On Apr 29, 2008, at 1:46 AM, Russell Wallace wrote:
Suppose we say there are two types of intelligence (not in any
rigorous sense, just in broad classification):
Deliberative. Able to prove theorems, solve the Busy Beaver problem
for small N, write and prove properties of small functions, construct
cellular automata computers for small functions, derive small
functions from specifications, notice what it's doing, accept symbolic
heuristics to improve its efficiency, think about said heuristics etc.
Symbolic intelligence that can, in some crude sense, copy some of the
things humans can symbolically do.
Spatial. Able to perceive patterns in two or three dimensions. Can be
used, with mods, for a robot visual cortex; image recognition; given a
series of photographs of a landmark from varying viewpoints, can
derive a 3d model and backtrack that to the 2d image visible from any
other viewpoint; can pathfind units around a map in a video game; can
make much better than random guesses as to likely folds of a new
protein chain; can animate a cartoon from the description "cat sits on
mat".
I will take a third position and point out that there is no real
distinction between these two categories, or at least if there is you
are doing it wrong. One of the amusing and fruitless patterns of
behavior in the AI community is the incessant categorization of
various processes into nominally distinct buckets in the absence of a
theoretically justifiable reason for doing so. The above is such an
example.
As a general comment, the computer science literature on the D-
oriented side of things is *much* deeper than the S-oriented side of
things, and the literature that theoretically integrates the two is
thin on the ground indeed. This is probably a reflection of the
observation that competency at D is far more widely distributed than
S, or at least that far more competent people have worked on D than on
S.
When I originally switched to the "Spatial" side of things, one of the
first things I noticed was that the backing theory and literature was
medieval compared to what you call the "Deliberative" side. On the
downside that meant that there was not a lot to work from, but on the
upside that also meant there was still a fair amount of low-hanging
fruit left to be picked. Spatial can scale extremely well in a very
general sense, but you'll have to do some original work to get there
because your off-the-shelf computer science will leave you wanting.
It should actually be pretty obvious, even without really hammering
out the theory, how the "Deliberative" part can be trivially expressed
in a "Spatial" solution -- the former can be correctly viewed as a
narrow instance of the latter.
J. Andrew Rogers
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agi
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