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]> wrote:
You're probably right :-)
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 4:16 PM, Matthew Lohbihler
<[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]> 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]>
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]>
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]> 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] t:+353 83 4214179 Join the quest for
Machine Intelligence at http://numenta.org Formerly of Adnet
[email protected] http://www.adnet.ie
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 7:27 PM, Matthew Lohbihler
<[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] t:+353 83 4214179 Join the quest for
Machine Intelligence at http://numenta.org Formerly of Adnet
[email protected] http://www.adnet.ie
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 5:04 PM, cogmission (David Ray)
<[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]
http://cortical.io
--
With kind regards,
David Ray
Java Solutions Architect
Cortical.io
Sponsor of: HTM.java
[email protected]
http://cortical.io
--
With kind regards,
David Ray
Java Solutions Architect
Cortical.io
Sponsor of: HTM.java
[email protected]
http://cortical.io
