-Caveat Lector-
***** POC Plans: For BC Election 2005, Political Avatars under
development; For BC Election 2009, Political Avatars run on trial basis;
For Election 2013, Political Avatars with super-human AI online *****
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Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2002 16:37:14 -0700 (PDT)
From: Franklin Wayne Poley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [AI-Arms-Race] The Last Program
MIT's OCW could become the last program this planet needs. Let me explain
by continuing my review of Schildt's book on C and AI, in the context of
yesterday's letter to the BC Ministry of Advanced Education and request
for a grant to develop "automated courseware" for C programming
instruction. BTW, on a more mundane level I just checked two calendars
(one from UBC and one from BCIT) and course offerings for programming
languages usually cost the individual student around $25/hour plus tax.
Right from the beginning C automated courseware would cost a fraction of
that...and the robo-professor would be available to students 24/7.
If I were able to solve any problem used to assess "g" in humans, you
would call me a genius. My cpp compiler, guided by an expert programmer
can do just that. Yes it must take the problems one at a time or in
groupings (like the grouping for a particular system of formal logic) and
yes it does things in a different way than a human does. But the outcome
will be a machine genius, more capable of forming concepts (data
categories) and manipulating those categories in a logical manner than any
human: a machine genius which can solve all of those problems that go
into "g" faster and more accurately than any human. If anyone disagrees,
please give an example of any "g" problem from the Mental Measurements
Yearbook which a machine cannot be programmed to solve.
The organization of Schildt's book on C and AI falls into line with the
widely used "g" and "s" models of human mental measurement. The C Compiler
is a good analogy to "g" as general potential intelligence. How can the
potential be brought out? Just as in humans it requires some kind of
social interaction. A feral child with the best genes in the world will
likely grow up retarded. The social interaction of the programmer is very
different from that of the parent and siblings etc. but it turns the
potential into actual problem solving in either case. The child acquires
"applications programs" of a kind over time. The machine can acquire
applications programs to solve the same range of problems. Again, if
anyone can give an example of an exception, I would like to hear it.
This social interaction for man or machine leads to learning, does it not?
Schildt's Chapter 7 is titled Machine Learning. "Closely tied to
intelligence is learning" he says correctly (p.239). Then the insightful
comment, "In fact, intelligence cannot exist without the ability to learn
because the principle advantage of learning is that it is the means of
ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE" (block letters are mine). In other words, if you have
no knowledge, expectedly you have no intelligence. And on page 241: "A
computer can easily learn anything you can learn by rote. In fact, it is
the normal manner in which a computer operates."
Does it make any difference to the outcome if the genius who can
manipulate concepts with perfect logic and with great speed and accuracy
has ACQUIRED THIS KNOWLEDGE by rote; or whether the genius is man or
machine?
Over time I predict that all of MIT's Opencourseware courses will be
taught by "expert system teacher" programs and the archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED] illustrate how. Then the esp-teacher programs
will become esp-practitioner programs, enabling users on the www to access
this knowledge in thousands of subjects.
I am determined to illustrate this in detail with C programming (or a more
suitable language if one comes along). This is in line with Schildt's
forecast that middle management intellectual workers will be replaced next
by "smart automation". Again, it will have its detractors. I doubt that
the welders replaced by robotic arms in GM plants would have given their
approval, had they been consulted in advance. But Schildt is correct about
the inexorable course of automation. Given that, I am all in favour of
making the best of it. Indeed I don't think we (the public) have a
rational alternative.
I would like to have eager and enthusiastic collaborators on this who are
experts in C or other programming. I have been beating the cyber-bushes
for this over quite some time now. However, I am quite capable of doing it
on my own if necessary. It will be slower and I will probably stop at the
level of one completed intro course but that should do the job. I think it
will illustrate how the rest of OCW will develop, from esp-teacher
programs to esp-practitioner programs. A huge transformation of the
educational system worldwide, because the entire OCW system will be a
giant AI, having ACQUIRED THE KNOWLEDGE of a university education in all
subjects taught. That acquired knowledge will be "passed on" by machine to
any human students who want it. When genetic algorithms are built into
that system the machine will continue to learn on its own without limit.
And to teach what it has learned to humankind without limit. I see nothing
to prevent machines in a few decades from leading humans into colonization
of the planets and beyond. Kevin Warwick's "March of the Machines" (his
1997 book title).
We humans can sit around or "rock and roll"...forever watchful that OUR
machines remain OUR machines and never get out of control. But I fear that
even now the public has insufficient knowledge of what AI and "smart
automation" really can do and that is why I keep appealing to our
politicians to improve the education OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC in this
respect many fold. MIT's OCW can do exactly that for us if it is set up
properly. We have to keep it from turning into a $100 m. boondoggle.
On page 240 of Schildt we read:
"A program that could do this (learn) would be in theory THE LAST PROGRAM
ever written because it could learn to perform various tasks on its own
simply by being taught" (again, my bloc letters). MIT's OCW could become
this planet's "Last Program".
FWP
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