Re: AGI goals (was Re: Information theoretic approaches to AGI (was Re: [agi] The Necessity of Embodiment))
So it's about money then.. now THAT makes me feel less worried!! :) That explains a lot though. On 8/28/08, Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Valentina Poletti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Got ya, thanks for the clarification. That brings up another question. Why do we want to make an AGI? I'm glad somebody is finally asking the right question, instead of skipping over the specification to the design phase. It would avoid a lot of philosophical discussions that result from people having different ideas of what AGI should do. AGI could replace all human labor, worth about US $2 to $5 quadrillion over the next 30 years. We should expect the cost to be of this magnitude, given that having it sooner is better than waiting. I think AGI will be immensely complex, on the order of 10^18 bits, decentralized, competitive, with distributed ownership, like today's internet but smarter. It will converse with you fluently but know too much to pass the Turing test. We will be totally dependent on it. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions
Hi Ben, My own feeling is that computation is just the latest in a series of technical metaphors that we apply in service of understanding how the universe works. Like the others before it, it captures some valuable aspects and leaves out others. It leaves me wondering: what future metaphors will we apply to the universe, ourselves, etc., that will make computation-as-metaphor seem as quaint as the old clockworks analogies? I believe that computation is important in that it can help us simulate intelligence, but intelligence itself is not simply computation (or if it is, it's in a way that requires us to transcend our current notions of computation). Note that I'm not suggesting anything mystical or dualistic at all, just offering the possibility that we can find still greater metaphors for how intelligence works. Either way though, I'm very interested in the results of your work - at worst, it will shed some needed light on the subject. At best... well, you know that part. :-] Terren --- On Tue, 9/2/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Tuesday, September 2, 2008, 4:50 PM On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 4:43 PM, Eric Burton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I really see a number of algorithmic breakthroughs as necessary for the development of strong general AI I hear that a lot, yet I never hear any convincing arguments in that regard... So, hypothetically (and I hope not insultingly), I tend to view this as a kind of unconscious overestimation of the awesomeness of our own species ... we feel intuitively like we're doing SOMETHING so cool in our brains, it couldn't possibly be emulated or superseded by mere algorithms like the ones computer scientists have developed so far ;-) ben agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] What is Friendly AI?
Hi Vlad, Thanks for the response. It seems that you're advocating an incremental approach *towards* FAI, the ultimate goal being full attainment of Friendliness... something you express as fraught with difficulty but not insurmountable. As you know, I disagree that it is attainable, because it is not possible in principle to know whether something that considers itself Friendly actually is. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, as the saying goes, and Friendliness depends on whether you're the egg or the cook. Terren --- On Sat, 8/30/08, Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] What is Friendly AI? To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Saturday, August 30, 2008, 1:53 PM On Sat, Aug 30, 2008 at 8:54 PM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- On Sat, 8/30/08, Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You start with what is right? and end with Friendly AI, you don't start with Friendly AI and close the circular argument. This doesn't answer the question, but it defines Friendly AI and thus Friendly AI (in terms of right). In your view, then, the AI never answers the question What is right?. The question has already been answered in terms of the algorithmic process that determines its subgoals in terms of Friendliness. There is a symbolic string what is right? and what it refers to, the thing that we are trying to instantiate in the world. The whole process of answering the question is the meaning of life, it is what we want to do for the rest of eternity (it is roughly a definition of right rather than over-the-top extrapolation from it). It is an immensely huge object, and we know very little about it, like we know very little about the form of a Mandelbrot set from the formula that defines it, even though it entirely unfolds from this little formula. What's worse, we don't know how to safely establish the dynamics for answering this question, we don't know the formula, we only know the symbolic string, formula, that we assign some fuzzy meaning to. There is no final answer, and no formal question, so I use question-answer pairs to describe the dynamics of the process, which flows from question to answer, and the answer is the next question, which then follows to the next answer, and so on. With Friendly AI, the process begins with the question a human asks to himself, what is right?. From this question follows a technical solution, initial dynamics of Friendly AI, that is a device to make a next step, to initiate transferring the dynamics of right from human into a more reliable and powerful form. In this sense, Friendly AI answers the question of right, being the next step in the process. But initial FAI doesn't embody the whole dynamics, it only references it in the humans and learns to gradually transfer it, to embody it. Initial FAI doesn't contain the content of right, only the structure of absorb it from humans. Of course, this is simplification, there are all kinds of difficulties. For example, this whole endeavor needs to be safeguarded against mistakes made along the way, including the mistakes made before the idea of implementing FAI appeared, mistakes in everyday design that went into FAI, mistakes in initial stages of training, mistakes in moral decisions made about what right means. Initial FAI, when it grows up sufficiently, needs to be able to look back and see why it turned out to be the way it did, was it because it was intended to have a property X, or was it because of some kind of arbitrary coincidence, was property X intended for valid reasons, or because programmer Z had a bad mood that morning, etc. Unfortunately, there is no objective morality, so FAI needs to be made good enough from the start to eventually be able to recognize what is valid and what is not, reflectively looking back at its origin, with all the depth of factual information and optimization power to run whatever factual queries it needs. I (vainly) hope this answered (at least some of the) other questions as well. -- Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://causalityrelay.wordpress.com/ --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] draft for comment
TITLE: Embodiment: Who does not have a body? AUTHOR: Pei Wang ABSTRACT: In the context of AI, ``embodiment'' should not be interpreted as ``giving the system a body'', but as ``adapting to the system's experience''. Therefore, being a robot is neither a sufficient condition nor a necessary condition of being embodied. What really matters is the assumption about the environment for which the system is designed. URL: http://nars.wang.googlepages.com/wang.embodiment.pdf --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] What is Friendly AI?
On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 12:46 AM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Vlad, Thanks for the response. It seems that you're advocating an incremental approach *towards* FAI, the ultimate goal being full attainment of Friendliness... something you express as fraught with difficulty but not insurmountable. As you know, I disagree that it is attainable, because it is not possible in principle to know whether something that considers itself Friendly actually is. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, as the saying goes, and Friendliness depends on whether you're the egg or the cook. Sorry Terren, I don't understand what you are trying to say in the last two sentences. What does considering itself Friendly means and how it figures into FAI, as you use the phrase? What (I assume) kind of experiment or arbitrary decision are you talking about? -- Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://causalityrelay.wordpress.com/ --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions
2008/9/2 Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Yes, I agree that your Turing machine approach can model the same situations, but the different formalisms seem to lend themselves to different kinds of analysis more naturally... I guess it all depends on what kinds of theorems you want to formulate... What I am interested in is if someone gives me a computer system that changes its state is some fashion, can I state how powerful that method of change is likely to be? That is what the exact difference between a traditional learning algorithm and the way I envisage AGIs changing their state. Also can you formalise the difference between a humans method of learning how to learn, and boot strapping language off language (both examples of a strange loop), and a program inspecting and changing its source code. I'm also interested in recursive self changing systems and whether you can be sure they will stay recursive self changing systems, as they change. This last one especially with regard to people designs systems with singletons in mind. Will --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: AGI goals (was Re: Information theoretic approaches to AGI (was Re: [agi] The Necessity of Embodiment))
2008/8/28 Valentina Poletti [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Got ya, thanks for the clarification. That brings up another question. Why do we want to make an AGI? To understand ourselves as intelligent agents better? It might enable us to have decent education policy, rehabilitation of criminals. Even if we don't make human like AGIs the principles should help us understand ourselves, just as optics of the lens helped us understand the eye and aerodynamics of wings helps us understand bird flight. It could also gives us more leverage, more brain power on the planet to help solve the planets problems. This is all predicated on the idea that fast take off is pretty much impossible. It is possible then all bets are off. Will --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] What is Friendly AI?
Hey Vlad - By considers itself Friendly, I'm refering to an FAI that is renormalizing in the sense you suggest. It's an intentional stance interpretation of what it's doing, regardless of whether the FAI is actually considering itself Friendly, whatever that would mean. I'm asserting that if you had an FAI in the sense you've described, it wouldn't be possible in principle to distinguish it with 100% confidence from a rogue AI. There's no Turing Test for Friendliness. Terren --- On Wed, 9/3/08, Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] What is Friendly AI? To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 5:04 PM On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 12:46 AM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Vlad, Thanks for the response. It seems that you're advocating an incremental approach *towards* FAI, the ultimate goal being full attainment of Friendliness... something you express as fraught with difficulty but not insurmountable. As you know, I disagree that it is attainable, because it is not possible in principle to know whether something that considers itself Friendly actually is. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, as the saying goes, and Friendliness depends on whether you're the egg or the cook. Sorry Terren, I don't understand what you are trying to say in the last two sentences. What does considering itself Friendly means and how it figures into FAI, as you use the phrase? What (I assume) kind of experiment or arbitrary decision are you talking about? -- Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://causalityrelay.wordpress.com/ --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] draft for comment
Pei:it is important to understand that both linguistic experience and non-linguistic experience are both special cases of experience, and the latter is not more real than the former. In the previous discussions, many people implicitly suppose that linguistic experience is nothing but Dictionary-Go-Round [Harnad, 1990], and only non-linguistic experience can give symbols meaning. This is a misconception coming from traditional semantics, which determines meaning by referred object, so that an image of the object seems to be closer to the real thing than a verbal description [Wang, 2007]. 1. Of course the image is more real than the symbol or word. Simple test of what should be obvious: a) use any amount of symbols you like, incl. Narsese, to describe Pei Wang. Give your description to any intelligence, human or AI, and see if it can pick out Pei in a lineup of similar men. b) give the same intelligence a photo of Pei - apply the same test. Guess which method will win. Only images can represent *INDIVIDUAL objects* - incl Pei/Ben or this keyboard on my desk. And in the final analysis, only indvidual objects *are* real. There are no chairs or oranges for example - those general concepts are, in the final analysis, useful fictions. There is only this chair here and that chair over there. And if you want to refer to them, individually, - so that you communicate successfully with another person/intelligence - you have no choice but to use images, (flat or solid). 2. Symbols are abstract - they can't refer to anything unless you already know, via images, what they refer to. If you think not, please draw a cheggnutAgain, if I give you an image of a cheggnut, you will have no problem. 3. You talk of a misconception of semantics, but give no reason why it is such, merely state it is. 4. You leave out the most important thing of all - you argue that experience is composed of symbols and images. And...? Hey, there's also the real thing(s). The real objects that they refer to. You certainly can't do science without looking at the real objects. And science is only a systematic version of all intelligence. That's how every functioning general intelligence is able to be intelligent about the world - by being grounded in the real world, composed of real objects. which it can go out and touch, walk round, look at and interact with. A box like Nars can't do that, can it? Do you realise what you're saying, Pei? To understand statements is to *realise* what they mean - what they refer to - to know that they refer to real objects, which you can really go and interact with and test - and to try (or have your brain try automatically) to connect those statements to real objects. When you or I are given words or images, find this man [Pei], or cook a Chinese meal tonight, we know that those signs must be tested in the real world and are only valid if so tested. We know that it's possible that that man over there who looks v. like the photo may not actually be Pei, or that Pei may have left the country and be impossible to find. We know that it may be impossible to cook such a meal, because there's no such food around. - And all such tests can only be conducted in the real world (and not say by going and looking at other texts or photos - living in a Web world). Your concept of AI is not so much un-grounded as unreal. 5. Why on earth do you think that evolution shows us general intelligences very successfully dealing with the problems of the world for over a billion years *without* any formal symbols? Why do infants take time to acquire l;anguage and are therefore able to survive without it? The conception of AI that you are advancing is the equivalent of Creationism - it both lacks and denies an evolutionary perspective on intelligence - a (correctly) cardinal sin in modern science.. --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions
hi, What I am interested in is if someone gives me a computer system that changes its state is some fashion, can I state how powerful that method of change is likely to be? That is what the exact difference between a traditional learning algorithm and the way I envisage AGIs changing their state. I'm sure this question is unsolvable in general ... so the interesting question may be: Is there a subset of the class of possible AGI's, which includes systems of an extremely (and hopefully unlimitedly) high level of intelligence, and for which it *is* tractable to usefully probabilistically predict the consequences of the system's self-modifications... Also can you formalise the difference between a humans method of learning how to learn, and boot strapping language off language (both examples of a strange loop), and a program inspecting and changing its source code. Suppose one has a program of size N that has some self-reprogramming capability. There's a question of: for a certain probability p, how large is the subset of program space that the program has probability p of entering (where the probability is calculated across possible worlds, e.g. according to an occam distribution). I'm also interested in recursive self changing systems and whether you can be sure they will stay recursive self changing systems, as they change. I'm almost certain there is no certainty in this world, regarding empirical predictions like that ;-) ben --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] What is Friendly AI?
On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 1:34 AM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm asserting that if you had an FAI in the sense you've described, it wouldn't be possible in principle to distinguish it with 100% confidence from a rogue AI. There's no Turing Test for Friendliness. You design it to be Friendly, you don't generate an arbitrary AI and then test it. The latter, if not outright fatal, might indeed prove impossible as you suggest, which is why there is little to be gained from AI-boxes. -- Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://causalityrelay.wordpress.com/ --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] draft for comment
Pei, I have a different sort of reason for thinking embodiment is important ... it's a deeper reason that I think underlies the embodiment is important because of symbol grounding argument. Linguistic data, mathematical data, visual data, motoric data etc. are all just bits ... and intelligence needs to work by recognizing patterns among these bits, especially patterns related to system goals. What I think is that the set of patterns in perceptual and motoric data has radically different statistical properties than the set of patterns in linguistic and mathematical data ... and that the properties of the set of patterns in perceptual and motoric data is intrinsically better suited to the needs of a young, ignorant, developing mind. All these different domains of pattern display what I've called a dual network structure ... a collection of hierarchies (of progressively more and more complex, hierarchically nested patterns) overlayed with a heterarchy (of overlapping, interrelated patterns). But the statistics of the dual networks in the different domains is different. I haven't fully plumbed the difference yet ... but, among the many differences is that in perceptual/motoric domains, you have a very richly connected dual network at a very low level of the overall dual network hierarchy -- i.e., there's a richly connected web of relatively simple stuff to understand ... and then these simple things are related to (hence useful for learning) the more complex things, etc. In short, Pei, I agree that the arguments typically presented in favor of embodiment in AI suck. However, I think there are deeper factors going on which do imply a profound value of embodiment for AGI. Unfortunately, we currently lack a really appropriate scientific language for describing the differences in statistical organization between different pattern-sets, so it's almost as difficult to articulate these differences as it is to understand them... -- Ben G On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 4:58 PM, Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: TITLE: Embodiment: Who does not have a body? AUTHOR: Pei Wang ABSTRACT: In the context of AI, ``embodiment'' should not be interpreted as ``giving the system a body'', but as ``adapting to the system's experience''. Therefore, being a robot is neither a sufficient condition nor a necessary condition of being embodied. What really matters is the assumption about the environment for which the system is designed. URL: http://nars.wang.googlepages.com/wang.embodiment.pdf --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome - Dr Samuel Johnson --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Computation as an explanation of the universe (was Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions)
I think that computation is not so much a metaphor for understanding the universe as it is an explanation. If you enumerate all possible Turing machines, thus enumerating all possible laws of physics, then some of those universes will have the right conditions for the evolution of intelligent life. If neutrons were slightly heavier than they actually are (relative to protons), then stars could not sustain fusion. If they were slightly lighter, then they would be stable and we would have no elements. Because of gravity, the speed of light, Planck's constant, the quantization of electric charge, and the finite age of the universe, the universe has a finite length description, and is therefore computable. The Bekenstein bound of the Hubble radius is 2.91 x 10^122 bits. Any computer within a finite universe must have less memory than it, and therefore cannot simulate it except by using an approximate (probabilistic) model. One such model is quantum mechanics. For the same reason, an intelligent agent (which must be Turing computable if the universe is) cannot model itself, except probabilistically as an approximation. Thus, we cannot predict what we will think without actually thinking it. This property makes our own intelligence seem mysterious. An explanation is only useful if it makes predictions, and it does. If the universe were not Turing computable, then Solomonoff induction and AIXI as ideal models of prediction and intelligence would not be applicable to the real world. Yet we have Occam's Razor and find in practice that all successful machine learning algorithms use algorithmically simple hypothesis sets. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- On Wed, 9/3/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 4:17 PM Hi Ben, My own feeling is that computation is just the latest in a series of technical metaphors that we apply in service of understanding how the universe works. Like the others before it, it captures some valuable aspects and leaves out others. It leaves me wondering: what future metaphors will we apply to the universe, ourselves, etc., that will make computation-as-metaphor seem as quaint as the old clockworks analogies? I believe that computation is important in that it can help us simulate intelligence, but intelligence itself is not simply computation (or if it is, it's in a way that requires us to transcend our current notions of computation). Note that I'm not suggesting anything mystical or dualistic at all, just offering the possibility that we can find still greater metaphors for how intelligence works. Either way though, I'm very interested in the results of your work - at worst, it will shed some needed light on the subject. At best... well, you know that part. :-] Terren --- On Tue, 9/2/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Tuesday, September 2, 2008, 4:50 PM On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 4:43 PM, Eric Burton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I really see a number of algorithmic breakthroughs as necessary for the development of strong general AI I hear that a lot, yet I never hear any convincing arguments in that regard... So, hypothetically (and I hope not insultingly), I tend to view this as a kind of unconscious overestimation of the awesomeness of our own species ... we feel intuitively like we're doing SOMETHING so cool in our brains, it couldn't possibly be emulated or superseded by mere algorithms like the ones computer scientists have developed so far ;-) ben --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] draft for comment
Mike, As I said before, you give symbol a very narrow meaning, and insist that it is the only way to use it. In the current discussion, symbols are not 'X', 'Y', 'Z', but 'table', 'time', 'intelligence'. BTW, what images you associate with the latter two? Since you prefer to use person as example, let me try the same. All of my experience about 'Mike Tintner' is symbolic, nothing visual, but it still makes you real enough to me, and I've got more information about you than a photo of you can provide. For instance, this experience tells me that to argue this issue with you will very likely be a waste of time, which is something that no photo can teach me. I still cannot pick you out in a lineup, but it doesn't mean your name is meaningless to me. I'm sorry if it sounds rude --- I rarely talk to people in this tone, but you are exceptional, in my experience of personal communication. Again, the meaning of your name, in my mind, is not the person it refers, but its relations with other concepts in my experience, this experience can either be visual, verbal, or something else. Pei On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 6:07 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Pei:it is important to understand that both linguistic experience and non-linguistic experience are both special cases of experience, and the latter is not more real than the former. In the previous discussions, many people implicitly suppose that linguistic experience is nothing but Dictionary-Go-Round [Harnad, 1990], and only non-linguistic experience can give symbols meaning. This is a misconception coming from traditional semantics, which determines meaning by referred object, so that an image of the object seems to be closer to the real thing than a verbal description [Wang, 2007]. 1. Of course the image is more real than the symbol or word. Simple test of what should be obvious: a) use any amount of symbols you like, incl. Narsese, to describe Pei Wang. Give your description to any intelligence, human or AI, and see if it can pick out Pei in a lineup of similar men. b) give the same intelligence a photo of Pei - apply the same test. Guess which method will win. Only images can represent *INDIVIDUAL objects* - incl Pei/Ben or this keyboard on my desk. And in the final analysis, only indvidual objects *are* real. There are no chairs or oranges for example - those general concepts are, in the final analysis, useful fictions. There is only this chair here and that chair over there. And if you want to refer to them, individually, - so that you communicate successfully with another person/intelligence - you have no choice but to use images, (flat or solid). 2. Symbols are abstract - they can't refer to anything unless you already know, via images, what they refer to. If you think not, please draw a cheggnutAgain, if I give you an image of a cheggnut, you will have no problem. 3. You talk of a misconception of semantics, but give no reason why it is such, merely state it is. 4. You leave out the most important thing of all - you argue that experience is composed of symbols and images. And...? Hey, there's also the real thing(s). The real objects that they refer to. You certainly can't do science without looking at the real objects. And science is only a systematic version of all intelligence. That's how every functioning general intelligence is able to be intelligent about the world - by being grounded in the real world, composed of real objects. which it can go out and touch, walk round, look at and interact with. A box like Nars can't do that, can it? Do you realise what you're saying, Pei? To understand statements is to *realise* what they mean - what they refer to - to know that they refer to real objects, which you can really go and interact with and test - and to try (or have your brain try automatically) to connect those statements to real objects. When you or I are given words or images, find this man [Pei], or cook a Chinese meal tonight, we know that those signs must be tested in the real world and are only valid if so tested. We know that it's possible that that man over there who looks v. like the photo may not actually be Pei, or that Pei may have left the country and be impossible to find. We know that it may be impossible to cook such a meal, because there's no such food around. - And all such tests can only be conducted in the real world (and not say by going and looking at other texts or photos - living in a Web world). Your concept of AI is not so much un-grounded as unreal. 5. Why on earth do you think that evolution shows us general intelligences very successfully dealing with the problems of the world for over a billion years *without* any formal symbols? Why do infants take time to acquire l;anguage and are therefore able to survive without it? The conception of AI that you are advancing is the equivalent of Creationism - it both lacks and denies an
Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions
Terren:My own feeling is that computation is just the latest in a series of technical metaphors that we apply in service of understanding how the universe works. Like the others before it, it captures some valuable aspects and leaves out others. It leaves me wondering: what future metaphors will we apply to the universe, ourselves, etc., that will make computation-as-metaphor seem as quaint as the old clockworks analogies? I think this is a good important point. I've been groping confusedly here. It seems to me computation necessarily involves the idea of using a code (?). But the nervous system seems to me something capable of functioning without a code - directly being imprinted on by the world, and directly forming movements, (even if also involving complex hierarchical processes), without any code. I've been wondering whether computers couldn't also be designed to function without a code in somewhat similar fashion. Any thoughts or ideas of your own? --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] draft for comment.. P.S.
I think I have an appropriate term for what I was trying to conceptualise. It is that intelligence has not only to be embodied, but it has to be EMBEDDED in the real world - that's the only way it can test whether information about the world and real objects is really true. If you want to know whether Jane Doe is great at sex, you can't take anyone's word for it, you have to go to bed with her. [Comments on the term esp. welcome). --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] draft for comment
On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 6:24 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What I think is that the set of patterns in perceptual and motoric data has radically different statistical properties than the set of patterns in linguistic and mathematical data ... and that the properties of the set of patterns in perceptual and motoric data is intrinsically better suited to the needs of a young, ignorant, developing mind. Sure it is. Systems with different sensory channels will never fully understand each other. I'm not saying that one channel (verbal) can replace another (visual), but that both of them (and many others) can give symbol/representation/concept/pattern/whatever-you-call-it meaning. No on is more real than others. All these different domains of pattern display what I've called a dual network structure ... a collection of hierarchies (of progressively more and more complex, hierarchically nested patterns) overlayed with a heterarchy (of overlapping, interrelated patterns). But the statistics of the dual networks in the different domains is different. I haven't fully plumbed the difference yet ... but, among the many differences is that in perceptual/motoric domains, you have a very richly connected dual network at a very low level of the overall dual network hierarchy -- i.e., there's a richly connected web of relatively simple stuff to understand ... and then these simple things are related to (hence useful for learning) the more complex things, etc. True, but can you say that the relations among words, or concepts, are simpler? In short, Pei, I agree that the arguments typically presented in favor of embodiment in AI suck. However, I think there are deeper factors going on which do imply a profound value of embodiment for AGI. Unfortunately, we currently lack a really appropriate scientific language for describing the differences in statistical organization between different pattern-sets, so it's almost as difficult to articulate these differences as it is to understand them... In this short paper, I make no attempt to settle all issues, but just to point out a simple fact --- a laptop has a body, and is not less embodied than Roomba or Mindstorms --- that seems have been ignored in the previous discussion. Pei --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Computation as an explanation of the universe (was Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions)
Matt, I have several objections. First, as I understand it, your statement about the universe having a finite description length only applies to the *observable* universe, not the universe as a whole. The hubble radius expands at the speed of light as more light reaches us, meaning that the observable universe has a longer description length every day. So it does not seem very relevant to say that the description length is finite. The universe as a whole (observable and not-observable) *could* be finite, but we don't know one way or the other so far as I am aware. Second, I do not agree with your reason for saying that physics is necessarily probabilistic. It seems possible to have a completely deterministic physics, which merely suffers from a lack of information and computation ability. Imagine if the universe happened to follow Newtonian physics, with atoms being little billiard balls. The situation is deterministic, if only we knew the starting state of the universe and had large enough computers to approximate the differential equations to arbitrary accuracy. Third, this is nitpicking, but I also am not sure about the argument that we cannot predict our thoughts. It seems formally possible that a system could predict itself. The system would need to be compressible, so that a model of itself could fit inside the whole. I could be wrong here, feel free to show me that I am. Anyway, the same objection also applies back to the necessity of probabilistic physics: is it really impossible for beings within a universe to have an accurate compressed model of the entire universe? (Similarly, if we have such a model, could we use it to run a simulation of the entire universe? This seems much less possible.) --Abram On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 6:45 PM, Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think that computation is not so much a metaphor for understanding the universe as it is an explanation. If you enumerate all possible Turing machines, thus enumerating all possible laws of physics, then some of those universes will have the right conditions for the evolution of intelligent life. If neutrons were slightly heavier than they actually are (relative to protons), then stars could not sustain fusion. If they were slightly lighter, then they would be stable and we would have no elements. Because of gravity, the speed of light, Planck's constant, the quantization of electric charge, and the finite age of the universe, the universe has a finite length description, and is therefore computable. The Bekenstein bound of the Hubble radius is 2.91 x 10^122 bits. Any computer within a finite universe must have less memory than it, and therefore cannot simulate it except by using an approximate (probabilistic) model. One such model is quantum mechanics. For the same reason, an intelligent agent (which must be Turing computable if the universe is) cannot model itself, except probabilistically as an approximation. Thus, we cannot predict what we will think without actually thinking it. This property makes our own intelligence seem mysterious. An explanation is only useful if it makes predictions, and it does. If the universe were not Turing computable, then Solomonoff induction and AIXI as ideal models of prediction and intelligence would not be applicable to the real world. Yet we have Occam's Razor and find in practice that all successful machine learning algorithms use algorithmically simple hypothesis sets. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- On Wed, 9/3/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 4:17 PM Hi Ben, My own feeling is that computation is just the latest in a series of technical metaphors that we apply in service of understanding how the universe works. Like the others before it, it captures some valuable aspects and leaves out others. It leaves me wondering: what future metaphors will we apply to the universe, ourselves, etc., that will make computation-as-metaphor seem as quaint as the old clockworks analogies? I believe that computation is important in that it can help us simulate intelligence, but intelligence itself is not simply computation (or if it is, it's in a way that requires us to transcend our current notions of computation). Note that I'm not suggesting anything mystical or dualistic at all, just offering the possibility that we can find still greater metaphors for how intelligence works. Either way though, I'm very interested in the results of your work - at worst, it will shed some needed light on the subject. At best... well, you know that part. :-] Terren --- On Tue, 9/2/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date:
Re: [agi] What is Friendly AI?
I'm talking about a situation where humans must interact with the FAI without knowledge in advance about whether it is Friendly or not. Is there a test we can devise to make certain that it is? --- On Wed, 9/3/08, Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] What is Friendly AI? To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 6:11 PM On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 1:34 AM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm asserting that if you had an FAI in the sense you've described, it wouldn't be possible in principle to distinguish it with 100% confidence from a rogue AI. There's no Turing Test for Friendliness. You design it to be Friendly, you don't generate an arbitrary AI and then test it. The latter, if not outright fatal, might indeed prove impossible as you suggest, which is why there is little to be gained from AI-boxes. -- Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://causalityrelay.wordpress.com/ --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions
Hi Mike, I see two ways to answer your question. One is along the lines that Jaron Lanier has proposed - the idea of software interfaces that are fuzzy. So rather than function calls that take a specific set of well defined arguments, software components talk somehow in 'patterns' such that small errors can be tolerated. While there would still be a kind of 'code' that executes, the process of translating it to processor instructions would be much more highly abstracted than any current high level language. I'm not sure I truly grokked Lanier's concept, but it's clear that for it to work, this high-level pattern idea would still need to somehow translate to instructions the processor can execute. The other way of answering this question is in terms of creating simulations of things like brains that don't execute code. You model the parallelism in code from which emerges the structures of interest. This is the A-Life approach that I advocate. But at bottom, a computer is a processor that executes instructions. Unless you're talking about a radically different kind of computer... if so, care to elaborate? Terren --- On Wed, 9/3/08, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 7:02 PM Terren:My own feeling is that computation is just the latest in a series of technical metaphors that we apply in service of understanding how the universe works. Like the others before it, it captures some valuable aspects and leaves out others. It leaves me wondering: what future metaphors will we apply to the universe, ourselves, etc., that will make computation-as-metaphor seem as quaint as the old clockworks analogies? I think this is a good important point. I've been groping confusedly here. It seems to me computation necessarily involves the idea of using a code (?). But the nervous system seems to me something capable of functioning without a code - directly being imprinted on by the world, and directly forming movements, (even if also involving complex hierarchical processes), without any code. I've been wondering whether computers couldn't also be designed to function without a code in somewhat similar fashion. Any thoughts or ideas of your own? agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Computation as an explanation of the universe (was Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions)
--- On Wed, 9/3/08, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Computation as an explanation of the universe (was Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions) To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 7:35 PM Matt, I have several objections. First, as I understand it, your statement about the universe having a finite description length only applies to the *observable* universe, not the universe as a whole. The hubble radius expands at the speed of light as more light reaches us, meaning that the observable universe has a longer description length every day. So it does not seem very relevant to say that the description length is finite. The universe as a whole (observable and not-observable) *could* be finite, but we don't know one way or the other so far as I am aware. OK, then the observable universe has a finite description length. We don't need to describe anything else to model it, so by universe I mean only the observable part. Second, I do not agree with your reason for saying that physics is necessarily probabilistic. It seems possible to have a completely deterministic physics, which merely suffers from a lack of information and computation ability. Imagine if the universe happened to follow Newtonian physics, with atoms being little billiard balls. The situation is deterministic, if only we knew the starting state of the universe and had large enough computers to approximate the differential equations to arbitrary accuracy. I am saying that the universe *is* deterministic. It has a definite quantum state, but we would need about 10^122 bits of memory to describe it. Since we can't do that, we have to resort to approximate models like quantum mechanics. I believe there is a simpler description. First, the description length is increasing with the square of the age of the universe, since it is proportional to area. So it must have been very small at one time. Second, the most efficient way to enumerate all possible universes would be to run each B-bit machine for 2^B steps, starting with B = 0, 1, 2... until intelligent life is found. For our universe, B ~ 407. You could reasonably argue that the algorithmic complexity of the free parameters of string theory and general relativity is of this magnitude. I believe that Wolfram also argued that the (observable) universe is a few lines of code. But even if we discover this program it does not mean we could model the universe deterministically. We would need a computer larger than the universe to do so. Third, this is nitpicking, but I also am not sure about the argument that we cannot predict our thoughts. It seems formally possible that a system could predict itself. The system would need to be compressible, so that a model of itself could fit inside the whole. I could be wrong here, feel free to show me that I am. Anyway, the same objection also applies back to the necessity of probabilistic physics: is it really impossible for beings within a universe to have an accurate compressed model of the entire universe? (Similarly, if we have such a model, could we use it to run a simulation of the entire universe? This seems much less possible.) There is a simple argument using information theory. Every system S has a Kolmogorov complexity K(S), which is the smallest size that you can compress a description of S to. A model of S must also have complexity K(S). However, this leaves no space for S to model itself. In particular, if all of S's memory is used to describe its model, there is no memory left over to store any results of the simulation. --Abram On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 6:45 PM, Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think that computation is not so much a metaphor for understanding the universe as it is an explanation. If you enumerate all possible Turing machines, thus enumerating all possible laws of physics, then some of those universes will have the right conditions for the evolution of intelligent life. If neutrons were slightly heavier than they actually are (relative to protons), then stars could not sustain fusion. If they were slightly lighter, then they would be stable and we would have no elements. Because of gravity, the speed of light, Planck's constant, the quantization of electric charge, and the finite age of the universe, the universe has a finite length description, and is therefore computable. The Bekenstein bound of the Hubble radius is 2.91 x 10^122 bits. Any computer within a finite universe must have less memory than it, and therefore cannot simulate it except by using an approximate (probabilistic) model. One such model is quantum mechanics. For the same reason, an intelligent agent (which must be Turing computable if the universe is) cannot model itself, except probabilistically as an approximation. Thus, we cannot predict what we
[agi] A NewMetaphor for Intelligence - the Computer/Organiser
Terren's request for new metaphors/paradigms for intelligence threw me temporarily off course.Why a new one - why not the old one? The computer. But the whole computer. You see, AI-ers simply don't understand computers, or understand only half of them What I'm doing here is what I said philosophers do - outline existing paradigms and point out how they lack certain essential dimensions. When AI-ers look at a computer, the paradigm that they impose on it is that of a Turing machine - a programmed machine, a device for following programs. But that is obviously only the half of it.Computers are obviously much more than that - and Turing machines. You just have to look at them. It's staring you in the face. There's something they have that Turing machines don't. See it? Terren? They have - a keyboard. And as a matter of scientific, historical fact, computers are first and foremost keyboards - i.e.devices for CREATING programs on keyboards, - and only then following them. [Remember how AI gets almost everything about intelligence back to front?] There is not and never has been a program that wasn't first created on a keyboard. Indisputable fact. Almost everything that happens in computers happens via the keyboard. So what exactly is a keyboard? Well, like all keyboards whether of computers, musical instruments or typewriters, it is a creative instrument. And what makes it creative is that it is - you could say - an organiser. A device with certain organs (in this case keys) that are designed to be creatively organised - arranged in creative, improvised (rather than programmed) sequences of action/ association./organ play. And an extension of the body. Of the organism. All organisms are organisers - devices for creatively sequencing actions/ associations./organs/ nervous systems first and developing fixed, orderly sequences/ routines/ programs second. All organisers are manifestly capable of an infinity of creative, novel sequences, both rational and organized, and crazy and disorganized. The idea that organisers (including computers) are only meant to follow programs - to be straitjacketed in movement and thought - is obviously untrue. Touch the keyboard. Which key comes first? What's the program for creating any program? And there lies the secret of AGI. --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] A NewMetaphor for Intelligence - the Computer/Organiser
Mike, There's nothing particularly creative about keyboards. The creativity comes from what uses the keyboard. Maybe that was your point, but if so the digression about a keyboard is just confusing. In terms of a metaphor, I'm not sure I understand your point about organizers. It seems to me to refer simply to that which we humans do, which in essence says general intelligence is what we humans do. Unfortunately, I found this last email to be quite muddled. Actually, I am sympathetic to a lot of your ideas, Mike, but I also have to say that your tone is quite condescending. There are a lot of smart people on this list, as one would expect, and a little humility and respect on your part would go a long way. Saying things like You see, AI-ers simply don't understand computers, or understand only half of them. More often than not you position yourself as the sole source of enlightened wisdom on AI and other subjects, and that does not make me want to get to know your ideas any better. Sorry to veer off topic here, but I say these things because I think some of your ideas are valid and could really benefit from an adjustment in your presentation of them, and yourself. If I didn't think you had anything worthwhile to say, I wouldn't bother. Terren --- On Wed, 9/3/08, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] A NewMetaphor for Intelligence - the Computer/Organiser To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 9:42 PM Terren's request for new metaphors/paradigms for intelligence threw me temporarily off course.Why a new one - why not the old one? The computer. But the whole computer. You see, AI-ers simply don't understand computers, or understand only half of them What I'm doing here is what I said philosophers do - outline existing paradigms and point out how they lack certain essential dimensions. When AI-ers look at a computer, the paradigm that they impose on it is that of a Turing machine - a programmed machine, a device for following programs. But that is obviously only the half of it.Computers are obviously much more than that - and Turing machines. You just have to look at them. It's staring you in the face. There's something they have that Turing machines don't. See it? Terren? They have - a keyboard. And as a matter of scientific, historical fact, computers are first and foremost keyboards - i.e.devices for CREATING programs on keyboards, - and only then following them. [Remember how AI gets almost everything about intelligence back to front?] There is not and never has been a program that wasn't first created on a keyboard. Indisputable fact. Almost everything that happens in computers happens via the keyboard. So what exactly is a keyboard? Well, like all keyboards whether of computers, musical instruments or typewriters, it is a creative instrument. And what makes it creative is that it is - you could say - an organiser. A device with certain organs (in this case keys) that are designed to be creatively organised - arranged in creative, improvised (rather than programmed) sequences of action/ association./organ play. And an extension of the body. Of the organism. All organisms are organisers - devices for creatively sequencing actions/ associations./organs/ nervous systems first and developing fixed, orderly sequences/ routines/ programs second. All organisers are manifestly capable of an infinity of creative, novel sequences, both rational and organized, and crazy and disorganized. The idea that organisers (including computers) are only meant to follow programs - to be straitjacketed in movement and thought - is obviously untrue. Touch the keyboard. Which key comes first? What's the program for creating any program? And there lies the secret of AGI. --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] What is Friendly AI?
--- On Wed, 9/3/08, Steve Richfield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK, lets take a concrete example: The Middle East situation, and ask our infinitely intelligent AGI what to do about it. OK, lets take a concrete example of friendly AI, such as competitive message routing ( http://www.mattmahoney.net/agi.html ). CMR has an algorithmically complex definition of friendly. The behavior of billions of peers (narrow-AI specialists) are controlled by their human owners who have an economic incentive to trade cooperatively and provide useful information. Nevertheless, the environment is hostile, so a large fraction (probably most) of CPU cycles and knowledge will probably be used to defend against attacks, primarily spam. CMR is friendly AGI because a lot of narrow-AI specialists that understand just enough natural language to do their jobs and know just a little about where to route other messages will result (I believe) in a system that is generally useful as a communication medium to humans. You would just enter any natural language message and it would get routed to anyone who cares, human or machine. So to answer your question, CMR would not solve the Middle East conflict. It is not designed to. That is for people to do. Forcing people to do anything is not friendly. CMR is friendly in the sense that a market is friendly. A market can sell weapons to both sides, but markets also reward cooperation. Countries that trade with each other have an incentive not to go to war. Likewise, the internet can be used to plan attacks and promote each sides' agenda, but also to make it easier for the two sides to communicate. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] What is Friendly AI?
--- On Wed, 9/3/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm talking about a situation where humans must interact with the FAI without knowledge in advance about whether it is Friendly or not. Is there a test we can devise to make certain that it is? No. If an AI has godlike intelligence, then testing whether it is friendly would be like an ant proving that you won't step on it. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] What Time Is It? No. What clock is it?
Hey gang... It’s Likely That Times Are Changing http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/35992/title/It%E2%80%99s_Likely_That_Times_Are_Changing A century ago, mathematician Hermann Minkowski famously merged space with time, establishing a new foundation for physics; today physicists are rethinking how the two should fit together. A PDF of a paper presented in March of this year, and upon which the article is based, can be found at http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.4452. It's a free download. Lots of equations, graphs, oh my! Cheers, Brad --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] What is Friendly AI?
On 09/03/2008 05:52 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: I'm talking about a situation where humans must interact with the FAI without knowledge in advance about whether it is Friendly or not. Is there a test we can devise to make certain that it is? This seems extremely unlikely. Consider that any set of interactions you have with a machine you deem friendly could have been with a genuinely friendly machine or with an unfriendly machine running an emulation of a friendly machine in an internal sandbox, with the unfriendly machine acting as man in the middle. If you have only ever interacted with party B, how could you determine if party B is relaying your questions to party C and returning party C's responses to you or interacting with you directly -- given that all real-world solutions like timing responses against expected response times and trying to check for outgoing messages are not possible? Unless you understood party B's programming perfectly and had absolute control over its operation, you could not. And if you understood its programming that well, you wouldn't have to interact with it to determine if it is friendly or not. joseph --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] What is Friendly AI?
Terren, On 9/3/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm talking about a situation where humans must interact with the FAI without knowledge in advance about whether it is Friendly or not. Is there a test we can devise to make certain that it is? Like religions based on friendly prophets that eventually lead their following astray, past action can be no guarantee of future safety despite the best of intentions. Certainly, the Middle East situation is proof of this, as all three monotheistic religions are now doing really insane things to confom to their religious teachings. I suspect that a *successful* FAI will make these same sorts of errors. I believe that there are VERY clever ways of correcting even the most awful of problematic situations using advanced forms of logic like reverse reductio ad absurdum. However, I have neither following nor prior success to support this, so this remains my own private conviction. Steve Richfield --- On Wed, 9/3/08, Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] What is Friendly AI? To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 6:11 PM On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 1:34 AM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm asserting that if you had an FAI in the sense you've described, it wouldn't be possible in principle to distinguish it with 100% confidence from a rogue AI. There's no Turing Test for Friendliness. You design it to be Friendly, you don't generate an arbitrary AI and then test it. The latter, if not outright fatal, might indeed prove impossible as you suggest, which is why there is little to be gained from AI-boxes. -- Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://causalityrelay.wordpress.com/ --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] A NewMetaphor for Intelligence - the Computer/Organiser
Terren, If you think it's all been said, please point me to the philosophy of AI that includes it. A programmed machine is an organized structure. A keyboard (and indeed a computer with keyboard) are something very different - there is no organization to those 26 letters etc. They can be freely combined and sequenced to create an infinity of texts. That is the very essence and manifestly, the whole point, of a keyboard. Yes, the keyboard is only an instrument. But your body - and your brain - which use it, are themselves keyboards. They consist of parts which also have no fundamental behavioural organization - that can be freely combined and sequenced to create an infinity of sequences of movements and thought - dances, texts, speeches, daydreams, postures etc. In abstract logical principle, it could all be preprogrammed. But I doubt that it's possible mathematically - a program for selecting from an infinity of possibilities? And it would be engineering madness - like trying to preprogram a particular way of playing music, when an infinite repertoire is possible and the environment, (in this case musical culture), is changing and evolving with bewildering and unpredictable speed. To look at computers as what they are (are you disputing this?) - machines for creating programs first, and following them second, is a radically different way of looking at computers. It also fits with radically different approaches to DNA - moving away from the idea of DNA as coded program, to something that can be, as it obviously can be, played like a keyboard - see Dennis Noble, The Music of Life. It fits with the fact (otherwise inexplicable) that all intelligences have both deliberate (creative) and automatic (routine) levels - and are not just automatic, like purely programmed computers. And it fits with the way computers are actually used and programmed, rather than the essentially fictional notion of them as pure turing machines. And how to produce creativity is the central problem of AGI - completely unsolved. So maybe a new approach/paradigm is worth at least considering rather than more of the same? I'm not aware of a single idea from any AGI-er past or present that directly addresses that problem - are you? Mike, There's nothing particularly creative about keyboards. The creativity comes from what uses the keyboard. Maybe that was your point, but if so the digression about a keyboard is just confusing. In terms of a metaphor, I'm not sure I understand your point about organizers. It seems to me to refer simply to that which we humans do, which in essence says general intelligence is what we humans do. Unfortunately, I found this last email to be quite muddled. Actually, I am sympathetic to a lot of your ideas, Mike, but I also have to say that your tone is quite condescending. There are a lot of smart people on this list, as one would expect, and a little humility and respect on your part would go a long way. Saying things like You see, AI-ers simply don't understand computers, or understand only half of them. More often than not you position yourself as the sole source of enlightened wisdom on AI and other subjects, and that does not make me want to get to know your ideas any better. Sorry to veer off topic here, but I say these things because I think some of your ideas are valid and could really benefit from an adjustment in your presentation of them, and yourself. If I didn't think you had anything worthwhile to say, I wouldn't bother. Terren --- On Wed, 9/3/08, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] A NewMetaphor for Intelligence - the Computer/Organiser To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 9:42 PM Terren's request for new metaphors/paradigms for intelligence threw me temporarily off course.Why a new one - why not the old one? The computer. But the whole computer. You see, AI-ers simply don't understand computers, or understand only half of them What I'm doing here is what I said philosophers do - outline existing paradigms and point out how they lack certain essential dimensions. When AI-ers look at a computer, the paradigm that they impose on it is that of a Turing machine - a programmed machine, a device for following programs. But that is obviously only the half of it.Computers are obviously much more than that - and Turing machines. You just have to look at them. It's staring you in the face. There's something they have that Turing machines don't. See it? Terren? They have - a keyboard. And as a matter of scientific, historical fact, computers are first and foremost keyboards - i.e.devices for CREATING programs on keyboards, - and only then following them. [Remember how AI gets almost everything about intelligence back to front?] There is not and never has been a program that wasn't first created on a keyboard. Indisputable fact. Almost everything
