Dillon,
I have in fact watched those videos many times over, and while they
are nice to look at, they describe absolutely nothing about how
Numenta plans to implement behavior. I could, right now, code a simple
TD-learning system (which is well-described in literature), to perform
actions, and then I could slap on a convolutional neural network to
allow it to behave in response to certain images of people, places,
objects, or really whatever I'd like. Why is Numenta so slow to add
something so simple? These things have been done time-and-time again,
just like HTM even. Look up Recurrent Sparse Autoencoders, and you'll
find those perform the exact same operations, and have been known
about for decades. I'm sorry, but every time I hear Jeff speak about
something, it seems like he's embellishing some empty concept in his
head, without a single way to implement it on paper or in code. And
when he does give some inkling towards how to implement it, it's
already been done by a previous researcher.
Julian
Julian Samaroo
Manager of Information Technology
BluePrint Pathways, LLC
(516) 993-1150
On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 10:01 AM, Dillon Bender
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Lol, okay...
Have you watched this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFazR5yqesk
Though, technically, they aren’t developing any structure per se,
just the algorithms. This talk is obviously about including the
algorithms behind sub-cortical structures. It’s the main focus
right now. I’m not pretending anything.
Jeff also explains his goals for integrating sensorimotor feedback
in this Q&A session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRwf2uQTiWU
- Dillon
*From:*nupic [mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>] *On Behalf Of *Matthew
Lohbihler
*Sent:* Tuesday, June 30, 2015 9:37 AM
*To:* Dillon Bender
*Subject:* Re: Response to Jeff Hawkins interview.
Actually, he doesn't. Jeff talks about cortex all the time. I have
never seen any talk of, research into, or plans to develop any
other structure. Don't get me wrong: cortex is a key thing. But
let's not pretend that, publicly anyway, anything else matters
much to Numenta at the moment.
On 6/30/2015 10:20 AM, Dillon Bender wrote:
Right, Jeff talks about this all the time. An isolated cortex
knows virtually nothing and can cause nothing. It requires the
sub-cortical structures like the basal ganglia for learning
sensorimotor perception and control. That aspect will no doubt
need to be included in HTM in some form. But like he also says
all the time, there’s no reason it has to resemble natural,
humanoid functions. All the cortical principles will be
applied generally to any sensory domain, limited by our
imagination. No circumvention of the biological algorithm is
planned.
- Dillon
*From:*nupic [mailto:[email protected]] *On
Behalf Of *Matthew Lohbihler
*Sent:* Tuesday, June 30, 2015 9:03 AM
*To:* Dillon Bender
*Subject:* Re: Response to Jeff Hawkins interview.
I tend to agree with John. I suspect that intelligence
developed upon a neurological substrate without which that
cortex can't function completely. Maybe, maybe, MI can still
be developed by circumventing the substrate, but we'll learn
so much more by developing it too.
On 6/30/2015 9:49 AM, Dillon Bender wrote:
<John> "And I think we'll have to work our way through the whole animal
kingdom to get a humanoid robot working."
If what you mean is that researchers should start with building
simple organisms and then bolt on the more recently evolved systems, then I
think this is false. The human brain contains the entirety of non-mammal to
mammal evolution, so there is no reason to model non-mammals.
I think you have missed out on Numenta's current research goals to work
sensorimotor into CLA theory, because they realized before you that intelligence
"needs to be embodied with sensory-motor loop at the core of its
functionality." They have stated many times that the previous version of the theory
modeled L2/3 of the cortex, and now adding L4 (and soon L5) will help close the
sensorimotor loop.
- Dillon
-----Original Message-----
From: nupic [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
John Blackburn
Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2015 4:55 AM
To: Dillon Bender
Subject: Re: Response to Jeff Hawkins interview.
Sorry to reopen this thread, I missed it! David, I wanted to
comment on what you said on Facebook:
2.) For the first time in human history, we have an algorithm which
models activity in the neocortex and performs with true intelligence exactly
**how** the brain does it (its the HOW that is truly important here). ...and by
the way, this was also contributed by Jeff Hawkins and Numenta.
"performs with true intelligence" is a pretty bold claim. If this
is the case, how come there are no very convincing examples of HTM working with human
like intelligence? The Hotgym example is nice but it is really no better than what could
be achieved with many existing neural networks. Echo state networks have been around for
years and can make temporal predictions quite well. I recently presented some time
sequence data relating to a bridge to this forum but HTM did not succeed in modelling
this (ESNs worked much better). So outside of Hotgym, what really compelling demos do you
have? I've been away for a while so maybe I missed something...
I am also rather concerned HTM needs swarming before it can model anything.
Isn't that "cheating" in a way? It seems the HTM is rather fragile and needs a
lot of help. The human brain does not have this luxury it just has to cope with whatever
data it gets.
I'm also not convinced the neocortex is everything as Jeff Hawkins
thinks. I seriously doubt the bulk of the brain is just scaffolding.
I've been told birds have no neocortex but are capable of very
intelligent behaviour including constructing tools. Meanwhile I don't see any
AI robot capable of even ant-like intelligence. (ants are
amazing!) Has anyone even constructed a robot based on HTM?
Personally I don't think a a disembodied computer can ever be
intelligent (not even ant-like intelligence). IMO a robot (and it must BE a
robot) needs to be embodied with sensory-motor loop at the core of its
functionality to start behaving like an animal. (animals are the only things we
know that show intelligence: clouds don't, volcanos don't, computers don't).
And I think we'll have to work our way through the whole animal kingdom to get
a humanoid robot working.
John.
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 10:17 PM, cogmission (David
Ray)<[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
You're probably right :-)
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 4:16 PM, Matthew Lohbihler
<[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
Yes, I agree. Except for the part about checking up on us.
As i
mentioned before, indifference to us seems to me to be more
the
default than caring about us.
On 5/25/2015 5:03 PM, cogmission (David Ray) wrote:
Let me try and think this through. Only in the context of
scarcity
does the question of AGI **or** us come about. Where there
is no
scarcity, I think an AGI will just go about its business -
peeking in
from time to time to make sure we're doing ok. Why in a
universe
where it can go anywhere it wants and produce infinite
energy and not
be bound by our planet, would a super-super intelligent
being even be
obsessed over us, when it could merely go someplace else? I
honestly
thing that is the way it will be. (and maybe is already!)
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 3:56 PM, Matthew Lohbihler
<[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
Forgive me David, but these are very loose definitions,
and i've
lost track of how they relate back to what an AGI will
think about
humanity. But to use your terms - hopefully accurately
- what if the
AGI satisfies its sentient need for "others" by
creating other AGIs,
ones that it can love and appreciate? I doubt humans
would ever be
up such a task, unless 1) as pets, or 2) with
cybernetic improvements.
On 5/25/2015 4:37 PM, David Ray wrote:
Observation is the phenomenon of distinction, in the
domain of language.
The universe consists of two things, content and
context. Content
depends on its boundaries in order to exist. It depends
on what it
is not for it's being. Context is the space for things
to be, though
it is not quite space because space is yet another
thing. It has no
boundaries and it cannot be arrived at by assembling
all of its content.
Ideas; love, hate, our sense of who we are, our
histories what we
know to be true all of those are content. Context is
what allows for
that stuff to be. And all of it lives in language
without which there would be nothing.
There maybe would be a "drift" but we wouldn't know
about it and we
wouldn't be able to observe it.
Sent from my iPhone
On May 25, 2015, at 3:26 PM, Matthew Lohbihler
<[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]>
wrote:
You lost me. You seem to be working with definitions of
"observation" and "space for thinking" that i'm unaware
of.
On 5/25/2015 4:14 PM, David Ray wrote:
Matthew L.,
It isn't a thought. It is there before observation or
thoughts or
thinking. It actually is the space for thinking to
occur - it is the
context that allows for thought. We bring it to the
table - it is
there before we are (ontologically speaking). (It being
this sense
of integrity/wholeness)
Sent from my iPhone
On May 25, 2015, at 2:59 PM, Matthew Lohbihler
<[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]>
wrote:
Goodness. I thought we agreed that an AGI would not
think like humans.
And besides, "love" doesn't feel like something i want
to depend on
as obvious in a machine.
On 5/25/2015 3:50 PM, David Ray wrote:
If I can take this conversation into yet a different
direction.
I think we've all been dancing around The question of
what belies
the generation of morality or how will an AI derive its
sense of
ethics? Of course initially there will be those
parameters that are
programmed in - but eventually those will be gotten
around.
There has been a lot of research into this actually -
though it's
not common knowledge it is however knowledge developed
over the
observation of millions of people.
The universe and all beings along the gradient of
sentience observe
(albeit perhaps unconsciously), a sense of what I will
call
integrity or "wholeness". We'd like to think that
mankind steered
itself through the ages toward notions of gentility and
societal
sophistication; but it didn't really. The idea that a
group or
different groups devised a grand plan to have it turn
out this way is totally preposterous.
What is more likely is that there is a natural order to
things and
that is motion toward what works for the whole. I can't
prove any of
this but internally we all know when it's missing or
when we are not
in alignment with it. This ineffable sense is what love
is - it's concern for the whole.
So I say that any truly intelligent being, by virtue of
existing in
a substrate of integrity will have this built in and a
super
intelligent being will understand this - and that is
ultimately the
best chance for any single instance to survive is for
the whole to survive.
Yes I know immediately people want to cite all the
aberrations and
of course yes there are aberrations just as there are
mutations but
those aberrations our reactions to how a person is
shown love during
their development.
Like I said I can't prove any of this but eventually it
will bear
itself out and we will find it to be so in the future.
You can be skeptical if you want to but ask yourself
some questions.
Why is it that we all know when it's missing
(fairness/justice/integrity)? Why is it that we develop
open source
software and free software? Why is it that despite our
greed and
insecurity society moves toward freedom and equality
for everyone?
One more question. Why is it that the most advanced
philosophical
beliefs cite that where we are located as a
phenomenological event,
is not in separate bodies?
I know this kind of talk doesn't go over well in this
crowd of
concrete thinkers but I know that there is some science
somewhere that backs this up.
Sent from my iPhone
On May 25, 2015, at 2:12 PM, vlab<[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
Small point: Even if they did decide that our diverse
intelligence
is worth keeping around (having not already mapped it
into silicon)
why would they need all of us. Surely 10% of the
population would
give them enough 'sample size' to get their diversity
ration, heck maybe 1/10 of 1% would be
enough. They may find that we are wasting away the
planet (oh, not maybe,
we are) and the planet would be more efficient and they
could have
more energy without most of us. (Unless we become
'copper tops' as
in the Matrix movie).
On 5/25/2015 2:40 PM, Fergal Byrne wrote:
Matthew,
You touch upon the right point. Intelligence which can
self-improve
could only come about by having an appreciation for
intelligence, so
it's not going to be interested in destroying diverse
sources of
intelligence. We represent a crap kind of intelligence
to such an AI
in a certain sense, but one which it itself would
rather communicate
with than condemn its offspring to have to live like.
If these
things appear (which looks inevitable) and then they
kill us, many
of them will look back at us as a kind of "lost
civilisation" which they'll struggle to reconstruct.
The nice thing is that they'll always be able to
rebuild us from the
human genome. It's just a file of numbers after all.
So, we have these huge threats to humanity. The AGI
future is the
only reversible one.
Regards
Fergal Byrne
--
Fergal Byrne, Brenter IT
Author, Real Machine Intelligence with Clortex and NuPIC
https://leanpub.com/realsmartmachines
Speaking on Clortex and HTM/CLA at euroClojure Krakow,
June 2014:
http://euroclojure.com/2014/
and at LambdaJam Chicago, July
2014:http://www.lambdajam.com
http://inbits.com - Better Living through Thoughtful
Technology
http://ie.linkedin.com/in/fergbyrne/ -
https://github.com/fergalbyrne
e:[email protected]
<mailto:e:[email protected]> t:+353 83 4214179
<tel:%2B353%2083%204214179> Join the quest for
Machine Intelligence athttp://numenta.org Formerly of
Adnet
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
http://www.adnet.ie
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 7:27 PM, Matthew Lohbihler
<[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
I think Jeff underplays a couple of points, the
main one being the
speed at which an AGI can learn. Yes, there is a
natural limit to
how much experimentation in the real world can be
done in a given
amount of time. But we humans are already going
beyond this with,
for example, protein folding simulations, which
speeds up the
discovery of new drugs and such by many orders of
magnitude. Any
sufficiently detailed simulation could massively
narrow down the
amount of real world verification necessary, such
that new
discoveries happen more and more quickly, possibly
at some point
faster than we know the AGI is doing them. An
intelligence
explosion is not a remote possibility. The major
risk here is what Eliezer Yudkowsky pointed out: not that the AGI is evil or
something, but that it is indifferent to humanity.
No one yet goes out of their way to make any form
of AI care about
us (because we don't yet know how). What if an AI
created
self-replicating nanobots just to prove a
hypothesis?
I think Nick Bostrom's book is what got Stephen,
Elon, and Bill all
upset. I have to say it starts out merely
interesting, but gets to
a dark place pretty quickly. But he goes too far in
the other
direction, at the same time easily accepting that
superinteligences
have all manner of cognitive skill, but at the same
time can't
fathom the how humans might not like the idea of
having our brain's
pleasure centers constantly poked, turning us all
into smiling idiots (as i mentioned here:
http://blog.serotoninsoftware.com/so-smart-its-stupid).
On 5/25/2015 2:01 PM, Fergal Byrne wrote:
Just one last idea in this. One thing that crops up
every now and
again in the Culture novels is the response of the
Culture to
Swarms, which are self-replicating viral machines
or organisms.
Once these things start consuming everything else,
the AIs (mainly
Ships and Hubs) respond by treating the swarms as a
threat to the
diversity of their Culture. They first try to
negotiate, then
they'll eradicate. If they can contain them,
they'll do that.
They do this even though they can themselves
withdraw from real
spacetime. They don't have to worry about their own
survival. They
do this simply because life is more interesting
when it includes all the rest of us.
Regards
Fergal Byrne
--
Fergal Byrne, Brenter IT
Author, Real Machine Intelligence with Clortex and
NuPIC
https://leanpub.com/realsmartmachines
Speaking on Clortex and HTM/CLA at euroClojure
Krakow, June 2014:
http://euroclojure.com/2014/
and at LambdaJam Chicago, July
2014:http://www.lambdajam.com
http://inbits.com - Better Living through
Thoughtful Technology
http://ie.linkedin.com/in/fergbyrne/ -
https://github.com/fergalbyrne
e:[email protected]
<mailto:e:[email protected]> t:+353 83 4214179
<tel:%2B353%2083%204214179> Join the quest for
Machine Intelligence athttp://numenta.org Formerly
of Adnet
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
http://www.adnet.ie
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 5:04 PM, cogmission (David
Ray)
<[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
This was someone's response to Jeff's interview
(see here:
https://www.facebook.com/fareedzakaria/posts/10152703985901330)
Please read and comment if you feel the need...
Cheers,
David
--
With kind regards,
David Ray
Java Solutions Architect
Cortical.io
Sponsor of: HTM.java
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
http://cortical.io
--
With kind regards,
David Ray
Java Solutions Architect
Cortical.io
Sponsor of: HTM.java
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
http://cortical.io
--
With kind regards,
David Ray
Java Solutions Architect
Cortical.io
Sponsor of: HTM.java
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
http://cortical.io
