creative program is an AWESOMELY hard problem. Just getting a basically
adaptive program that pace Ben's could develop something like hide-and-seek
independently, after learning to fetch, is hard enough - or a maze-running
creature that could, say, learn to climb over maze walls and not just run round
them..
Mike,
On 4/24/08, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Steve:What is a novel solution?! Since THIS question seems to be driving
much the current AGI efforts, I think that this should be completely wrung
out.My program will identify the parts of the problem that ARE known and direct
effort to the "missing pieces".
You're right that creativity, small and large, is at the centre of AGI. But
I've never met an AGI-er who really does want to "wring it out" - even say
Minsky. Because the conclusion is painful. And that's that a program can only
do so much. It can't normally identify "the missing pieces" in creative
problems.
Much of my working career has been as a high-tech consultant of last resort -
someone that an investor brings into a failing company just before "pulling the
plug". Since in a real sense I must compete creatively with those who preceded
me - and who probably know more about the problem domain than I do, I have had
to develop a general approach to creativity in these situations. The one that
seems to work best is to set about proving that there is no solution, and
somewhere along the way to a proof there will emerge an insurmountable gap that
points the way to a solution.
The main way science does that - and science surely has to be a major
paradigm of creativity - is, in part, by scientists going out into the field,
and collecting fresh observations, and performing new tests, (and even touching
and talking to patients). You have to, of course, if you're trying to be
creative and discover something, look for new kinds of evidence and perform new
kinds of experiments, But there is no substitute for going into the field. You
can't just do it in the computer room, or study. And you can't just direct
others, from the comfort of your computational armchair, to look for you.
Actually this is fundamental to most artistic and historical discovery. And
it's fundamental to technological creativity. You do have to play around with
those pieces of metal and get hands-on experience.
YES. One of my technical interests is longevity. Most people in this field
never see anyone with gray hair! Most of my advances came from working with
elderly people who were up against "age-related" disorders, and finding that
many of the assumptions that "researchers" were working on were just plain
wrong. Only ~1% of older people actually die from aging. The rest die of
something else. My own work has been in observing and later in correcting the
consistencies in the things that are actually killing older people.
If you're trying to market some new product, it's vital to go out and talk
to potential customers. Or are you suggesting that scientific, artistic,
historical, technological & business creativity can be entirely programmed? And
AGI-ers needn't talk to investors?
There is SUCH a gap between the mind of an AGIer and the mind of an investor,
that I doubt that anything but suspicion could be communicated.
(You do realise, also, that the history of human creativity is the story of
endless resistance to going out into the field and on location. Natural
philosophers, for example, had to be dragged out kicking and screaming by
Bacon, before they became scientists. And this has been repeated in field after
field. Computer chairs are so comfy).
I hadn't thought about or realized this. THIS is a VERY significant
statement. This suggests an appropriate caveat right at the front of any
prospectus or proposal, to guide investment money away from other proposals and
hopefully to the one in hand. for example:
Longevity: Investments in research efforts that do NOT involve working with
elderly people to solve their real-world problems that are relevant to the
research, at best can only result in elegant solutions to non-problems.
AGI: R&D investments must target the markets and technology of 5-10 years in
the future to produce the large and solid profits that investors now expect.
Computer technology has now proceeded to the point that human-like capability
should be expected from new investments, yet this is not yet available in
off-the-shelf software. Hence we plan to perform some actual research
(currently rare for R&D efforts) to more accurately target the future market
that our competitors will be doomed to miss because of their lack of research.
Is this the sort of message that you think needs to be conveyed?
Steve Richfield
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