Re: AW: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
Dave, Sorry to reply so tardily. I had to devote some time to other, pressing, matters. First, a general comment. There seems to be a very interesting approach to arguing one's case being taken by some posters on this list in recent days. I believe this approach was evinced most recently, and most baldly, by list newbie, Colin Hales. Apparently, Mr. Hales doesn't believe he is responsible for making his arguments clear or backing up his assertions of fact. Rather, it is we who must educate ourselves about the background for his particular arguments and assertions so we will be able to prove those arguments and assertions to ourselves for him. Now, THAT's an ego! This approach, of course, begs the question, Why should I care what Mr. Hales argues or asserts if he isn't going to take the time and effort needed to convince me he's not just some poseur? Does anyone else find this a tad insulting? It's tantamount to saying, Well, I've made my argument in English. It may not be perfectly clear to you because, to really understand it, you need to be fluent in Esperanto. If you're not, that's your problem. Go learn Esperanto so you can understand my fabulous reasoning and be convinced of my argument's veracity. Get real. I can (and will) ignore Mr. Hales. But, then, you used this same approach in your last post to me when you wrote, The OCP approach/strategy, both in crucial specifics of its parts and particularly in its total synthesis, *IS* novel; I recommend a closer re-examination! I think not. If you really care whether I think OCP's approach is novel, you have to convince me, not give me homework. I'm not arguing OCP's position. You are. If you think I don't understand OCP well enough, and if you think that is important to get me to take your argument seriously, then it's up to you to do the heavy lifting. In this case, though, I'll let you off the hook by gladly conceding the point. I will accept as true the proposition that OCP's approach to NLU is completely novel. Of course, I do this gladly because it makes not a bit of difference. In the first place, I didn't argue that the OCP approach was not novel in either its design or implementation. In fact, I'm sure it is. I argued that trying to solve the artificial intelligence problem by, first, solving the NLU problem is not a novel strategy. We have Mr. Turing to thank for it. It has been tried before. It has, to date, always failed. But, as I said, this makes no difference simply because thr fact that the OCP strategy is novel doesn't prove it will work. Indeed, it's not even good evidence. Prior approaches that failed were also once novel. If the problem of NLU is AI-complete (and this is widely believed to be the case), it will not fall to a finite algorithm with space/time complexity small enough to make it viable in a real-time AGI. If NLU turns out to not be AI-complete, then we still have fifty years of past failed effort by many intelligent, sincere and dedicated people to support the argument that it is at least a very difficult problem. My point has been, and still is, that NLU becomes a necessary condition of AGI IFF we define AGI as AGHI. Many people simply can't conceive of a general intelligence that isn't human-like. This is understandable since the only general intelligence we (think we) know something about is human intelligence. In that context, cracking the NLU problem can (although still needn't necessarily) be viewed as a prerequisite to cracking the AGI problem. But, human intelligence is not the only general intelligence we can imagine or create. IMHO, we can get to human-beneficial, non-human-like (but, still, human-inspired) general intelligence much quicker if, at least for AGI 1.0, we avoid the twin productivity sinks of NLU and embodiment. In the end, of course, both or us really have only our opinions. You can't prove the OCP approach, novel though it may be, will, finally, crack the elusive NLU problem. I can't prove it won't. I, agree, therefore, that we should agree to disagree and let history sort things out. Cheers, Brad David Hart wrote: On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 4:39 PM, Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, it has, in fact, been tried before. It has, in fact, always failed. Your comments about the quality of Ben's approach are noted. Maybe you're right. But, it's not germane to my argument which is that those parts of Ben G.'s approach that call for human-level NLU, and that propose embodiment (or virtual embodiment) as a way to achieve human-level NLU, have been tried before, many times, and have always failed. If Ben G. knows something he's not telling us then, when he does, I'll consider modifying my views. But, remember, my comments were never directed at the OpenCog project or Ben G. personally. They were directed at an AGI *strategy
Re: [agi] It is more important how AGI works than what it can do.
Dave, Well, I thought I'd described how pretty well. Even why. See my recent conversation with Dr. Heger on this list. I'll be happy to answer specific questions based on those explanations but I'm not going to repeat them here. Simply haven't got the time. Although I have not been asked to do so, I do feel I need to provide an ex post facto disclaimer. Here goes: I am aware of the approach being taken by Stephen Reed in the Texai project. I am currently associated with that project as a volunteer. What I have said previously in this regard) is, however, my own interpretation and opinion insofar as what I have said concerned tactics or strategies that may be similar to those being implemented in the Texai project. I'm pretty sure my interpretations and opinions are highly compatible with Steve's views even though they may not agree in every detail. My comments should NOT, however, be taken as an official representation of the Texai project's tactics, strategies or goals. End disclaimer. I was asked by Dr. Heger to go into some of the specifics of the strategy I had in mind. I honored his request and wrote quite extensively (for a list posting -- sorry 'bout that) about that strategy. I have not argued, nor do I intend to argue, that I have an approach to AGI that is better, faster or more economical than approach X. Instead, I have simply pointed out that NLU and embodiment problems have proven themselves to be extremely difficult (indeed, intractable to date). I, therefore, on those grounds alone, believe (and it's just an OPINION, although I believe a well-reasoned one) that we will get to a human-beneficial AGI sooner (and, I guess, probably, therefore, cheaper) if we side-step those two proven productivity sinks. For now. End of argument. I'm not trying to sell my AGI strategy or agenda to you or anyone else. Like many people on this list who have an opinion on these matters, I have a background as a practitioner in AI that goes back over twenty years. I've designed and written narrow-AI production (expert) system engines and been involved in knowledge engineering using those engines. The results of my efforts have saved large corporations millions of dollars (if not billions, over time). I can assure you that most of the humans who saw these systems come to life and out-perform their own human experts, were pretty sure I'd succeeded in getting a human into the box. To them, it was already AGI. I'd gotten a computer to do something only a human being (their employee) had theretofore been able to do. And I got the computer to do it BETTER and FASTER. Of course, these were mostly non-technical people who didn't understand the technology (in many cases had never even heard of it) and so, to them, there was a bit of magic involved. We, here, of course know that was not the case. While the stuff I built back in the 1980's and 1990's may not have been snazzy, wiz-bang AI with conversational robots and the whole Sci-Fi thing, it was still damn impressive and extremely human-beneficial. No NLU. No embodiment. I don't claim to have a better way to get to AGI, just a less risky way. Based on past experience (in the field). I have never intended to criticize any particular AGI approach. I have not tried to show that my approach is conceptually superior to any other approach on any specific design point. Indeed, I firmly believe that a multitude of vastly different approaches to this problem is a good thing. At least initially. As far as OCP's approach to embodiment is concerned, again it's neither the specifics nor the novelty of any particular approach that concerns me. The efficacy of any approach to the embodiment problem can only be determined once it has been tried. I'm only pointing out something everybody here knows full well: embodiment in various forms has, so far, failed to provide any real help in cracking the NLU problem. Might it in the future? Sure. But the key word there is might. When you go to the track to bet on a horse, do you look for the nag that's come in last or nearly last in every previous race that season and say to yourself, Hey, I have a novel betting strategy and, regardless what history shows (and the odds-makers say), I think I can make a killing here by betting the farm on that consistent loser! Probably not. Why? Because past performance, while not a guarantee of future performance, is really the only thing you have to go on, isn't it? Cheers, Brad P.S. Back in the early 1970's I once paid for a weekend of debauchery in Chicago from the proceeds of my $10 bet on a 20-to-1 horse at Arlington Park race track because I liked the name, She's a Dazzler. So it can happen. The only question is: How much do you want to bet? ;-) David Hart wrote: Brad, Your post describes your position *very* well, thanks. But, it does not describe *how* or *why* your AI system might
Re: AW: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
Ben, Well, I guess you told me! I'll just be taking my loosely-coupled ...bunch of clever narrow-AI widgets... right on out of here. No need to worry about me venturing an opinion here ever again. I have neither the energy nor, apparently, the intellectual ability to respond to a broadside like that from the top dog. It's too bad. I was just starting to fell at home here. Sigh. Cheers (and goodbye), Brad Ben Goertzel wrote: A few points... 1) Closely associating embodiment with GOFAI is just flat-out historically wrong. GOFAI refers to a specific class of approaches to AI that wer pursued a few decades ago, which were not centered on embodiment as a key concept or aspect. 2) Embodiment based approaches to AGI certainly have not been extensively tried and failed in any serious way, simply because of the primitive nature of real and virtual robotic technology. Even right now, the real and virtual robotics tech are not *quite* there to enable us to pursue embodiment-based AGI in a really tractable way. For instance, humanoid robots like the Nao cost $20K and have all sorts of serious actuator problems ... and virtual world tech is not built to allow fine-grained AI control of agent skeletons ... etc. It would be more accurate to say that we're 5-15 years away from a condition where embodiment-based AGI can be tried-out without immense time-wastage on making not-quite-ready supporting technologies work 3) I do not think that humanlike NL understanding nor humanlike embodiment are in any way necessary for AGI. I just think that they seem to represent the shortest path to getting there, because they represent a path that **we understand reasonably well** ... and because AGIs following this path will be able to **learn from us** reasonably easily, as opposed to AGIs built on fundamentally nonhuman principles To put it simply, once an AGI can understand human language we can teach it stuff. This will be very helpful to it. We have a lot of experience in teaching agents with humanlike bodies, communicating using human language. Then it can teach us stuff too. And human language is just riddled through and through with metaphors to embodiment, suggesting that solving the disambiguation problems in linguistics will be much easier for a system with vaguely humanlike embodied experience. 4) I have articulated a detailed proposal for how to make an AGI using the OCP design together with linguistic communication and virtual embodiment. Rather than just a promising-looking assemblage of in-development technologies, the proposal is grounded in a coherent holistic theory of how minds work. What I don't see in your counterproposal is any kind of grounding of your ideas in a theory of mind. That is: why should I believe that loosely coupling a bunch of clever narrow-AI widgets, as you suggest, is going to lead to an AGI capable of adapting to fundamentally new situations not envisioned by any of its programmers? I'm not completely ruling out the possiblity that this kind of strategy could work, but where's the beef? I'm not asking for a proof, I'm asking for a coherent, detailed argument as to why this kind of approach could lead to a generally-intelligent mind. 5) It sometimes feels to me like the reason so little progress is made toward AGI is that the 2000 people on the planet who are passionate about it, are moving in 4000 different directions ;-) ... OpenCog is an attempt to get a substantial number of AGI enthusiasts all moving in the same direction, without claiming this is the **only** possible workable direction. Eventually, supporting technologies will advance enough that some smart guy can build an AGI on his own in a year of hacking. I don't think we're at that stage yet -- but I think we're at the stage where a team of a couple dozen could do it in 5-10 years. However, if that level of effort can't be systematically summoned (thru gov't grants, industry funding, open-source volunteerism or wherever) then maybe AGI won't come about till the supporting technologies develop further. My hope is that we can overcome the existing collective-psychology and practical-economic obstacles that hold us back from creating AGI together, and build a beneficial AGI ASAP ... -- Ben G On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 2:34 AM, David Hart [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 4:39 PM, Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, it has, in fact, been tried before. It has, in fact, always failed. Your comments about the quality of Ben's approach are noted. Maybe you're right. But, it's not germane to my argument which is that those parts of Ben G.'s approach that call for human-level NLU, and that propose embodiment (or virtual embodiment) as a way to achieve human-level NLU, have been tried before
Re: [agi] NARS and probability
Pei, Ben G. and Abram, Oh, man, is this stuff GOOD! This is the real nitty-gritty of the AGI matter. How does your approach handle counter-evidence? How does your approach deal with insufficient evidence? (Those are rhetorical questions, by the way -- I don't want to influence the course of this thread, just want to let you know I dig it and, mostly, grok it as well). I love this stuff. You guys are brilliant. Actually, I think it would make a good publication: PLN vs. NARS -- The AGI Smack-down! A win-win contest. This is a rare treat for an old hacker like me. And, I hope, educational for all (including the participants)! Keep it coming, please! Cheers, Brad Pei Wang wrote: On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 8:03 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yah, according to Bayes rule if one assumes P(bird) = P(swimmer) this would be the case... (Of course, this kind of example is cognitively misleading, because if the only knowledge the system has is Swallows are birds and Swallows are NOT swimmers then it doesn't really know that the terms involved are swallows, birds, swimmers etc. ... then in that case they're just almost-meaningless tokens to the system, right?) Well, it depends on the semantics. According to model-theoretic semantics, if a term has no reference, it has no meaning. According to experience-grounded semantics, every term in experience have meaning --- by the role it plays. Further questions: (1) Don't you intuitively feel that the evidence provided by non-swimming birds says more about Birds are swimmers than Swimmers are birds? (2) If your answer for (1) is yes, then think about Adults are alcohol-drinkers and Alcohol-drinkers are adults --- do they have the same set of counter examples, intuitively speaking? (3) According to your previous explanation, will PLN also take a red apple as negative evidence for Birds are swimmers and Swimmers are birds, because it reduces the candidate pool by one? Of course, the probability adjustment may be very small, but qualitatively, isn't it the same as a non-swimming bird? If not, then what the system will do about it? Pei On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 7:34 PM, Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben, I see your position. Let's go back to the example. If the only relevant domain knowledge PLN has is Swallows are birds and Swallows are NOT swimmers, will the system assigns the same lower-than-default probability to Birds are swimmers and Swimmers are birds? Again, I only need a qualitative answer. Pei On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 7:24 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Pei, I finally took a moment to actually read your email... However, the negative evidence of one conclusion is no evidence of the other conclusion. For example, Swallows are birds and Swallows are NOT swimmers suggests Birds are NOT swimmers, but says nothing about whether Swimmers are birds. Now I wonder if PLN shows a similar asymmetry in induction/abduction on negative evidence. If it does, then how can that effect come out of a symmetric truth-function? If it doesn't, how can you justify the conclusion, which looks counter-intuitive? According to Bayes rule, P(bird | swimmer) P(swimmer) = P(swimmer | bird) P(bird) So, in PLN, evidence for P(bird | swimmer) will also count as evidence for P(swimmer | bird), though potentially with a different weighting attached to each piece of evidence If P(bird) = P(swimmer) is assumed, then each piece of evidence for each of the two conditional probabilities, will count for the other one symmetrically. The intuition here is the standard Bayesian one. Suppose you know there are 1 things in the universe, and 1000 swimmers. Then if you find out that swallows are not swimmers ... then, unless you think there are zero swallows, this does affect P(bird | swimmer). For instance, suppose you think there are 10 swallows and 100 birds. Then, if you know for sure that swallows are not swimmers, and you have no other info but the above, your estimate of P(bird|swimmer) should decrease... because of the 1000 swimmers, you now know there are only 990 that might be birds ... whereas before you thought there were 1000 that might be birds. And the same sort of reasoning holds for **any** probability distribution you place on the number of things in the universe, the number of swimmers, the number of birds, the number of swallows. It doesn't matter what assumption you make, whether you look at n'th order pdf's or whatever ... the same reasoning works... From what I understand, your philosophical view is that it's somehow wrong for a mind to make some assumption about the pdf underlying the world around it? Is that correct? If so I don't agree with this... I think this kind of assumption is just part of the inductive bias with which a mind approaches the world. The human mind may well have particular pdf's for stuff like birds and trees wired into it, as we evolved to deal with these things. But that's not really
Re: [agi] It is more important how AGI works than what it can do.
Dr. Matthias Heger wrote: Brad Pausen wrote The question I'm raising in this thread is more one of priorities and allocation of scarce resources. Engineers and scientists comprise only about 1% of the world's population. Is human-level NLU worth the resources it has consumed, and will continue to consume, in the pre-AGI-1.0 stage? Even if we eventually succeed, would it be worth the enormous cost? Wouldn't it be wiser to go with the strengths of both humans and computers during this (or any other) stage of AGI development? I think it is not so important what abilities our first AGIs will have. Human language would be a nice feature but it is not necessary. Agreed. And nothing in the above quote indicates otherwise. I'm only arguing that we should not spend scarce resources now (or ever, really) trying to implement unnecessary features. Both human-level NLU and human-like embodiment are, in my considered opinion, unnecessary for AGI 1.0. It is more important how it works. We want to develop an intelligent software which has the potential to solve very different problems in different domains. This is the main idea of AGI. Imagine someone thinks he has build an AGI. How can he convince the community that it is in fact AGI and not AI? If he shows some applications where his AGI works then this is an indication for the G in his AGI but it is no proof at all. I agree. Even a turing test would be no good test because given n questions for the AGI I can never be sure whether it can pass the test for further n questions. Ah, I see you've met my friend Mr. David Hume. AGI is inherently a white box problem not a black box problem. A chess playing computer is for many people a stunning machine. But we know HOW it works and only(!) because we know the HOW we can evaluate the potential of this approach for general AGI. Brad, for this reason I think your question about whether the first AGI should have the ability for human language or not is not so important. If you can create a software which has the ability to solve very different problems in very different domains than you have solved the main problem of AGI. Actually, I disagree with you here. There is really no need to create a single AGI that can solve problems in multiple domains. Most humans can't do that. We can, more easily, I believe, coordinate a network of AGI agents that are, each, experts in a single domain. These experts would be trained by human experts (as well as be able to learn from experience) and would be able to exchange information across domains as needed (need being determined, perhaps, by an expert supervisor AGI agent). None of these agents, alone, would qualify as AGI (because they are narrow-domain experts). The system in which these AGI experts function would, however, constitute true AGI. Your reply makes it sound like I have a question about whether the first AGI should have human language ability. I have no question about this. What I have is an informed opinion. It is this: requiring solution of an AI-complete problem (human-level NLU) is the kiss of death for the success of any AGI concept. If we let go of this strategy and concentrate on making non-human-like intelligences (using already-proven AI strategies that do not rely on NLU or embodiment and that leverage the strengths of the only non-human intelligence we have at present), I believe we will get to much more powerful AGI much sooner. My concept of AGI holds that creating many different domain experts using proven, narrow-AI technology and, then, coordinating a vast network of these domain experts to identify/solve complex, cross-domain problems (in real-time and concurrently if necessary) will, in fact, result in a system that has a problem-solving capability greater than any single human being. Without requiring human-level NLU or embodiment. It will be more robust (massive redundancy, such as that found in biologically-evolved systems is the key here) than any human being, be quicker than any human being and be more accurate than any human being (or, especially, organization of human beings -- have you ever tried to get an error in you HMO medical records corrected?). For example, in the (near, I hope) future when you feel sick, you will sit down at your computer and call up a medical practitioner (GP) AGI agent (it doesn't really matter from where, but assume from the Internet). This will be the same GP AGI agent anyone else anywhere in the world would call up (except, of course, each human is invoking a, localized, instance of the GP AGI agent). Note that you're ahead of the game already. You didn't have to wait two weeks to get an appointment (at 7AM in the morning). You didn't have to go to a remote location (the doctor's office or clinic). The visit to your doctor is already much less stressful, a medical benefit in and of itself. Once the GP AGI responds, you will only have
Re: AW: AW: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
Dr. Matthias Heger wrote: Brad Paulson wrote More generally, as long as AGI designers and developers insist on simulating human intelligence, they will have to deal with the AI-complete problem of natural language understanding. Looking for new approaches to this problem, many researches (including prominent members of this list) have turned to embodiment (or virtual embodiment) for help. We only know one human level intelligence which works. And this works with embodiment. So for this reason, it seems to be an useful approach. Dr. Heger, First, I don't subscribe to the belief that AGI 1.0 need be human-level. In fact, my belief is just the opposite: I don't think it should be human-level. And, with all due respect sir, while we may know that human-level intelligence works, we have no idea (or very little idea) *how* it works. That, to me, seems to be the more important issue. If we did have a better idea of how human-level intelligence worked, we'd probably have built a human-like AGI by now. Instead, for all we know, human intelligence (and not just the absence or presence or degree thereof in any individual human) may be at the bottom end of the scale in the universe of all possible intelligences. You are also, again with all due respect, incorrect in saying that we have no other intelligence with which to work. We have the digital computer. It can beat expert humans at the game of chess. It can beat any human at arithmetic -- both in speed and accuracy. Unlike humans, it remembers anything ever stored in its memory and can recall anything in its memory with 100% accuracy. It never shows up to work tired or hung over. It never calls in sick. On the other hand, what a digital computer doesn't do well at present, things like understanding human natural language and being creative (in a non-random way), humans do very well. So, why are we so hell-bent on building an AGI in our own image? It just doesn't make sense when it is manifestly clear that we know how to do better. Why aren't we designing and developing an AGI that leverages the strengths, rather than attempts to overcome the weaknesses, of both forms of intelligence? For many tasks that would be deemed intelligent if Turing's imitation game had not required natural HUMAN language understanding (or the equivalent mimicking thereof), we have already created a non-human intelligence superior to human-level intelligence. It thinks nothing like we do (base-2 vs. base-10) yet, for many feats of intelligence only humans used to be able to perform, it is a far superior intelligence. And, please note, not only is human-like embodiment *not* required by this intelligence, it would be (as it is to the human chess player) a HINDRANCE. But, of course, if we always use the humans as a guide to develop AGI then we will probably obtain similar limitations we observe in humans. I actually don't have a problem with using human-level intelligence as an *inspiration* for AGI 1.0. Digital computers were certainly inspired by human-level intelligence. I do, however, have a problem with using human-level intelligence as a *destination* for AGI 1.0. I think an AGI which should be useful for us, must be a very good scientist, physicist and mathematician. Is the human kind of learning by experience and the human kind of intelligence good for this job? I don't think so. Most people on this planet are very poor in these disciplines and I don't think that this is only a question of education. There seems to be a very subtle fine tuning of genes necessary to change the level of intelligence from a monkey to the average human. And there is an even more subtle fine tuning necessary to obtain a good mathematician. One must be careful with arguments from genetics. The average chimp will beat any human for lunch in a short-term memory contest. I don't care how good the human contestant is at mathematics. Since judgments about intelligence are always relative to the environment in which it is evinced, in an environment where those with good short-term memory skills thrive and those without barely survive, chimps sure look like the higher intelligence. This is discouraging for the development of AGI because it shows that human level intelligence is not only a question of the right architecture but it seems to be more a question of the right fine tuning of some parameters. Even if we know that we have the right software architecture, then the real hard problems would still arise. Perhaps. But your first sentence should have read, This is discouraging for the development of HUMAN-LEVEL AGI because It doesn't really matter to a non-human AGI. We know that humans can swim. But who would create a swimming machine by following the example of the human anatomy? Yes. Just as we didn't design airplanes to fly bird-like, even though the bird was our best source of inspiration for developing
Re: AW: AW: AW: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
Dr. Matthias Heger wrote: Brad Paulson wrote Fortunately, as I argued above, we do have other choices. We don't have to settle for human-like. I do not see so far other choices. Chess is AI but not AGI. Yes, I agree but IFF by AGI you mean human-level AGI. As you point out below, a lot has to do with how we define AGI. Your idea of an incremental roadmap to human-level AGI is interesting, but I think everyone who tries to build a human-level AGI already makes incremental experiments and first steps with non-human-level AGI in order to make a proof of concept. I think, Ben Goertzel has done some experiments with artificial dogs and other non-human agents. So it is only a matter of definition what we mean by AGI 1.0 I think, we now have already AGI 0.0.x and the goal is AGI 1.0 which can do the same as a human. Why this goal? An AGI which resembles functionally (not necessarily in algorithmic details) a human has the great advantage that everyone can communicate with this agent. Yes, but everyone can communicate with baby AGI right now using a highly-restricted subset of human natural language. The system I'm working on now uses the simple, declarative sentence, the propositional (if/then) rule statement, and simple query as its NL interface. The declarations of fact and propositional rules are upgraded, internally, to FOL+. AI-agent to AI-agent communication is done entirely in FOL+. I had considered using Prolog for the human interface but the non-success of Prolog in a community (computer programmers) already expert at communicating with computers using formal languages caused me to drop back to the, more difficult, but not impossible, semi-formal NL approach. We don't need to crack the entire NLU problem to be able to communicate with AGI's in a semi-formalized version of natural human language. Sure, it can get tedious. just as talking to a two-year old human child can get tedious (unless it's your kid, of course: then, it's fascinating!). Does it impress people at demos? The average person? Yep, it pretty much does. Even though it's far from finished at this time. Skeptical AGHI designers and developers? Not so much. But, I'm working on that! The question I'm raising in this thread is more one of priorities and allocation of scarce resources. Engineers and scientists comprise only about 1% of the world's population. Is human-level NLU worth the resources it has consumed, and will continue to consume, in the pre-AGI-1.0 stage? Even if we eventually succeed, would it be worth the enormous cost? Wouldn't it be wiser to go with the strengths of both humans and computers during this (or any other) stage of AGI development? Getting digital computers to understand natural human language at human-level has proven itself to be an AI-complete problem. Do we need another fifty years of failure to achieve NLU using computers to finally accept this? Developing NLU for AGI 1.0 is not playing to the strengths of the digital computer or of humans (who only take about three years to gain a basic grasp of language and continue to improve that grasp as they age into adulthood). Computers calculate better than do humans. Humans are natural language experts. IMHO, saying that the first version of AGI should include enabling computers to understand human language like humans is just about as silly as saying the first version of AGI should include enabling humans to be able to calculate like computers. IMHO, embodiment is another loosing proposition where AGI 1.0 is concerned. For all we know, embodiment won't work until we can produce an artificial bowel movement. It's the, To think like Einstein, you have to stink like Einstein. theory. Well, I don't want AGI 1.0 to think like Einstein. I want it to think BETTER than Einstein (and without the odoriferous side-effect, thank you very much). It would be interesting for me which set of abilities you want to have in AGI 1.0. Well, we (humanity) need, first, to decide *why* we want to create another form of intelligence. And the answer has to be something other than because we can. What benefits do we propose should issue to humanity from such an expensive pursuit? In other words, what does human-beneficial AGI really mean? Only once we have ironed out our differences in that regard (or, at least, have produced a compromise on a list of core abilities), should we start thinking about an implementation. In general, though, when it comes to implementation, we need to start small and play to our strengths. For example, people who want to build AGHI tend to look down their noses at classic, narrow-AI successes such as expert (production) systems (Ben G. is NOT in this group, BTW). This has prevented these folks from even considering using this technology to achieve AGI 1.0. I *am* (proudly and loudly) using this technology to build bootstrapping intelligent agents for AGI.
Re: AW: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
David Hart wrote: On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 7:29 PM, Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] Unfortunately, as long as the mainstream AGI community continue to hang on to what should, by now, be a thoroughly-discredited strategy, we will never (or too late) achieve human-beneficial AGI. What a strange rant! How can something that's never before been attempted be considered a thoroughly-discredited strategy? I.e., creating an AI system system designed for *general learning and reasoning* (one with AGI goals clearly thought through to a greater degree than anyone has attempted previously: http://opencog.org/wiki/OpenCogPrime:Roadmap ) and then carefully and deliberately progressing that AI through Piagetan-inspired inspired stages of learning and development, all the while continuing to methodically improve the AI with ever more sophisticated software development, cognitive algorithm advances (e.g. planned improvements to PLN and MOSES/Reduct), reality modeling and testing iterations, homeostatic system tuning, intelligence testing and metrics, etc. Please: strange rant? I've been known to employ inflammatory rhetoric in the past when my blood was boiling and I have always been sorry I did it. I have an opinion. You don't think it agrees with your opinion. That's called a disagreement amongst peers. Not a strange rant. First, you have taken my statement out of context. I was NOT referring to Ben G.'s overall approach to AGI. His *concept* of AGI, if you will. I was referring to the (not his) strategy of making human-level NLU a prerequisite for AGI (this is not a strategy pioneered by Ben G.). Human-level AGI is an AI-complete problem. So, this strategy makes the goal of getting to AGI 1.0 dependent on solving an AI-complete problem. The strategy of using embodiment to help crack the NLU problem (also not pioneered by Ben G.) may very well be another AI-complete problem (indeed, it may contain a whole collection of AI-complete problems). I don't think that's a very good plan. You, apparently, do. I can point to past failures, you can only point to future possibilities. Still, neither of us is going to convince the other we are right. End of story. Time will tell (and this e-mail list is conveniently archived for later reference). Second, ...never before been attempted...? Simply not true. I was in high school when this stuff was first attempted. I personally remember reading about it. I haven't succumbed to Alzheimer's yet. By the time I got to college, most of the early predictions had already been shown to have been way too optimistic. But, since eyewitness testimony is not usually good enough, I give you this quote from the Wikipedia article on Strong AI (which is what searching Wikipedia for AGI will get you): The first generation of AI researchers were convinced that [AGI] was possible and that it would exist in just a few decades. As AI pioneer Herbert Simon wrote in 1965: machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do.[10] Their predictions were the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's character HAL 9000, who accurately embodied what AI researchers believed they could create by the year 2001. Of note is the fact that AI pioneer Marvin Minsky was a consultant[11] on the project of making HAL 9000 as realistic as possible according to the consensus predictions of the time, having himself said on the subject in 1967, Within a generation...the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will substantially be solved.[12] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence) So, it has, in fact, been tried before. It has, in fact, always failed. Your comments about the quality of Ben's approach are noted. Maybe you're right. But, it's not germane to my argument which is that those parts of Ben G.'s approach that call for human-level NLU, and that propose embodiment (or virtual embodiment) as a way to achieve human-level NLU, have been tried before, many times, and have always failed. If Ben G. knows something he's not telling us then, when he does, I'll consider modifying my views. But, remember, my comments were never directed at the OpenCog project or Ben G. personally. They were directed at an AGI *strategy* not invented by Ben G. or OpenCog. One might well have said in early 1903 that the concept of powered flight was a thoroughly-discredited strategy. It's just as silly to say that now [about Goertzel's approach to AGI] as it would have been to say it then [about the Wright brothers' approach to flight]. What? No it's not just as silly. Let me see if I have this straight. You would have me believe that because One might as well have said in early 1903 the concept of powered flight was a 'thoroughly-discredited' strategy.' my objection to a 2008 AGI strategy is just as silly. Nice try
Re: AW: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
Dr. Heger, Point #3 is brilliantly stated. I couldn't have expressed it better. And I know this because I've been trying to do so, in slightly broader terms, for months on this list. Insofar as providing an AGI with a human-biased sense of space and time is required to create a human-like AGI (what I prefer to call AG*H*I), I agree it is a mistake. More generally, as long as AGI designers and developers insist on simulating human intelligence, they will have to deal with the AI-complete problem of natural language understanding. Looking for new approaches to this problem, many researches (including prominent members of this list) have turned to embodiment (or virtual embodiment) for help. IMHO, this is not a sound tactic because human-like embodiment is, itself, probably an AI-complete problem. Insofar as achieving human-like embodiment and human natural language understanding is possible, it is also a very dangerous strategy. The process of understanding human natural language through human-like embodiment will, of necessity, lead to the AGHI developing a sense of self. After all, that's how we humans got ours (except, of course, the concept preceded the language for it). And look how we turned out. I realize that an AGHI will not turn on us simply because it understands that we're not (like) it (i.e., just because it acquired a sense of self). But, it could. Do we really want to take that chance? Especially when it's not necessary for human-beneficial AGI (AGI without the silent H)? Cheers, Brad Dr. Matthias Heger wrote: 1. We feel ourselves not exactly at a single point in space. Instead, we identify ourselves with our body which consist of several parts and which are already at different points in space. Your eye is not at the same place as your hand. I think this is a proof that a distributed AGI will not need to have a complete different conscious state for a model of its position in space than we already have. 2.But to a certain degree you are of course right that we have a map of our environment and we know our position (which is not a point because of 1) in this map. In the brain of a rat there are neurons which each represent a position of the environment. Researches could predict the position of the rat only by looking into the rat's brain. 3. I think it is extremely important, that we give an AGI no bias about space and time as we seem to have. Our intuitive understanding of space and time is useful for our life on earth but it is completely wrong as we know from theory of relativity and quantum physics. -Matthias Heger -Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: Mike Tintner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Gesendet: Samstag, 4. Oktober 2008 02:44 An: agi@v2.listbox.com Betreff: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once. The foundation of the human mind and system is that we can only be in one place at once, and can only be directly, fully conscious of that place. Our world picture, which we and, I think, AI/AGI tend to take for granted, is an extraordinary triumph over that limitation - our ability to conceive of the earth and universe around us, and of societies around us, projecting ourselves outward in space, and forward and backward in time. All animals are similarly based in the here and now. But,if only in principle, networked computers [or robots] offer the possibility for a conscious entity to be distributed and in several places at once, seeing and interacting with the world simultaneously from many POV's. Has anyone thought about how this would change the nature of identity and intelligence? --- 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=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Let's face it, this is just dumb.
Wow, that's a pretty strong response there, Matt. Friends of yours? If I were in control of such things, I wouldn't DARE walk out of a lab and announce results like that. So I have no fear of being the one to bring that type of criticism on myself. But, I'm just as vulnerable as any of us to having colleagues do it for (to) me. So, yeah. I have a problem with premature release, or announcement, of a technology that's associated with an industry in which I work. It's irresponsible science when scientists do it. It's irresponsible marketing (now, there's a redundant phrase for you) when company management does it. And, it's irresponsible for you to defend such practices. That stuff deserved to be mocked. Get over it. Cheers, Brad Matt Mahoney wrote: So here is another step toward AGI, a hard image classification problem solved with near human-level ability, and all I hear is criticism. Sheesh! I hope your own work is not attacked like this. I would understand if the researchers had proposed something stupid like using the software in court to distinguish adult and child pornography. Please try to distinguish between the research and the commentary by the reporters. A legitimate application could be estimating the average age plus or minus 2 months of a group of 1000 shoppers in a marketing study. In any case, machine surveillance is here to stay. Get used to it. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- On Thu, 10/2/08, Bob Mottram [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Bob Mottram [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] Let's face it, this is just dumb. To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Thursday, October 2, 2008, 6:21 AM 2008/10/2 Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: It boasts a 50% recognition accuracy rate +/-5 years and an 80% recognition accuracy rate +/-10 years. Unless, of course, the subject is wearing a big floppy hat, makeup or has had Botox treatment recently. Or found his dad's Ronald Reagan mask. 'Nuf said. Yes. This kind of accuracy would not be good enough to enforce age related rules surrounding the buying of certain products, nor does it seem likely to me that refinements of the technique will give the needed accuracy. As you point out people have been trying to fool others about their age for millenia, and this trend is only going to complicate matters further. In future if De Grey gets his way this kind of recognition will be useless anyway. P.S. Oh, yeah, and the guy responsible for this project claims it doesn't violate anyone's privacy because it can't be used to identify individuals. Right. They don't say who sponsored this research, but I sincerely doubt it was the vending machine companies or purveyors of Internet porn. It's good to question the true motives behind something like this, and where the funding comes from. I do a lot of stuff with computer vision, and if someone came to me saying they wanted something to visually recognise the age of a person I'd tell them that they're probably wasting their time, and that indicators other than visual ones would be more likely to give a reliable result. --- 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=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] Let's face it, this is just dumb.
This is probably a tad off-topic, but I couldn't help myself. From the Technology-We-Could-Probably-Do-Without files: STEP RIGHT UP, LET THE COMPUTER LOOK AT YOUR FACE AND TELL YOU YOUR AGE http://www.physorg.com/news141394850.html From the article: ...age-recognition algorithms could ... prevent minors from purchasing tobacco products from vending machines, and deny children access to adult Web sites. Sixteen-year-old-male's inner dialog: I need a smoke and some porn. Let me think... Where did dad put that Ronald Reagan Halloween mask? It boasts a 50% recognition accuracy rate +/-5 years and an 80% recognition accuracy rate +/-10 years. Unless, of course, the subject is wearing a big floppy hat, makeup or has had Botox treatment recently. Or found his dad's Ronald Reagan mask. 'Nuf said. Cheers, Brad P.S. Oh, yeah, and the guy responsible for this project claims it doesn't violate anyone's privacy because it can't be used to identify individuals. Right. They don't say who sponsored this research, but I sincerely doubt it was the vending machine companies or purveyors of Internet porn. --- 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] NARS vs. PLN [Was: NARS probability]
Ben wrote: I remain convinced that probability theory is a proper foundation for uncertain inference in an AGI context, whereas Pei remains convinced of the oppositeSo, this is really the essential issue, rather than the particularities of the algebra... But, please, don't stop discussing that algebra. This is the most fun I've had on an e-mail list in years! Cheers, Brad Ben Goertzel wrote: On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 9:28 PM, Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 7:26 PM, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Wow! I did not mean to stir up such an argument between you two!! Abram: This argument has been going on for about 10 years, with some on periods and off periods, so don't feel responsible for it --- you just raised the right topic in the right time to turn it on again. ;-) Correct ... Pei and I worked together on the same AI project for a few years (1998-2001) and had related arguments in person many times during that period, and have continued the argument off and on over email... It has been an interesting and worthwhile discussion, from my view any way, but neither of us has really convinced the other... I remain convinced that probability theory is a proper foundation for uncertain inference in an AGI context, whereas Pei remains convinced of the opposite ... So, this is really the essential issue, rather than the particularities of the algebra... The reason this is a subtle point is roughly as follows (in my view, Pei's surely differs). I think it's mathematically and conceptually clear that for a system with unbounded resources probability theory is the right way to reason. However if you look at Cox's axioms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox%27s_theorem you'll see that the third one (consistency) cannot reasonably be expected of a system with severely bounded computational resources... So the question, conceptually, is: If a cognitive system can only approximately obey Cox's third axiom, then is it really sensible for the system to explicitly approximate probability theory ... or not? Because there is no way for the system to *exactly* follow probability theory There is not really any good theory of what reasoning math a system should (implicitly or explicitly) emulate given limited resources... Pei has his hypothesis, I have mine ... I'm pretty confident I'm right, but I can't prove it ... nor can he prove his view... Lacking a comprehensive math theory of these things, the proof is gonna be in the pudding ... And, it is quite possible IMO that both approaches can work, though they will not fit into the same AGI systems. That is, an AGI system in which NARS would be an effective component, would NOT necessarily look the same as an AGI system in which PLN would be an effective component... Along these latter lines: One thing I do like about using a reasoning system with a probabilistic foundation is that it lets me very easily connect my reasoning engine with other cognitive subsystems also based on probability theory ... say, a Hawkins style hierarchical perception network (which is based on Bayes nets) ... MOSES for probabilistic evolutionary program learning etc. Probability theory is IMO a great lingua franca for connecting different AI components into an integrative whole... -- Ben G *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modify https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Your Subscription [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=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] Dangerous Knowledge - A Correction
Oops! The William Blake poem recited in the Dangerous Knowledge BBC program was not Infinity (that's what Cantor was so concerned about). It was Auguries of Innocence. The passage used in the program (and the one borrowed by Sting) was: To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour. It's a beautiful poem. 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=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] Dangerous Knowledge
Recently, someone on this list (I apologize for not making a note of this person's name) raised the question whether we might find a shortcut to AGI. The author went on to opine that, because the problems associated with achieving AGI had been considered by some of the world's most brilliant minds at various times over thousands of years of human history and because the problem, nonetheless, remains unsolved, it was extremely unlikely such a shortcut would ever be found. I believe this opinion neglects an important element of discovery (or creativity, if you will). An element that is not found in every person who possesses a towering intellect but that can only be found in one that does. I speak of intellectual courage (or foolhardiness -- it's often difficult to tell and could be both). It's the courage (or obsession, or both) that causes a man (or woman) to give themselves over to a novel insight so thoroughly that it comes to define their self-image, their very being. This form of courage is so close to insanity that many of these individuals find themselves crossing that very boundary. In our time, John Nash, for example. Or Alan Turing, if only just for the brief hours, days and moments before he took his own life. This isn't ordinary courage. This is courage of an extraordinary kind. It doesn't manifest itself very often (perhaps once or twice in every century). But, when it does, the person possessing it can give us the shortcut that changes everything. This type of courage could very well be from whence that shortcut to AGI eventually comes. It's not a matter of just having mulled the problem over time and time again. Or the number of mullers involved. Or the length of time the mulling has been ongoing. It is, rather, a matter of being intellectually fearless and willing to put oneself in harms way for one's convictions. There is a series of videos done by the BBC on the Web (link below) that everyone on this list should watch. They will both enlighten and frighten. The first is about the mathematician, Georg Cantor, who dared look infinity straight in the eye without blinking. In the process, he turned mathematics on its head and was excoriated by some of the most renowned mathematicians of the time. He died penniless in a mental institution. The link to Dangerous Knowledge Part 1 is here: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=4007105149032380914ei=PvTXSJONKI_8-gHFhOi-Agq=artificial+lifevt=lf Man, that URI is practically infinite! The links to the other parts of the video should be on that same page. I love the fact that they quote from William Blake's famous poem Infinity (which Sting also borrowed and used in the lyrics to the title song of his last album, Sacred Love -- to be expected from a former teacher of literature, I guess). Also highly recommended (the Sting album). BTW, I'm writing this from my sick bed. Got an awful virus that can best be described as someone putting a bicycle pump up your nose, plugging all of the other orifices in your head, and then pumping like crazy until you are completely convinced your head is going to explode like a rotten melon. I like that description better than a sinus infection. Thanks to laptops and WiFi routers (and lots of Tylenol and some prescription stuff I can't pronounce let alone spell in my present condition), I'm still able to surf the 'net and read my e-mail, although I'm probably doing so under the influence of the cold medicine I've been taking. Anyhow, it's put me in a reflective mood. One of the things I'd like to reelect upon with you all here has to do with, well... with you all here. Since joining this list, I think I have learned more about more subjects associated with AI than I could have learned in two years of graduate-level study in a classroom setting. The reason is simple. We have some very bright and accomplished folks posting to this list regularly. I have especially enjoyed, for example, the recent thread on NARs vs PLN and the exchanges between Ben G., Pei and Abram. I mean, one's lucky if one has a couple of professors that know there stuff this well in one's entire graduate course of study. Here, I have many solid thinkers publicly working out their differences on this list, grinding each other's arguments down until the nub of the matter lies helplessly exposed. I, then, swoop down and greedily grab it up! You can't buy this type of education at any cost. Thank you all. Matt M., David H. and everyone else who contributes here regularly, a big, mushy thanks for making me a smarter, if not necessarily better, human being! Yep, too much cold medicine. Later... Brad --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription:
[agi] Dangerous Knowledge - Update
Sorry, but in my drug-addled state I gave the wrong URI for the Dangerous Knowledge videos on YouTube. The one I gave was just to the first part of the Cantor segment. All of the segments can be reached from the link below. You can recreate this link by searching, in YouTube, on the key words Dangerous Knowledge. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Dangerous+Knowledgesearch_type=aq=-1oq= 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=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] NLP? Nope. NLU? Yep!
I believe the company mentioned in this article was referenced in an active thread here recently. They claim to have semantically enabled Wikipedia. Their stuff is supposed to have a vocabulary 10x that of the typical U.S. college graduate. Currently being licensed to software developers working on Web 3.0. A quote from the company's CEO in the article: We have taught the computer virtually all of the (... ah, er, what's that word? ... ah, er ... oh, yeah) meanings of words and phrases in the English language. Oh, OK, so I added the stuff in the parentheses. Sue me. COMPUTERS FIGURING OUT WHAT WORDS MEAN http://www.physorg.com/news140929129.html 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=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] 3D CPU PTO's Peer-to-Peer Patent Review Study
FIRST 3-D PROCESSOR RUNS AT 1.4 GHZ ON NEW ARCHITECTURE http://www.physorg.com/news140692629.html PROGRAM TURNS TO ONLINE MASSES TO IMPROVE PATENTS http://www.physorg.com/news140672870.html Enjoy, 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=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] Will AGI Be Stillborn?
From the article: A team of biologists and chemists [lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School] is closing in on bringing non-living matter to life. It's not as Frankensteinian as it sounds. Instead, a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can almost be called life. http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/biologists-on-t.html There's a video entitled A Protocell Forming from Fatty Acids. It's fascinating and, at the same time, a bit scary. Paper co-authored by Szostak published this month: Thermostability of model protocell membranes http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805086105.full.pdf+html --- 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] Remembering Caught in the Act
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/science/05brain.html?_r=3partner=rssnytemc=rssoref=sloginoref=sloginoref=slogin or, indirectly, http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/05/0138237from=rss --- 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] How Would You Design a Play Machine?
Eric, It was a real-life near-death experience (auto accident). I'm aware of the tryptamine compound and its presence in hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD. According to Wikipedia, it is not related to the NDE drug of choice which is Ketamine (Ketalar or ketamine HCL -- street name back in the day was Special K). Ketamine is a chemical secreted into the brain when your body detects an over-generation of Glutamate. Glutamate (i.e., the food flavor enhancer, MSG) is a neurotransmitter released in massive quantities when your senses lead your brain to believe it is in mortal danger. It's your brain's way of, literally, trying to think its (your) way out of danger - fast. Trouble is, too much Glutamate can irreparably damage the brain, hence the Ketamine push and the NDE experience. Ketamine is a Schedule 3 drug. Today, it is primarily used as an anesthetic in surgery performed on geriatric adults, children and animals (by vets). It takes a much higher dose than that used for anesthetic purposes to achieve the NDE experience. Back in the day, it was used as an adjunct to psychotherapy. The Russians claimed it worked wonders for all sorts of addiction, especially alcoholism. I do not recommend use of Ketamine unsupervised by a qualified medical practitioner. Just like LSD, people have been known to react badly (bad trip). But, then, I don't recommend near-fatal auto accidents either. ;-) Cheers, Brad Eric Burton wrote: Hi, Err ... I don't have to mention that I didn't stay dead, do I? Good. Was this the archetypal death/rebirth experience found in for instance tryptamine ecstacy or a real-life near-death experience? Eric B --- 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] To sleep, perchance to dream...
EXPLORING THE FUNCTION OF SLEEP http://www.physorg.com/news138941239.html From the article: Because it is universal, tightly regulated, and cannot be lost without serious harm, Cirelli argues that sleep must have an important core function. But what? Sleep may be the price you pay so your brain can be plastic the next day, Cirelli and Tononi say. Their hypothesis is that sleep allows the brain to regroup after a hard day of learning by giving the synapses, which increase in strength during the day, a chance to damp down to baseline levels. This is important because the brain uses up to 80 percent of its energy to sustain synaptic activity. Sleep may also be important for consolidating new memories, and to allow the brain to forget the random, unimportant impressions of the day, so there is room for more learning the next day. This could be why the brain waves are so active during certain periods of sleep. I just gotta get me one of these! (Will Smith, Independence Day) SHARP UNVEILS NEW ANTI-BIRD FLU AIR PURIFIER http://www.physorg.com/news139046671.html 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] How Would You Design a Play Machine?
Terren, OK, you hooked me. A virgin is something I haven't been called (or even been associated with) in about forty-five years. So, I feel compelled to defend my non-virginity at all costs. I'm 58 now. You do the math (don't forget to subtract for the 30 years I was married). ;-) My widowed girlfriend of the last eight years is a mother of two 30-something-year-olds (a boy and a girl) and four grandchildren, ages 11 (going on 16) down to 2. All girls! The woman is post-menopausal and insatiable! A little Astroglide (thank you, NASA!) and we're ready to rumble. No birth control required! Sex under 50? OK. Sex after 50? To the moon!! The Bradster is one lucky puppy. So there! I thought orgasms were cool, too. Until I died. Now THAT was cool. So, for orgasms, it's sort of a quantity vs. quality thing for me these days. I'll eventually get to do that dying thing again (probably just once, though). But between now and then, I hope to have lots and lots of orgasms! Not as cool as dying, but a bit easier to come by. (I won't say it if you don't think it!) ;-) Err ... I don't have to mention that I didn't stay dead, do I? Good. I don't recall whether or not I said one could describe an orgasm to a virgin in lieu of experiencing the real thing. But, the AGI I have in mind is of the non-Turing/Loebner, non-orgasmic type, so the description will just have to do. In my design, this is required only so the AGI can empathize with human experience. It may need to know what a happy ending is, but it doesn't have to have one. Who knows, though? Maybe we've finally discovered that it's not Microsoft's fault we have to re-boot Windows at least twice a day. Maybe a re-boot is sort of like an orgasm for Windows? Explains that little happy chiming sound it makes during boot-up, right? Maybe, just maybe, Windows was, to quote Steely Dan, programmed by fellows with compassion and vision. Anyhow, that example fits with views I've expressed in the context of explaining how my AGI design requires empathy on the part of the AGI so it can empathize with human experiences without having to actually have them. So, maybe I did say that. Since I have no intention of developing a Turing/Loebner AGI, the ability to empathize is all my design really needs. And, it may not even need that. Benign indifference may be enough. My design is still evolving even as I work on the implementation (it's a big job and I'm only one man). If I do my job right, my AGI will have no sense of self. I achieve that, mostly, by building a non-embodied AGI. Embodiment leads directly to a sense of self which leads inexorably to an I am me and you're not world view. I don't know about you, but an AGI with a sense of self gives me the willies. Turns out, by NOT bestowing a sense of self on a non-Turing/Loebner AGI, one does away with a great many rather sticky problems in the area of morality and ethics. How do I know what it's like to not have a sense of self? A... That's where the dying but not really dying part fits the puzzle. Talk about experiences that are hard to explain! But, that's another topic for another thread. Now, to the meaty stuff... You wrote: ... the really interesting question I would pose to you non-embodied advocates is: how in the world will you motivate your creation? Some animals and all humans are motivated to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. This requires the existence of a brain and a nervous system, preferably both peripheral and central. In animals other than humans and some higher-order primates and mammals, motivation is more typically called instinct. The difference? Motivations are usually conscious and somewhat malleable. Instincts are usually not. To be sure, there is some gray area here, but not enough, I think, to alone derail my argument. While human motivations may appear more complex, this is almost always because they are more abstract. They can usually be boiled down to fit the pleasure/pain model (e.g., reward/punishment). There has been some interesting recent work on altruism reported in the cog sci literature. When I can lay hands on some URIs, I'll post them here. With that conceptual background established, my reply is that your question contains the implicit assumption we non-embodied advocates are planning to build Turing/Loebner AGIs. Some of us may be. I am not. Since my AGI model is not of the T/L variety, motivation does NOT apply. But, I'm prepared to meet you halfway and cop to instinct. My AGI WILL have at least one overriding instinct. I've discussed it here recently (but it seemed most people who commented on my post didn't fully get it). Here it is: My AGI will be equipped with an instinctual drive to resolve cognitive dissonance (simulated, of course) engendered by its own inability to understand or answer queries posed by humans (or other AGIs). I hasten
Re: [agi] How Would You Design a Play Machine?
Mike, So you feel that my disagreement with your proposal is sad? That's quite an ego you have there, my friend. You asked for input and you got it. The fact that you didn't like my input doesn't make me or the effort I spent composing it sad. I haven't read all of the replies to your post yet, but judging by the index listing in my e-mail client, it has already drained a considerable amount of time and intellectual energy from the members of this list. You want sad? That's sad. Nice try at ignoring the substance of what I wrote while continuing to advance you own views. I did NOT say THINKING about your idea, or any idea for that matter, was a waste of time. Indeed, the second sentence of my reply contained the following ...(unless [studying human play is] being done purely for research purposes). I did think about your idea. I concluded what it proposes (not the idea itself) is, in fact, a waste of time for people who want to design and build a working AGI before mid-century. I'm sure some list members will agree with you. I'm also sure some will agree with me. But, most will have their own views on this issue. That's the way it works. The AGI I (and many others) have in mind will be to human intelligence what an airplane is to a bird. For many of the same reasons airplanes don't play like birds do, my AGI won't play (or create) like humans do. And, just as the airplane flies BETTER THAN the bird (for human purposes), my AGI will create BETTER THAN any human (for human purposes). You wrote, [Play] is generally acknowledged by psychologists to be an essential dimension of creativity - which is the goal of AGI. Wrong. ONE of the goals (not THE goal) of AGI is *inspired* by human creativity. Indeed, I am counting on the creativity of the first generation of AGIs to help humans build (or keep humans away from building) the second generation of AGIs. But... neither generation has to (and, IMHO, shouldn't) have human-style creativity. In fact, I suggest we not use the word creativity when discussing AGI-type knowledge synthesis because that is a term that has been applied solely to human-style intelligence. Perhaps, idea mining would be a better way to describe what I think about when I think about AGI-style creativity. Knowledge synthesis also works for me and has a greater syllable count. Either phrase fits the mechanism I have in mind for an AGI that works with MASSIVE quantities of data, using well-studied and established data mining techniques, to discover important (to humans and, eventually, AGIs themselves) associations. It would have been impossible to build this type of idea mining capability into an AI before the mid 1990's (before the Internet went public). It's possible now. Indeed, Google is encouraging it by publishing an open source REST (if memory serves) API to the Googleverse. No human intelligence would be capable of doing such data mining without the aid of a computer and, even then, it's not easy for the human intellect (associations between massive amounts of data are often, themselves, still quite massive - ask the CIA or the NSA or Google). Certainly play is ...fundamental to the human mind-and-body My point was simply that this should have little or no interest to those of us attempting to build a working, non-human-style AGI. We can discuss it all we like (however, I don't intend to continue doing so after this reply -- I've stated my case). Such discussion may be worthwhile (if only to show up its inherent wrongness) but spending any time attempting to design or build an AGI containing a simulation of human-style play (or creativity) is not. There are only so many minutes in a day and only so many days in a life. The human-style (Turing test) approach to AI has been tried. It failed (not in every respect, of course, but the Loebner Prizes - the $25K and $100K prizes - established in 1990 remain unclaimed). I don't intend to spend one more minute or hour of my life trying to win the Loebner Prize. The enormous amount of intellectual energy spent (largely wasted), from the mid 1950's to the end of the 1980's, trying to create a human-like AI is a true tragedy. But, perhaps, even more tragic is that unquestioningly holding up Turing's imitation game as the gold standard of AI created what we call in the commercial software industry a reference problem. To get new clients to buy your software, you need a good reference from former/current clients. Anyone who has attempted to get funding for an AGI project since the mid-1990s will attest that the (unintentional but nevertheless real) damage caused by Turing and his followers continues to have a very real, negative effect on the field of AI/AGI. I have done, and will continue to do, my best to see that this same mistake is not repeated in this century's quest to build a beneficial (to humanity) AGI. Unfortunately, we
Re: [agi] How Would You Design a Play Machine?
Charles, By now you've probably read my reply to Tintner's reply. I think that probably says it all (and them some!). What you say holds IFF you are planing on building an airplane that flies just like a bird. In other words, if you are planning on building a human-like AGI (that could, say, pass the Turing test). My position is, and has been for decades, that attempting to pass the Turing test (or win either of the two, one-time-only, Loebner Prizes) is a waste of precious time and intellectual resources. Thought experiments? No problem. Discussing ideas? No problem. Human-like AGI? Big problem. Cheers, Brad Charles Hixson wrote: Play is a form a strategy testing in an environment that doesn't severely penalize failures. As such, every AGI will necessarily spend a lot of time playing. If you have some other particular definition, then perhaps I could understand your response if you were to define the term. OTOH, if this is interpreted as being a machine that doesn't do anything BUT play (using my supplied definition), then your response has some merit, but even that can be very useful. Almost all of mathematics, e.g., is derived out of such play. I have a strong suspicion that machines that don't have a play mode can never proceed past the reptilian level of mentation. (Here I'm talking about thought processes that are mediated via the reptile brain in entities like mammals. Actual reptiles may have some more advanced faculties of which I'm unaware. (Note that, e.g., shrews don't have much play capability, but they have SOME.) Brad Paulsen wrote: Mike Tintner wrote: ...how would you design a play machine - a machine that can play around as a child does? I wouldn't. IMHO that's just another waste of time and effort (unless it's being done purely for research purposes). It's a diversion of intellectual and financial resources that those serious about building an AGI any time in this century cannot afford. I firmly believe if we had not set ourselves the goal of developing human-style intelligence (embodied or not) fifty years ago, we would already have a working, non-embodied AGI. Turing was wrong (or at least he was wrongly interpreted). Those who extended his imitation test to humanoid, embodied AI were even more wrong. We *do not need embodiment* to be able to build a powerful AGI that can be of immense utility to humanity while also surpassing human intelligence in many ways. To be sure, we want that AGI to be empathetic with human intelligence, but we do not need to make it equivalent (i.e., just like us). I don't want to give the impression that a non-Turing intelligence will be easy to design and build. It will probably require at least another twenty years of two steps forward, one step back effort. So, if we are going to develop a non-human-like, non-embodied AGI within the first quarter of this century, we are going to have to just say no to Turing and start to use human intelligence as an inspiration, not a destination. Cheers, Brad Mike Tintner wrote: Just a v. rough, first thought. An essential requirement of an AGI is surely that it must be able to play - so how would you design a play machine - a machine that can play around as a child does? You can rewrite the brief as you choose, but my first thoughts are - it should be able to play with a) bricks b)plasticine c) handkerchiefs/ shawls d) toys [whose function it doesn't know] and e) draw. Something that should be soon obvious is that a robot will be vastly more flexible than a computer, but if you want to do it all on computer, fine. How will it play - manipulate things every which way? What will be the criteria of learning - of having done something interesting? How do infants, IOW, play? --- 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] How Would You Design a Play Machine?
Mike Tintner wrote: ...how would you design a play machine - a machine that can play around as a child does? I wouldn't. IMHO that's just another waste of time and effort (unless it's being done purely for research purposes). It's a diversion of intellectual and financial resources that those serious about building an AGI any time in this century cannot afford. I firmly believe if we had not set ourselves the goal of developing human-style intelligence (embodied or not) fifty years ago, we would already have a working, non-embodied AGI. Turing was wrong (or at least he was wrongly interpreted). Those who extended his imitation test to humanoid, embodied AI were even more wrong. We *do not need embodiment* to be able to build a powerful AGI that can be of immense utility to humanity while also surpassing human intelligence in many ways. To be sure, we want that AGI to be empathetic with human intelligence, but we do not need to make it equivalent (i.e., just like us). I don't want to give the impression that a non-Turing intelligence will be easy to design and build. It will probably require at least another twenty years of two steps forward, one step back effort. So, if we are going to develop a non-human-like, non-embodied AGI within the first quarter of this century, we are going to have to just say no to Turing and start to use human intelligence as an inspiration, not a destination. Cheers, Brad Mike Tintner wrote: Just a v. rough, first thought. An essential requirement of an AGI is surely that it must be able to play - so how would you design a play machine - a machine that can play around as a child does? You can rewrite the brief as you choose, but my first thoughts are - it should be able to play with a) bricks b)plasticine c) handkerchiefs/ shawls d) toys [whose function it doesn't know] and e) draw. Something that should be soon obvious is that a robot will be vastly more flexible than a computer, but if you want to do it all on computer, fine. How will it play - manipulate things every which way? What will be the criteria of learning - of having done something interesting? How do infants, IOW, play? --- 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] rpi.edu
Eric, http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/research/rair/asc_rca/ Sorry, couldn't answer your question based on quick read. Cheers, Brad Eric Burton wrote: Does anyone know if Rensselaer Institute is still on track to crack the Turing Test by 2009? There was a Slashdot article or two about their software called 'RASCALS' earlier this year. --- 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] AGI's Philosophy of Learning
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. Cheers, Brad Abram Demski wrote: Mike, There are at least 2 ways this can happen, I think. The first way is that a mechanism is theoretically proven to be complete, for some less-than-sufficient formalism. The best example of this is one I already mentioned: the neural nets of the nineties (specifically, feedforward neural nets with multiple hidden layers). There is a completeness result associated with these. I quote from http://www.learnartificialneuralnetworks.com/backpropagation.html : Although backpropagation can be applied to networks with any number of layers, just as for networks with binary units it has been shown (Hornik, Stinchcombe, White, 1989; Funahashi, 1989; Cybenko, 1989; Hartman, Keeler, Kowalski, 1990) that only one layer of hidden units suces to approximate any function with finitely many discontinuities to arbitrary precision, provided the activation functions of the hidden units are non-linear (the universal approximation theorem). In most applications a feed-forward network with a single layer of hidden units is used with a sigmoid activation function for the units. This sort of thing could have contributed to the 50 years of less-than-success you mentioned. The second way this phenomenon could manifest is more a personal fear than anything else. I am worried that there really might be partial principles of mind that could seem to be able to do everything for a time. The possibility is made concrete for me by analogies to several smaller domains. In linguistics, the grammar that we are taught in high school does almost everything. In logic, 1st-order systems do almost everything. In sequence learning, hidden markov models do almost everything. So, it is conceivable that some AGI method will be missing something fundamental, yet seem for a time to be all-encompassing. On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 5:58 AM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Abram:I am worried-- worried that an AGI system based on anything less than the one most powerful logic will be able to fool AGI researchers for a long time into thinking that it is capable of general intelligence. Can you explain this to me? (I really am interested in understanding your thinking). AGI's have a roughly 50 year record of total failure. They have never shown the slightest sign of general intelligence - of being able to cross domains. How do you think they will or could fool anyone? --- 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
[agi] Brains + Sleep, Bird Brains, Brain Rules
(1) STUDY FINDS THAT SLEEP SELECTIVELY PRESERVES EMOTIONAL MEMORIES http://www.physorg.com/news137908693.html (2) BIG-BRAINED ANIMALS [BIRDS] EVOLVE FASTER http://www.physorg.com/news138003096.html (3) BRAIN RULES Here's a guy selling a book/DVD (Brain Rules) about how to improve your mental performance. Many people on this list will already be familiar with the brain science behind the book. Rule #1? Exercise Boosts Brain Power. On the site, the author gives a talk on video (probably from the DVD) about how exercise can improve your brain's performance. There's, uh, just one problem: he does his own videos and I would say he's morbidly obese himself. Do as I say, not as I do? Go figure. Rule #7 - Sleep is Good For the Brain. Given his weight, he probably suffers from sleep apnea to some extent. Geeze, this guy is breaking all of his own rules! But, note that he was still smart enough to earn (I presume) a PhD (or MD) and write a book called Brain Rules? Again, go figure. To be fair, though, his science seems to be conservative and based on peer-reviewed research, some of which is summarized in the PhysOrg link above (1). From the Web site: Dr. John Medina is a developmental molecular biologist and research consultant. He is an affiliate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He is also the director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Pacific University. The videos are well done and, occasionally, humorous (intentionally so, I presume). http://www.brainrules.net/?gclid=CPuLzubfkJUCFSAUagodXhqUPA Here's the US Amazon site page for the book (301 pages + DVD), p. 2008, $20 (hardcover). http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/097904/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8n=283155s=books 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
[agi] The results of disembodiment
Pieces of rat brain controls small robo platform. How's *that* for an out-of-body experience! There's video even!! http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/mg19926696.100-rise-of-the-ratbrained-robots.html Cheers, Brad P.S. Sorry I haven't been participating on the list that much this week (Hey! I heard that!).. I needed to get some work done and get my car fixed. As you might imagine, I rarely leave my computer and in fact I did take it with me to the auto repair place (stop snickering..). Anyhow, car is fixed (well, the part I could afford...) , but I still have a bunch of work to do. As Gov. Arnold likes to say I'll be Bach. Why does he want to be Bach? I really do miss you folks. Back soon. --- 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] The Necessity of Embodiment
Charles, I don't think I've misunderstood what Turing was proposing. At least not any more than the thousands of other people who have written about Turing and his test over the decades: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test http://www.zompist.com/turing.html (Twelve reasons to toss the Turing test) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/ (read the entire article) http://tekhnema.free.fr/3Lasseguearticle.htm (What Kind of Turing Test Did Turing Have in Mind) What I think Turing had in mind was a test of an artificial intelligence's ability to fool a human into thinking s/he was talking to another human. If the computer program claiming to be intelligent couldn't simulate a human successfully enough to fool an actual human, it failed the imitation test. Therefore, the Turing test is a test to see if a computer program (artificial intelligence) can imitate human intelligence well enough to fool a human. This is what is meant by the term Turing-indistinguishable (*from a human*). Clearly, Turing's test is capable *only* of judging human-like artificial intelligences. Yet, there are other forms of intelligence that humans have created and can, in the future, create. IMHO, as long as we continue to hold up the Turning test (whatever flavor you like) as the gold standard of what is or is not successful AGI, we will continue to make little progress. It's not that it's a WRONG TEST (although you will find people who argue strenuously that it is, in fact, wrong). It's that it tests the WRONG THING. Unless, that is, you plan on building a Turing-indistinguishable AGI. In which case I wish you luck, but have little hope for the success of your endeavors. I propose dropping the Turning test as a means to test the efficacy of artificial general intelligence. I don't really care if the AGI I build can imitate a human successfully because I'm not setting out to create a human-like AGI. I'm setting out to build a human-compatible AGI that will be empathetic to humans but that will far surpass their intellectual capabilities in short order. There's a HUGE difference. I truly believe that successful AGI will be to human intelligence what the Boeing 747 is to a bird. They both fly, but that's pretty much where the similarities end. The bird is an evolved, natural flier. The 747 is a product of the evolved human brain, inspired by the natural fliers, but it is, itself, a very un-bird-like, artificial flier. I say thank your lucky stars there was nobody like Alan Turing around at the latter part of the 19th century proposing that, to be deemed a successful artificial flying machine, the candidate machine would have to fool real birds into thinking it was another bird. If humans had continued to try to imitate a bird to achieve human flight, we'd still be taking ocean liners to Europe. I strongly believe the first successful AGI will have very little in common with human intelligence. It will be better at many things beneficial to humanity, it will do those things faster and it will be able to create its own, improved, replacement. I believe this so much that I am betting the rest of my life on it. Cheers, Brad Charles Hixson wrote: Brad Paulsen wrote: ... Sigh. Your point of view is heavily biased by the unspoken assumption that AGI must be Turing-indistinguishable from humans. That it must be AGHI. This is not necessarily a bad idea, it's just the wrong idea given our (lack of) understanding of general intelligence. Turing was a genius, no doubt about that. But many geniuses have been wrong. Turing was tragically wrong in proposing (and AI researchers/engineers terribly naive in accepting) his infamous imitation test, a simple test that has, almost single-handedly, kept AGI from becoming a reality for over fifty years. The idea that AGI won't be real AGI unless it is embodied is a natural extension of Turing's imitation test and, therefore, inherits all of its wrongness. ... Cheers, Brad You have misunderstood what Turing was proposing. He was claiming that if a computer could act in the proposed manner that you would be forced to conceed that it was intelligent, not the converse. I have seen no indication that he believed that there was any requirement that a computer be able to pass the Turing test to be considered intelligent. --- 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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Necessity of Embodiment
Mike Tintner wrote: Bob: As a roboticist I can say that a physical body resembling that of a human isn't really all that important. You can build the most sophisticated humanoid possible, but the problems still boil down to how such a machine should be intelligently directed by its software. What embodiment does provide are *instruments of causation* and closed loop control. The muscles or actuators cause events to occur, and sensors then observe the results. Both actuation and sensing are subject to a good deal of uncertainty, so an embodied system needs to be able to cope with this adequately, at least maintaining some kind of homeostatic regime. Note that actuator and sensor could be broadly interpreted, and might not necessarily operate within a physical domain. The main problem with non-embodied systems from the past is that they tended to be open loop (non reflective) and often assumed crisp logic. Certainly from a marketing perspective - if you're trying to promote a particular line of research - humanoid-like embodiment certainly helps people to identify with what's going on. Also if you're trying to understand human cognition by attempting to reproduce results from developmental psychology a humanoid form may also be highly desirable. Bob, I think you are v. seriously wrong - and what's more, I suspect, robotically as well as humanly wrong. You are, in a sense, missing literally the whole point. What mirror neurons are showing is that our ability to understand humans - as say portrayed in The Dancers : http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/matisse_dance_moma.jpg comes from our capacity to simulate them with our whole body-and-brain all-at-once. Note that our brain does not just simulate their particular movement at the given point in time on that canvas - it simulates and understands their *manner* of movement - and you can get up and dance like them, and continue their dance, and produce/predict *further* movements that will be a reasonable likeness of how those dancers might dance - all from that one captured pose. Our ability to understand animals and how they will move and emote and generally respond similarly comes from our ability to simulate them with our whole body-and-brain all at once - hence it is that we can go still further and liken humans to almost every animal under the sun - he's a snake/lizard/angry bear/slug/busy bee etc. etc. Not only do we understand animals but also inanimate matter and its movements or non-movements with our whole body. Hence we see a book as lying on the table, and a wardrobe as standing in a room. This capacity is often valuable for inventors, who use it to imagine, for example, how liquids will flow through a machine, or scientists like Einstein who imagined himself riding a beam of light, or Kekule who imagined the atoms of a benzene molecule coiling like a snake. We can only understand the entire world and how it behaves by embodying it within ourselves... or embodying ourselves within it. This capacity shows that our self is a whole-brain-and-body unit. If I ask you to change your self - and please try this mentally - to simulate/ imagine yourself walking as - say,a flaming diva.. John Wayne... John Travolta... Madonna... you should find that you will immediately/instinctively start to do this with your whole body and brain at once.As one integral unit. Now my v. garbled understanding ( please comment) is that those Carnegie Mellon starfish robots show that such an integrated whole self is both possible - and perhaps vital - for robots too. You need a whole-body-self not just to understand/embody the outside world and predict its movements, but to understand your inner body/world and how it's holding up and how together or falling apart it is - and whether you will/won't be able to execute different movements and think thoughts. You see, I hope, why I say you are missing the whole point. Mike, Sigh. Your point of view is heavily biased by the unspoken assumption that AGI must be Turing-indistinguishable from humans. That it must be AGHI. This is not necessarily a bad idea, it's just the wrong idea given our (lack of) understanding of general intelligence. Turing was a genius, no doubt about that. But many geniuses have been wrong. Turing was tragically wrong in proposing (and AI researchers/engineers terribly naive in accepting) his infamous imitation test, a simple test that has, almost single-handedly, kept AGI from becoming a reality for over fifty years. The idea that AGI won't be real AGI unless it is embodied is a natural extension of Turing's imitation test and, therefore, inherits all of its wrongness. I believe the time, effort and money spent attempting to develop an embodied AGI (one with simulated human sensorimotor capabilities) would be much better spent, at this point in time, building a *human-compatible AGI*. A human-compatible AGI is an AGI
Re: FWIW: Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning
Charles, Well, that's what gets me up in the morning. I learn something new every day! FWIW, I don't believe the Pink Floyd reference is appropriate since I don't *think* they included the signature word: stinkin'. The We don't need no.. part is there, though. ;-) As educational as this may be, I think it's getting pretty far off-topic, so I'll stop now. Cheers, Brad Charles Hixson wrote: Brad Paulsen wrote: ... Nope. Wrong again. At least you're consistent. That line actually comes from a Cheech and Chong skit (or a movie -- can't remember which at the moment) where the guys are trying to get information by posing as cops. At least I think that's the setup. When the person they're attempting to question asks to see their badges, Cheech replies, Badges? We don't need no stinking badges! Having been a young adult in the 1960's and 1970's, I am, of course, a long-time Pink Floyd fan. In fact, one of my Pandora (http://www.pandora.com) stations is set up so that I hear something by PF at least once a week. Brad FWIW: We don't need no stinking badges is from the movie Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Many places have copied it from there. It could be that both Pink Floyd and Cheech and Chong both copied it. (It was also in a Farley comic strip.) *Your* source may be Cheech and Chong. --- 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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning
Terren Suydam wrote: Brad, I'm not entirely certain this was directed to me, since it seems to be a response to both things I said and things Mike Tintner said. My comments below, where (hopefully) appropriate. --- On Mon, 8/4/08, Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ah, excuse me. Don't humans (i.e., computer programmers, script writers) ground virtual reality worlds? Isn't that just a way of simulating human (or some other abstract) reality? Humans create simulated environments, but I'm not sure what you mean when you say humans ground them. If I have some kind of intelligent agent running around in a simulation, then that simulation *is* the agent's real world. Consider for instance that we could actually be intelligent agents in some super-intelligent alien's simulation. We have no access to that alien's world - all we know is what we perceive through our senses. What would it add to say that the alien who created the simulation grounds our world? Terren, My comments were directed to the thread, not to you personally. For future reference, I always begin comments directed to specific persons in a thread to those persons by name. I wish everyone one would. Absent such personal salutation, assume I meant my comments to be for all readers to/posters in the thread. Unfortunately, there is no single definition of the word grounding (or symbol grounding) that is widely accepted in the AI (or Cognitive Science) community. It is, however, fairly well acknowledged that: The symbols in an autonomous hybrid symbolic+sensorimotor system -- a Turing-scale robot consisting of both a symbol system and a sensorimotor system that reliably connects its internal symbols to the external objects they refer to, so it can interact with them Turing-indistinguishably from the way a person does -- would be grounded. But whether its symbols would have meaning rather than just grounding is something that even the robotic Turing Test -- hence cognitive science itself -- cannot determine, or explain. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_grounding). To me, the key phrase in that quote is that grounding may be defined if an AGI ...interacts Turning-indistinguishably from the way a person does And, of course, the last sentence puts even accomplishment of that goal in doubt to the extent grounding a symbol may not necessarily give it meaning. So far, we have found no way to tell. But, I think most folks on this list would be awestruck by an AGI that could pass such a test next week, next year, next decade. We aren't even close, fifty years post-Turing, as things currently stand. I think the Turning test has been holding back AI/AGI for decades. It sets up a nearly impossible (in fact, it may *be* impossible) standard by which all AI efforts are (and have been) judged. Sometimes I think Turing was playing a cruel joke (I'll make sure no one is able to build an AI that anyone will take seriously by defining a test that sounds reasonable but is, in fact, impossible to pass. Now, that's comedy!). I know of no law that says an AGI *must* be Turing-indistinguishable from a human in the way it interacts with the world (and real humans living in it). In my view of AGI, there is only a need for the AGI to be grounded in *some* world (including worlds that can only be described) that is *compatible* with ours. This does not *require* human-like senses (indeed, it may not require *any* senses) nor does this require the ability to pass the Turing test. How is grounding using AGI-human interaction different from getting the experiential information from a third-party once removed (i.e., from the virtual reality program's programmer)? Except that the former method might be more direct and efficient. Experiential information cannot be given, it must be experienced, in exactly the same way that you cannot give a virgin the experience of sex by talking about it. Grounding requires experience (otherwise the term is meaningless). An agent in a virtual environment experiences that environment in the same way that we experience ours. There is no fundamental difference there. I disagree. You can give a virgin an understanding of the experience of having sex by talking about (i.e., describing) it. Do you really want to throw the human emotion of empathy out with the bathwater? I think its a rather important emotion. It says that one human being can understand the feelings of another without having to have, first, personally experienced what gave rise to those feelings. You don't have to be a rape victim to understand rape. You don't have to be a black person to understand racism and prejudice. I can go on and on. But, that's not my point (just a counter to yours). Here's my point... There is an implicit assumption in everything you've said in your reply. It is that an AGI, to be an AGI, must be able to experience the human (or VR avatar
Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning
Ben Goertzel wrote: Well, having an intuitive understanding of human language will be useful for an AGI even if its architecture is profoundly nonhumanlike. And, human language is intended to be interpreted based on social, spatiotemporal experience. So the easiest way to make an AGI grok human language is very likely to give it an embodiment in a world somewhat like the one in which we live. This does not imply the AGI must think in a thoroughly humanlike manner. -- Ben G Call me old-fashioned, but I believe ..an intuitive understanding of human language... can be acquired entirely through description. Why can't human language be ...intended to be interpreted based on... *description of* social, spatiotemporal experience? Of course it's not the same thing. But is that a distinction that makes a significant difference? IMHO, the answer is: not if all you really need is an AGI with *human compatibility*. I submit we can build a highly-functional, human-compatible, AGI without requiring that it directly experience human space and time. A description should suffice. You've written books. In those books, I assume you described all manner and sorts of things. In order for people to learn from your books, are you really suggesting that they have to directly experience everything described therein? If so, why not skip the book-writing drudgery and lead learn-by-doing seminars? You'd make more money and think of the frequent flier miles you'd rack up! :-) I'm not saying that learning human language by direct experience couldn't be beneficial. Nor am I arguing that it is not important for an AGI to be able to communicate effectively with humans. Understanding human language is probably the gold standard for this behavior and it certainly will be more important for some applications (e.g., humanoid robots) than for others (e.g., data-mining or security AGIs). My issue is with how Turing sent everyone out on this wild goose chase fifty-some years ago and many AI/AGI researchers are still out there looking for Turing's if-a-human-cannot-tell-it's-not-human goose. I just don't think Turing-indistinguishably is necessary. We should be concentrating on building artificial general intelligence (AGI) that is human-compatible, not artificial general human intelligence (AGHI). I submit if we build the human-compatible AGI first, it will help us achieve AGHI in much less time and at much lower cost -- if that's what human society decides it wants. Research AGHI? Maybe, but low priority. Research and implement human-compatible AGI? You betcha. And, toward that latter task, I'll put my money on the learn-by-description approach until direct experience shows me otherwise! :-) - That was (an attempt at) a JOKE. Brad Grounding is a potential problem IFF your AGI is, actually, an AGHI, where the H stands for Human. There's nothing wrong with borrowing the good features of human intelligence, but an uncritical aping of all aspects of human intelligence just because we think highly of ourselves is doomed. At least I hope it is. Frankly, the possibility of an AGHI scares the crap out of me. Personally, I'm in this to build and AGI that is about as far from a human copy (with or without improvements) as possible. Better, faster, less prone to breakdown. And, eventually, a whole lot smarter. We don't need no stinkin' grounding. 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/?; 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] mailto:[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 https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modify https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Your Subscription [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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning
Jiri, I'd really like to hear more about your approach. Sounds bang-on! Have you written a paper (or worked from papers written by others) to which you could point us? Cheers, Brad Jiri Jelinek wrote: Ben, My perspective on grounding is partially summarized here www.goertzel.org/papers/PostEmbodiedAI_June7.htm Clearly, embodiment makes the task of teaching a proto-AGI system a heck of a lot easier – to such a great extent that trying to create a totally unembodied AGI would be a foolish thing. I wouldn't be so sure about that. Your embodiment approach might be better for dealing with the implicit knowledge problem than trying to specify every single fact using the predicate logic or by a conversation-based teaching. But there is another way, and that's teaching through submitted stories [initially written in a formal language] = a solution I'm trying to implement when I (once a while) get to my AGI development. Stories (and the formal language) provide important contextual data and collections of those stories can supply a decent amount of semantic knowledge useful for generating ( clarifying) the implicit knowledge / grounding particular concepts. Writing stories is [I guess] generally easier than setting up scenarios-to-learn-from in simulated 3D world. And all the data processing and attention allocation etc you need in order to handle the 3D world is IMO an unnecessary overkill. But, I have to admit, my AGI is not well functional yet (+ I definitely have AGI stuff to learn), so - just sharing my current opinion. ;-) Regards, Jiri Jelinek --- 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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning
Mike Tintner wrote: Brad;We don't need no stinkin' grounding. Your intention, I take it, is partly humorous. You are self-consciously assuming the persona of an angry child/adolescent. How do I know that without being grounded in real world conversations? How can you understand the prosody of language generally without being grounded in conversations? How can I otherwise know that you do not literally mean that grounding stinks like a carcase? What language does not have prosody? Mike, Partly humorous, partly to make the point clear (in which effort humor sometimes helps). I don't know what you mean by self-consciously but you really have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote that. You can guess. Which you did. And, you can guess wrong. Which you did. So, even though your interpretation of what I said comes from a grounded human, it didn't help you much in this case. Oh, and the willful child stuff was used in a clearly-demarcated simile in a previous paragraph. That simile had to do with learning by asking. It clearly does not apply (except as part of the backing argument) to the above statement. As for prosody being a factor in understanding language, we're communicating using language right now, via e-mail, where prosodic clues are practically non-existent. We're not agreeing, but that doesn't mean we're both not understanding. Even if you did manage to build an AGI that could use prosody like a human, it would run into the same prosody-related issues that attend all written communication. Mostly, my post was not about your (or any human's) symbol grounding capabilities or lack thereof. I was simply pointing out in that post that a human-compatible AGI can become grounded enough through description. Again and again, in your reply you refer to yourself (e.g., How do I know that without being grounded in real world conversations?). My response to that is Why should I care? Unless, that is, you are, implicitly, suggesting an AGI must be Turing-indistinguishable from a human (like you) when it comes to being grounded. If that's a correct inference on my part, then I disagree. I think uncritical acceptance of Turing's test is one of the worst mistakes made in modern science by really smart people. And, in the remainder of your reply, you do more than I ever could have alone to make my point for me. How am I able to proceed to the following analysis of your sentence without grounding? ..Brad's sentence reveals a fascinating example of the workings of the unconscious mind. He has assumed in one sentence the persona of a wilful child. In effect, his unconscious mind is commenting on his conscious position : I know that I am being wilful in demanding that AGI be conducted purely in language/symbols - demanding like a child that the world conform to my wishes and convenience (because, frankly, I only know how to do AI that is language- and symbol-based, and having to learn new sign systems would be jolly inconvenient, and I'm too lazy, so there). Congratulations. You're a human whose understanding of the world is supposed to be the gold standard for AGI, grounded-by-experience knowledge and you totally misinterpreted what I wrote. I never assumed the persona of a willful child. The reference to the child was a simile and that (should have been) plain by my use of the word like in the description. My human-compatible AGI would have very quickly understood the remainder of that sentence to be a simile and have interpreted it (unlike yourself) correctly. Moreover, that simile extended only to the way an AGI might learn by description. By definition, I can't say it had nothing to do with my subconscious but, then, neither (especially) can you. There's a lot more to language than meets the eye - or could ever meet the eye of a non-grounded AGI. Maybe, but you have yet to convince me a human-compatible AGI would need it. P.S. I would suggest as a matter of practice here that anyone who wants to argue a position should ALWAYS PROVIDE AN EXAMPLE OR TWO - of say a sentence or even a single word that they think can be understood with or without grounding. (Sorry Bob M., I think that's worth shouting about). Argument without examples here should be regarded as shoddy, inferior intellectual practice. Suggest all you want. I think I am a very clear and concise writer. So do other people. I've won awards for it. I do use examples when I feel they will help others better understand what I'm writing about. I think I probably want people to understand what I write more than you do. I confess to assuming a certain level of knowledge about AI/AGI on the part of my audience when I write for this list. I also expect them to be facile with Google and Wikipedia should I fall short. If that's not good enough for you, just refrain from replying to my posts. Or, now here's a radical idea: ask me for clarification
Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning
Terren Suydam wrote: I don't know, how do you do it? :-] A human baby that grows up with virtual reality hardware surgically implanted (never to experience anything but a virtual reality) will have the same issues, right? There is no difference in principle between real reality and virtual reality. All we have is our senses and our abilities to internally structure a world from the data that comes from them. That is how an AGI must do it - internally structure. To a virtually-embodied AGI, the virtual world would be its real world. It wouldn't have access to our real world. Terren --- On Mon, 8/4/08, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How will the virtual AGI distinguish between what is virtual and real, and whether any information in any medium presents a realistic picture, good likeness, is true to life or a gross distortion, and whether any proposal will really work or whether it itself is grounded or a fictional character? --- 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 Ah, excuse me. Don't humans (i.e., computer programmers, script writers) ground virtual reality worlds? Isn't that just a way of simulating human (or some other abstract) reality? If so, why not simply tell the AGI what it needs to know about the physical world? Better yet (for human sensibilities), why not simply program the AGI to ask a human when it determines it needs further information? How is grounding using AGI-human interaction different from getting the experiential information from a third-party once removed (i.e., from the virtual reality program's programmer)? Except that the former method might be more direct and efficient. People blind or deaf from birth probably have a very different internal idea (grounding) of colors or sounds (respectively) than people born with normal vision and hearing. That doesn't mean they can't productively interact with the latter group. It happens every day. It's also not fair to use Harry's statements and expose them to Vlad's requests for clarification as a counterexample of not grounding. Vlad and Harry are just human. Humans get tired, don't feel well (headaches, etc.). There are a multitude of things that could cause a human to write fuzzily (or, perhaps, for Vlad to read or think fuzzily). The AGI a human creates can, however, be built to not suffer from fuzziness when describing things it believes or knows (without having to be grounded in human reality through direct self-experience). In that case, Vlad would not have to ask for clarification and that test goes out the window. Grounding is a potential problem IFF your AGI is, actually, an AGHI, where the H stands for Human. There's nothing wrong with borrowing the good features of human intelligence, but an uncritical aping of all aspects of human intelligence just because we think highly of ourselves is doomed. At least I hope it is. Frankly, the possibility of an AGHI scares the crap out of me. Personally, I'm in this to build and AGI that is about as far from a human copy (with or without improvements) as possible. Better, faster, less prone to breakdown. And, eventually, a whole lot smarter. We don't need no stinkin' grounding. 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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: do we need a stronger politeness code on this list?
Jim Bromer, This post is not intended for you specifically, but for the entire group. I accept your apology. Peace. And now... Everybody, Gee, it seems like elitism and censorship are alive and well on the AGI list. I can't believe some of the stuff I've read in this thread. Much of this rhetoric is coming from people who have never posted (or, at least not recently posted) to this list. Some from the regulars. But, what is most worrisome to me is that these types of proposals are not being rejected forcefully and outright by the administrators/moderators of this list. I beg you all to consider the words of Thomas Jefferson: I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. Count to ten and, then, realize that each of us has the power to decide for ourselves which posts we read and to which posts we reply. The quickest way to get rid of the crackpots and trolls is to simply ignore them. Most of us use mail clients most of the time. My mail client (Thunderbird) allows me to set up powerful filters by which I can self-moderate this list quite well, thank you very much. I simply choose to not read posts from certain individuals. That way, my blood pressure stays as low as possible and I'm not tempted to reply. It only takes a few minutes to write a filter and even less time to update it. This can be done with most Web-based e-mail readers as well. The best part? My kill-list (so-called because the people on it are dead to me) does not affect any other list member. The people in it can keep posting here (I just never see those posts) and, therefore, any other list member can still read them. But, please, I'm begging you, do not let this list fall victim to the easy way out by banning certain individuals or topics before we, the list members, get a chance to see them. And, please, don't even consider any form of entrance exam or proof of intelligence. Cheers, Brad P.S. I'm also not in favor of disallowing emotive language. Here, again, if you don't like a particular poster's style, you can always kill-list them. Don't deprive me of the entertainment they often provide. Some people are just bombastic by nature. Scratch the surface and they turn out to be, guess what? Real human beings. With all the emotional baggage and over the top behavior that can bring. But, also with all of the emotional needs and insecurities. Sometimes we just need to cut people a little slack. Judge not lest you be judged. That kind of thing. P.P.S. I was interested to see the list posting analysis in which I was the second most frequent poster for July! I joined the AGI list (by invitation) on April 1, 2008. From then until June 1 (two months), I submitted just 19 posts (for an average of just 9.5 posts per month). The vast majority of those were informational (i.e., contained a headlines written by someone else with a link to the associated article but which I felt might be of interest to other list members). I didn't initiate a thread until late July. The vast majority of my posts in July were over a two-day period and were responses to comments I received from other list members. Just goes to show how misleading statistics can be. But what really gets me cheezed-off is that Loosemore got first place! :-) Jim Bromer wrote: I seriously meant it to be a friendly statement. Obviously I expressed myself poorly. Jim Bromer On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 6:41 PM, Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This from the guy who only about three or four days ago responded to a post I made here by telling me to get a life. And, that was the sum-total of his comments. What's that smell?!? Ah, hypocrisy! Jim Bromer wrote: I used to think that critical attacks on a person's general thinking were reasonable, but I have found that the best way to reduce the most hostile and intolerant comments is to be overly objective and refrain from making any personal comments at all. Unfortunately, I have found that you have to refrain from making friendly or shared-experience kinds of remarks as well in order to use this method to effectively reduce the dullest sort of personal attacks and the grossest exaggerations. The best method of bringing the conversation to a higher level is to get as many people as possible to refrain from sinking to the lower levels. Some of the most intolerant remarks that I received from a few people in this group were for remarks where I said that I thought that there was a chance that I might have received some divine guidance on a logical SAT project that I was working on. At one point, to the best of my recollection, Ben Goertzel made the statement that since a polynomial time SAT was impossible, discussion of polynomial time methods of SAT would be banned from the group! Since polynomial time vs non-polynomial time SAT is famously unprovable, Ben's remark seemed
Re: [agi] How do we know we don't know?
Mike, Valentina was referring to a remark I made (and shouldn't have -- just on general principles) about her making my *personal* kill-list thanks to the LOL she left regarding Richard Loosemore's original reply to the post that started this thread. I should have taken a time out before I opened my big fingers. Had I done so, I would have found out (as I did through subsequent exchanges with Richard) that his comments were based on a misunderstanding. He thought what I was calling the list of things we don't know was a list of all things not known. It wasn't. I was referring to the list of things we know we don't know. I take full responsibility for creating this misunderstanding through sloppy writing/editing. Anyhow, I took Richard's initial comments the wrong way (probably because I'm as insecure as the next person). Valentina's message got read in that context. The misunderstanding has all been worked out now, so there was really no reason for all the initial drama. Valentina: if you're reading this, I apologize for overreacting. I re-read your post after I'd calmed down and realized that you did add a brief comment on Richard's reply. You didn't just pile on. I look forward to hearing more about your views on building an AGI. I'm happy to see this thread has generated some interesting side discussions. I'm here to learn and, occasionally, see what people who give a lot of time and thought to this subject think of my whacky ideas. Cheers, Brad Mike Tintner wrote: Er no, I don't believe in killing people :) I'm not quite sure what you're what getting at. I was just trying to add another layer of complexity to the brain's immensely multilayered processing. Our processing of new words/word combinations shows that there is a creative aspect to this processing - it isn't just matching. Some of this might be done by standard verbal associations/ semantic networks - e.g. yes IMO artcop could be a word for, say, art critic - cops police, and art can be seen as being policed - I may even have that last expression in memory. But in other cases, the processing may have to be done by imaginative association/drawing - dirksilt could just conceivably be a word, if I imagine some dirk/dagger-like tool being used on silt, (doesn't make much sense but conceivable for my brain) - I doubt that such reasoning could be purely verbal. Valentina: This is how I explain it: when we perceive a stimulus, word in this case, it doesn't reach our brain as a single neuron firing or synapse, but as a set of already processed neuronal groups or sets of synapses, that each recall various other memories, concepts and neuronal group. Let me clarify this. In the example you give, the wod artcop might reach us as a set of stimuli: art, cop, mediu-sized word, word that begins with a, and so on. All these connect activate various maps in our memory, and if something substantial is monitored at some point (going with Richard's theory of the monitor, I don't have other references of this actually), we form a response. This is more obvious in the case of sight - where an image is first broken into various compontents that are separately elaborated: colours, motion, edges, shapes, etc. - and then further sent to the upper parts of the memory where they can be associated to higher level concepts. If any of this is not clear let me know, instead of adding me to your kill-lists ;-P On 7/31/08, *Mike Tintner* [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Vlad: I think Hofstadter's exploration of jumbles ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumble ) covers this ground. You don't just recognize the word, you work on trying to connect it to what you know, and if set of letters didn't correspond to any word, you give up. There's still more to word recognition though than this. How do we decide what is and isn't, may or may not be a word? A neologism? What may or may not be words from: cogrough dirksilt thangthing artcop coggourd cowstock or fomlepaung or whatever? *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modify https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Your Subscription [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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] How do we know we don't know?
Abram, The syntactic surface feature argument makes a good, but rather narrow, addition to the list of mechanisms that can engender a feeling of not knowing. The interesting part is that, as someone who speaks Norwegian, using that word in the example didn't set off phonological feature alarms for me. Non-Norwegian speakers picked it up right off. Your argument for semantic (i.e., meaning) features lacks concrete examples so it is difficult to tell exactly what you mean. Based on your general argument, I would conclude that it requires a content search of some sort and, therefore, falls under one of the mechanisms posited in my initial post. Cheers, Brad Abram Demski wrote: I think the same sort of solution applies to the world series case; the only difference is that it is semantic features that fail to combine, rather than syntactic. In other words, there are either zero associations or none with the potential to count as an answer. --Abram On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 7:51 PM, Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt, I confess, I'm not sure I understand your response. It seems to be a variant of the critique made by three people early-on in this thread based on the misleading example query in my original post. These folks noted that an analysis of linguistic surface features (i.e., the word fomlepung would not sound right to an English speaking query recipient) could account for the feeling of not knowing. And they were right. For queries of that type (i.e., queries that contained foreign, slang or uncommon words). I apologized for that first example and provided an improved query (one that has valid English syntax and uses common English words -- so it will pass linguistic surface feature analysis). To wit: Which team won the 1924 World Series? Cheers, Brad Matt Mahoney wrote: This is not a hard problem. A model for data compression has the task of predicting the next bit in a string of unknown origin. If the string is an encoding of natural language text, then modeling is an AI problem. If the model doesn't know, then it assigns a probability of about 1/2 to each of 0 and 1. Probabilities can be easily detected from outside the model, regardless of the intelligence level of the model. -- 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/?; 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/?; 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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] How do we know we don't know?
Richard Loosemore wrote: Brad Paulsen wrote: Richard Loosemore wrote: Brad Paulsen wrote: All, Here's a question for you: What does fomlepung mean? If your immediate (mental) response was I don't know. it means you're not a slang-slinging Norwegian. But, how did your brain produce that feeling of not knowing? And, how did it produce that feeling so fast? Your brain may have been able to do a massively-parallel search of your entire memory and come up empty. But, if it does this, it's subconscious. No one to whom I've presented the above question has reported a conscious feeling of searching before having the conscious feeling of not knowing. It could be that your brain keeps a list of things I don't know. I tend to think this is the case, but it doesn't explain why your brain can react so quickly with the feeling of not knowing when it doesn't know it doesn't know (e.g., the very first time it encounters the word fomlepung). My intuition tells me the feeling of not knowing when presented with a completely novel concept or event is a product of the Danger, Will Robinson!, reptilian part of our brain. When we don't know we don't know something we react with a feeling of not knowing as a survival response. Then, having survived, we put the thing not known at the head of our list of things I don't know. As long as that thing is in this list it explains how we can come to the feeling of not knowing it so quickly. Of course, keeping a large list of things I don't know around is probably not a good idea. I suspect such a list will naturally get smaller through atrophy. You will probably never encounter the fomlepung question again, so the fact that you don't know what it means will become less and less important and eventually it will drop off the end of the list. And... Another intuition tells me that the list of things I don't know, might generate a certain amount of cognitive dissonance the resolution of which can only be accomplished by seeking out new information (i.e., learning)? If so, does this mean that such a list in an AGI could be an important element of that AGI's desire to learn? From a functional point of view, this could be something as simple as a scheduled background task that checks the things I don't know list occasionally and, under the right circumstances, pings the AGI with a pang of cognitive dissonance from time to time. So, what say ye? Isn't this a bit of a no-brainer? Why would the human brain need to keep lists of things it did not know, when it can simply break the word down into components, then have mechanisms that watch for the rate at which candidate lexical items become activated when this mechanism notices that the rate of activation is well below the usual threshold, it is a fairly simple thing for it to announce that the item is not known. Keeping lists of things not known is wildly, outrageously impossible, for any system! Would we really expect that the word ikrwfheuigjsjboweonwjebgowinwkjbcewijcniwecwoicmuwbpiwjdncwjkdncowk- owejwenowuycgxnjwiiweudnpwieudnwheudxiweidhuxehwuixwefgyjsdhxeiowudx- hwieuhyxweipudxhnweduiweodiuweydnxiweudhcnhweduweiducyenwhuwiepixuwe- dpiuwezpiweudnzpwieumzweuipweiuzmwepoidumw is represented somewhere as a word that I do not know? :-) I note that even in the simplest word-recognition neural nets that I built and studied in the 1990s, activation of a nonword proceeded in a very different way than activation of a word: it would have been easy to build something to trigger a this is a nonword neuron. Is there some type of AI formalism where nonword recognition would be problematic? Richard Loosemore Richard, You seem to have decided my request for comment was about word (mis)recognition. It wasn't. Unfortunately, I included a misleading example in my initial post. A couple of list members called me on it immediately (I'd expect nothing less from this group -- and this was a valid criticism duly noted). So far, three people have pointed out that a query containing an un-common (foreign, slang or both) word is one way to quickly generate the feeling of not knowing. But, it is just that: only one way. Not all feelings of not knowing are produced by linguistic analysis of surface features. In fact, I would guess that the vast majority of them are not so generated. Still, some are and pointing this out was a valid contribution (perhaps that example was fortunately bad). I don't think my query is a no-brainer to answer (unless you want to make it one) and your response, since it contained only another flavor of the previous two responses, gives me no reason whatsoever to change my opinion. Please take a look at the revised example in this thread. I don't think it has the same problems (as an example) as did the initial example. In particular, all of the words are common (American English) and the syntax is valid
Re: [agi] How do we know we don't know?
Richard, Someone who can throw comments like Isn't this a bit of a no-brainer? and Keeping lists of 'things not known' is wildly, outrageously impossible, for any system! at people should expect a little bit of annoyance in return. If you can't take it, don't dish it out. Your responses to my initial post so far have been devoid of any real substantive evidence or argument for the opinions you have expressed therein. Your initial reply correctly identified an additional mechanism that two other list members had previously reported (that surface features could raise the feeling of not knowing without triggering an exhaustive memory search). As I pointed out in my response to them, this observation was a good catch but did not, in any way, show my ideas to be no-brainers or wildly, outrageously impossible. In that reply, I posted a new example query that contained only common American English words and was syntactically valid. If you want to present an evidence-based or well-reasoned argument why you believe my ideas are meritless, then let's have it. Pejorative adjectives, ad hominem attacks and baseless opinions don't impress me much. As to your cheerleader, she's just made my kill-list. The only thing worse than someone who slings unsupported opinions around like they're facts, is someone who slings someone else's unsupported opinions around like they're facts. Who is Mark Waser? Cheers, Brad Richard Loosemore wrote: Brad Paulsen wrote: Valentina, Well, the LOL is on you. Richard failed to add anything new to the two previous responses that each posited linguistic surface feature analysis as being responsible for generate the feeling of not knowing with that *particular* (and, admittedly poorly-chosen) example query. This mechanism will, however, apply to only a very tiny number of cases. In response to those first two replies (not including Richard's), I apologized for the sloppy example and offered a new one. Please read the entire thread and the new example. I think you'll find Richard's and your explanation will fail to address how the new example might generate the feeling of not knowing. Brad, Isn't this response, as well as the previous response directed at me, just a little more annoyed-sounding than it needs to be? Both Valentina and I (and now Mark Waser also) have simply focused on the fact that it is relatively trivial to build mechanisms that monitor the rate at which the system is progressing in its attempt to do a recognition operation, and then call it as a not known if the progress rate is below a certain threshold. In particular, you did suggest the idea of a system keeping lists of things it did not know, and surely it is not inappropriate to give a good-naturedly humorous response to that one? So far, I don't see any of us making a substantial misunderstanding of your question, nor anyone being deliberately rude to you. Richard Loosemore Valentina Poletti wrote: lol.. well said richard. the stimuli simply invokes no signiticant response and thus our brain concludes that we 'don't know'. that's why it takes no effort to realize it. agi algorithms should be built in a similar way, rather than searching. Isn't this a bit of a no-brainer? Why would the human brain need to keep lists of things it did not know, when it can simply break the word down into components, then have mechanisms that watch for the rate at which candidate lexical items become activated when this mechanism notices that the rate of activation is well below the usual threshold, it is a fairly simple thing for it to announce that the item is not known. Keeping lists of things not known is wildly, outrageously impossible, for any system! Would we really expect that the word ikrwfheuigjsjboweonwjebgowinwkjbcewijcniwecwoicmuwbpiwjdncwjkdncowk- owejwenowuycgxnjwiiweudnpwieudnwheudxiweidhuxehwuixwefgyjsdhxeiowudx- hwieuhyxweipudxhnweduiweodiuweydnxiweudhcnhweduweiducyenwhuwiepixuwe- dpiuwezpiweudnzpwieumzweuipweiuzmwepoidumw is represented somewhere as a word that I do not know? :-) I note that even in the simplest word-recognition neural nets that I built and studied in the 1990s, activation of a nonword proceeded in a very different way than activation of a word: it would have been easy to build something to trigger a this is a nonword neuron. Is there some type of AI formalism where nonword recognition would be problematic? Richard Loosemore *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modify https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Your Subscription[Powered by Listbox] http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member
Re: [agi] How do we know we don't know?
Richard, I just finished reading and replying to your post preceding this one (I guess). Your tone and approach in that post was more like what I expected from you. I'm not going to get in a pissing match about what I should or should not take personally. That will generate only heat not light. Peace, OK? Cheers, Brad P.S. I will review Valentina's post to see if I misunderstood it. When I originally read it, it sure looked like piling on to me. P.S. Terren: I reserve the right to put anyone in my personal kill-list. I don't have to justify my reasons. If I choose to not read the posts of a particular list member, and that person turns up on Time Magazine's cover ten years from now, well... my loss. Right? Richard Loosemore wrote: Brad, I just wrote a long, point-by-point response to this, but on reflection I am not going to send it. Instead, I would like to echo Terren Suydam's comment and say that I think that you have overreacted here, because in my original reply to you I had not the slightest intention of insulting you or your ideas. The opening remark, for example, was meant to suggest that the QUESTION you posed was a no-brainer (as in, easily answerable), not that your ideas were brainless. You will note that there was a smiley in the post, and it started with a question, not a declaration (Isn't this a bit of a no-brainer?...). Throughout, I have simply been trying to explain that there is a general strategy for solving your initial question - a strategy quite well known to many people - which applies to all versions of the question, whether they be at the lexical level or the semantic level. Valentina, it seems to me, was reacting to the humorous example I gave, not mocking you personally. Certainly, if you feel that I insulted you I am quite willing to apologize for what (from my point of view) was an accident of prose style. Richard Loosemore Brad Paulsen wrote: Richard, Someone who can throw comments like Isn't this a bit of a no-brainer? and Keeping lists of 'things not known' is wildly, outrageously impossible, for any system! at people should expect a little bit of annoyance in return. If you can't take it, don't dish it out. Your responses to my initial post so far have been devoid of any real substantive evidence or argument for the opinions you have expressed therein. Your initial reply correctly identified an additional mechanism that two other list members had previously reported (that surface features could raise the feeling of not knowing without triggering an exhaustive memory search). As I pointed out in my response to them, this observation was a good catch but did not, in any way, show my ideas to be no-brainers or wildly, outrageously impossible. In that reply, I posted a new example query that contained only common American English words and was syntactically valid. If you want to present an evidence-based or well-reasoned argument why you believe my ideas are meritless, then let's have it. Pejorative adjectives, ad hominem attacks and baseless opinions don't impress me much. As to your cheerleader, she's just made my kill-list. The only thing worse than someone who slings unsupported opinions around like they're facts, is someone who slings someone else's unsupported opinions around like they're facts. Who is Mark Waser? Cheers, Brad Richard Loosemore wrote: Brad Paulsen wrote: Valentina, Well, the LOL is on you. Richard failed to add anything new to the two previous responses that each posited linguistic surface feature analysis as being responsible for generate the feeling of not knowing with that *particular* (and, admittedly poorly-chosen) example query. This mechanism will, however, apply to only a very tiny number of cases. In response to those first two replies (not including Richard's), I apologized for the sloppy example and offered a new one. Please read the entire thread and the new example. I think you'll find Richard's and your explanation will fail to address how the new example might generate the feeling of not knowing. Brad, Isn't this response, as well as the previous response directed at me, just a little more annoyed-sounding than it needs to be? Both Valentina and I (and now Mark Waser also) have simply focused on the fact that it is relatively trivial to build mechanisms that monitor the rate at which the system is progressing in its attempt to do a recognition operation, and then call it as a not known if the progress rate is below a certain threshold. In particular, you did suggest the idea of a system keeping lists of things it did not know, and surely it is not inappropriate to give a good-naturedly humorous response to that one? So far, I don't see any of us making a substantial misunderstanding of your question, nor anyone being deliberately rude to you. Richard Loosemore Valentina Poletti wrote: lol
Re: [agi] How do we know we don't know?
Richard Loosemore wrote: Brad Paulsen wrote: James, Someone ventured the *opinion* that keeping such a list of things I don't know was nonsensical, but I have yet to see any evidence or well-reasoned argument backing that opinion. So, it's just an opinion. One with which I, obviously, do not agree. Please be clear about what was intended by my remarks. I *now* have an explicit, episodic memory of confronting the question Who won the world series in 1954, and as a result of that episode that occured today, I have the explicit knowledge that I do not know the answer. Having that kind of explicit knowledge of lack-of-knowledge is not problematic at all. The only thing that seems implausible is that IN GENERAL we try to answer questions by first looking up explicit elements that encode the fact that we do not know the answer. As a general strategy this must, surely, be deeply implausible, for the reasons that I originally gave, which centered on the fact that the sheer quantity of unknowns would be overwhelming for any system. For almost every one of the potentially askable questions that would elicit, in me, a response of I do not know, there would not be any such episode. Similarly, it would be clearly implausible for the cognitive system to spend its time making lists of things that it did not know. If that is not an example of an obviously implausible mechanism, then I do not know what would be. Ah. Now we're getting somewhere! I do *not* (and did not) propose that we keep a list of all the things unknown in memory. Nor did I propose some background task that would maintain or add to such a list. That would be ...wildly, outrageously impossible, for any system! Maybe, instead of assuming the worse (that I could be so ignorant as to propose such a list), you might have asked for some clarification? The list of things I don't know is, by definition, a list of things I know I don't know. How could I *possibly* know about things I don't know I don't know? The list I propose contains ONLY those things we know we don't know. Such a list is, in my opinion, completely manageable and, indeed, helpful information to have around. When we first encounter a completely novel object or event we will have to search (percolate, whatever) for it in memory and come up empty (however you want to define that). It is then, and *only* then, that we put this knowledge (or meta-knowledge) on the things (I know) I don't know list. This list can be consulted before performing a search of all memory to determine if there's a need to do such an exhaustive search. If the thing we're trying to remember is on the things (I know) I don't know list, we can very quickly report the feeling of not knowing. Otherwise, we have to do the exhaustive (however you define that) search of things we do know and come up empty. Such a list can also be used by subconscious processes to power our desire to learn. Presumably, we experience cognitive dissonance when we feel there's something we know nothing about and want to resolve that feeling. How? By learning. Once learned, the thing falls off the things (I know) I don't know list. Similarly, if an item is on the list for a long time, it will naturally fall off the list (the use it or lose it principle). Both of these natural actions will work, I believe, to keep this list quite small. Sometimes (well, don't ask my ex) I can be a bit thick. I know you're all surprised to hear that, but... It just dawned on me that much of the uproar here may have been caused by a miscommunication (gee, where have we heard of that happening before?). I may have used the term things we don't know to denote the things we know we don't know list. If so, please accept my apologies. Having played with these questions for a long time, this *important* distinction apparently became lost to me and I began to assume it self-evident that a things we don't know list would have had to come into being as the result of our encounters with those things when they were things we didn't know we didn't know (and, therefore, could not be in any list of knowledge we had -- we are clueless about these things until we encounter them). If that's the case, let me (finally) be clear: the list I am talking about in the human or AGI agent's memory is a list of THINGS I KNOW I DON'T KNOW. In the first (misleading) example I gave, the word fomlepung would be on that list after the query containing it had resulted in the I don't know answer (how that determination is made is really a minor point for this discussion). In the second example query I gave, the Which team won the 1924 World Series? would also, after eliciting the I don't know response, find its way onto this list. This was not merely an opinion, it was a reasoned argument, illustrated by an example of a nonword that clearly belonged to a vast class of nonwords. Well, be fair
Re: [agi] How do we know we don't know?
Richard Loosemore wrote: Brad Paulsen wrote: All, Here's a question for you: What does fomlepung mean? If your immediate (mental) response was I don't know. it means you're not a slang-slinging Norwegian. But, how did your brain produce that feeling of not knowing? And, how did it produce that feeling so fast? Your brain may have been able to do a massively-parallel search of your entire memory and come up empty. But, if it does this, it's subconscious. No one to whom I've presented the above question has reported a conscious feeling of searching before having the conscious feeling of not knowing. It could be that your brain keeps a list of things I don't know. I tend to think this is the case, but it doesn't explain why your brain can react so quickly with the feeling of not knowing when it doesn't know it doesn't know (e.g., the very first time it encounters the word fomlepung). My intuition tells me the feeling of not knowing when presented with a completely novel concept or event is a product of the Danger, Will Robinson!, reptilian part of our brain. When we don't know we don't know something we react with a feeling of not knowing as a survival response. Then, having survived, we put the thing not known at the head of our list of things I don't know. As long as that thing is in this list it explains how we can come to the feeling of not knowing it so quickly. Of course, keeping a large list of things I don't know around is probably not a good idea. I suspect such a list will naturally get smaller through atrophy. You will probably never encounter the fomlepung question again, so the fact that you don't know what it means will become less and less important and eventually it will drop off the end of the list. And... Another intuition tells me that the list of things I don't know, might generate a certain amount of cognitive dissonance the resolution of which can only be accomplished by seeking out new information (i.e., learning)? If so, does this mean that such a list in an AGI could be an important element of that AGI's desire to learn? From a functional point of view, this could be something as simple as a scheduled background task that checks the things I don't know list occasionally and, under the right circumstances, pings the AGI with a pang of cognitive dissonance from time to time. So, what say ye? Isn't this a bit of a no-brainer? Why would the human brain need to keep lists of things it did not know, when it can simply break the word down into components, then have mechanisms that watch for the rate at which candidate lexical items become activated when this mechanism notices that the rate of activation is well below the usual threshold, it is a fairly simple thing for it to announce that the item is not known. Keeping lists of things not known is wildly, outrageously impossible, for any system! Would we really expect that the word ikrwfheuigjsjboweonwjebgowinwkjbcewijcniwecwoicmuwbpiwjdncwjkdncowk- owejwenowuycgxnjwiiweudnpwieudnwheudxiweidhuxehwuixwefgyjsdhxeiowudx- hwieuhyxweipudxhnweduiweodiuweydnxiweudhcnhweduweiducyenwhuwiepixuwe- dpiuwezpiweudnzpwieumzweuipweiuzmwepoidumw is represented somewhere as a word that I do not know? :-) I note that even in the simplest word-recognition neural nets that I built and studied in the 1990s, activation of a nonword proceeded in a very different way than activation of a word: it would have been easy to build something to trigger a this is a nonword neuron. Is there some type of AI formalism where nonword recognition would be problematic? Richard Loosemore Richard, You seem to have decided my request for comment was about word (mis)recognition. It wasn't. Unfortunately, I included a misleading example in my initial post. A couple of list members called me on it immediately (I'd expect nothing less from this group -- and this was a valid criticism duly noted). So far, three people have pointed out that a query containing an un-common (foreign, slang or both) word is one way to quickly generate the feeling of not knowing. But, it is just that: only one way. Not all feelings of not knowing are produced by linguistic analysis of surface features. In fact, I would guess that the vast majority of them are not so generated. Still, some are and pointing this out was a valid contribution (perhaps that example was fortunately bad). I don't think my query is a no-brainer to answer (unless you want to make it one) and your response, since it contained only another flavor of the previous two responses, gives me no reason whatsoever to change my opinion. Please take a look at the revised example in this thread. I don't think it has the same problems (as an example) as did the initial example. In particular, all of the words are common (American English) and the syntax is valid. Cheers, Brad
Re: [agi] How do we know we don't know?
James, So, you agree that some sort of search must take place before the feeling of not knowing presents itself? Of course, realizing we don't have a lot of information results from some type of a search and not a separate process (at least you didn't posit any). Thanks for your comments! Cheers Brad James Ratcliff wrote: It is fairly simple at that point, we have enough context to have a very limited domain world series - baseball 1924 answer is a team, so we can do a lookup in our database easily enough, or realize that we really dont have a lot of information about baseball in our mindset. And for the other one, it would just be a strait term match. James Ratcliff ___ James Ratcliff - http://falazar.com Looking for something... --- On *Mon, 7/28/08, Brad Paulsen /[EMAIL PROTECTED]/* wrote: From: Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] How do we know we don't know? To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Monday, July 28, 2008, 4:12 PM Jim Bromer wrote: On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:58 PM, Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All, What does fomlepung mean? If your immediate (mental) response was I don't know. it means you're not a slang-slinging Norwegian. But, how did your brain produce that feeling of not knowing? And, how did it produce that feeling so fast? Your brain may have been able to do a massively-parallel search of your entire memory and come up empty. But, if it does this, it's subconscious. No one to whom I've presented the above question has reported a conscious feeling of searching before having the conscious feeling of not knowing. Brad My guess that initial recognition must be based on the surface features of an input. If this is true, then that could suggest that our initial recognition reactions are stimulated by distinct components (or distinct groupings of components) that are found in the surface input data. Jim Bromer Hmmm. That particular query may not have been the best example since, to a non-Norwegian speaker, the phonological surface feature of that statement alone could account for the feeling of not knowing. In other words, the word fomlepung just doesn't sound right. Good point. But, that may only explain how we know we don't know strange sounding words. Let's try another example: Which team won the 1924 World Series? 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/?; 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 https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modify https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Your Subscription [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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] How do we know we don't know?
Valentina, Well, the LOL is on you. Richard failed to add anything new to the two previous responses that each posited linguistic surface feature analysis as being responsible for generate the feeling of not knowing with that *particular* (and, admittedly poorly-chosen) example query. This mechanism will, however, apply to only a very tiny number of cases. In response to those first two replies (not including Richard's), I apologized for the sloppy example and offered a new one. Please read the entire thread and the new example. I think you'll find Richard's and your explanation will fail to address how the new example might generate the feeling of not knowing. Cheers, Brad Valentina Poletti wrote: lol.. well said richard. the stimuli simply invokes no signiticant response and thus our brain concludes that we 'don't know'. that's why it takes no effort to realize it. agi algorithms should be built in a similar way, rather than searching. Isn't this a bit of a no-brainer? Why would the human brain need to keep lists of things it did not know, when it can simply break the word down into components, then have mechanisms that watch for the rate at which candidate lexical items become activated when this mechanism notices that the rate of activation is well below the usual threshold, it is a fairly simple thing for it to announce that the item is not known. Keeping lists of things not known is wildly, outrageously impossible, for any system! Would we really expect that the word ikrwfheuigjsjboweonwjebgowinwkjbcewijcniwecwoicmuwbpiwjdncwjkdncowk- owejwenowuycgxnjwiiweudnpwieudnwheudxiweidhuxehwuixwefgyjsdhxeiowudx- hwieuhyxweipudxhnweduiweodiuweydnxiweudhcnhweduweiducyenwhuwiepixuwe- dpiuwezpiweudnzpwieumzweuipweiuzmwepoidumw is represented somewhere as a word that I do not know? :-) I note that even in the simplest word-recognition neural nets that I built and studied in the 1990s, activation of a nonword proceeded in a very different way than activation of a word: it would have been easy to build something to trigger a this is a nonword neuron. Is there some type of AI formalism where nonword recognition would be problematic? Richard Loosemore *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modify https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Your Subscription [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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] How do we know we don't know?
Ed, Thanks for the response. I'm going to read it a couple more times to make sure I didn't miss anything. But, on first read, looks good! Thanks for taking the time to comment in such detail! Cheers, Brad Ed Porter wrote: I believe the human brain, in addition to including the controller for a physical robot, includes the controller of a thought robot which includes pushing much of the brain through learned or instinctual mental behaviors. My understanding is that much of higher level function of this thought controller is largely in the prefrontal cortex, basil ganglia, thalamic loop. I am guessing that answering a query such as What does word_X (in this case fomlepung) mean? is a type of learned behavior. The thought robot is consciously aware of the query task and the idea that as a query, its task is to search for recollection of the word fomlepung and its associations. I think the search is generated by a consciously broadcasting a pattern looking for a match for fomlepung to the appropriate areas of the brain. Although much of the spreading activation done in response to this conscious activation is, itself, in the subconscious, the thought robot task of answering a query is focusing attention on the query and any feedback from it indicating a possible answer. This could be done by looking for feedback from cortical activations to the thalamus that are in synchrony with the query pattern, tuning into them, and testing them so see if any of them are a desired match. When the conscious task of query answering does not get feedback indicating an answer, the conscious pre-frontal process engaged in query is aware of that lack of desired feedback and, thus, the human in whose mind the process is taking place is conscious that he/she doesn't know (or at least can recall) the meaning of the word. Conscious feelings of not knowing can arise in other contexts besides answering a what does word_X mean query. In some of them, subconscious processes might, for various reasons, promote a failure to match a subconscious query or task up to the consciousness. For example, a sub-subconscious pattern completion process, in say high level perception or in cognition, might draws activation to itself, pushing its activation into semi-conscious or conscious attention, both because its activation pattern is beginning to better match an emotionally weighted patterns that direct more activation energy back to it, and because there is a missing a piece of information necessary for that valuable match to be made. The brain may have learned by evolution or individual experience that such information would be more likely found if the much greater spreading activation resources of semi-conscious or conscious attention could be utilized for conducting the search for such missing information. This causes a greater search to be made for such information, and if the information is not found quickly, could cause even more attention to be allocated to the search, pushing the search and its failure into clear conscious awareness. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Abram Demski [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 4:25 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] How do we know we don't know? It seems like you have some valid points, but I cannot help but point out a problem with your question. It seems like any system for pattern recognition and/or prediction will have a sensible I Don't Know state. An algorithm in a published paper might suppress this in an attempt to give as reasonable an output as is possible in all situations, but it seems like in most such cases it would be easy to add. Therefore, where is the problem? Yet, I follow your comments and to an extent agree... the feeling when I don't know something could possibly be related to animal fear (though I am not sure), and the second time I encounter the same thing is certainly different (because I remember the previous not-knowing, so I at least have that info for context this time). But I think the issue might nonetheless be non-fundamental, because algorithms typically can easily report their not knowing. --Abram On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:58 PM, Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All, Here's a question for you: What does fomlepung mean? If your immediate (mental) response was I don't know. it means you're not a slang-slinging Norwegian. But, how did your brain produce that feeling of not knowing? And, how did it produce that feeling so fast? Your brain may have been able to do a massively-parallel search of your entire memory and come up empty. But, if it does this, it's subconscious. No one to whom I've presented the above question has reported a conscious feeling of searching before having the conscious feeling of not knowing. It could be that your brain keeps a list of things I don't know. I tend to think this is the case, but it doesn't explain why your brain can react so quickly
[agi] How do we know we don't know?
All, Here's a question for you: What does fomlepung mean? If your immediate (mental) response was I don't know. it means you're not a slang-slinging Norwegian. But, how did your brain produce that feeling of not knowing? And, how did it produce that feeling so fast? Your brain may have been able to do a massively-parallel search of your entire memory and come up empty. But, if it does this, it's subconscious. No one to whom I've presented the above question has reported a conscious feeling of searching before having the conscious feeling of not knowing. It could be that your brain keeps a list of things I don't know. I tend to think this is the case, but it doesn't explain why your brain can react so quickly with the feeling of not knowing when it doesn't know it doesn't know (e.g., the very first time it encounters the word fomlepung). My intuition tells me the feeling of not knowing when presented with a completely novel concept or event is a product of the Danger, Will Robinson!, reptilian part of our brain. When we don't know we don't know something we react with a feeling of not knowing as a survival response. Then, having survived, we put the thing not known at the head of our list of things I don't know. As long as that thing is in this list it explains how we can come to the feeling of not knowing it so quickly. Of course, keeping a large list of things I don't know around is probably not a good idea. I suspect such a list will naturally get smaller through atrophy. You will probably never encounter the fomlepung question again, so the fact that you don't know what it means will become less and less important and eventually it will drop off the end of the list. And... Another intuition tells me that the list of things I don't know, might generate a certain amount of cognitive dissonance the resolution of which can only be accomplished by seeking out new information (i.e., learning)? If so, does this mean that such a list in an AGI could be an important element of that AGI's desire to learn? From a functional point of view, this could be something as simple as a scheduled background task that checks the things I don't know list occasionally and, under the right circumstances, pings the AGI with a pang of cognitive dissonance from time to time. So, what say ye? 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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] How do we know we don't know?
Jim Bromer wrote: On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:58 PM, Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All, What does fomlepung mean? If your immediate (mental) response was I don't know. it means you're not a slang-slinging Norwegian. But, how did your brain produce that feeling of not knowing? And, how did it produce that feeling so fast? Your brain may have been able to do a massively-parallel search of your entire memory and come up empty. But, if it does this, it's subconscious. No one to whom I've presented the above question has reported a conscious feeling of searching before having the conscious feeling of not knowing. Brad My guess that initial recognition must be based on the surface features of an input. If this is true, then that could suggest that our initial recognition reactions are stimulated by distinct components (or distinct groupings of components) that are found in the surface input data. Jim Bromer Hmmm. That particular query may not have been the best example since, to a non-Norwegian speaker, the phonological surface feature of that statement alone could account for the feeling of not knowing. In other words, the word fomlepung just doesn't sound right. Good point. But, that may only explain how we know we don't know strange sounding words. Let's try another example: Which team won the 1924 World Series? 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/?; 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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] US PATENT ISSUED for the TEN ETHICAL LAWS OF ROBOTICS
potential applications extend to the roles of switchboard/receptionist and personal assistant/companion (in a time-share mode). Opinions ? John L http://www.ethicalvalues.com http://www.ethicalvalues.info http://www.emotionchip.net http://www.global-solutions.org http://www.world-peace.org http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/fairhaven/schematics.html http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/fairhaven/behaviorism.html http://www.forebrain.org http://www.charactervalues.com http://www.charactervalues.org http://www.charactervalues.net - Original Message - From: Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Monday, July 21, 2008 12:35 PM Subject: Re: [agi] US PATENT ISSUED for the TEN ETHICAL LAWS OF ROBOTICS Matt, Never underestimate the industriousness of a PATENT TROLL. He's already been granted a new patent for the same concept, except (apparently, I haven't read the patent yet, this time for an ethical chip). Patent #7236963 (awarded in 2007) for the emotion chip. Don't worry, it's as indefensible as the first one. Same random buzzword generator, different title. The problem is giving one of these morons a technology patent is like giving an ADHD kid a loaded gun. You know they're just looking to use it as blackmail for some quick royalty fees. The posting here was, no doubt, for intimidation purposes. Of course, somebody ought to tell him the AGI crowd doesn't have much use for a solution to the ethical artificial intelligence problem (whatever the hell that is). Indeed, even after he tells us what it is, it still doesn't make any sense. And I quote from the (first) patent's Abstract A new model of motivational behavior, described as a ten-level metaperspectival hierarchy of... Say what? There is no such word as metaperspectival. Not in English, at least. Yet, that's the word he uses to define his invention. But, it gets better... ...ethical terms, serves as the foundation for an ethical simulation of artificial intelligence. Well, I'm glad he intends to conduct his simulation ethically. I think what he really meant, however, was “a simulation of ethical artificial intelligence.” He does get half a grammar point for using the correct article (“an”) before “ethical.” You don't see that much these days. But, ah... we have another problem here. You see, artificial intelligence IS ALREADY a simulation. In particular, it is a simulation of human intelligence. Hence the word artificial. At least, that's the idea. Does he really mean his patent applies to a simulation of a simulation? Given that most existing AI software is computationally intensive and gasping for breath most of the time, that's got to be one slow-ass AI invention! Again, from the Abstract of the first patent... This AI system is organized as a tandem, nested...” Sigh. Where I come from (planet earth), tandem and nested are mutually exclusive modifiers. It's either tandem (i.e., “along side of” or “behind each other”) or it's nested (i.e., “inside of”). Can't be both at the same time. Sorry. Continuing, still in the Abstract... “...overseen by a master control unit – expert system (coordinating the motivational interchanges over real time).” OMG. Let me see if I have this straight. He has succeeded in patenting a simulation of a simulation with a “master control unit” that is, itself, another simulation. The only thing that contraption will do in real time is sit there looking stupid. That's presuming he could make it work which, as far as I can tell by scanning his patent, is right up there with the probability we'll solve the energy crises and the greenhouse effect using cold fusion. I have a good dozen of these gems, most of them from the Abstract alone. It gets REALLY weird when you read the patent description where he talks about how this invention solves the affective language understanding problem heretofore unsolved. News Alert: the entire NLP problem has yet to be solved (after 50 of trying by some of the best minds in the world). I have a PDF version of the newer patent (#7236963) which I will send (off-list) to anyone interested. Be advised, it's 3MB+ in size. Alternatively, you can read about it (see a picture of Mr. LaMuth, and download the PDF) at www.emotionchip.net. I also have a PDF version of the other, earlier, patent he holds (#6587846) – the supposed “recently issued” patent (actually, granted in 2003). I will also send this off-list to anyone interested (it's only about 1.3MB). Frankly, the reason these PDFs are so large is that every page is a graphic image. The documents contain no data stored as text (that I could find). This is pretty typical with U.S. Patent Office documents. Somebody there really likes (or liked) the TIFF image format. Unfortunately, this makes the Search function in Acrobat (or FoxIt Reader) completely useless. BTW, this guy apparently uses a dialup ISP. Yeah. State of the art
[agi] Pretty soon, there will be nowhere to hide!
All, DUTCH RESEARCHERS TAKE FLIGHT WITH THREE-GRAM 'DRAGONFLY' http://www.physorg.com/news135936047.html Some may consider this a bit off-topic, but it has an undeniable way cool factor. Be sure to watch the video (YouTube link in the article). Come to think of it, since everything has something to do with artificial general intelligence, doesn't that mean nothing is really off-topic here? ;-) (dodging beer cans, running for cover...) 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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] US PATENT ISSUED for the TEN ETHICAL LAWS OF ROBOTICS
Ah... And just what the hell is your problem? And I mean that in the friendliest way possible. Just what the HELL is your problem? Brad Jim Bromer wrote: Brad Paulsen Said: Mr. LaMuth, You are correct, sir. I should not have called you a patent troll. It was not only harsh, it was inaccurate. I was under the impression the term applied to a person or company holding a patent said person or company was not also developing, or imminently planning to develop, as a product. According to Wikipedia, however, this is not the correct definition of the term (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll). Please accept my sincerest apologies... ..That being said, I would be happy to look over your patent in detail and to give you my written, expert opinion on (a) whether it can actually be defended against challenges to its claim(s) and (b) whether it is possible, using current hardware and software tools, to actually construct a working prototype from the patent description. I have just two requirements: (1) You must agree to allow me to publish my analysis, unmodified, on the Internet (I will gladly also post, in the same location, any comments you may have regarding my analysis) and, (b) you must agree to assist in this analysis by providing any additional information I may need to complete the task. We can communicate for this purpose via email (this will also provide a “log” of our collaboration). I assure you I am completely sincere in making this offer. I have charged clients up to $250 per hour for similar services. Since I feel truly remorseful about incorrectly intimating you were a patent troll, you get this one on me. ;-) Let me know if you're interested. I have everything I need to get started right away. Cheers, Brad --- Dude... Get a life. I mean that in the friendliest way possible, but honestly. Get a life. Jim Bromer * *From:* Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] * *To:* agi@v2.listbox.com * *Subject:* Re: [agi] US PATENT ISSUED for the TEN ETHICAL LAWS OF ROBOTICS * *Date:* Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:37:16 -0500 Mr. LaMuth, You are correct, sir. I should not have called you a patent troll. It was not only harsh, it was inaccurate. I was under the impression the term applied to a person or company holding a patent said person or company was not also developing, or imminently planning to develop, as a product. According to Wikipedia, however, this is not the correct definition of the term (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll). Please accept my sincerest apologies. You do, however, appear to be a non-practicing entity (NPE). Wikipedia defines this term as ...a patent owner who does not manufacture or use the patented invention (same article). The patent you cited was first applied for in 2000 (actually in 1999 if we count the provisional patent) and approved in 2003. This is hardly a “recently issued” patent as you claimed in your initial post to this list. Since you did not mention any applicable existing products, or products currently under development (or even claimed to have a proof-of-concept prototype working and available for examination by interested parties), I think you can see where a reasonable person would have cause to believe your post may have had some other purpose. As to your claim to have initially posted here looking for “...aid in developing...” your invention, I must, also, assume you are being sincere. But, there is nothing in your initial posting to this mailing list that supports this assumption in any way, shape or form. There is no mention of having acquired any funding, no mention of a job opening, nor is there mention of any intent on your part to seek a development partner (individual or company). That being said, I would be happy to look over your patent in detail and to give you my written, expert opinion on (a) whether it can actually be defended against challenges to its claim(s) and (b) whether it is possible, using current hardware and software tools, to actually construct a working prototype from the patent description. I have just two requirements: (1) You must agree to allow me to publish my analysis, unmodified, on the Internet (I will gladly also post, in the same location, any comments you may have regarding my analysis) and, (b) you must agree to assist in this analysis by providing any additional information I may need to complete the task. We can communicate for this purpose via email (this will also provide a “log” of our collaboration). I assure you I am completely sincere in making this offer. I have charged clients up to $250 per hour for similar services. Since I feel truly remorseful about incorrectly intimating you were a patent troll, you get this one on me. ;-) Let me know if you're interested. I have everything I need to get started right away. Cheers, Brad
Re: FW: [agi] WHAT PORTION OF CORTICAL PROCESSES ARE BOUND BY THE BINDING PROBLEM?
Mike, If memory serves, this thread started out as a discussion about binding in an AGI context. At some point, the terms forward-chaining and backward-chaining were brought up and, then, got used in a weird way (I thought) as the discussion turned to temporal dependencies and hierarchical logic constructs. When it appeared no one else was going to clear up the ambiguities, I threw in my two cents. I made a spectacularly good living in the late 1980's building expert system engines and knowledge engineering front-ends, so I think I know a thing or two about that narrow AI technology. Funny thing, though, at that time, the trade press were saying expert systems were no longer real AI. They worked so well at what they did, the mystery wore off. Ah, the price of success in AI. ;-) What makes the algorithms used in expert system engines less than suitable for AGI is their static (snapshot) nature and crispness. AGI really needs some form of dynamic programming, probabilistic (or fuzzy) rules (such as those built using Bayes nets or hidden Markov models), and runtime feedback. Thanks for the kind words. Cheers, Brad Mike Tintner wrote: Brad: By definition, an expert system rule base contains the total sum of the knowledge of a human expert(s) in a particular domain at a given point in time. When you use it, that's what you expect to get. You don't expect the system to modify the rule base at runtime. If everything you need isn't in the rule base, you need to talk to the knowledge engineer. I don't know of any expert system that adds rules to its rule base (i.e., becomes “more expert”) at runtime. I'm not saying necessarily that this couldn't be done, but I've never seen it. In which case - (thanks BTW for a v. helpful post) - are we talking entirely here about narrow AI? Sorry if I've missed this, but has anyone been discussing how to provide a flexible, evolving set of rules for behaviour? That's the crux of AGI, isn't it? Something at least as flexible as a country's Constitution and Body of Laws. What ideas are on offer here? --- 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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: FW: [agi] WHAT PORTION OF CORTICAL PROCESSES ARE BOUND BY THE BINDING PROBLEM?
Richard Loosemore wrote: Brad Paulsen wrote: I've been following this thread pretty much since the beginning. I hope I didn't miss anything subtle. You'll let me know if I have, I'm sure. ;=) It appears the need for temporal dependencies or different levels of reasoning has been conflated with the terms forward-chaining (FWC) and backward-chaining (BWC), which are typically used to describe different rule base evaluation algorithms used by expert systems. The terms “forward-chaining” and “backward-chaining” when used to refer to reasoning strategies have absolutely nothing to do with temporal dependencies or levels of reasoning. These two terms refer simply, and only, to the algorithms used to evaluate “if/then” rules in a rule base (RB). In the FWC algorithm, the “if” part is evaluated and, if TRUE, the “then” part is added to the FWC engine's output. In the BWC algorithm, the “then” part is evaluated and, if TRUE, the “if” part is added to the BWC engine's output. It is rare, but some systems use both FWC and BWC. That's it. Period. No other denotations or connotations apply. Whooaa there. Something not right here. Backward chaining is about starting with a goal statement that you would like to prove, but at the beginning it is just a hypothesis. In BWC you go about proving the statement by trying to find facts that might support it. You would not start from the statement and then add knowledge to your knowledgebase that is consistent with it. Richard, I really don't know where you got the idea my descriptions or algorithm added “...knowledge to your (the “royal” you, I presume) knowledgebase...”. Maybe you misunderstood my use of the term “output.” Another (perhaps better) word for output would be “result” or “action.” I've also heard FWC/BWC engine output referred to as the “blackboard.” By definition, an expert system rule base contains the total sum of the knowledge of a human expert(s) in a particular domain at a given point in time. When you use it, that's what you expect to get. You don't expect the system to modify the rule base at runtime. If everything you need isn't in the rule base, you need to talk to the knowledge engineer. I don't know of any expert system that adds rules to its rule base (i.e., becomes “more expert”) at runtime. I'm not saying necessarily that this couldn't be done, but I've never seen it. I have more to say about your counterexample below, but I don't want this thread to devolve into a critique of 1980's classic AI models. The main purpose I posted to this thread was that I was seeing inaccurate conclusions being drawn based on a lack of understanding of how the terms “backward” and “forward” chaining related to temporal dependencies and hierarchal logic constructs. There is no relation. Using forward chaining has nothing to do with “forward in time” or “down a level in the hierarchy.” Nor does backward chaining have anything to do with “backward in time” or “up a level in the hierarchy.” These terms describe particular search algorithms used in expert system engines (since, at least, the mid-1980s). Definitions vary in emphasis, such as the three someone posted to this thread, but they all refer to the same critters. If one wishes to express temporal dependencies or hierarchical levels of logic in these types of systems, one needs to encode these in the rules. I believe I even gave an example of a rule base containing temporal and hierarchical-conditioned rules. So for example, if your goal is to prove that Socrates is mortal, then your above desciption of BWC would cause the following to occur 1) Does any rule allow us to conclude that x is/is not mortal? 2) Answer: yes, the following rules allow us to do that: If x is a plant, then x is mortal If x is a rock, then x is not mortal If x is a robot, then x is not mortal If x lives in a post-singularity era, then x is not mortal If x is a slug, then x is mortal If x is a japanese beetle, then x is mortal If x is a side of beef, then x is mortal If x is a screwdriver, then x is not mortal If x is a god, then x is not mortal If x is a living creature, then x is mortal If x is a goat, then x is mortal If x is a parrot in a Dead Parrot Sketch, then x is mortal 3) Ask the knowledge base if Socrates is a plant, if Socrates is a rock, etc etc . working through the above list. 3) [According to your version of BWC, if I understand you aright] Okay, if we cannot find any facts in the KB that say that Socrates is known to be one of these things, then add the first of these to the KB: Socrates is a plant [This is the bit that I question: we don't do the opposite of forward chaining at this step]. 4) Now repeat to find all rules that allow us to conclude that x is a plant. For this set of ... then x is a plant rules, go back and repeat the loop from step 2 onwards. Then if this does not work, Well, you can imagine the rest
Re: FW: [agi] WHAT PORTION OF CORTICAL PROCESSES ARE BOUND BY THE BINDING PROBLEM?
I've been following this thread pretty much since the beginning. I hope I didn't miss anything subtle. You'll let me know if I have, I'm sure. ;=) It appears the need for temporal dependencies or different levels of reasoning has been conflated with the terms forward-chaining (FWC) and backward-chaining (BWC), which are typically used to describe different rule base evaluation algorithms used by expert systems. The terms “forward-chaining” and “backward-chaining” when used to refer to reasoning strategies have absolutely nothing to do with temporal dependencies or levels of reasoning. These two terms refer simply, and only, to the algorithms used to evaluate “if/then” rules in a rule base (RB). In the FWC algorithm, the “if” part is evaluated and, if TRUE, the “then” part is added to the FWC engine's output. In the BWC algorithm, the “then” part is evaluated and, if TRUE, the “if” part is added to the BWC engine's output. It is rare, but some systems use both FWC and BWC. That's it. Period. No other denotations or connotations apply. To help remove any mystery that may still surround these concepts, here is an FWC algorithm in pseudo-code (WARNING: I'm glossing over quite a few details here – I'll be happy to answer questions on list or off): 0. set loop index to 0 1. got next rule? no: goto 5 2. is rule FIRED? yes: goto 1 3. is key equal to rule's antecedent? yes: add consequent to output, mark rule as FIRED, output is new key, goto 0 4. goto 1 5. more input data? yes: input data is new key, goto 0 6. done. To turn this into a BWC algorithm, we need only modify Step #3 to read as follows: 3. is key equal to rule's consequent? yes: add antecedent to output, mark rule as FIRED, output is new key, goto 0 If you need to represent temporal dependencies in FWC/BWC systems, you have to express them using rules. For example, if washer-a MUST be placed on bolt-b before nut-c can be screwed on, the rule base might look something like this: 1. if installed(washer-x) then install(nut-z) 2. if installed(bolt-y) then install(washer-x) 3. if notInstalled(bolt-y) then install(bolt-y) In this case, rule #1 won't get fired until rule #2 fires (nut-z can't get installed until washer-x has been installed). Rule #2 won't get fired until rule #3 has fired (washer-x can't get installed until bolt-y has been installed). NUT-Z! (Sorry, couldn't help it.) To kick things off, we pass in “bolt-y” as the initial key. This triggers rule #3, which will trigger rule #2, which will trigger rule #1. These temporal dependencies result in the following assembly sequence: install bolt-y, then install washer-x, and, finally, install nut-z. A similar thing can be done to implement rule hierarchies. 1. if levelIs(0) and installed(washer-x) then install(nut-z) 2. if levelIs(0) and installed(nut-z) goLevel(1) 3. if levelIs(1) and notInstalled(gadget-xx) then install(gadget-xx) 4. if levelIs(0) and installed(bolt-y) then install(washer-x) 5. if levelIs(0) and notInstalled(bolt-y) then install(bolt-y) Here rule #2 won't fire until rule #1 has fired. Rule #1 won't fire unless rule #4 has fired. Rule #4 won't fire until rule #5 has fired. And, finally, Rule #3 won't fire until Rule #2 has fired. So, level 0 could represent the reasoning required before level 1 rules (rule #3 here) will be of any use. (That's not the case here, of course, just stretching my humble example as far as I can.) Note, again, that the temporal and level references in the rules are NOT used by the BWC. They probably will be used by the part of the program that does something with the BWC's output (the install(), goLevel(), etc. functions). And, again, the results should be completely unaffected by the order in which the RB rules are evaluated or fired. I hope this helps. Cheers, Brad Richard Loosemore wrote: Mike Tintner wrote: A tangential comment here. Looking at this and other related threads I can't help thinking: jeez, here are you guys still endlessly arguing about the simplest of syllogisms, seemingly unable to progress beyond them. (Don't you ever have that feeling?) My impression is that the fault lies with logic itself - as soon as you start to apply logic to the real world, even only tangentially with talk of forward and backward or temporal considerations, you fall into a quagmire of ambiguity, and no one is really sure what they are talking about. Even the simplest if p then q logical proposition is actually infinitely ambiguous. No? (Is there a Godel's Theorem of logic?) Well, now you have me in a cleft stick, methinks. I *hate* logic as a way to understand cognition, because I think it is a derivative process within a high-functional AGI system, not a foundation process that sits underneath everything else. But, on the other hand, I do understand how it
Re: [agi] Interesting article about EU's open source AGI robot program
Below is a short list of robot kits available from some on-line resellers. I have no connection to any of the companies or Web sites mentioned nor have I used and of the kits listed here. http://www.electronickits.com/robot/Bioloid.htm $350 USD - Beginner's Kit (4 servos - Dynamixel AX-12x) $895 USD - Comprehensive Kit (19 servos + 1 sensor module) $3,500 USD - Expert's Kit (21 servos + 3 sensors + wireless com + wireless camera set) All models are based on Atmel Atmega128 8-bit RISC architecture MCU with 64KB of RAM and 16K on-board programmable flash memory (plus board space for another 64KB of flash memory) , up to 16MHz clock speed. No soldering required. All software is Windows-based (i.e. you need a Windows-based computer to use their robot programming software). Once uploaded to the robot, the RS-232 cable (if not wireless) is disconnected and the robot moves around on its own. The robot's brain is the Atmega128 of the AVR Series from Atmel. There is apparently an AVR series version of the GNU GCC compiler that Bioloid recommends for use programming the Atmega128 (a RISC chip). The CM-5 (the robot's controller, of which the Atmega128 is a part, sports an RS232 interface. This could be used to add a Gumstix (http://www.gumstix.com/products.html) or other such Linux-based, full-featured computer that would run the cognitive software and use the Atmega128 and it's 64MB of RAM (plus 16MB of flash memory) to talk back and forth with the Atmega128 (which would be used only for low-level control of the servos and sensors). Gumstix are called that because that is their approximate size (a pack of chewing gum). Their basix model motherboard sells for $129USD and a tweener board for $20USD (this board provides the RS232 I/O port). It would be relatively easy to mount the Gumstix + tweener combo to the CM-5 and have it talk to the Atmega128 through the serial port. Some inventive ways to power the Gumstix board would have to be found (e.g., battery power, solar power). The Gumstix CPU is based on an Intel RISC CPU. Instead of the tweener, a board can be purchased with an SD slot (so flash memory could be increased up to 1 GB at least (indeed, SanDisk is currently selling 2 and 3 GB SD cards). http://www.electronickits.com/robot/KHR-1.htm KHR-1 Eco Robot High-Performance Humanoid Robot. 17 servos ($1,200 USD) KHR-2HV Advanced Humanoid Biped Robot. 17 Servos ($959 + wireless controller for $199 more) The KHR-2HV is the newer model. Both are bipedal humanoid. And, if you shop around, you will see that it's quite a good deal (compare with prices on Dr. Robot for the same functionality). It's a kit, but it doesn't require soldering. They have a pretty cool video of the uint doing back flips and cartwheels: http://www.electronickits.com/robot/khr1demo.wmv The manuals are written in Janglish (Japanese English) and can be difficult to read. Lots of pictures though. I only mention this because they make a big deal out of the fact that their manuals and software are in English. It's just really poor English. Kinda like my California Spanglish. ;-) If you don't need a humanoid bot (i.e., any autonomous bot will do)... iRobot sells a non-humanoid development bot based on its Roomba vacuum cleaner robot. No assembly required. Comes with an Atmel-based MCU (apparently, a popular MCU for robotics work) that connects to your PC (for uploading programs) with a serial cable. There's one demo video where the bot goes to a refridgerator (the portable kind, so it naturally sits near the floor), opens the door, and grabs a can of soda/beer (using an extra-cost robot arm extension), and takes the can back to its starting point (the human who sent it). Just one problem: once the robot's got the can in its arm, it can't close the refirdgerator door! And, if you tilt the refridgerator so that the door would close automatically, it would also close on the robot while it was trying to fish the can out of the fridge. Interesting demo, nontheless! And (without the robot arm), the price is very reasonable: $399 USD. Includes the C/C++ compiler for your PC (Windows only again). Cheers, Brad Bob Mottram wrote: 2008/7/11 Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Interesting article about EU's open source AGI robot program at http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208808365 http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208808365 The fact that iCub is open source is to be welcomed. In the past I've been critical of secret source robots which were just re-inventions of the wheel. However I think that open source robotics at the present time is more of an aspiration than a reality. For an open
[agi] More Brain Matter(s)...
All, RESEARCH IDENTIFIES BRAIN CELLS RELATED TO FEAR http://www.physorg.com/news134969685.html 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=106510220-47b225 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] And, now, from the newsroom...
WHY MUSICIANS MAKE US WEEP AND COMPUTERS DON'T http://www.physorg.com/news134795617.html DO WE THINK THAT MACHINES CAN THINK? http://www.physorg.com/news134797615.html 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=106510220-47b225 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] Larrabee - Intel's Response to Nvidia's GPU Platform
Hi Kids! http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/602910/rumour-control-larrabee-based-on-32-original-pentium-cores.html# Cheers, Brad --- 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] need some help with loopy Bayes net
YKY, I'm not certain this applies directly to your issue, but it's an interesting paper nonetheless: http://web.mit.edu/cocosci/Papers/nips00.ps. Cheers, Brad YKY (Yan King Yin) wrote: I'm considering nonmonotonic reasoning using Bayes net, and got stuck. There is an example on p483 of J Pearl's 1988 book PRIIS: Given: birds can fly penguins are birds penguins cannot fly The desiderata is to conclude that penguins are birds, but penguins cannot fly. Pearl translates the KB to: P(f | b) = high P(f | p) = low P(b | p) = high where high and low means arbitrarily close to 1 and 0, respectively. If you draw this on paper you'll see a triangular loop. Then Pearl continues to deduce: Conditioning P(f | p) on both b and ~b, P(f | p) = P(f | p,b) P(b | p) + P(f | p,~b) [1-P(b | p)] P(f | p,b) P(b | p) Thus P(f | p,b) P(f | p) / P(b | p) which is close to 0. Thus Pearl concludes that given penguin and bird, fly is not true. But I found something wrong here. It seems that the Bayes net is loopy and we can conclude that fly given penguin and bird can be either 0 or 1. (The loop is somewhat symmetric). Ben, do you have a similar problem dealing with nonmonotonicity using probabilistic networks? YKY --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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: Savants and user-interfaces [was Re: [agi] WHAT SORT OF HARDWARE $33K AND $850K BUYS TODAY FOR USE IN AGI
I was nearly kicked out of school in seventh grade for coming up with a method of manipulating (multiplying, dividing) large numbers in my head using what I later learned was a shift-reduce method. It was similar to this: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/742717/human_calculator/ My seventh grade math teacher was so upset with me, he almost struck me (physically -- you could get away with that back them). His reason? Wasting valuable math class time. The point is, you can train yourself to do this type of thing and look very savant-like. The above link is just one in a series of videos where the teacher presents this system. It takes practice, but not much more than learning the standard multiplication table. Cheers, Brad Vladimir Nesov wrote: Interesting: is it possible to train yourself to run a specially designed nontrivial inference circuit based on low-base transformations (e.g. binary)? You start by assigning unique symbols to its nodes, train yourself to stably perform associations implementing its junctions, and then assemble it all together by training yourself to generate a problem as a temporal sequence (request), so that it can be handled by the overall circuit, and training to read out the answer and convert it to sequence of e.g. base-10 digits or base-100 words keying pairs of digits (like in mnemonic)? Has anyone heard of this attempted? At least the initial steps look straightforward enough, what kind of obstacles this kind of experiment can run into? On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 7:43 AM, Linas Vepstas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/6/30 Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED]: savant I've always theorized that savants can do what they do because they've been able to get direct access to, and train, a fairly small number of neurons in their brain, to accomplish highly specialized (and thus rather unusual) calculations. I'm thinking specifically of Ramanujan, the Hindi mathematician. He appears to have had access to a multiply-add type circuit in his brain, and could do symbolic long division and multiplication as a result -- I base this on studying some of the things he came up with -- after a while, it seems to be clear how he came up with it (even if the feat is clearly not reproducible). In a sense, similar feats are possible by using a modern computer with a good algebra system. Simon Plouffe seems to be a modern-day example of this: he noodles around with his systems, and finds various interesting relationships that would otherwise be obscure/unknown. He does this without any particularly deep or expansive training in math (whence some of his friction with real academics). If Simon could get a computer-algebra chip implanted in his brain, (i.e. with a very, very user-freindly user-interface) so that he could work the algebra system just by thinking about it, I bet his output would resemble that of Ramanujan a whole lot more than it already does -- as it were, he's hobbled by a crappy user interface. Thus, let me theorize: by studying savants with MRI and what-not, we may find a way of getting a much better man-machine interface. That is, currently, electrodes are always implanted in motor neurons (or visual cortex, etc) i.e. in places of the brain with very low levels of abstraction from the real word. It would be interesting to move up the level of abstraction, and I think that studying how savants access the magic circuits in thier brain will open up a method for high-level interfaces to external computing machinery. --linas --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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
[agi] You Say Po-tay-toe, I Sign Po-toe-tay...
Greetings Fellow Knowledge Workers... WHEN USING GESTURES, RULES OF GRAMMAR REMAIN THE SAME http://www.physorg.com/news134065200.html The link title is a bit misleading. You'll see what I mean when you read it. Enjoy, Brad --- 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] Approximations of Knowledge
Richard, Thanks for your comments. Very interesting. I'm looking forward to reading the introductory book by Waldrop. Thanks again! Cheers, Brad Richard Loosemore wrote: Brad Paulsen wrote: Richard, I think I'll get the older Waldrop book now because I want to learn more about the ideas surrounding complexity (and, in particular, its association with, and differentiation from, chaos theory) as soon as possible. But, I will definitely put an entry in my Google calendar to keep a lookout for the new book in 2009. Thanks very much for the information! Cheers, Brad You're welcome. I hope it is not a disappointment: the subject is a peculiar one, so I believe that it is better to start off with the kind of journalistic overview that Waldrop gives. Let me know what your reaction is. Here is the bottom line. At the core of the complex systems idea there is something very significant and very powerful, but a lot of people have wanted it to lead to a new science just like some of the old science. In other words, they have wanted there to be a new, fabulously powerful 'general theory of complexity' coming down the road. However, no such theory is in sight, and there is one view of complexity (mine, for example) that says that there will probably never be such a theory. If this were one of the traditional sciences, the absence of that kind of progress toward unification would be a sign of trouble - a sign that this was not really a new science after all. Or, even worse, a sign that the original idea was bogus. But I believe that is the wrong interpretation to put on it. The complexity idea is very significant, but it is not a science by itself. Having said all of that, there are many people who so much want there to be a science of complexity (enough of a science that there could be an institute dedicated to it, where people have real jobs working on 'complex systems'), that they are prepared to do a lot of work that makes it look like something is happening. So, you can find many abstract papers about complex dynamical systems, with plenty of mathematics in them. But as far as I can see, most of that stuff is kind of peripheral ... it is something to do to justify a research program. At the end of the day, I think that the *core* complex systems idea will outlast all this other stuff, but it will become famous for its impact on oter sciences, rather than for the specific theories of 'complexity' that it generates. We will see. Richard Loosemore Richard Loosemore wrote: Brad Paulsen wrote: Or, maybe... Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos Roger Lewin, 2000 $10.88 (new, paperback) from Amazon (no used copies) Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos by Roger Lewin (Paperback - Feb 15, 2000) Nope, not that one either! Darn. I think it may have been Simplexity (Kluger), but I am not sure. Interestingly enough, Melanie Mitchell has a book due out in 2009 called The Core Ideas of the Sciences of Complexity. Interesting title, given my thoughts in the last post. Richard Loosemore --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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] Approximations of Knowledge
Richard, I presume this is the Waldrop Complexity book to which you referred: Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos M. Mitchell Waldrop, 1992, $10.20 (new, paperback) from Amazon (used copies also available) http://www.amazon.com/Complexity-Emerging-Science-Order-Chaos/dp/0671872346/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1214641304sr=1-1 Is this the newer book you had in mind? At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity Stuart Kauffman (The Santa Fe Institute), 1995, $18.95 (new, paperback) from Amazon (used copies also available) http://www.amazon.com/At-Home-Universe-Self-Organization-Complexity/dp/0195111303/ref=reg_hu-wl_mrai-recs Cheers, Brad Richard Loosemore wrote: Jim Bromer wrote: From: Richard Loosemore Jim, I'm sorry: I cannot make any sense of what you say here. I don't think you are understanding the technicalities of the argument I am presenting, because your very first sentence... But we can invent a 'mathematics' or a program that can is just completely false. In a complex system it is not possible to used analytic mathematics to predict the global behavior of the system given only the rules that determine the local mechanisms. That is the very definition of a complex system (note: this is a complex system in the technical sense of that term, which does not mean a complicated system in ordinary language). Richard Loosemore Well lets forget about your theory for a second. I think that an advanced AI program is going to have to be able to deal with complexity and that your analysis is certainly interesting and illuminating. But I want to make sure that I understand what you mean here. First of all, your statement, it is not possible to use analytic mathematics to predict the global behavior of the system given only the rules that determine the local mechanisms. By analytic mathematics are you referring to numerical analysis, which the article in Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_analysis describes as the study of algorithms for the problems of continuous mathematics (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). Because if you are saying that the study of continuous mathematics -as distinguished from discrete mathematics- cannot be used to represent discreet system complexity, then that is kind of a non-starter. It's a cop-out by initial definition. I am primarily interested in discreet programming ( I am, of course also interested in continuous systems as well), but in this discussion I was expressing my interest in measures that can be taken to simplify computational complexity. Again, Wikipedia gives a slightly more complex definition of complexity than you do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity I am not saying that your particular definition of complexity is wrong, I only want to make sure that I understand what it is that you are getting at. The part of your sentence that read, ...given only the rules that determine the local mechanisms, sounds like it might well apply to the kind of system that I think would be necessary for a better AI program, but it is not necessarily true of all kinds of demonstrations of complexity (as I understand them). For example, consider a program that demonstrates the emergence of complex behaviors from collections of objects that obey simple rules that govern their interactions. One can use a variety of arbitrary settings for the initial state of the program to examine how different complex behaviors may emerge in different environments. (I am hoping to try something like this when I buy my next computer with a great graphics chip in it.) This means that complexity does not have to be represented only in states that had been previously generated by the system, as can be obviously seen in the fact that initial states are a necessity of such systems. I think I get what you are saying about complexity in AI and the problems of research into AI that could be caused if complexity is the reality of advanced AI programming. But if you are throwing technical arguments at me, some of which are trivial from my perspective like the definition of, continuous mathematics (as distinguished from discrete mathematics), then all I can do is wonder why. Jim, With the greatest of respect, this is a topic that will require some extensive background reading on your part, because the misunderstandings in your above test are too deep for me to remedy in the scope of one or two list postings. For example, my reference to analytic mathematics has nothing at all to do with the wikipedia entry you found, alas. The word has many uses, and the one I am employing is meant to point up a distinction between classical mathematics that allows equations to be solved algebraically, and experimental mathematics that solves systems by simulation. Analytic means by analysis in this context...but this is a very
Re: [agi] Approximations of Knowledge
Or, maybe... Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos Roger Lewin, 2000 $10.88 (new, paperback) from Amazon (no used copies) Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos by Roger Lewin (Paperback - Feb 15, 2000) Brad Richard Loosemore wrote: Jim Bromer wrote: From: Richard Loosemore Jim, I'm sorry: I cannot make any sense of what you say here. I don't think you are understanding the technicalities of the argument I am presenting, because your very first sentence... But we can invent a 'mathematics' or a program that can is just completely false. In a complex system it is not possible to used analytic mathematics to predict the global behavior of the system given only the rules that determine the local mechanisms. That is the very definition of a complex system (note: this is a complex system in the technical sense of that term, which does not mean a complicated system in ordinary language). Richard Loosemore Well lets forget about your theory for a second. I think that an advanced AI program is going to have to be able to deal with complexity and that your analysis is certainly interesting and illuminating. But I want to make sure that I understand what you mean here. First of all, your statement, it is not possible to use analytic mathematics to predict the global behavior of the system given only the rules that determine the local mechanisms. By analytic mathematics are you referring to numerical analysis, which the article in Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_analysis describes as the study of algorithms for the problems of continuous mathematics (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). Because if you are saying that the study of continuous mathematics -as distinguished from discrete mathematics- cannot be used to represent discreet system complexity, then that is kind of a non-starter. It's a cop-out by initial definition. I am primarily interested in discreet programming ( I am, of course also interested in continuous systems as well), but in this discussion I was expressing my interest in measures that can be taken to simplify computational complexity. Again, Wikipedia gives a slightly more complex definition of complexity than you do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity I am not saying that your particular definition of complexity is wrong, I only want to make sure that I understand what it is that you are getting at. The part of your sentence that read, ...given only the rules that determine the local mechanisms, sounds like it might well apply to the kind of system that I think would be necessary for a better AI program, but it is not necessarily true of all kinds of demonstrations of complexity (as I understand them). For example, consider a program that demonstrates the emergence of complex behaviors from collections of objects that obey simple rules that govern their interactions. One can use a variety of arbitrary settings for the initial state of the program to examine how different complex behaviors may emerge in different environments. (I am hoping to try something like this when I buy my next computer with a great graphics chip in it.) This means that complexity does not have to be represented only in states that had been previously generated by the system, as can be obviously seen in the fact that initial states are a necessity of such systems. I think I get what you are saying about complexity in AI and the problems of research into AI that could be caused if complexity is the reality of advanced AI programming. But if you are throwing technical arguments at me, some of which are trivial from my perspective like the definition of, continuous mathematics (as distinguished from discrete mathematics), then all I can do is wonder why. Jim, With the greatest of respect, this is a topic that will require some extensive background reading on your part, because the misunderstandings in your above test are too deep for me to remedy in the scope of one or two list postings. For example, my reference to analytic mathematics has nothing at all to do with the wikipedia entry you found, alas. The word has many uses, and the one I am employing is meant to point up a distinction between classical mathematics that allows equations to be solved algebraically, and experimental mathematics that solves systems by simulation. Analytic means by analysis in this context...but this is a very abstract sense of the word that I am talking about here, and it is very hard to convey. This topic is all about 'complex systems' which is a technical term that does not mean systems that are complicated (in the everyday sense of 'complicated'). To get up to speed on this, I recommend a popular science book called Complexity by Waldrop, although there was also a more recent book whose name I forget, which may be better. You could also read Wolfram's A New Kind of Science, but that is huge and does not come
Re: [agi] Approximations of Knowledge
Richard, I think I'll get the older Waldrop book now because I want to learn more about the ideas surrounding complexity (and, in particular, its association with, and differentiation from, chaos theory) as soon as possible. But, I will definitely put an entry in my Google calendar to keep a lookout for the new book in 2009. Thanks very much for the information! Cheers, Brad Richard Loosemore wrote: Brad Paulsen wrote: Or, maybe... Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos Roger Lewin, 2000 $10.88 (new, paperback) from Amazon (no used copies) Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos by Roger Lewin (Paperback - Feb 15, 2000) Nope, not that one either! Darn. I think it may have been Simplexity (Kluger), but I am not sure. Interestingly enough, Melanie Mitchell has a book due out in 2009 called The Core Ideas of the Sciences of Complexity. Interesting title, given my thoughts in the last post. Richard Loosemore --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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] WHAT SORT OF HARDWARE $33K AND $850K BUYS TODAY FOR USE IN AGI
Richard and Ed, Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein Prelude to insanity: unintentionally doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same results. - Me Cheers, Brad Richard Loosemore wrote: Ed Porter wrote: I do not claim the software architecture for AGI has been totally solved. But I believe that enough good AGI approaches exist (and I think Novamente is one) that when powerful hardware available to more people we will be able to relatively quickly get systems up and running that demonstrate the parts of the problems we have solved. And that will provide valuable insights and test beds for solving the parts of the problem that we have not yet solved. You are not getting my point. What you just said was EXACTLY what was said in 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973 ..2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 .. And every time it was said, the same justification for the claim was given: I just have this belief that it will work. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme fubar. With regard to your statement the problem is understanding HOW TO DO IT --- WE DO UNDERSTAND HOW TO DO IT --- NOT ALL OF IT --- AND NOT HOW TO MAKE IT ALL WORK TOGETHER WELL AUTOMATICALLY --- BUT --- GIVEN THE TYPE OF HARDWARE EXPECTED TO COST LESS THAN $3M IN 6 YEARS --- WE KNOW HOW TO BUILD MUCH OF IT --- ENOUGH THAT WE COULD PROVIDE EXTREMELY VALUABLE COMPUTERS WITH OUR CURRENT UNDERSTANDINGS. You do *not* understand how to do it. But I have to say that statements like your paragraph above are actually very good for my health, because their humor content is right up there in the top ten, along with Eddie Izzard's Death Star Canteen sketch and Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. So long as the general response to the complex systems problem is not This could be a serious issue, let's put our heads together to investigate it, but My gut feeling is that this is just not going to be a problem, or Quit rocking the boat!, you can bet that nobody really wants to ask any questions about whether the approaches are correct, they just want to be left alone to get on with their approaches. History, I think, will have some interesting things to say about all this. Good luck anyway. Richard Loosemore --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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
[agi] As we inch closer to The Singularity...
Hey Gang... RESEARCHERS DEVELOP NEURAL IMPLANT THAT LEARNS WITH THE BRAIN http://www.physorg.com/news133535377.html I wonder what *that* software looks like! Cheers, Brad --- 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
[agi] Have you hugged a cephalopod today?
From The More stuff we already know department... NEW RESEARCH ON OCTOPUSES SHEDS LIGHT ON MEMORY http://www.physorg.com/news132920831.html Cheers, Brad --- 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
[agi] Learning without Understanding?
Hear Ye, Hear Ye... CHILDREN LEARN SMART BEHAVIORS WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT THEY KNOW http://www.physorg.com/news132839991.html Cheers, Brad And, remember: think twice, code once! --- 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
[agi] RoboSex?
Fellow AGIers, Every once in a while this list could use a bit of intentional humor. Unfortunately, I think these guys are serious: IN 2050, YOUR LOVER MAY BE A ... ROBOT http://www.physorg.com/news132727834.html Pacis progredior, Brad --- 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] IBM, Los Alamos scientists claim fastest computer
If anyone is interested, I have some additional information on the C870 NVIDIA Tesla card. I'll be happy to send it to you off-list. Just contact me directly. Cheers, Brad --- 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
[agi] How the brain separates audio signals from noise
Hi Kids! Article summary: http://www.physorg.com/news132290651.html Article text: http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-documentdoi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060138ct=1 Enjoy! --- 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
[agi] Forget talk to the animals. Talk directly to their cells.
All, Not specifically AGI-related, but too interesting not to pass along, so: SWEET NOTHINGS: ARTIFICIAL VESICLES AND BACTERIAL CELLS COMMUNICATE BY WAY OF SUGAR COMPONENTS http://www.physorg.com/news131883741.html Cheers, Brad --- 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: Are rocks conscious? (was RE: [agi] Did this message get completely lost?)
J Storrs Hall, PhD wrote: Actually, the nuclear spins in the rock encode a single state of an ongoing computation (which is conscious). Successive states occur in the rock's counterparts in adjacent branes of the metauniverse, so that the rock is conscious not of unfolding time, as we see it, but of a journey across probability space. What is the rock thinking? T h i s i s w a a a y o f f t o p i c . . . Josh I just love it when you talk string theory. Somehow, though, I didn't picture you as a 0.0005 probability sort of guy. :-) Cheers, Brad P.S. You're right about this thread wandering way off topic, though. We should probably get back to the serious business of comparing PLN to FOL. On Tuesday 03 June 2008 05:05:05 pm, Matt Mahoney wrote: --- On Tue, 6/3/08, John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually on further thought about this conscious rock, I want to take that particular rock and put it through some further tests to absolutely verify with a high degree of confidence that there may not be some trace amount of consciousness lurking inside. So the tests that I would conduct are - Verify the rock is in a solid state at close to absolute zero but not at absolute zero. The rock is not in the presence of a high frequency electromagnetic field. The rock is not in the presence of high frequency physical vibrational interactions. The rock is not in the presence of sonic vibrations. The rock is not in the presence of subatomic particle bombardment, radiation, or being hit by a microscopic black hole. The rock is not made of nano-robotic material. The rock is not an advanced, non-human derived, computer. The rock contains minimal metal content. The rock does not contain holograms. The rock does not contain electrostatic echoes. The rock is a solid, spherical structure, with no worm holes :) The rock... You see what I'm getting at. In order to be 100% sure. Any failed tests of the above would require further scientific analysis and investigation to achieve proper non-conscious certification. You forgot a test. The postions of the atoms in the rock encode 10^25 bits of information representing the mental states of 10^10 human brains at 10^15 bits each. The data is encrypted with a 1000 bit key, so it appears statistically random. How would you prove otherwise? -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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] Did this message get completely lost?
John G. Rose wrote: From: Brad Paulsen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Not exactly (to start with, you can *never* be 100% sure, try though you might :-) ). Take all of the investigations into rockness since the dawn of homo sapiens and we still only have a 0.9995 probability that rocks are not conscious. Everything is belief. Even hard science. That was the nub of Hume's intellectual contribution. It doesn't mean we can't be sure enough. It just means that we can never be 100% sure of *anything*. We can be 100% sure that we can never be 100% sure of *anything*. Including that statement! I believe (with 0.51 probability) my point has been made. :-) Of course, there's belief and then there's BELIEF. To me (and to Hume), it's not a difference in kind. It's just that the leap from observational evidence to empirical (natural) belief is a helluvalot shorter than is the leap from observational evidence to supernatural belief. I agree that it is for us in the modern day technological society. But it may not have been always the case. We have been grounded by reason. Before reason it may have been largely supernatural. That's why sometimes I think AGI's could start off with little knowledge and lots of supernatural, just to make it easier for it to attach properties to the void. It starts off knowing there is some god bringing it into existence but eventually it figures out that the god is just some geek software engineer and then it becomes atheist real quick heheh I don't entirely disagree with you. I don't entirely agree either. But, like the is a rock conscious thread, if we want to continue this one we should either take it off-list or move it to the Singularity Outreach list. Don't ya think? :-\ John --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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: Are rocks conscious? (was RE: [agi] Did this message get completely lost?)
But, without us droids, how would you verify/validate your consciousness? And, think about what you'd be taking over. As Sting says, What good's a world that's all used up? Rhetorical questions, both. When I start quoting Sting lyrics, I *know* it's time for me to get off a thread. Ta! Cheers, Brad John G. Rose wrote: From: J Storrs Hall, PhD [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Actually, the nuclear spins in the rock encode a single state of an ongoing computation (which is conscious). Successive states occur in the rock's counterparts in adjacent branes of the metauniverse, so that the rock is conscious not of unfolding time, as we see it, but of a journey across probability space. What is the rock thinking? T h i s i s w a a a y o f f t o p i c . . . I never would have thought of that. To come up with something as good I would have to explore consciousness and anti-consciousness, potential-consciousness, stuff like that. But kicking around these ideas really shouldn't hurt. You could build AGI and make the darn thing appear conscious. But what fun is that if you know it's fake? Or are we all fake? Are we all just automatons or is it like - I'm the only one conscious and all the rest of you are all simulations in MY world space, p-zombies, bots, you'll all fake so if I want to take over the world and expunge all you droids, there are no religious repercussions, as long as I could pull it off without being terminated. John --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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] Did this message get completely lost?
John G. Rose wrote: You see what I'm getting at. In order to be 100% sure. Any failed tests of the above would require further scientific analysis and investigation to achieve proper non-conscious certification. Not exactly (to start with, you can *never* be 100% sure, try though you might :-) ). Take all of the investigations into rockness since the dawn of homo sapiens and we still only have a 0.9995 probability that rocks are not conscious. Everything is belief. Even hard science. That was the nub of Hume's intellectual contribution. It doesn't mean we can't be sure enough. It just means that we can never be 100% sure of *anything*. Of course, there's belief and then there's BELIEF. To me (and to Hume), it's not a difference in kind. It's just that the leap from observational evidence to empirical (natural) belief is a helluvalot shorter than is the leap from observational evidence to supernatural belief. Cheers, Brad Today's words-to-live-by: Everything in moderation. Including moderation. ;-) P.S. Hmmm. The Thunderbird e-mail client spell checker recognizes the word homo but not the word sapiens. It gets better. Here's WordWeb's definition of sapiens: Of or relating to or characteristic of Homo sapiens. Oh. Now I get it! NOT. Sigh... Isn't there some sort of dictionary-writing rule that says you're not allowed to use the word you're defining in the definition of that word? I smell a project! Let's build a dictionary that contains nothing but circular definitions. For example: definition - Of or relating to or characteristic of defining something. From: Brad Paulsen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] John wrote: A rock is either conscious or not conscious. Excluding the middle, are we? Conscious, not conscious or null? I don't want to put words into Ben company's mouths, but I think what they are trying to do with PLN is to implement a system that expressly *includes the middle*. In theory (but not necessarily in practice) the clue to creating the first intelligent machine may be to *exclude the ends*! Scottish philosopher and economist David Hume argued way back in the 18th century that all knowledge is based on past observation. Because of this, we can never be 100% certain of *anything*. While Hume didn't put it in such terms, as I understand his thinking, it comes down to *everything* is a probability or all knowledge is fuzzy knowledge. There is no such thing as 0. There is no such thing as 1. For example, let's say you are sitting at a table holding a pencil in your hand. In the past, every time you let go of the pencil in this situation (or a similar situation), it dropped to the table. The cause and effect for this behavior is so well documented that we call the underlying principal the *law* of gravity. But, even so, can you say with probability 1.0 that the *next* time you let go of that pencil in a similar situation that it will, in fact, drop to the table? Hume said you can't. As those ads for stock brokerage firms on TV always say in their disclaimers, Past performance is no guarantee of future performance. Of course, we are constantly predicting the future based on our knowledge of past events (or others' knowledge of past events which we have learned and believe to be correct). I will, for instance, give you very favorable odds if you are willing to bet against the pencil hitting the table when dropped. Unless you enjoy living life on the edge, your predictions won't stray very far from past experiences (or learned knowledge about past experiences). But, in the end, it's all probability and fuzziness. It is all belief, baby. Yes Hume and Kant actually were making contributions to AGI but didn't' know it. Although I suppose at the time there imaginations where rich and varied enough to where those possibilities were not totally unthinkable. Regarding the issue of consciousness and the rock, there are several possible scenarios to consider here. First, the rock may be conscious but only in a way that can be understood by other rocks. The rock may be conscious but it is unable to communicate with humans (and vice versa) so we assume it's not conscious. The rock is truly conscious and it thinks we're not conscious so it pretends to be just like it thinks we are and, as a result, we're tricked into thinking it's not conscious. Finally, if a rock falls in the forest, does it make a sound? Consciousness may require at least two actors. Think about it. What good would consciousness do you if there was no one else around to appreciate it? Would you, in that case, in fact be conscious? Most humans will treat a rock as if it were not conscious because, in the past, that assumption has proven to be efficacious for predictions involving rocks. I know of no instance where someone was able to talk a rock
Re: [agi] Ideological Interactions Need to be Studied
Richard Loosemore wrote: Anyone at the time who knew that Isaac Newton was trying to do could have dismissed his efforts and said Idiot! Planetary motion is simple. Ptolemy explained it in a simple way. I use simplicity-preferring prior, so epicycles are good enough for me. Which is why the admonition You don't want to reinvent the wheel! is such bad advice. Reinventing the wheel is prerequisite to technological progress. If somebody hadn't reinvented the wheel, we'd be buying front and rear logs for our cars instead of front and rear tires. Cheers, Brad Richard Loosemore wrote: Vladimir Nesov wrote: On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 6:27 AM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But, why SHOULD there be a *simple* model that produces the same capabilities? What if the brain truly is a conglomeration of many complex interacting pieces? Because unless I know otherwise, I use simplicity-preferring prior. Biological complexity is hardly evidence that the refined computational model is also complex. It is very easy, as J. Rogers noted, to scramble a simple object so that you won't ever guess that it's simple based just on how it looks on the surface. This misses the point I think. It all has to do with the mistake of *imposing* simplicity on something by making a black-box model of it. For example, the Ptolemy model of planetary motion imposed a 'simple' model of the solar system in which everything could be explained by a set of nested epicycles. There would have been no need to use any other model because in principle those epicycles could have been augmented to infinite depth, to yield as good a fit to the data as you wanted. That is a black-box model of the solar system because it stuffs all the real complexity inside a black box and then models the black box with a simplistic formalism. If all you care about is getting a precise model of planetary movement across the sky, this would be (and was!) the simplest model anyone could ask for. But it was wrong. It was wrong because it obscured the real situation. The real situation could not be understood without inventing a whole new type of mathematics (calculus) and discovering a new law of nature (universal gravitation). By any measure, that combination of calculus and gravitation was a more complicated explanation. Anyone at the time who knew that Isaac Newton was trying to do could have dismissed his efforts and said Idiot! Planetary motion is simple. Ptolemy explained it in a simple way. I use simplicity-preferring prior, so epicycles are good enough for me. And if that same person insisted that there SHOULD be a simple model of planetary motion (where simple meant 'as simple as epicycles) would have been insisting that an explanation as complicated as calculus and gravitation was in some sense bad or unparsimonious. In the long run, of course, gravity plus calculus was perceived as being 'simple' and elegant in the extreme. But that is not the point, because before it was discovered it could have been criticised as being far, far more complicated than the epicycle explanation. What Rogers was suggesting was that a 'simple' black-box explanation was already a good explanation for neurons. Quite apart from the fact that such a model has not even been created yet (!), even if it did exist, it would amount to nothing more than an epicycle explanation. Richard Loosemore --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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] Did this message get completely lost?
John wrote: A rock is either conscious or not conscious. Excluding the middle, are we? I don't want to put words into Ben company's mouths, but I think what they are trying to do with PLN is to implement a system that expressly *includes the middle*. In theory (but not necessarily in practice) the clue to creating the first intelligent machine may be to *exclude the ends*! Scottish philosopher and economist David Hume argued way back in the 18th century that all knowledge is based on past observation. Because of this, we can never be 100% certain of *anything*. While Hume didn't put it in such terms, as I understand his thinking, it comes down to *everything* is a probability or all knowledge is fuzzy knowledge. There is no such thing as 0. There is no such thing as 1. For example, let's say you are sitting at a table holding a pencil in your hand. In the past, every time you let go of the pencil in this situation (or a similar situation), it dropped to the table. The cause and effect for this behavior is so well documented that we call the underlying principal the *law* of gravity. But, even so, can you say with probability 1.0 that the *next* time you let go of that pencil in a similar situation that it will, in fact, drop to the table? Hume said you can't. As those ads for stock brokerage firms on TV always say in their disclaimers, Past performance is no guarantee of future performance. Of course, we are constantly predicting the future based on our knowledge of past events (or others' knowledge of past events which we have learned and believe to be correct). I will, for instance, give you very favorable odds if you are willing to bet against the pencil hitting the table when dropped. Unless you enjoy living life on the edge, your predictions won't stray very far from past experiences (or learned knowledge about past experiences). But, in the end, it's all probability and fuzziness. It is all belief, baby. Regarding the issue of consciousness and the rock, there are several possible scenarios to consider here. First, the rock may be conscious but only in a way that can be understood by other rocks. The rock may be conscious but it is unable to communicate with humans (and vice versa) so we assume it's not conscious. The rock is truly conscious and it thinks we're not conscious so it pretends to be just like it thinks we are and, as a result, we're tricked into thinking it's not conscious. Finally, if a rock falls in the forest, does it make a sound? Consciousness may require at least two actors. Think about it. What good would consciousness do you if there was no one else around to appreciate it? Would you, in that case, in fact be conscious? Most humans will treat a rock as if it were not conscious because, in the past, that assumption has proven to be efficacious for predictions involving rocks. I know of no instance where someone was able to talk a rock that was in the process of falling on him or her to change direction by appealing to the rock, one conscious entity to another. And maybe they should have. There is, after all, based on past experience, only a 0.9995 probability that a rock is not conscious. Cheers, Brad John G. Rose wrote: From: j.k. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On 06/01/2008 09:29 PM,, John G. Rose wrote: From: j.k. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On 06/01/2008 03:42 PM, John G. Rose wrote: A rock is conscious. Okay, I'll bite. How are rocks conscious under Josh's definition or any other non-LSD-tripping-or-batshit-crazy definition? The way you phrase your question indicates your knuckle-dragging predisposition making it difficult to responsibly expend an effort in attempt to satisfy your - piqued inquisitive biting action. Yes, my tone was overly harsh, and I apologize for that. It was more indicative of my frustration with the common practice on this list of spouting nonsense like rocks are conscious *without explaining what is meant* by such an ostensibly ludicrous statement or *giving any kind of a justification whatsoever*. This sort of intellectual sloppiness seriously lowers the quality of the list and makes it difficult to find the occasionally really insightful content. A rock is either conscious or not conscious. Is it less intellectually sloppy to declare it not conscious? John --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription:
[agi] More brain scanning and language
Hey kids: A COMPUTER THAT CAN 'READ' YOUR MIND http://www.physorg.com/news131623779.html Cheers, Brad --- 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
[agi] U.S. Plan for 'Thinking Machines' Repository
Fellow AGI-ers, At the risk of being labeled the list's newsboy... U.S. Plan for 'Thinking Machines' Repository Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 28, @07:19PM from the save-those-ideas-for-later dept. An anonymous reader writes Information scientists organized by the U.S.'s NIST say they will create a concept bank that programmers can use to build thinking machines that reason about complex problems at the frontiers of knowledge - from advanced manufacturing to biomedicine. The agreement by ontologists - experts in word meanings and in using appropriate words to build actionable machine commands - outlines the critical functions of the Open Ontology Repository (OOR). More on the summit that produced the agreement here. Cheers, Brad --- 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
[agi] Phoenix has Landed
Hi Gang! The first Phoenix Lander pix from Mars: http://fawkes4.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=315cID=7 Cheers, Brad --- 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
[agi] More Phoenix Info...
Hi again... As I write this I'm watching the post-landing NASA press conference live on NASA TV (http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html). One of the NASA people was talking about what a difficult navigation problem they'd successfully overcome. His analogy was, It was like golfing from a tee in Boston, Mass, aiming at a cup in Australia and hitting a hole-in-one. Everybody applauded (and so they should have). But, then, the next guy to speak interjected, Yeah. And the cup was moving! They had only a 20 meter window of landing space to make their desired landing spot (after a 600+ million kilometer trip from earth). It looks, by the initial data, that they nailed it. This program begin in 1998. Ten years! Imagine how the technology they were working with changed (improved) in those ten years. The success of the Phoenix Lander now brings NASA's Mars mission success rate up to 50%. They are very different problems, of course, but one is prompted on the heals of a great intellectual success like this to renew one's belief that humanity will, one day, build the AGI we can only dream about and (most of the time battling great frustration) work toward today. Cheers, Brad --- 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] Porting MindForth AI into JavaScript Mind.html
John, Yeah. And look how well that worked. It didn't. Most people who post drivel to lists like this honestly don't think they're posting drivel. Their ignorance runs very, very deep (in many cases to the point of clinical self-delusion). It is as deep as their conviction that they are smarter than everybody else; a conviction they will evince in every post they make (if only by declaring how everyone else has missed the point or is barking up the wrong tree). And, in most cases, if you take them on directly (i.e., rise to their bait), they will bury you in mounds and mounds of more, and better-targeted, drivel. You will spend the rest of your productive life trying to dig yourself out from under their prolific, but vacant, verbiage giving them even more opportunities to spew their nonsense. They'll throw straw man after straw man at you. When you finally just give up in frustration, they will use that as further evidence (to themselves and, if they can spin it just right, to others) of their own correctness. These people are, typically, pretty handy with the English language and love to talk about themselves and their unique creations. In general terms, of course. Their ideas are so world-shattering that they must keep the details close to their vest, you see. I suspect most of these folks also have high IQ's. They're just intellectually lazy. They really don't see why they should have to study what others before them (or even their contemporaries) have struggled to elucidate. After all, that's the intellectual equivalent of manual labor. They're too smart for that. They'd rather construct their own world from whole cloth and, then, spend their intellectually-work-free days trying to shove it down everyone else's throats. While these people may, occasionally, have something interesting to say, it won't be because they have any interesting ideas. It will be because they produce a huge volume of words. Random chance says that, somewhere in there, they are bound to produce an utterance meaningful to others at some point. To them, of course, all of their own utterances are supremely meaningful. I brought this problem up about a month ago and received some gentle criticism about throwing the baby out with the bathwater and how history demonstrates that most true paradigm-shift creators were considered crackpots in their own time. The difference is that those creators had empirical evidence, or solid reasoning, to back up their ideas and they were eager to have others independently verify their discoveries. Trolls don't have any evidence (that they'll let you independently examine) nor does their reasoning hold up under even the slightest external scrutiny. I have never advocated kicking anyone off an e-mail list (or from anywhere else) unless their postings are totally off-topic (i.e., spam, hate, porn). I'm one with Thomas Jefferson who said, I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. Although, in practice, history shows even he had his limits. My suggestion: adjust your e-mail client's troll filters. Adjust both the from and content filters. You'll still have to manually weed out the occasional reply to their drivel that slips through, but this should relieve you from having to get your blood pressure up over everything the trolls write. Works for me! Cheers, Brad - Original Message - From: John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Saturday, May 17, 2008 3:37 PM Subject: RE: [agi] Porting MindForth AI into JavaScript Mind.html It's hard to refute something vague or irrelevant, with 10 volumes of Astrology background behind it, and it's not necessary, as nonsense is usually self-evident. What's needed is merciless moderation... I think it's overdue for someone to get a good Waseration. --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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
[agi] WikiMining with Java
Some of you may be interesting in this WikiMining Java API: http://www.ukp.tu-darmstadt.de/software/JWPL. JWPL is the acronym for Java WikiPedia Library. The license isn't open source. But, it is available at no charge for non-commercial use in research. It's from an academic project in Germany. From the download page: Lately, Wikipedia has been recognized as a promising lexical semantic resource. If Wikipedia is to be used for large-scale NLP tasks, efficient programmatic access to the knowledge therein is required. JWPL (Java Wikipedia Library) is a free, Java-based application programming interface that allows to access all information contained in Wikipedia. The high-performance Wikipedia API provides structured access to information nuggets like redirects, categories, articles and link structure. It is described in our LREC 2008 (http://elara.tk.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/publications/2008/lrec08_camera_ready.pdf paper. JWPL now contains a Mediawiki Markup parser that can be used to further analyze the contents of a Wikipedia page. The parser can also be used stand-alone with other texts using MediaWiki markup. Cheers, Brad --- 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
[agi] Re: Accidental Genius
Ryan, Thanks for the clarifications and the links! Cheers, Brad - Original Message - From: Bryan Bishop [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 9:46 PM Subject: Re: Accidental Genius On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 9:21 PM, Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I happened to catch a program on National Geographic Channel today entitled Accidental Genius. It was quite interesting from an AGI standpoint. One of the researchers profiled has invented a device that, by sending electromagnetic pulses through a person's skull to the appropriate spot in the left hemisphere of that person's brain, can achieve behavior similar to that of an idiot savant in a non-brain-damaged person (in the session shown, this was a volunteer college student). That's Snyder's work.* http://www.wireheading.com/brainstim/savant.html http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/rTMS Re: savantism, http://heybryan.org/intense_world_syndrome.html DIY rTMS: http://transcenmentalism.org/OpenStim/tiki (there's a mailing list) http://heybryan.org/mailing_lists.html Before being zapped by the device, the student is taken through a series of exercises. One is to draw a horse from memory. The other is to read aloud a very familiar saying with a slight grammatical mistake in it (the word the is duplicated, i.e., the the, in the saying -- sorry I can't recall the saying used). Then the student is shown a computer screen full of dots for about 1 second and asked to record his best guess at how many dots there were. This exercise is repeated several times (with different numbers of dots each time). It's not just being zapped, it's being specifically stimulated in a certain region of the brain; think of it like actually targetting the visual cortex, or actually targetting the anterior cingulate, the left ventrolateral amygdala, etc. And that's why this is interesting. I wrote somewhat about this on my site once: http://heybryan.org/recursion.html Specifically, if this can be used to modify attention, then can we use it to modify attention re: paying attention to attention? Sounds like a direct path to the singularity to me. The student is then zapped by the electromagnetic pulse device for 15 minutes. It's kind of scary to watch the guy's face flinch uncontrollably as each pulse is delivered. But, while he reported feeling something, he claimed there was no pain or disorientation. His language facilities were unimpaired (they zap a very particular spot in the left hemisphere based on brain scans taken of idiot savants). Right. The DIY setups that I have heard of haven't been able to be all that high-powered due to safety concerns -- not safety re: the brain, but safety when considering working with superhigh voltages so close to one's head. ;-) You can watch the episode on-line here: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/tv-schedule. It's not scheduled for repeat showing anytime soon. Awesome. Thanks for the link. That's not a direct link (I couldn't find one). When you get to that Web page, navigate to Wed, May 7 at 3PM and click the More button under the picture. Unfortunately, the full-motion video is the size of a large postage stamp. The full screen view uses stop motion (at least i did on my laptop using a DSL-based WiFi hotspot). The audio is the same in both versions. - Bryan * Damien Broderick had to correct me on this, once. :-) --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups OpenCog.org (Open Cognition Project) group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/opencog?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~--- --- 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
[agi] Accidental Genius
I happened to catch a program on National Geographic Channel today entitled Accidental Genius. It was quite interesting from an AGI standpoint. One of the researchers profiled has invented a device that, by sending electromagnetic pulses through a person's skull to the appropriate spot in the left hemisphere of that person's brain, can achieve behavior similar to that of an idiot savant in a non-brain-damaged person (in the session shown, this was a volunteer college student). Before being zapped by the device, the student is taken through a series of exercises. One is to draw a horse from memory. The other is to read aloud a very familiar saying with a slight grammatical mistake in it (the word the is duplicated, i.e., the the, in the saying -- sorry I can't recall the saying used). Then the student is shown a computer screen full of dots for about 1 second and asked to record his best guess at how many dots there were. This exercise is repeated several times (with different numbers of dots each time). The student is then zapped by the electromagnetic pulse device for 15 minutes. It's kind of scary to watch the guy's face flinch uncontrollably as each pulse is delivered. But, while he reported feeling something, he claimed there was no pain or disorientation. His language facilities were unimpaired (they zap a very particular spot in the left hemisphere based on brain scans taken of idiot savants). After being zapped, the exercises are repeated. The results were impressive. The horse drawn after the zapping contained much more detail and was much better rendered than the horse drawn before the zapping. Before the zapping, the subject read the familiar saying correctly (despite the duplicate the). After zapping, the duplicate the stopped him dead in his tracks. He definitely noticed it. The dots were really impressive though. Before being zapped, he got the count right in only two cases. After being zapped, he got it right in four cases. The effects of the electromagnetic zapping on the left hemisphere fade within a few hours. Don't know about you, but I'd want that in writing. You can watch the episode on-line here: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/tv-schedule. It's not scheduled for repeat showing anytime soon. That's not a direct link (I couldn't find one). When you get to that Web page, navigate to Wed, May 7 at 3PM and click the More button under the picture. Unfortunately, the full-motion video is the size of a large postage stamp. The full screen view uses stop motion (at least i did on my laptop using a DSL-based WiFi hotspot). The audio is the same in both versions. Cheers, Brad --- 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
[agi] Panda: a pattern-based programming system
Readers of these lists might enjoy the refereed paper Overview of the Panda Programming System (http://www.jot.fm:80/issues/issue_2008_05/article1/) described in the following abstract: This article provides an overview of a pattern-based programming system, named Panda, for automatic generation of high-level programming language code. Many code generation systems have been developed [2, 3, 4, 5, 6] that are able to generate source code by means of templates, which are defined by means of transformation languages such as XSL, ASP, etc. But these templates cannot be easily combined because they map parameters and code snippets provided by the programmer directly to the target programming language. On the contrary, the patterns used in a Panda program generate a code model that can be used as input to other patterns, thereby providing an unlimited capability of composition. Since such a composition may be split across different files or code units, a high degree of separation of concerns [15] can be achieved. A pattern itself can be created by using other patterns, thus making it easy to develop new patterns. It is also possible to implement an entire programming paradigm, methodology or framework by means of a pattern library: design patterns [8], Design by Contract [12], Aspect-Oriented Programming [1, 11], multi-dimensional separation of concerns [13, 18], data access layer, user interface framework, class templates, etc. This way, developing a new programming paradigm does not require to extend an existing programming system (compiler, runtime support, etc.), thereby focusing on the paradigm concepts. The Panda programming system introduces a higher abstraction level with respect to traditional programming languages: the basic elements of a program are no longer classes and methods but, for instance, design patterns and crosscutting concerns [1, 11]. Cheers, Brad --- 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] Comments from a lurker...
Steve Josh, You guys ought to get a kick out of this: http://www.physorg.com:80/news127452360.html. We don't need no stinking gigahertz circuits when we can have terahertz guided-wave circuits. That's 1000 times faster than gigahertz (but, of course, you know that). Based on the terahertz radiation portion of the infrared spectrum. Some guys in Utah made it work (I.e., were able to split and exchange signals at terahertz speeds). It's an interesting read. They figure about 10 years to commercial deployment. That might just be in time to save Moore's ass once again. ;-) Enjoy! Cheers, Brad - Original Message - From: Steve Richfield To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 3:28 PM Subject: Re: [agi] Comments from a lurker... Josh, On 4/15/08, J Storrs Hall, PhD [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Monday 14 April 2008 04:56:18 am, Steve Richfield wrote: ... My present efforts are now directed toward a new computer architecture that may be more of interest to AGI types here than Dr. Eliza. This new architecture should be able to build new PC internals for about the same cost, using the same fabrication facilities, yet the processors will run ~10,000 times faster running single-thread code. This (massively-parallel SIMD) is perhaps a little harder than you seem to think. I did my PhD thesis on it and led a multi-million-dollar 10-year ARPA-funded project to develop just such an architecture. I didn't see any attachments. Perhaps you could send me some more information about this? Whenever I present this stuff, I always emphasize that there is NOTHING new here, just an assortment of things that are decades old. Hopefully you have some good ideas in there, or maybe even some old ideas that I can attribute new thinking to. The first mistake everybody makes is to forget that the bottleneck for existing processors isn't computing power at all, it's memory bandwidth. All the cruft on a modern processor chip besides the processor is there to ameliorate that problem, not because they aren't smart enough to put more processors on. Got this covered. Each of the ~10K ALUs has ~8 memory banks to work with, for a total of ~80K banks, so there should be no latencies except for inter-ALU communication. Have I missed something here? The second mistake is to forget that processor and memory silicon fab use different processes, the former optimized for fast transistors, the latter for dense trench capacitors. You won't get both at once -- you'll give up at least a factor of ten trying to combine them over the radically specialized forms. Got that covered. Once multipliers and shift matrices are eliminated and only a few adders, pipeline registers, and a little random logic remain, then the entire thing can be fabricated with MEMORY fab technology! Note that memories have been getting smarter (and even associative), e.g. cache memories, and when you look at their addressing, row selection, etc., there is nothing more complex than I am proposing for my ALUs. While the control processor might at first appear to violate this, note that it needs no computational speed, so its floating point and other complex instructions can be emulated on slow memory-compatible logic. The third mistake is to forget that nobody knows how to program SIMD. This is a long and complicated subject. I spent a year at CDC digging some of the last of the nasty bugs out of their Cyber-205 FORTRAN compiler's optimizer and vectorizer, whose job it was to sweep these issues under the rug. There are some interesting alternatives, like describing complex code skeletons and how to vectorize them. When someone writes a loop whose structure is new to the compiler, someone else would have to explain to the computer how to vectorize it. Sounds kludgy, but co0nsidering the man-lifetimes that it takes to write a good vectorizing compiler, this actually works out to much less total effort. I absolutely agree that programmers will quickly fall into two groups - those who get it and make the transition to writing vectorizable code fairly easily, and those who go into some other line of work. They can't even get programmers to adopt functional programming, for god's sake; the only thing the average programmer can think in is BASIC, I can make a pretty good argument for BASIC, as its simplicity makes it almost ideal to write efficient compilers for. Add to that the now-missing MAT statements for simple array manipulations, and you have a pretty serious competitor for all other approaches. or C which is essentially machine-independent assembly. C is only SISD machine independent. When you move to more complex architectures, its paradigm breaks down. Not even LISP. APL, which is the closest approach to a SIMD language, died a decade or so back.
[agi] Posting Strategies - A Gentle Reminder
Dear Fellow AGI List Members: Just thought I'd remind the good members of this list about some strategies for dealing with certain types of postings. Unfortunately, the field of AI/AGI is one of those areas where anybody with a pulse and a brain thinks they can design a program that thinks. Must be easy, right? I mean, I can do it so how hard can it be to put me in a can? Well, that's what some very smart people in the 1940's, '50's and into the 1960's thought. They were wrong. Most of them now admit it. So, on AI-related lists, we have to be very careful about the kinds of conversations on which we spend our valuable time. Here are some guidelines. I realize most people here know this stuff already. This is just a gentle reminder. If a posting makes grandiose claims, is dismissive of mainstream research, techniques, and institutions or the author claims to have special knowledge that has apparently been missed (or dismissed) by all of the brilliant scientific/technical minds who go to their jobs at major corporations and universities every day (and are paid for doing so), and also by every Nobel Laureate for the last 20 years, this posting should be ignored. DO NOT RESPOND to these types of postings: positively or negatively. The poster is, obviously, either irrational or one of the greatest minds of our time. In the former case, you know they're full of it, I know they're full of it, but they will NEVER admit that. You will never win an argument with an irrational individual. In the latter case, stop and ask yourself: Why is somebody that fantastically smart posting to this mailing list? He or she is, obviously, smarter than everyone here. Why does he/she need us to validate his or her accomplishments/knowledge by posting on this list? He or she should have better things to do and, besides, we probably wouldn't be able to understand (appreciate) his/her genius anyhow. The only way to deal with postings like this is to IGNORE THEM. Don't rise to the bait. Like a bad cold, they will be irritating for a while, but they will, eventually, go away. Cheers, Brad --- 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] Big Dog
What's really impressive is how natural the leg movements are. I was flashing to images of young horses navigating rough terrain. - Original Message - From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 6:48 PM Subject: [agi] Big Dog Peruse the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Wwfeature=related Of course, they are only showing the best stuff. And I am sure there is plenty of work left to do. But from the variety of behaviors that are displayed, I would say that the problem of quadraped walking is surprisingly well solved. apparently it's way easier than biped locomotion... ben --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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
