Steve Richfield wrote:
Richard,
On 6/11/08, *Richard Loosemore* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
I am using cognitive science as a basis for AGI development,
If my fear of paradigm shifting proves to be unfounded, then you may
well be right. However, I would be surprised if there weren't a LOT of
paradigm shifting going on. It would sure be nice to know rather than
taking such a big gamble. Only time will tell for sure.
Your concept of "paradigm shifting" (which, BTW, has nothing to do with
another very well established meaning of the phrase 'paradigm shift')
makes no coherent sense to me, nor does it seem to have any
consequences. You seem only to be talking about transforming
representations from one form to another, which is commonplace.
and finding it not only appropriate, but IMO the only viable approach.
This really boils down to the meaning of "viable".
I wrote a paper specifically describing what I mean when I say that it
is the only viable approach. I do not mean it in any kind of vague,
subjective way, but only in the particular sense described in that
paper. Check it out on my website susaro.com (the complex systems paper
from 2007).
I was asserting that
the cost of gathering more information (e.g. with a scanning UV
fluorescence microscope) was probably smaller than even a single AGI
development project - if you count the true value of your very talented
efforts. Hence, this boils down to what your particular skills are,
which I presume are in AI programming. On the other hand, I have worked
in a major university's neurological surgery lab, wrote programs that
interacted with individual neurons, etc., and hence probably feel
"warmer" about working the lab side of this problem.
FWIW my skills are as a cognitive scientist *and* as an AI software
engineer, both. Before that I was a mathematical physicist.
I recently published a paper in the area of cognitive neuroscience (see
my website).
The cost of doing of brain scan would be far higher than the projected
cost of the most ambitious version of the project I am working on.
The value of such a brain scan for AGI would be extremely doubtful, for
reasons that many people have pointed out.
That means you could spend far more money than would be needed to build
an AGI using cognitive science, and get absolutely nothing useful at the
other end.
Note that no one has funded neuroscience research to determine
information processing functionality - it has ALL been to support
research targeting various illnesses. The IP feedback that has come out
of those efforts is byproduct and NOT the primary goal. It would take
rather little experimentation to make a BIG dent in the many unknowns
relating to AGI if that were the primary goal.
But... the cognitive neuropsychologists and cognitive neuroscientists
have been trying to do exactly that for at least two decades.
You are talking about *neurologists* not neuroscientists. They are two
different types of researcher.
BTW, neuroscience researchers are in the SAME sort of employment warp as
AI people are. All of the research money is now going to genetic
research, leaving classical neuroscience research stalled. They aren't
even working on new operations that are needed to address various
conditions that present operations fail to address. A friend of mine now
holds a dual post, as both the chairman of a neurological surgery
department and as the director of research at a major university's
health sciences complex. He is appalled at where the research money is
now being "thrown", and how little will probably ever come of it. He
must administer this misdirected research, while also administering a
surgical team that still must often work in the dark due to inadequate
research. He feels helpless in this crazy situation.
I sympathize: but what you are talking about is the waste of money by
cognitve and computational neuroscientists doing brain scan work, at the
expense of neurologists. I too believe that the brain scan work is of
little value, but probably for different reasons than yours. Either
way, this does not quite map onto the funding issues that conventional
AI people are facing.
The "good news" here is that even a few dollars put into
IP-related research would probably return a LOT of useful information
for AGI folks. All I was saying is that somehow, someone needs to do
this work.
The problem is that I do not know what you mean by "IP" work in the
neuroscience context. All of those brain scan people who you friend
complains of ARE doing information processing work on the brain. If
they are not doing what you are talking about, then what do you mean by
IP work?
At this stage of the game I do not believe that work to unravel the
exact structure o fthe brain will be any use unless it is guided by a
deeper understand of the functional structures, just as it would be
extremely difficult for a primitive people to exactly duplicate a car
without having a good idea of what the various parts of a car are
supposed to do. In such a car-scanning project, the primitive people
would have to either do a complete replication at microscopic level,
with zero understanding, and get every detail right, or they could
understand how it worked, and thereby give themselves the freedom to
design it their own way, without having to get every molecule in the
right place.
But I have made that argumet several times recently.
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=103754539-40ed26
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
