Dave, Re my first point there is no choice whatsoever - you (any serious creative) *have* to start by addressing the creative problem - in this case true AGI end-problems. You have to start, e.g.,, addressing the problem part of your would-be plane, the part that's going to give you take-off, because that then affects all the other parts of the plane/machine. Start anywhere else & the odds of irrelevancy would be around IMO 100%, It is truly staggering that this primary "law" of serious creativity is being flouted - with inevitably zero results.
Re the idea of a truly broad education, sure that's v. idealistic. But AGI education should be at the v. least "open-minded" - willing to consider any form of problemsolving. People should be willing to think, for example, about an alternative form of machine to the TM because again there is no choice - the TM does *not* incorporate or address the creative problemsolving of the programmer upon which it depends. But there is no willingness to think outside the box/frame here. Re flawed goals - yes, I think you & I might agree, that almost any goals you set for your AGI will be overambitious. However, if they are insanely overambitious, as in trying to build an entire AGI system, then you can't really learn much from your mistakes. If they are basic, "local AGI" goals, as I mentioned to John - (and altho I disagree with your particular goals, your overall philosophy seems to be broadly consistent with this idea) - then you can learn from your mistakes, and make your targets more realistic still. From: David Jones Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2010 6:22 PM To: agi Subject: Re: [agi] The problem with AGI per Sloman Mike, I think your idealistic view of how AGI should be pursued does not work in reality. What is your approach that fits all your criteria? I'm sure that any such approach would be severely flawed as well. Dave On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Mike Tintner <[email protected]> wrote: [BTW Sloman's quote is a month old] I think he means what I do - the end-problems that an AGI must face. Please name me one true AGI end-problem being dealt with by any AGI-er - apart from the toybox problem. As I've repeatedly said- AGI-ers simply don't address or discuss AGI end-problems. And they do indeed start with "solutions" - just as you are doing - re the TSP problem and the problem of combinatorial complexity, both of wh. have in fact nothing to do with AGI, and for neither of wh.. can you provide a single example of a relevant AGI problem. One could not make up this total avoidance of the creative problem, And AGI-ers are not just shockingly but obscenely narrow in their disciplinarity/ the range of their problem interests - maths, logic, standard narrow AI computational problems, NLP, a little robotics and that's about it - with by my rough estimate some 90% of human and animal real world problemsolving of no interest to them. That esp. includes their chosen key fields of language, conversation and vision - all of wh. are much more the province of the *arts* than the sciences, when it comes to AGI The fact that creative, artistic problemsolving presents a totally different paradigm to that of programmed, preplanned problemsolving, is of no interest to them - because they lack what educationalists would call any kind of metacognitive (& interdisciplinary) "scaffolding" to deal with it. It doesn't matter that programming itself, and developing new formulae and theorems - (all the forms IOW of creative maths, logic, programming, science and technology) - the very problemsolving upon wh. they absolutely depend.- also come under "artistic problemsolving". So there is a major need for broadening AI & AGI education both in terms of culturally creative problemsolving and true culture-wide multidisciplinarity. From: Jim Bromer Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2010 5:05 PM To: agi Subject: Re: [agi] The problem with AGI per Sloman Both of you are wrong. (Where did that quote come from by the way. What year did he write or say that.) An inadequate understanding of the problems is exactly what has to be expected by researchers (both professional and amateurs) when they are facing a completely novel pursuit. That is why we have endless discussions like these. What happened over and over again in AI research is that the amazing advances in computer technology always seemed to suggest that similar advances in AI must be just off the horizon. And the reality is that there have been major advances in AI. In the 1970's a critic stated that he wouldn't believe that AI was possible until a computer was able to beat him in chess. Well, guess what happened and guess what conclusion he did not derive from the experience. One of the problems with critics is that they can be as far off as those whose optimism is absurdly unwarranted. If a broader multi-disciplinary effort was the obstacle to creating AGI, we would have AGI by now. It should be clear to anyone who examines the history of AI or the present day reach of computer programming that a multi-discipline effort is not the key to creating effective AGI. Computers have become pervasive in modern day life, and if it was just a matter of getting people with different kinds of interests involved, it would have been done by now. It is a little like saying that the key to safe deep sea drilling is to rely on the expertise of companies that make billions and billions of dollars and which stand to lose billions by mistakes. While that should make sense, if you look a little more closely, you can see that it doesn't quite work out that way in the real world. Jim Bromer On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 7:33 AM, Mike Tintner <[email protected]> wrote: "One of the problems of AI researchers is that too often they start off with an inadequate understanding of the problems and believe that solutions are only a few years away. We need an educational system that not only teaches techniques and solutions, but also an understanding of problems and their difficulty — which can come from a broader multi-disciplinary education. That could speed up progress." A. 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