Mark Waser wrote:
Richard,
You're not gaining any supporters this way
Prompted by your enthusiastic write-up, I just wasted one and a half
hours scanning through all of the AGI-08 papers that I downloaded
previously. I have 28 of them; they did not include anything from
Stephen Reed, nor any NARS paper, so I guess my collection must be
incomplete, but even so....
Stephen Reed's video is at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8829736327020081807
All the videos are linked from http://www.agi-08.org/schedule.php
All of the 49 accepted papers are linked from
http://www.agi-08.org/papers/ (though, apparently, Stephen doesn't have
an accepted paper -- Steve, do you have a link or write-up for the paper
that your video was based on somewhere? I couldn't find it anywhere on
the Texai site).
You also missed the point that the papers do NOT reflect what was in the
videos at all since the authors were confined to short overviews but
then appeared as part of a longer panel discussion. The panel
discussions brought out a lot more about the maturing systems like
Novamente, NARS, LIDA, SOAR, etc. and also showed a lot more of the
commonality between approaches.
I saw absolutely nothing that makes me believe that a field called
"Artificial General Intelligence" even exists yet.
And what did you see other than "scanning" the papers? Having attended
the conference, I can assure you that the papers were the least
important thing there. Anyone who is on this list who doesn't attend
AGI-09 is making a *HUGE* mistake. The extended coffee breaks and the
banquet dinner alone were worth the price of admission AND flying out
there. If you had seen the excitement and the commonalities at those
events, you wouldn't be spouting this uninformed nonsense. AGI is a
young field, still in the formative stages, but it is coalescing very
nicely and is well worth any time, money, and attention you can spare.
Uh, if you remember I spent plenty of money going to the precursor
workshop that was AGI-06, in Bethesda. There was great enthusiasm there
too, and I heard many of the same people talk (many of them
incoherently). I had to listen to fatuous idiots laughing at ideas
I had previously looked through those papers when I was thinking of
gong, and I found them mindnumbingly irrelevant. I know this field well
enough that I can scan such papers pretty quickly and understand their
content. Some of them I read from beginning to end, just to check.
Nope, same conclusions.
People do not even have a common LANGUAGE within which they could
discuss the question of whether these papers are arbitrary pet
projects of their creators, or something deeper. Does anyone here
understanding what I mean by that?
I understand what you mean by that. I am telling you that you are
incorrect. People started out with different languages but were well
able to reframe and translate into each other's pet terms quite easily
and there were already examples of the languages converging during the
conference. You just didn't see it because all you looked at were a few
of the papers written well before the conference. Watch the videos.
Come to AGI-09. Stop being a skeptic (until you can clearly articulate
and back up your skepticism ;-).
I did that. I have done it here.
My god, Mark: I had to listen to people having a general discussion of
"grounding" (the supposed them of that workshop) without a single person
showing the slightest sign that they had more than an amateur's
perspective on what that concept actually means. I have a right to be
disgusted with the current state of this field.
I hear people enthusing about systems that are filled with holes that
were discovered decades ago, but still no fix. I read vague
speculations and the use of buzzwords ('Theory of Mind'!?). I see
papers discussing narrow AI projects.
Cynical? You bet I am.
Richard Loosemore
-------------------------------------------
agi
Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now
RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/
Modify Your Subscription:
http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=101455710-f059c4
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
