Re: [agi] Second Life the Gaza Conflict
On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 8:23 PM, Mike Tintner wrote: I thought there might possibly be some interest in this ( perhaps explanations) - the news item doesn't really explain how or why Second Life is being used: This has nothing to do with AGI. It is propaganda. Some Palestinians have set up a protest site in Second Life. There is a lot of propaganda activity (on both sides) if you do a google search. BillK --- 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=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Creativity and Rationality (was: Re: Should I get a PhD?)
On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 3:55 PM, Mike Tintner wrote: (On the contrary, Pei, you can't get more narrow-minded than rational thinking. That's its strength and its weakness). Pei In case you haven't noticed, you won't gain anything from trying to engage with the troll. Mike does not discuss anything. He states his opinions in many different ways, pretending to respond to those that waste their time talking to him. But no matter what points are raised in discussion with him, they will only be used as an excuse to produce yet another variation of his unchanged opinions. He doesn't have any technical programming or AI background, so he can't understand that type of argument. He is against the whole basis of AGI research. He believes that rationality is a dead end, a dying culture, so deep-down, rational arguments mean little to him. Don't feed the troll! (Unless you really, really, think he might say something useful to you instead of just wasting your time). BillK --- 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=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Creativity and Rationality (was: Re: Should I get a PhD?)
On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 6:40 PM, Ben Goertzel wrote: IMHO, Mike Tintner is not often rude, and is not exactly a troll because I feel he is genuinely trying to understand the deeper issues related to AGI, rather than mainly trying to stir up trouble or cause irritation However, I find conversing with him generally frustrating because he combines A) extremely strong intuitive opinions about AGI topics with B) almost utter ignorance of the details of AGI (or standard AI), or the background knowledge needed to appreciate these details when compactly communicated This means that discussions with Mike never seem to get anywhere... and, frankly, I usually regret getting into them In my opinion you are being too generous and your generosity is being taken advantage of. As well as trying to be nice to Mike, you have to bear list quality in mind and decide whether his ramblings are of some benefit to all the other list members. There are many types of trolls; some can be quite sophisticated. See: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1032102 The definitive guide to Trolls A classic troll tries to make us believe that he is a skeptic. He is divisive and argumentative with need-to-be-right attitude, searching for the truth, flaming discussion, and sometimes insulting people or provoking people to insult him. A troll is usually an expert in reusing the same words of its opponents and in turning it against them. The Contrarian Troll. A sophisticated breed, Contrarian Trolls frequent boards whose predominant opinions are contrary to their own. A forum dominated by those who support firearms and knife rights, for example, will invariably be visited by Contrarian Trolls espousing their beliefs in the benefits of gun control. BillK --- 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=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] Re: [sl4] Join me on Bebo
On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 12:42 AM, Thomas McCabe wrote: I'm not a moderator, but as a fellow list-user I do ask that you please refrain from sending such things to SL4 in future. This Bebo invite spam is more Bebo's fault than Ryan's. Bebo (like many social networking sites) by default assume that new users want to send an invite to everyone in their address book. They operate a block opt-in policy. If you just quickly click through the buttons you send an invite to everyone in your address book. Then sit and panic when you realize what you've done. :) Ryan isn't the only one that has been caught out by this system. BillK --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Entheogins, understainding the brain, and AGI
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 7:51 PM, Eric Burton wrote: This is a really good avenue of discussion for me. snip You'all probably should join rec.drugs.psychedelic http://groups.google.com/group/rec.drugs.psychedelic/topics People are still posting there, so the black helicopters haven't taken them all away yet. (Of course they might all be FBI agents. It's happened before) :) There are many similar interest groups for you to choose from. BillK --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] Professor Asim Roy Finally Publishes Controversial Brain Theory
Nobody has mentioned this yet. http://www.physorg.com/news146319784.html Quotes: However, Roy's controversial ideas on how the brain works and learns probably won't immediately win over many of his colleagues, who have spent decades teaching robots and artificial intelligence (AI) systems how to think using the classic connectionist theory of the brain. Connectionists propose that the brain consists of an interacting network of neurons and cells, and that it solves problems based on how these components are connected. In this theory, there are no separate controllers for higher level brain functions, but all control is local and distributed fairly equally among all the parts. In his paper, Roy argues for a controller theory of the brain. In this view, there are some parts of the brain that control other parts, making it a hierarchical system. In the controller theory, which fits with the so-called computational theory, the brain learns lots of rules and uses them in a top-down processing method to operate. In his paper, Roy shows that the connectionist theory actually is controller-based, using a logical argument and neurological evidence. He explains that some of the simplest connectionist systems use controllers to execute operations, and, since more complex connectionist systems are based on simpler ones, these too use controllers. If Roy's logic correctly describes how the brain functions, it could help AI researchers overcome some inherent limitations in connectionist algorithms. Connectionism can never create autonomous learning machines, and that's where its flaw is, Roy told PhysOrg.com. Connectionism requires human babysitting of their learning algorithms, and that's not very brain-like. We don't guide and control the learning inside our head. etc BillK --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Professor Asim Roy Finally Publishes Controversial Brain Theory
On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 3:06 PM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yeah. Great headline -- Man beats dead horse beyond death! I'm sure that there will be more details at 11. Though I am curious . . . . BillK, why did you think that this was worth posting? ??? Did you read the article? --- Quote: In the late '90s, Asim Roy, a professor of information systems at Arizona State University, began to write a paper on a new brain theory. Now, 10 years later and after several rejections and resubmissions, the paper Connectionism, Controllers, and a Brain Theory has finally been published in the November issue of IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics – Part A: Systems and Humans. Roy's theory undermines the roots of connectionism, and that's why his ideas have experienced a tremendous amount of resistance from the cognitive science community. For the past 15 years, Roy has engaged researchers in public debates, in which it's usually him arguing against a dozen or so connectionist researchers. Roy says he wasn't surprised at the resistance, though. I was attempting to take down their whole body of science, he explained. So I would probably have behaved the same way if I were in their shoes. No matter exactly where or what the brain controllers are, Roy hopes that his theory will enable research on new kinds of learning algorithms. Currently, restrictions such as local and memoryless learning have limited AI designers, but these concepts are derived directly from that idea that control is local, not high-level. Possibly, a controller-based theory could lead to the development of truly autonomous learning systems, and a next generation of intelligent robots. The sentiment that the science is stuck is becoming common to AI researchers. In July 2007, the National Science Foundation (NSF) hosted a workshop on the Future Challenges for the Science and Engineering of Learning. The NSF's summary of the Open Questions in Both Biological and Machine Learning [see below] from the workshop emphasizes the limitations in current approaches to machine learning, especially when compared with biological learners' ability to learn autonomously under their own self-supervision: Virtually all current approaches to machine learning typically require a human supervisor to design the learning architecture, select the training examples, design the form of the representation of the training examples, choose the learning algorithm, set the learning parameters, decide when to stop learning, and choose the way in which the performance of the learning algorithm is evaluated. This strong dependence on human supervision is greatly retarding the development and ubiquitous deployment of autonomous artificial learning systems. Although we are beginning to understand some of the learning systems used by brains, many aspects of autonomous learning have not yet been identified. Roy sees the NSF's call for a new science as an open door for a new theory, and he plans to work hard to ensure that his colleagues realize the potential of the controller model. Next April, he will present a four-hour workshop on autonomous machine learning, having been invited by the Program Committee of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN). - Now his 'new' theory may be old hat to you personally, but apparently not to the majority of AI researchers, (according to the article). He must be saying something a bit unusual to have been fighting for ten years to get it published and accepted enough for him to now have been invited to do a workshop on his theory. BillK --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Professor Asim Roy Finally Publishes Controversial Brain Theory
On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 3:52 PM, Ben Goertzel wrote: I skimmed over the paper at http://wpcarey.asu.edu/pubs/index.cfm and I have to say I agree with the skeptics. I don't doubt that this guy has made significant contributions in other areas of science and engineering, but this paper displeases me a great deal, due to making big claims of originality for ideas that are actually very old hat, and bolstering these claims via attacking a straw man of simplistic connectionism. snip Double thumbs down: not for wrongheadedness, but for excessive claims of originality plus egregious straw man arguments... So, basically, you don't disagree with his paper to much. You just don't like his attitude.;) Danged AI researchers that think they know it all! ;) You don't think you could call it excessive PR where he is trying to dislodge an entrenched view? BillK --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] My prospective plan to neutralize AGI and other dangerous technologies...
On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 1:22 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: I see how this would work: crazy people never tell lies, so you'd be able to nail 'em when they gave the wrong answers. Yup. That's how they pass lie detector tests as well. They sincerely believe the garbage they spread around. BillK --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: AW: AW: [agi] Language learning (was Re: Defining AGI)
On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 12:55 AM, Matt Mahoney wrote: I suppose you are right. Instead of encoding mathematical rules as a grammar, with enough training data you can just code all possible instances that are likely to be encountered. For example, instead of a grammar rule to encode the commutative law of addition, 5 + 3 = a + b = b + a = 3 + 5 a model with a much larger training data set could just encode instances with no generalization: 12 + 7 = 7 + 12 92 + 0.5 = 0.5 + 92 etc. I believe this is how Google gets away with brute force n-gram statistics instead of more sophisticated grammars. It's language model is probably 10^5 times larger than a human model (10^14 bits vs 10^9 bits). Shannon observed in 1949 that random strings generated by n-gram models of English (where n is the number of either letters or words) look like natural language up to length 2n. For a typical human sized model (1 GB text), n is about 3 words. To model strings longer than 6 words we would need more sophisticated grammar rules. Google can model 5-grams (see http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/08/all-our-n-gram-are-belong-to-you.html ), so it is able to generate and recognize (thus appear to understand) sentences up to about 10 words. Gigantic databases are indeed Google's secret sauce. See: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2008/09/doubling-up.html Quote: Monday, September 29, 2008 Posted by Franz Josef Och Machine translation is hard. Natural languages are so complex and have so many ambiguities and exceptions that teaching a computer to translate between them turned out to be a much harder problem than people thought when the field of machine translation was born over 50 years ago. At Google Research, our approach is to have the machines learn to translate by using learning algorithms on gigantic amounts of monolingual and translated data. Another knowledge source is user suggestions. This approach allows us to constantly improve the quality of machine translations as we mine more data and get more and more feedback from users. A nice property of the learning algorithms that we use is that they are largely language independent -- we use the same set of core algorithms for all languages. So this means if we find a lot of translated data for a new language, we can just run our algorithms and build a new translation system for that language. As a result, we were recently able to significantly increase the number of languages on translate.google.com. Last week, we launched eleven new languages: Catalan, Filipino, Hebrew, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Ukrainian, Vietnamese. This increases the total number of languages from 23 to 34. Since we offer translation between any of those languages this increases the number of language pairs from 506 to 1122 (well, depending on how you count simplified and traditional Chinese you might get even larger numbers). - BillK --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: AW: AW: [agi] Re: Defining AGI
On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 10:31 PM, Ben Goertzel wrote: Incorrect things are wrapped up with correct things in peoples' minds However, pure slowness at learning is another part of the problem ... Mark seems to be thinking of something like the checklist that the ISP technician walks through when you call with a problem. Even when you know what the problem is, the tech won't listen. He insists on working through his checklist, making you do all the irrelevant checks, eventually by a process of elimination, ending up with what you knew was wrong all along. Very little GI required. But Ben is saying that for evaluating science, there ain't no such checklist. The circumstances are too variable, you would need checklists to infinity. I go along with Ben. BillK --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Will Wright's Five Artificial Intelligence Prophecies
On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 8:28 PM, Bob Mottram wrote: Some thoughts on this: http://streebgreebling.blogspot.com/2008/10/will-wright-on-ai.html I like his first point: MACHINES WILL NEVER ACHIEVE HUMAN INTELLIGENCE According to Wright, one of the main benefits of the quest for AI is a better definition of human intelligence. Intelligence is whatever we can do that computers can't, says Wright. This reminds me of Mike Tintner. Even when these non-human intelligences are building space habitats, roaming the solar system and sending probes out to the stars, Mike will still be sitting there saying ' Ah, but they can't write poetry, so they are not really intelligent'. BillK --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Advocacy Is no Excuse for Exaggeration
On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 9:46 AM, Eric Burton wrote: My mistake I guess. I'm going to try harder to understand what you're saying from now on. Colin's profile on Nature says: I am a mature age PhD student with the sole intent of getting a novel chip technology and derivative products into commercial production. The chip technology facilitates natural learning of the kind biology uses to adapt to novelty. The artifacts will have an internal life. My mission is to create artificial (machines) that learn like biology learns and that have an internal life. Currently that goal requires lipid bilayer membrane molecular dynamics simulation. Publications Colin Hales. AI and Science's Lost Realm IEEE Intelligent Systems 21 , 76-81 (2006) Colin Hales. Physiology meets consciousness. A review of The Primordial Emotions: The Dawning of Consciousness by Derek Denton TRAFFIC EIGHT (2006) Hales, C. Qualia Ockham's Razor, Radio National, Australia 17 April (2005) Colin Hales. The 10 point framework and the altogether too hard basket Science and Consciousness Review (2003) --- BillK --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 7:44 PM, John G. Rose wrote: I'd go for 2 lists. Sometimes after working intensely on something concrete and specific one wants to step back and theorize. And then particular AGI approaches may be going down the wrong trail and need to step back and look at things from a different perspective. Even so, with all this the messages in the one list still are grouped by subject... I mean people can parse. But to simplify moderation and organization, etc.. I agree. I support more type 1 discussions. I have felt for some time that an awful lot of time-wasting has been going on here. I think this list should mostly be for computer tech discussion about methods of achieving specific results on the path(s) to AGI. I agree that there should be a place for philosophical discussion, either on a separate list, or uniquely identified in the Subject so that technicians can filter off such discussions. Some people may need to discuss philosophic alternative paths to AGI, to help clarify their thoughts. But if so, they are probably many years away from producing working code and might be hindering others who are further down the path of their own design. Two lists are probably best. Then if technicians want a break from coding, they can dip into the philosophy list, to offer advice or maybe find new ideas to play with. And, as John said. it would save on moderation time. BillK --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Updated AGI proposal (CMR v2.1)
On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 2:41 PM, Matt Mahoney wrote: But no matter. Whichever definition you accept, RSI is not a viable path to AGI. An AI that is twice as smart as a human can make no more progress than 2 humans. I can't say I've noticed two dogs being smarter than one dog. Admittedly, a pack of dogs can do hunting better, but they are not 'smarter'. Numbers just increase capabilities. Two humans can lift a heavier object than one human, but they are not twice as smart. As Ben says, I don't see a necessary connection between RSI and 'smarts'. It's a technique applicable from very basic levels. BillK --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Where the Future of AGI Lies
On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 10:05 PM, Matt Mahoney wrote: From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeltsin Boris Yeltsin studied at Pushkin High School in Berezniki in Perm Krai. He was fond of sports (in particular skiing, gymnastics, volleyball, track and field, boxing and wrestling) despite losing the thumb and index finger of his left hand when he and some friends sneaked into a Red Army supply depot, stole several grenades, and tried to dissect them.[5] But to be fair, Google didn't find it either. I've had a play with this. I think you are asking the wrong question. See - It's your fault! :) The Yeltsin article doesn't say that he was a world leader. It says he was President of Russia. The article doesn't say he lost 2 fingers. It says he lost a thumb and index finger. So I think you are expecting quite a high level of understanding to match your query with these statements. If you ask which president has lost a thumb and finger?. Then Powerset matches on the second page of results but Google matches on the first page of results. (Google is very good at keyword matching!) Cognition is still confused as it cannot find 'concepts' to match on. The Powerset FAQ says that it analyses your query and tries to extract a 'subject-relation-object' which it then tries to match. They give examples of the type of query they like. what was banned by the fda what caused the great depression The Cognition FAQ says that they try to find 'concepts' in your query and match on the 'concept' rather than actual words. i.e. The text Did they adopt the bill?; is known by Cognition to relate to information about the approval of Proposition A, because adopt in the text means to approve, and bill in the text means a proposed law. So it looks like they don't have concepts for 'world leader = president' or 'thumb and index finger = 2 fingers' NLP isn't as easy as it looks! :) BillK --- 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=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Where the Future of AGI Lies
On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 3:15 PM, Jiri Jelinek wrote: There is a difference between being good at a) finding problem-related info/pages, and b) finding functional solutions (through reasoning), especially when all the needed data is available. Google cannot handle even trivial answer-embedded questions. Last I heard Peter Norvig was saying that Google had no interest in putting a natural language front-end on Google. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/18/1530209 But other companies are interested. The main two are: Powerset http://www.powerset.com/ and Cognition http://www.cognition.com/ A new startup Eeggi is also interesting. http://www.eeggi.com/ BillK --- 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=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Artificial humor
On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 2:28 PM, Jiri Jelinek wrote: If you talk to a program about changing 3D scene and the program then correctly answers questions about [basic] spatial relationships between the objects then I would say it understands 3D. Of course the program needs to work with a queriable 3D representation but it doesn't need a body. I mean it doesn't need to be a real-world robot, it doesn't need to associate self with any particular 3D object (real-world or simulated) and it doesn't need to be self-aware. It just needs to be the 3D-scene-aware and the scene may contain just a few basic 3D objects (e.g. the Shrdlu stuff). Surely the DARPA autonomous vehicles driving themselves around the desert and in traffic show that computers can cope quite well with a 3D environment, including other objects moving around them as well? BillK --- 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))
On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Abram Demski wrote: snip By the way, where does this term wireheading come from? I assume from context that it simply means self-stimulation. Science Fiction novels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead In Larry Niven's Known Space stories, a wirehead is someone who has been fitted with an electronic brain implant (called a droud in the stories) to stimulate the pleasure centers of their brain. In 2006, The Guardian reported that trials of Deep brain stimulation with electric current, via wires inserted into the brain, had successfully lifted the mood of depression sufferers.[1] This is exactly the method used by wireheads in the earlier Niven stories (such as the 'Gil the Arm' story Death By Ectasy). In the Shaper/Mechanist stories of Bruce Sterling, wirehead is the Mechanist term for a human who has given up corporeal existence and become an infomorph. -- BillK --- 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] AGI's Philosophy of Learning
On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 2:56 PM, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Wow, sorry about that. I am using firefox and had no problems. The site was just the first reference I was able to find using google. Wikipedia references the same fact: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedforward_neural_network#Multi-layer_perceptron I've done a bit more investigation. The web site is probably clean. These attacks are probably coming from a compromised ad server. ScanSafe Quote: Online ads have become a primary target for malware authors because they offer a stealthy way to distribute malware to a wide audience. In many instances, the malware perpetrator can leverage the distributed nature of online advertising and the decentralization of website content to spread malware to hundreds of sites. So you might encounter these attacks at any site, because almost all sites serve up ads to you. And you're correct that FireFox with AdBlock Plus and NoScript is safe from these attacks. Using a Linux or Apple operating system is even safer. I dualboot to use Linux for browsing and only go into Windows when necessary. Nowadays you can also use virtualization to run several operating systems at once. Cooperative Linux also runs happily alongside Windows. BillK --- 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] AGI's Philosophy of Learning
On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 8:42 AM, Brad Paulsen wrote: Abram, Just FYI... When I attempted to access the Web page in your message, http://www.learnartificialneuralnetworks.com/ (that's without the backpropagation.html part), my virus checker, AVG, blocked the attempt with a message similar to the following: Threat detected! Virus found: JS/Downloader.Agent Detected on open Quarantined On a second attempt, I also got the IE 7.0 warning banner: This website wants to run the following add-on: Microsoft Data Access - Remote Data Services Dat...' from 'Microsoft Corporation'. If you trust the website and the add-on and want to allow it to run, click... (of course, I didn't click). This time, AVG gave me the option to heal the virus. I took this option. It may be nothing, but it also could be a drive by download attempt of which the owners of that site may not be aware. Yes, the possibility that the site has been hacked should always be considered as javascript injection attacks are becoming more and more common. Because of this, the latest version of AVG has been made to be very suspicious about javascript. This is causing some false detections when AVG encounters very complicated javascript as it errs on the side of safety. And looking at the source code for that page there is one large function near the top that might well have confused AVG (or it could be a hack, I'm not a javascript expert!). However, I scanned the site with Dr Web antivirus and it said the site was clean and the javascript was ok. This site has not yet been scanned by McAfee Site Advisor, but I have submitted it to them to be scanned soon. Of course, if you use the Mozilla FireFox browser you are protected from many drive by infections. Especially if you use the AdBlock Plus and NoScript addons. BillK --- 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] TOE -- US PATENT ISSUED for the TEN ETHICAL LAWS OF ROBOTICS
On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 1:13 AM, Mike Archbold wrote: It seems to me like to be real AGI you have skipped over the parts of Aristotle more applicable to AGI, like his metaphysics and logic. For example in the metaphysics he talks about beginning and end, causes, continuous/discrete, and this type of thing. At first glance it looks like your invention starts with ethics; why not build atop a metaphysics base? I'm not going to pass a judgement on your work but it seems like it's not going over well here with the crowd that has dealt with patent law. From my perspective I guess I don't like the idea of patenting some automation of Aristotle unless it was in a kind of production-ready state (ie., beyond mere concept stage). His invention is ethics, because that's what his field of work is. See his list of books here: http://www.allbookstores.com/author/John_E_Lamuth.html * A Diagnostic Classification of the Emotions : A Three-digit Coding System for Affective Language by Jay D. Edwards (Illustrator), John E. Lamuth April 2005, Paperback List Price: $34.95 * Character Values : Promoting a Virtuous Lifestyle cover Character Values : Promoting a Virtuous Lifestyle by Jay D. Edwards (Illustrator), John E. Lamuth (Editor) April 2005, Paperback List Price: $28.95 * Communication Breakdown : Decoding The Riddle Of Mental Illness by Jay D. Edwards (Introduction by), John E. Lamuth (Editor) June 2004, Paperback List Price: $28.95 * A Revolution in Family Values : Tradition Vs. Technology by Jay D. Edwards (Illustrator), John E. Lamuth April 2002, Paperback List Price: $19.95 * A Revolution in Family Values : Spirituality for a New Millennium by John E. Lamuth March 2001, Hardcover List Price: $24.95 * The Ultimate Guide to Family Values : A Grand Unified Theory of Ethics and Morality by John E. Lamuth September 1999, Hardcover List Price: $19.95 and his author profile here: http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/fairhaven/Contact_Fairhaven_Books.html Biography John E. LaMuth is a 52 year-old counselor and author, native to the Southern California area. Credentials include a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biological Sciences from University of California, Irvine: followed by a Master of Science Degree in Counseling from California State University, Fullerton; with an emphasis in Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling. John is currently engaged in private practice in Divorce and Family Mediation Counseling in the San Bernardino County area - JLM Mediation Service - Lucerne Valley, CA 92356 USA. John also serves as an Adjunct Faculty Member at Victor Valley College, Victorville, CA. BillK --- 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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] US PATENT ISSUED for the TEN ETHICAL LAWS OF ROBOTICS
On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 12:59 PM, Matt Mahoney wrote: This is a real patent, unfortunately... http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1Sect2=HITOFFp=1u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.htmlr=1f=Gl=50d=PALLRefSrch=yesQuery=PN%2F6587846 But I think it will expire before anyone has the technology to implement it. :-) I prefer Warren Ellis's angry, profane Three Laws of Robotics. (linked from BoingBoing) http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=5426 BillK --- 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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] DARPA looking for 'Cutting Edge' AI projects
On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 11:52 AM, Stefan Pernar wrote: I'm a consultant with DARPA, and I'm working on an initiative to push the boundaries of neuromorphic computing (i.e. artificial intelligence). The project is designed to advance ideas all fronts, including measuring and understanding biological brains, creating AI systems, and investigating the fundamental nature of intelligence. I'm conducting a wide search of these fields, but I wanted to know if any in this community know of neat projects along those lines that I might overlook. Maybe you're working on a project like that and want to talk it up? No promises (seriously), but interesting work will be brought to the attention of the project manager I'm working with. If you want to start up a dialog, send me an email, and we'll see where it goes. I'll also be reading the comments for the story. This sounds like the DARPA SyNAPSE program. Here is a blog post about the program with a link to the full specification document: http://p9.hostingprod.com/@modha.org/blog/2008/04/ April 25, 2008 SyNAPSE: Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics DARPA's Defense Sciences Office (DSO) has recently issued a Broad Agency Announcement entitled SyNAPSE. The program is led by Dr. Todd Hylton. --- This gives an idea of the people and projects already bidding. http://www.eventmakeronline.com/dso/View/presenter.asp?MeetingID=561 DARPA SyNAPSE Bidders Workshop March 4, 2008 -- This is an overview of the meeting from one of the participants. http://www.ine-news.org/view.php?article=rss-248category=Workshops%3AGeneral Report on the DARPA SyNAPSE Teaming Workshop Leslie Smith 14 March 2008 --- BillK --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=106510220-47b225 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] More Info Please
On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 2:20 PM, Mark Waser wrote: Geez. What the heck is wrong with you people and your seriously bogus stats? Try a real recognized neutral tracking service like Netcraft (http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html) Does anyone believe that they are biased and coking their data? March 2008 Percent April 2008 Percent Change Apache 82,454,415 50.69% 83,554,638 50.42% -0.27 Microsoft 57,698,503 35.47% 58,547,355 35.33% -0.14 Google 9,012,004 5.54% 10,079,333 6.08% 0.54 lighttpd 1,552,650 0.95% 1,495,308 0.90% -0.05 Sun 546,581 0.34% 547,873 0.33% -0.01 As I understand it, Netcraft's results are based on web sites, or more precisely, hostnames, rather than actual web servers. This introduces a bias because some servers run a large number of low-volume (or zero volume) web sites. This company attempts to survey web *servers* only (Note: Total is about 5% of Netcraft total) http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200804/ More detail here: http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200804/servers.html This gives 73% for Apache and 19% for Microsoft. BillK --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=103754539-40ed26 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] More Info Please
On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 3:53 PM, Mark Waser wrote: No. You are not correct. Read their methodology (http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/faq.html?mondir=/200804domdir=domain=) which I have copied and pasted below We visit what we consider well-known sites. In our case, we define a well-known site as a site that had a link to it from at least one other site that we consider well-known. So, if we are visiting you, it means we know about you through a link from another site. If a site stops responding to our request for 3 consecutive months, we automatically remove it from the survey. In this fashion, our list of known servers remains up to date. Because of this technique, we find that we actually only visit about 10% of the web sites out on the web. This is because approximately 90% of all web sites are fringe sites, such as domain squatters, personal web sites, etc., that are considered unimportant by the rest of the web community (because no-one considers them important enough to link to.) That's fine by me. They are trying to survey the web servers that are actually *used* on the internet. Ignoring millions of parked domains on IIS servers run by some major registrars. Their overall figure of 73% for Apache and 19% for Microsoft IIS sounds reasonable to me. As J. Andrew Rogers said, Apache is probably a larger % than this in Silicon Valley. BillK --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=103754539-40ed26 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] How general can be and should be AGI?
On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 8:09 PM, Mike Tintner wrote: So what you must tell me is how your or any geometrical system of analysis is going to be able to take a rorschach and come up similarly with a recognizable object or creature. Bear in mind, your system will be given no initial clues as to what objects or creatures are suitable as potential comparisons. It can by all means have a large set of visual images in memory, as we do. But you must tell me how your system will connect the rorschach with any of those images, such as a bat, - by *geometrical* means. snip This is called Content-based image retrieval (CBIR), also known as query by image content (QBIC) and content-based visual information retrieval (CBVIR) is the application of computer vision to the image retrieval problem, that is, the problem of searching for digital images in large databases. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBIR This is a hot area of computer research, with many test systems. (see article). Nothing to do with AGI, of course. Every post from Mike seems to be yet another different way of saying 'You're all wrong!' Are you sure you want to be on this list, Mike? BillK --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Symbols
On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 10:56 AM, Mike Tintner wrote: snip You guys probably think this is all rather peripheral and unimportant - they don't teach this in AI courses, so it can't be important. No. It means you're on the wrong list. But if you can't see things whole, then you can't see or connect with the real world. And, in case you haven't noticed, no AGI can connect with the real world. In fact, there is no such thing as an AGI at the moment. And there never will be if machines can't do what the brain does - which is, first and last, and all the time, look at the world in images as wholes. This list is not trying to duplicate a human brain. If you are the only person on the list who is correct, then you're wasting your time and our time here. It can't be much fun for you to spend all your time repeatedly telling everyone else that they've got it all wrong. Once or twice should be sufficient, else you turn into a troll. BillK --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=98558129-0bdb63 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Instead of an AGI Textbook
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 12:47 PM, Ben Goertzel wrote: Is there some kind of online software that lets a group of people update a Mind Map diagram collaboratively, in the manner of a Wiki page? This would seem critical if a Mind Map is to really be useful for the purpose you suggest... Here is a recent review of online mind mapping software: http://usableworld.terapad.com/index.cfm?fa=contentNews.newsDetailsnewsID=41870from=listdirectoryId=14375 Online mindmap tools - Updated! By James Breeze in Mind Maps Published: Saturday, 08 March 08 BillK --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=98558129-0bdb63 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] reasoning knowledge
On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 8:29 PM, Ben Goertzel wrote: snip I don't think that formal logic is a suitably convenient language for describing motor movements or dealing with motor learning. But still, I strongly suspect one can produce software programs that do handle motor movement and learning effectively. They are symbolic at the level of the programming language, but not symbolic at the level of the deliberative, reflective component of the artificial mind doing the learning. A symbol is a symbol **to some system**. Just because a hunk of program code contains symbols to the programmer, doesn't mean it contains symbols to the mind it helps implement. Any more than a neuron being a symbol to a neuroscientist, implies that neuron is a symbol to the mind it helps implement. Anyway, I agree with you that formal logical rules and inference are not the end-all of AGI and are not the right tool for handling visual imagination or motor learning. But I do think they have an important role to play even so. Asimo has a motor movement program. Obviously he didn't 'learn' it himself. But once written, it seems likely that similar sub-routines can be taken advantage of by later robots. BillK --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=95818715-a78a9b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Where are the women?
On Nov 30, 2007 2:37 PM, James Ratcliff wrote: More Women: Kokoro (image attached) So that's what a women is! I wondered.. BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=70777441-ffcff3
Re: Hacker intelligence level [WAS Re: [agi] Funding AGI research]
On Nov 29, 2007 8:33 AM, Bob Mottram wrote: My own opinion of all this, for what it's worth, is that the smart hackers don't waste their time writing viruses/botnets. There are many harder problems to which an intelligent mind can be applied. This discussion is a bit out of date. Nowadays no hackers (except for script kiddies) are interested in wiping hard disks or damaging your pc. Hackers want to *use* your pc and the data on it. Mostly the general public don't even notice their pc is working for someone else. When it slows down sufficiently, they either buy a new pc or take it to the shop to get several hundred infections cleaned off. But some infections (like rootkits) need a disk wipe to remove them completely. See: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7160tag=nl.e589 Quote- On Wednesday, the SANS Institute released its top 20 security risks update for 2007. It's pretty bleak across the board. There are client vulnerabilities in browsers, Office software (especially the Microsoft variety), email clients and media players. On the server side, Web applications are a joke, Windows Services are a big target, Unix and Mac operating systems have holes, backup software is an issue as are databases and management servers. Even anti-virus software is a target. And assuming you button down all of those parts–good luck folks–you have policies to be implemented (rights, access, encrypted laptops etc.) just so people can elude them. Meanwhile, instant messaging, peer-to-peer programs and your VOIP system are vulnerable. The star of the security show is the infamous zero day attack. -- Original SANS report here - http://www.sans.org/top20/?portal=bf37a5aa487a5aacf91e0785b7f739a4#c2 --- And, of course, all the old viruses are still floating around the net and have to be protected against. BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=70081689-300ee8
Re: [agi] Nirvana? Manyana? Never!
On 11/2/07, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: I didn't ask whether it's possible. I'm quite aware that it's possible. I'm asking if this is what you want for yourself. Not what you think that you ought to logically want, but what you really want. Is this what you lived for? Is this the most that Jiri Jelinek wants to be, wants to aspire to? Forget, for the moment, what you think is possible - if you could have anything you wanted, is this the end you would wish for yourself, more than anything else? Well, almost. Absolute Power over others and being worshipped as a God would be neat as well. Getting a dog is probably the nearest most humans can get to this. BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=60258273-c65ec9
Re: Economic libertarianism [was Re: The first-to-market effect [WAS Re: [agi] Religion-free technical content]
On 10/6/07, a wrote: I am skeptical that economies follow the self-organized criticality behavior. There aren't any examples. Some would cite the Great Depression, but it was caused by the malinvestment created by Central Banks. e.g. The Federal Reserve System. See the Austrian Business Cycle Theory for details. In conclusion, economics is a bad analogy with complex systems. My objection to economic libertarianism is that it's not a free market. A 'free' market is an impossibility. There will always be somebody who is bigger than me or cleverer than me or better educated than me, etc. A regulatory environment attempts to reduce the victimisation of the weaker members of the population and introduces another set of biases to the economy. A free market is just a nice intellectual theory that is of no use in the real world. (Unless you are in the Mafia, of course). BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=50792589-4d8a77
Re: The first-to-market effect [WAS Re: [agi] Religion-free technical content]
On 10/4/07, Bob Mottram [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To me this seems like elevating that status of nanotech to magic. Even given RSI and the ability of the AGI to manufacture new computing resources it doesn't seem clear to me how this would enable it to prevent other AGIs from also reaching RSI capability. Presumably lesser techniques means black hat activity, or traditional forms of despotism. There seems to be a clarity gap in the theory here. The first true AGI may be friendly, as suggested by Richard Loosemore. But if the military are working on developing an intelligent weapons system, then a sub-project will be a narrow AI project designed specifically to seek out and attack the competition *before* it becomes a true AGI. The Chinese are already constantly probing and attacking the western internet sites. BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=49977621-104d4e
Re: [agi] Religion-free technical content
On 10/2/07, Mark Waser wrote: A quick question for Richard and others -- Should adults be allowed to drink, do drugs, wirehead themselves to death? This is part of what I was pointing at in an earlier post. Richard's proposal was that humans would be asked in advance by the AGI what level of protection they required. So presumably Richard is thinking along the lines of a non-interfering AGI, unless specifically requested. There are obvious problems here. Humans don't know what is 'best' for them. Humans frequently ask for what they want, only later to discover that they really didn't want that. Humans change their mind all the time. Humans don't know 'in advance' what level of protection they would like. Death and/or mutilation comes very quickly at times. If I was intending to be evil, say, commit mass murder, I would request a lot of protection from the AGI, as other humans would be trying to stop me. -- I think the AGI will have great problems interfacing with these mixed-up argumentative humans. The AGI will probably have to do a lot of 'brain correction' to straighten out humanity. Let's hope that it knows what it is doing. BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=48932774-c6db65
Re: [agi] Religion-free technical content
On 9/30/07, Edward W. Porter wrote: I think you, Don Detrich, and many others on this list believe that, for at least a couple of years, it's still pretty safe to go full speed ahead on AGI research and development. It appears from the below post that both you and Don agree AGI can potentially present grave problems (which distinguished Don from some on this list who make fun of anyone who even considers such dangers). It appears the major distinction between the two of you is whether, and how much, we should talk and think about the potential dangers of AGI in the next few years. Take the Internet, WWW and Usenet as an example. Nobody gave a thought to security while they were being developed. They were delighted and amazed that the thing worked at all. Now look at the swamp we have now. Botnets, viruses, trojans, phishing, DOS attacks, illegal software, illegal films, illegal music, pornography of every kind, etc. (Just wish I had a pornograph to play it on). BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=48269918-e87cb0
Re: [agi] Minimally ambiguous languages
On 6/5/07, Bob Mottram [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I remember last year there was some talk about possibly using Lojban as a possible language use to teach an AGI in a minimally ambiguous way. Does anyone know if the same level of ambiguity found in ordinary English language also applies to sign language? I know very little about sign language, but it seems possible that the constraints applied by the relatively long time periods needed to produce gestures with arms/hands compared to the time required to produce vocalizations may mean that sign language communication is more compact and maybe less ambiguous. Also, comparing the way that the same concepts are represented using spoken and sign language might reveal something about how we normally parse sentences. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English Ogden's rules of grammar for Basic English allows people to use the 850 words to talk about things and events in the normal English way. Ogden did not put any words into Basic English that could be paraphrased with other words, and he strove to make the words work for speakers of any other language. He put his set of words through a large number of tests and adjustments. He also simplified the grammar but tried to keep it normal for English users. More recently, it has influenced the creation of Simplified English, a standardized version of English intended for the writing of technical manuals. BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=e9e40a7e
Re: [agi] My proposal for an AGI agenda
On 4/10/07, Eric Baum wrote: I'd commend to the LISP hackers' attention the compiler Stalin by Jeff Syskind, who last I knew was at Purdue. I'm uncertain the extent to which the compiler is available, but I imagine if you look around (for example find Syskind's home page) you will find papers or or pointers. My erstwhile collaborator Kevin Lang, initially a skeptic on the subject, ran extensive tests on Stalin and concluded the compiled code was substantially faster than compiled C and C++, even on problems where this was quite surprising. It's possible Kevin published something on these tests. http://community.schemewiki.org/?Stalin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin_(Scheme_implementation) http://cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~qobi/software.html Stalin is an aggressively optimizing Scheme compiler. It is the most highly optimizing Scheme compiler, and in fact one of the most highly optimizing compilers of any sort for any language. Stalin is publicly freely available, licensed under the GNU GPL. It was written by Jeffrey M. Siskind. In detail, Stalin is a whole-program compiler that uses advanced flow analysis closure conversion techniques. It compiles Scheme to highly optimized C. Stalin has a few very significant limitations, however: * it takes a *long* time to compile anything including the compiler * it is not designed for interactive use or debugging * it does not support R4RS/R5RS high-level macros * it does not support the full numeric tower The compiler itself does lifetime analysis and hence does not generate as much garbage as might be expected, but global reclamation of storage is done using the Boehm garbage collector. Scheme http://cbbrowne.com/info/scheme.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheme_(programming_language) Scheme is a LISP dialect that is relatively small, nicely supports tail recursion, provides block structure and lexical scoping, and gives a variety of object types first-class status (e.g. - first class objects are namable and can be passed around as function arguments, results, or as list elements). If Common LISP is considered analogous to C++ (which is not entirely unreasonable), Scheme would comparatively be analogous to C. Where Common LISP requires that the rich functionality (such as a wide variety of data structures and the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS)) come as an intrinsic part of the language, Scheme encourages the use of libraries to provide these sorts of additional functionality. The Scheme libraries are small enough that programmers commonly construct functionality using primitive functions, where a LISP system might have something already defined. This gives additional opportunity either to tune performance or shoot oneself in the foot by reimplementing it poorly... BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
Re: [agi] small code small hardware
On 3/29/07, kevin osborne wrote: snip You could argue that a lot of all this is the same kind of functions just operating in 'parrellel' with a lot of 'redundancy'. I'm not sure I buy that. Evolution is a miserly mistress. If thinking could have been achieved with less, it would have been, and any 'extra' would have no means of selection. The (also ridiculously large) amount of years involved in mammalian brain evolution all led towards what we bobble around with us today. I think there is an untold host of support functions necessary to take a Von Neumann machine to a tipping-point|critical-mass where it can truly think for itself. To even begin to equate top the generalised abilities of an imbecile. I think you have too high an opinion of Evolution. Evolution is kludge piled upon kludge. This is because evolution via natural selection cannot construct traits from scratch. New traits must be modifications of previously existing traits. This is called historical constraint. There are many examples available in nature of bad design. So it is not unlikely that a lot of the human brain processing is a redundant hangover from earlier designs. Of course, it is not a trivial problem to decide which functions are not required to create AGI. :) BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
[agi] Mind mapping software
I thought this free software opportunity might be of interest to some here. ConceptDraw MINDMAP 4 is a mind-mapping and team brainstorming tool with extended drawing capabilities. Use it to efficiently organize your ideas and tasks with the help of Mind Mapping technique. ConceptDraw MINDMAP 4 supports extra file formats, multi-page documents. It offers a rich collection of pre-drawn shapes. ConceptDraw MINDMAP 4 has extended capabilities for creating web sites and PowerPoint presentations. This software is temporarily available for free. * But you must download and install it within the next 19 hours. ** Restrictions for the free edition. 1. No free technical support 2. No free upgrades to future versions 3. Strictly non-commercial usage Normal price 119 USD. http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/conceptdraw-mindmap-personal/ BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
Re: [agi] SOTA
On 1/6/07, Bob Mottram wrote: This is the way it's going to go in my opinion. In a house or office the robots would really be dumb actuators - puppets - being controlled from a central AI which integrates multiple systems together. That way you can keep the cost and maintenance requirements of the robot to a bare minimum. Such a system also future-proofs the robot in a rapidly changing software world, and allows intelligence to be provided as an internet based service. http://www.pinktentacle.com/2006/12/top-10-robots-selected-for-robot-award-2006/ Robotic building cleaning system (Fuji Heavy Industries/ Sumitomo) - This autonomous robot roams the hallways of buildings, performing cleaning operations along the way. Capable of controlling elevators, the robot can move from floor to floor unsupervised, and it returns to its start location once it has finished cleaning. The robot is currently employed as a janitor at 10 high-rise buildings in Japan, including Harumi Triton Square and Roppongi Hills. BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
Re: Re: Re: Re: [agi] A question on the symbol-system hypothesis
On 12/4/06, Mark Waser wrote: Explaining our actions is the reflective part of our minds evaluating the reflexive part of our mind. The reflexive part of our minds, though, operates analogously to a machine running on compiled code with the compilation of code being largely *not* under the control of our conscious mind (though some degree of this *can* be changed by our conscious minds). The more we can correctly interpret and affect/program the reflexive part of our mind with the reflective part, the more intelligent we are. And, translating this back to the machine realm circles back to my initial point, the better the machine can explain it's reasoning and use it's explanation to improve it's future actions, the more intelligent the machine is (or, in reverse, no explanation = no intelligence). Your reasoning is getting surreal. As Ben tried to explain to you, 'explaining our actions' is our consciousness dreaming up excuses for what we want to do anyway. Are you saying that the more excuses we can think up, the more intelligent we are? (Actually there might be something in that!). You seem to have a real difficulty in admitting that humans behave irrationally for a lot (most?) of the time. Don't you read newspapers? You can redefine rationality if you like to say that all the crazy people are behaving rationally within their limited scope, but what's the point? Just admit their behaviour is not rational. Every time someone (subconsciously) decides to do something, their brain presents a list of reasons to go ahead. The reasons against are ignored, or weighted down to be less preferred. This applies to everything from deciding to get a new job to deciding to sleep with your best friend's wife. Sometimes a case arises when you really, really want to do something that you *know* is going to end in disaster, ruined lives, ruined career, etc. and it is impossible to think of good reasons to proceed. But you still go ahead anyway, saying that maybe it won't be so bad, maybe nobody will find out, it's not all my fault anyway, and so on. Human decisions and activities are mostly emotional and irrational. That's the way life is. Because life is uncertain and unpredictable, human decisions are based on best guesses, gambles and basic subconscious desires. An AGI will have to cope with this mess. Basing an AGI on iron logic and 'rationality' alone will lead to what we call 'inhuman' ruthlessness. BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
Re: Marvin and The Emotion Machine [WAS Re: [agi] A question on the symbol-system hypothesis]
to guess both how our brains function as well as they do and why they evolved in the ways that they did, until we have had more experience at trying to build such systems ourselves, to learn which kinds of bugs are likely to appear and to find ways to keep them from disabling us. In the coming decades, many researchers will try to develop machines with Artificial Intelligence. And every system that they build will keep surprising us with their flaws (that is, until those machines become clever enough to conceal their faults from us). In some cases, we'll be able to diagnose specific errors in those designs and then be able to remedy them. But whenever we fail to find any such simple fix, we will have little choice except to add more checks and balances—for example, by adding increasingly elaborate Critics. And through all this, we can never expect to find any foolproof strategy to balance the advantage of immediate action against the benefit of more careful, reflective thought. Whatever we do, we can be sure that the road toward designing 'post-human minds' will be rough. BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
Re: [agi] A question on the symbol-system hypothesis
On 12/5/06, Charles D Hixson wrote: BillK wrote: ... Every time someone (subconsciously) decides to do something, their brain presents a list of reasons to go ahead. The reasons against are ignored, or weighted down to be less preferred. This applies to everything from deciding to get a new job to deciding to sleep with your best friend's wife. Sometimes a case arises when you really, really want to do something that you *know* is going to end in disaster, ruined lives, ruined career, etc. and it is impossible to think of good reasons to proceed. But you still go ahead anyway, saying that maybe it won't be so bad, maybe nobody will find out, it's not all my fault anyway, and so on. ... BillK I think you've got a time inversion here. The list of reasons to go ahead is frequently, or even usually, created AFTER the action has been done. If the list is being created BEFORE the decision, the list of reasons not to go ahead isn't ignored. Both lists are weighed, a decision is made, and AFTER the decision is made the reasons decided against have their weights reduced. If, OTOH, the decision is made BEFORE the list of reasons is created, then the list doesn't *get* created until one starts trying to justify the action, and for justification obviously reasons not to have done the thing are useless...except as a layer of whitewash to prove that all eventualities were considered. For most decisions one never bothers to verbalize why it was, or was not, done. No time inversion intended. What I intended to say was that most (all?) decisions are made subconsciously before the conscious mind starts its reason / excuse generation process. The conscious mind pretending to weigh various reasons is just a human conceit. This feature was necessary in early evolution for survival. When danger threatened, immediate action was required. Flee or fight! No time to consider options with the new-fangled consciousness brain mechanism that evolution was developing. With the luxury of having plenty of time to reason about decisions, our consciousness can now play its reasoning games to justify what subconsciously has already been decided. NOTE: This is probably an exaggeration / simplification. ;) BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
Re: [agi] A question on the symbol-system hypothesis
On 12/2/06, Mark Waser wrote: My contention is that the pattern that it found was simply not translated into terms you could understand and/or explained. Further, and more importantly, the pattern matcher *doesn't* understand it's results either and certainly could build upon them -- thus, it *fails* the test as far as being the central component of an RSIAI or being able to provide evidence as to the required behavior of such. Mark, I think you are making two very basic wrong assumptions. 1) That humans are able to understand everything if it is explained to them simply enough and they are given unlimited time. 2) That it is even possible to explain some very complex ideas in a simple enough fashion. Consider teaching the sub-normal. After much repetition they can be trained to do simple tasks. Not understanding 'why', but they can remember instructions eventually. Even high IQ humans have the same equipment, just a bit better. They still have limits to how much they can remember, how much information they can hold in their heads and access. If you can't remember all the factors at once, then you can't understand the result. You can write down the steps, all the different data that affect the result, but you can't assemble it in your brain to get a result. And I think the chess or Go examples are a good example. People who think that they can look through the game records and understand why they lost are just not trained chess or go players. They have a good reason to call some people 'Go masters' or 'chess masters'. I used to play competitive chess and I can assure you that when our top board player consistently beat us lesser mortals we could rarely point at move 23 and say 'we shouldn't have done that'. It is *far* more subtle than that. If you think you can do that, then you just don't understand the problem. BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
Re: Re: [agi] A question on the symbol-system hypothesis
On 11/14/06, James Ratcliff wrote: If the contents of a knowledge base for AGI will be beyond our ability to comprehend then it is probably not human level AGI, it is something entirely new, and it will be alien and completely foriegn and unable to interact with us at all, correct? If you mean it will have more knowledge than we do, and do things somewhat differently, I agree on the point. You can't look inside the box because it's 10^9 bits. Size is not a acceptable barrier to looking inside. Wiki, is huge and will get infineltly huge, yet I can look inside it, and see that poison ivy causes rashes or whatnot. The AGI will have enourmous complexity, I agree, but you should ALWAYS be able to look inside it. Not in the tradional sense of pages of code maybe or simple set of rules, but the AGI itself HAS to be able to generalize and tell what it is doing. So something like, I see these leafs that look like this, supply picture, can I pick them up safely, will generate a human readable output that can itself be debugged. Or asking about the process of doing something, will generate a possible plan that the AI would follow, and a human could say, no thats not right, and cause the AI to go back and reconsider with new possible information. We can always look inside the 'logic' of what the AGI is doing, we may not be able to directly change that ourselves easily. Doesn't that statement cease to apply as soon as the AGI starts optimizing it's own code? If the AGI is redesigning itself it will be changing before our eyes, faster than we can inspect it. You must be assuming a strictly controlled development system where the AGI proposes a change, humans inspect it for a week then tell the AGI to proceed with that change. I suspect you will only be able to do that in the very early development stages. BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
Re: [agi] Natural versus formal AI interface languages
On 11/6/06, James Ratcliff wrote: In some form or another we are going to HAVE to have a natural language interface, either a translation program that can convert our english to the machine understandable form, or a simplified form of english that is trivial for a person to quickly understand and write. Humans use natural speech to communicate and to have an effective AGI that we can itneract with, it will have to have easy communication with us. That has been a critcal problem with all software since the beginning, a difficulty in the human computer interface. I go further to propose that as much knowledge information should be stored in easily recognizable natural language as well, only devolving into more complex forms where the cases warrant it, such as complex motor-sensor data sets, and some lower logic levels. Anybody remember short wave radio? The Voice of America does worldwide broadcasts in Special English. http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/about_special_english.cfm Special English has a core vocabulary of 1500 words. Most are simple words that describe objects, actions or emotions. Some words are more difficult. They are used for reporting world events and describing discoveries in medicine and science. Special English writers use short, simple sentences that contain only one idea. They use active voice. They do not use idioms. -- There is also Basic English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English Basic English is a constructed language with a small number of words created by Charles Kay Ogden and described in his book Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930). The language is based on a simplified version of English, in essence a subset of it. Ogden said that it would take seven years to learn English, seven months for Esperanto, and seven weeks for Basic English, comparable with Ido. Thus Basic English is used by companies who need to make complex books for international use, and by language schools that need to give people some knowledge of English in a short time. Also see: http://www.basic-english.org/ Basic English is a selection of 850 English words, used in simple structural patterns, which is both an international auxiliary language and a self-contained first stage for the teaching of any form of wider or Standard English. A subset, no unlearning. BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
Re: [agi] Natural versus formal AI interface languages
On 11/1/06, Charles D Hixson wrote: So. Lojban++ might be a good language for humans to communicate to an AI with, but it would be a lousy language in which to implement that same AI. But even for this purpose the language needs a verifier to insure that the correct forms are being followed. Ideally such a verifier would paraphrase the statement that it was parsing and emit back to the sender either an error message, or the paraphrased sentence. Then the sender would check that the received sentence matched in meaning the sentence that was sent. (N.B.: The verifier only checks the formal properties of the language to ensure that they are followed. It had no understanding, so it can't check the meaning.) This discussion reminds me of a story about the United Nations assembly meetings. Normally when a representative is speaking, all the translation staff are jabbering away in tandem with the speaker. But when the German representative starts speaking they all fall silent and sit staring at him. The reason is that they are waiting for the verb to come along. :) Billk - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] SOTA
On 10/20/06, Richard Loosemore wrote: I would *love* to see those IBM folks put a couple of jabbering four-year-old children in front of that translation system, to see how it likes their 'low-intelligence' language. :-) Does anyone have any contacts on the team, so we could ask? I sent an email to Liang Gu on the IBM MASTOR project team (not really expecting a reply) :) and have just received this response. Sounds hopeful. BillK - Bill, Thanks for your interests on MASTOR. And your suggestion of MASTOR for Children is really great! It is definitely much more meaningful if MASTOR can not only help adults but also children communicate with each other around the world using different languages! Although recognizing Children's voice has been proved a very challenging task, the translation and text-to-speech techniques thus involved should be very similar to what we have now. We will seriously investigate the possibility of this approach and will send you a test link if we later developed a pilot system on the web. Regards and thanks again for your enthusiasm about MASTOR, Liang - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] SOTA
On 10/19/06, Matt Mahoney wrote: - NLP components such as parsers, translators, grammar-checkers Parsing is unsolved. Translators like Babelfish have progressed little since the 1959 Russian-English project. Microsoft Word's grammar checker catches some mistakes but is clearly not AI. http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/nation/15783022.htm American soldiers bound for Iraq equipped with laptop translators Called the Two Way Speech-to-Speech Program, it's a translator that uses a computer to convert spoken English to Iraqi Arabic and vice versa. - If it is life-or-death, it must work pretty well. :) I believe this is based on the IBM MASTOR project. http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/research.nsf/pages/r.uit.innovation.html MASTOR's innovations include: methods that automatically extract the most likely meaning of the spoken utterance, store it in a tree structured set of concepts like actions and needs, methods that take the tree-based output of a statistical semantic parser and transform the semantic concepts in the tree to express the same set of concepts in a way appropriate for another language; methods for statistical natural language generation that take the resultant set of transformed concepts and generate a sentence for the target language; generation of proper inflections by filtering hypotheses with an n-gram statistical language model; etc BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] SOTA
On 10/19/06, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry, but IMO large databases, fast hardware, and cheap memory ain't got nothing to do with it. Anyone who doubts this get a copy of Pim Levelt's Speaking, read and digest the whole thing, and then meditate on the fact that that book is a mere scratch on the surface (IMO a scratch in the wrong direction, too, but that's neither here nor there). I saw a recent talk about an NLP system which left me stupified that so little progress has been made since 20 years ago. Having a clue about just what a complex thing intelligence is, has everything to do with it. Most normal speaking requires relatively little 'intelligence'. Adults who take young children on foreign holidays are amazed at how quickly the children appear to be chattering away to other children in a foreign language. They manage it for several reasons: 1) they don't have the other interests and priorities that adults have. 2) they use simple sentence structures and smallish vocabularies. 3) they discuss simple subjects of interest to children. The new IBM MASTOR system seems to be better than Babelfish. IBM are just starting on widespread commercial marketing of the system. Aiming at business travellers, apparently. MASTOR project description http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/research.nsf/pages/r.uit.innovation.html Here is a pdf file describing the MASTOR system in more detail http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/W/W06/W06-3711.pdf Here is a 12MB mpg download of the system in use. Simple speech, but impressive. http://www.research.ibm.com/jam/speech_to_speech.mpg BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] Numenta: article on Jeff Hawkins' AGI approach
On 6/2/06, Ben Goertzel wrote: Mike You note that Numenta's approach seems oriented toward implementing an animal-level mind... I agree, and I do think this is a fascinating project, and an approach that can ultimately succeed... but I think that for it to succeed Hawkins will have to introduce a LOT of deep concepts that he is currently ignoring in his approach. Most critically he ignores the complex, chaotic dynamics of brain systems... I suppose part of the motivation for starting with animal mind is that the human mind is just a minor adjustment to the animal mind, which is sorta true genetically and evolutionarily But on the other hand, just because animal brains evolved into human brains, doesn't mean that every system with animal-brain functionality has similar evolve-into-human-brain potentiality snip Just from a computer systems design perspective, I think this project is admirable. I think it is safe to claim that all the big computer design disasters occurred because they tried to do too much all at once. ''We want it all, and we want it now!'. Ben may be correct in claiming that major elements are being omitted, but if they even get an animal level intelligence running, this will be a remarkable achievement. They will be world leaders and will learn a lot about designing such systems. Even if it cannot progress to higher levels of intelligence, the experience gained will set their technicians well on the road to the next generation design. BillK --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
