Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
My two cents. FWIW: Anyone who seriously doubts whether AGI is possible will never contribute anything of value to those who wish to build an AGI. Anyone wishing to build an AGI should stop wasting time reading such literature including postings (let alone replying to them). This is not advocating blind or unscientific dogma, sometimes you just have to make a choice in belief systems and no one achieved anything of greatness or even just significance by listening to those who say it can't be done. Although reading the various philosophical arguments against AI was a useful step in my AGI education, I went through that phase using books and internet articles. Several times I was on the verge of unsubscribing from the list because of those discussions (and all of the ego-maniacal mudslinging, flamewars and troll-postings) - I agree fully with Harry. I want to see new ideas, experiences on what worked and didnt work, who's working on what approaches, suggestions for ways forward, references to new resources or tools etc. So when e.g. Ben 'criticises' Richard Loosemore's model, I'm highly interested (because Richard's way of thinking is in some aspects much closer to mine than Ben's approach), when Richard replies emotionally, I just skip his reply but when he puts forward a rational argument it is extremely interesting to me. So I vote to stop all philosophical arguments on the possibility of AGI on this list, even though it is a necessary, or better, crucial part of any AGIer's development stage... incidentally: storing any AI reading in my AI philosophy folder is typically equivalent to utter condemnation, despite the fact that philosophy is one of my greatest interests. Note that you should discount my posting somewhat due to the fact that I haven't posting anything for quite a while but that's because I am rather focussing my little time on building a first generation prototype. = Jean-Paul On 2008/10/15 at 18:12, Harry Chesley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 10/15/2008 8:01 AM, Ben Goertzel wrote: What are your thoughts on this? A narrower focus of the list would be better for me personally. I've been convinced for a long time that computer-based AGI is possible, and am working toward it. As such, I'm no longer interested in arguments about whether it is feasible or not. I skip over those postings in the list. I also skip over postings which are about a pet theory rather than a true reply to the original post. They tend to have the form your idea x will not work because it is in opposition to my theory y, which states insert complex description here. Certainly ones own ideas and theories should contribute to a reply, but they should not /be/ the reply. And the last category that I skip are discussions that have gone far into an area that I don't consider relevant to my own line of inquiry. But I think those are valuable contributions to the list, just not of immediate interest to me. Like a typical programmer, I tend to over-focus on what I'm working on. But what I find irrelevant may be spot on for someone else, or for me at some other time. --- 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 __ UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN This e-mail is subject to the UCT ICT policies and e-mail disclaimer published on our website at http://www.uct.ac.za/about/policies/emaildisclaimer/ or obtainable from +27 21 650 4500. This e-mail is intended only for the person(s) to whom it is addressed. If the e-mail has reached you in error, please notify the author. If you are not the intended recipient of the e-mail you may not use, disclose, copy, redirect or print the content. If this e-mail is not related to the business of UCT it is sent by the sender in the sender's individual capacity. _ --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] organising parallel processes
I assume that you have checked out Hofstadters architecture mixing random relevance (Fluid Analogies Research Group)? Jean-Paul Van Belle Associate Professor Head: Postgraduate Section, Department of Information Systems Research Associate: Centre for IT and National Development in Africa (CITANDA) The IS Dept is co-hosting ZA-WWW'08 Contact details: phone +27-21-6504256; fax +27-21-6502280; office LC 4.21 On 2008/05/04 at 09:09, in message [EMAIL PROTECTED], rooftop8000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: hi, I have a lot of parallel processes that are in control of their own activation (they can decide which processes are activated and for how long). I need some kind of organisation (a simple example would be a hierarchy of processes that only activate downwards). I'm looking for examples of possible organisations or hierarchies in existing AI systems or designs of them . Any ideas? thanks Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ --- 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=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Instead of an AGI textbook
Hi Ben Hereby my proposed additional topics / references for your wiki - aimed at the more computer scienty/mathematically challenged (like me): Sorry don't have the time to add directly to the wiki AGI ARCHITECTURES (EXPANDS on the COGNITIVE ARCHITECTURES section) Questions about any Would-Be AGI System. Ben Goertzel - May 20, 2002 Artificial General Intelligence: A Gentle Introduction - Pei Wang Architectures for intelligent systems by J. F. Sowa Cognitive Architectures: Research Issues and Challenges by Langley, Laird Rogers. Choosing and getting started with a cognitive architecture to test and use human-machine interfaces by Frank RITTER. MMI-Interaktiv, #7, Jun04 Artificial General Intelligence PowerPoint presentation by ?? Artificial General Intelligence - Goertzel, Ben; Pennachin, Cassio (Eds). Chapter by Peter Voss Four Contemporary AGI Designs: a Comparative Treatment Sep2006 Stan FRANKLIN, Ben GOERTZEL, Alexei SAMSONOVICH, Pei WANG Mixing Cognitive Science Concepts with Computer Science Algorithms and Data Structures: An Integrative Approach to Strong AI. Moshe Looks Ben Goertzel Computational ARchitectures for Intelligence and Motivation Darryl N. Davis The 17th IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control , ISIC’02, Canada, Oct 2002 Considerations Regarding Human-Level Artificial Intelligence - Nils J. Nilsson - Jan 2002 A Survey of Artificial Cognitive Systems: Implications for the Autonomous Development of Mental Capabilities in Computational Agents David Vernon. AGENTS Search and select depending on the nature of your AGI architecture. AUTONOMIC COMPUTING Any one of the IBM AC overview papers e.g. Practical Autonomic Computing: Roadmap to Self Managing Technology A White Paper Prepared for IBM January 2006 BOTS Read any document on AIML, check out on the Loebner prize and check the source code of at least one ChatterBot in your preferred programming langague. COGNITION List of cognitive biases - Wikipedia Contemporary Approaches to Symbol Grounding - Moshe Looks Interior Grounding, Reflection, and Self-Consciousness - Marvin Minsky Intl Conf on Brain Mind Society, Japan 2005. Solving the Symbol Grounding Problem: a Critical Review of Fifteen Years of Research by Mariarosaria Taddeo and Luciano Floridi French, R. M. (2002). The Computational Modeling of Analogy -Making. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(5), 200-205. COMPLEXITY THEORY - any good overview COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE Feigenbaum - Grand Challenges for Computational Intelligence Some paper on AIXI Craenen Eiben - Computational Intelligence 2002 Moshe Looks - Learning with Semantic Spaces: From Parameter Tuning to Discovery One of Wang's papers on Cognitive Informatics e.g. Theoretical Framework of CI, CI Models of the Brain or similar INTRODUCTORY, POPULAR GENERAL BOOKS: # Eric Baum, What is Thought?, 2004 # Ben Goertzel, The Hidden Pattern: A Patternist Philosophy of Mind, 2006 # Ben Goertzel, Cassio Pennachin (Eds.), Artificial General Intelligence, 2007 # Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence, 2004 # Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought, 2007; How the Mind Works; The language Instinct. # Storrs Hall, Beyond AI # Franklin, Artificial Minds # Sowa, Knowledge Representation # Douglas Hofstadter, Godel, Escher Bach # Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spritiual Machines The Singularity Is Near # Wolfram, A new kind of science # Smith, On the origin of objects # Jeff Hawkins, on intelligence and at least two of the following 'cognitive science compilations' # Rosenthal (ed), The Nature of Mind # Bechtel Graham, a Companion to Cognitive Science # Posner (ed), Foundationsof Congitive Science # Wilson Kehl, THe MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences Some other popular science titles that you might consider (some are quite dated): #Kevin Warwick, In the mind of the Machine #Robert Winston, the human mind #Philip Johnson-Laird - the computer and the mind #Gardenfors - conceptual spaces #Rita carter - mapping the mind #Rondey Brooks - Robot #and you should read at least one book by Roger Penrose (and/or perhaps Daniel Dennett.). Some advice on literature/articles NOT to read i.e. TIME-CONSUMING debates to avoid wasting your precious time on: ** PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES ** If you're defining your own AGI project, you have to choose (ideally one) language. IMHO if you already have lots of experience and feel comfortable in a particular language and it *seems to you* that it is adequate, then don't waste time debating other languages - *all* languages have their advantages and limitations. However, if you have to choose a new language (or don't mind changing) then: if you need raw speed and current hardware is likely to be a bottleneck, then: = if your algorithms are fairly classic in nature, choose C#, C++ or similar - ideally a dialect that supports parallel hardware architectures = but if your algorithms are fairly esoteric and/or you have 'strange' data structures, looks at Lisp, SmallTalk or similar if you think
[agi] Scalable computer resources
Hi There was a thread on cluster and distributed computing earlier. It was in the context of some of you possibly needing huge computer resource (bandwidth, storage space and/or raw processing power) for a short amount of time and . Check out Amazon's S3 and EC2 web services. To test out your ideas without having to worry about setting up a PC cluster or paying for huge computer resources which you only need briefly to test out ideas, their EC2 initiative Elastic Compute Cloud of Amazon.com and related webservices (e.g. S3 for storage) seems ideal. Amazon EC2 enables you to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days. You can commission one, hundreds or even thousands of server instances simultaneously. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=201590011]; Sample costs are: $0.10 - per hour Small Instance computer time [7.5 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit), 160 GB of instance storage, 32-bit platform - Linux] $0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out // $0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out // $0.13 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB Storage (S3 service): $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used (with Data Transfer from $0.10 per GB - all data transfer in, $.10-.18 out) If you want to do text mining on the web, you can use Alexa's related webservice (eg allowing for 'million query research results' mining). (Note: I don't earn commission on this nor do I have any relations to Amazon :) I haven't tested them out (yet) but their main development centre is right around the corner from me. Jean-Paul Van Belle Associate Professor Head: Postgraduate Section, Department of Information Systems ( http://www.commerce.uct.ac.za/InformationSystems/ ) Research Associate: Centre for IT and National Development in Africa (CITANDA) ( http://www.commerce.uct.ac.za/Organisations/CITANDA/ ) The IS Dept is co-hosting ZA-WWW'08 ( http://www.zaw3.co.za/ ) Contact details: phone +27-21-6504256; fax +27-21-6502280; office LC 4.21 --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=95818715-a78a9b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] OpenCog
IMHO more important than working towards contributing clean code would be to *publish the (required) interfaces for the modules as well as give standards for/details on the knowledge representation format*. I am sure that you have those spread over various internal and published documents (indeed, developing a system like Novamente or proposing a framework is impossible without those) but a cut-and-paste of the relevant sections are essential documentation for the framework. Also a concrete example of how a third-party module would slot into this framework would be mightily useful. I am raising this because many would-be AGI developers have to decide on an interface and KR standard even if they develop their own proprietory system - lots of mileage would be gotten from not having to reinvent the wheel. =Jean-Paul -- Research Associate: CITANDA Post-Graduate Section Head Department of Information Systems Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256 Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280 Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21 On 2007/12/28 at 14:59, in message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Benjamin Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 28, 2007 5:59 AM, YKY (Yan King Yin) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OpenCog is definitely a positive thing to happen in the AGI scene. It's been all vaporware so far. Yes, it's all vaporware so far ;-) On the other hand, the code we hope to release as part of OpenCog actually exists, but it's not yet ready for opening-up as some of it needs to be extracted from the overall Novamente code base, and other parts of it need to be cleaned-up in various ways... Much of the reason for yakking about it months in advance of releasing it, was a desire to assess the level of enthusiasm for it. There are a number of enthusiastic potential OpenCog developers on the OpenCog mail list, so in that regard, I feel the response has been enough to merit proceeding with the project... I wonder what would be the level of participation? Time will tell! -- Ben - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?; - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=79895084-0bd555
Re: [agi] Do we need massive computational capabilities?
Sounds like the worst case scenario: computations that need between say 20 and
100 PCs. Too big to run on a very souped up server (4-way Quad processor with
128GB RAM) but to scale up to a 100 Beowulf PC cluster typically means a factor
10 slow-down due to communications (unless it's a
local-data/computation-intensive algorithm) so you actually haven't gained much
in the process. {Except your AGI is now ready for a distributed computing
environment, which I believe luckily Novamenta was explicitely designed for.}
:)
=Jean-Paul
Research Associate: CITANDA
Post-Graduate Section Head
Department of Information Systems
Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256
Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280
Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21
Benjamin Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2007/12/07 15:06
I don't think we need more than hundreds of PCs to deal with these things,
but we need more than a current PC, according to the behavior of our
current algorithms.
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RE: Distributed search (was RE: Hacker intelligence level [WAS Re: [agi] Funding AGI research])
Hi Matt, Wonderful idea, now it will even show the typical human trait of lying...when i ask it do you still love me? most answers in its database will have Yes as an answer but when i ask it 'what's my name?' it'll call me John? However, your approach is actually already being implemented to a certain extent. Apparantly (was it newsweek, time?) the No 1 search engine in (Singapore? Hong Kong? Taiwan? - sorry I forgot) is *not* Google but a local language QA system that works very much the way you envisage it (except it collects the answers in its own SAN i.e. not distributed over the user machines) =Jean-Paul On 2007/12/07 at 18:58, in message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Matt You call it an AGI proposal but it is described as a distributed search algorithms that (merely) appears intelligent i.e. design for an Internet-wide message posting and search service. There doesn't appear to be any grounding or semantic interpretation by the AI system? How will it become more intelligent? Turing was careful to make no distinction between being intelligent and appearing intelligent. The requirement for passing the Turing test is to be able to compute a probability distribution P over text strings that varies from the true distribution no more than it varies between different people. Once you can do this, then given a question Q, you can compute answer A that maximizes P(A|Q) = P(QA)/P(Q). This does not require grounding. The way my system appears intelligent is by directing Q to the right experts, and by being big enough to have experts on nearly every conceivable topic of interest to humans. A lot of AGI research seems to be focused on how to represent knowledge and thought efficiently on a (much too small) computer, rather than on what services the AGI should provide for us. -- Research Associate: CITANDA Post-Graduate Section Head Department of Information Systems Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256 Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280 Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21 - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=73912948-7bb204
RE: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Interesting - after drafting three replies I have come to realize that it is possible to hold two contradictory views and live or even run with it. Looking at their writings, both Ben Richard know damn well what complexity means and entails for AGI. Intuitively, I side with Richard's stance that, if the current state of 'the new kind of science' cannot even understand simple chaotic systems - the toy-problems of three-variable differential quadratic equations and 2-D Alife, then what hope is there to find a theoretical solution for a really complex system. The way forward is by experimental exploration of part of the solution space. I don't think we'll find general complexity theories any time soon. On the other hand, practically I think that it *is* (or may be) possible to build an AGI system up carefully and systematically from the ground up i.e. inspired by a sound (or at least plausible) theoretical framework or by modelling it on real-world complex systems that seem to work (because that's the way I proceed too), finetuning the system parameters and managing emerging complexity as we go along and move up the complexity scale. (Just like engineers can build pretty much anything without having a GUT.) Both paradagmatic approaches have their merits and are in fact complementary: explore, simulate, genetically evolve etc. from the top down to get a bird's eye view of the problem space versus incrementally build up from the bottom up following a carefully chartered path/ridge inbetween the chasms of the unknown based on a strong conceptual theoretical founding. It is done all the time in other sciences - even maths! Interestingly, I started out wanting to use a simulation tool to check the behaviour (read: fine-tune the parameters) of my architectural designs but then realised that the simulation of a complex system is actually a complex system itself and it'd be easier and more efficient to prototype than to simulate. But that's just because of the nature of my architecture. Assuming Ben's theories hold, he is adopting the right approach. Given Richard's assumption or intuitions, he is following the right path too. I doubt that they will converge on a common solution but the space of conceivably possible AGI architectures is IMHO extremely large. In fact, my architectural approach is a bit of a poor cousin/hybrid: having neither Richard's engineering skills nor Ben's mathematical understanding I am hoping to do a scruffy alternative path :) -- Research Associate: CITANDA Post-Graduate Section Head Department of Information Systems Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256 Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280 Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21 On 2007/12/07 at 03:06, in message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Conclusion: there is a danger that the complexity that even Ben agrees must be present in AGI systems will have a significant impact on our efforts to build them. But the only response to this danger at the moment is the bare statement made by people like Ben that I do not think that the danger is significant. No reason given, no explicit attack on any component of the argument I have given, only a statement of intuition, even though I have argued that intuition cannot in principle be a trustworthy guide here. But Richard, your argument ALSO depends on intuitions ... I agree that AGI systems contain a lot of complexity in the dynamical- systems-theory sense. And I agree that tuning all the parameters of an AGI system externally is likely to be intractable, due to this complexity. However, part of the key to intelligence is **self-tuning**. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=73455082-621f89
Re: [agi] Where are the women?
By coincidence whilst the debate was raging last night (local time:), I was busy reading 'Studying Those Who Study Us, An anthropologist in the world of artificial intelligence', (Stanford University Press, 2001) which is a posthumous collection of academic essays by Diana Forsythe. She roamed 4 or 5 AI labs for the better part of 10 years using her trained anthropologist's eye to reflect on the culture of AI labls and geeks. A couple of essays concern exactly this point (esp 'Disappearing Women in the Social World of Computing') and I have a feeling that she would strongly disagree with the feelings expressed on this list i.e. that women are scarce because of the nature of the field - she feels strongly it has much more to do with the social attitudes (cultural norms) in the discipline. Ok she took a bit of a feminist angle but that's not surprising considering what happened to her parents (both were acccomplished computer scientist, the father became famous, the mother forgotten), or probably more by exactly her personal experiences in these labs. Anyway it is a very interesting (and quick) read with some good thoughts/inputs on other aspects of AI (and AGI) thinking - especially the disconnect between how AI geeks think and how the rest of the world (including the user) operates. The article that I found the most interesting was 'The Construction of Work in Artificial Intelligence' where she highlights strongly what *we* (AI scientists) think is real A(G)I as opposed to what we actually really do. It relates to an earlier posting of mine whereby I queried how much time the people claiming to work on AGI really spend on AGI design as opposed to the time spent on peripheral issues (she lists 19 major things AI researchers do, only one of which is related to real AI :) Back to the women, there is at least one very smart woman on this list who's elected to stay quiet in this debate... Samantha? =Jean-Paul -- Research Associate: CITANDA Post-Graduate Section Head Department of Information Systems Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256 Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280 Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21 On 2007/11/28 at 19:18, in message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Robin Gane-McCalla [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The interesting thing about CS and AI is that they are man-defined fields whereas physics, chemistry, biology etc are defined by nature. Perhaps the simple fact that almost all programming languages and concepts in AI were designed by white males (and a geeky subculture of white males at that) is the main factor that has limited the entrance of women and other minorities rather than other cultural differences. On Nov 28, 2007 7:46 AM, Jiri Jelinek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Where are the women? I once read a short article on this topic. The author was trying to explain it suggesting that many technical books are using rather man-appealing analogies when explaining concepts which has discouraging effect for women. They were about experiment with this in Germany, planning to rewrite text-books (/lectures) using neutral and woman-appealing analogies. I did not really follow it so not sure what the outcome was. Regards, Jiri Jelinek - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?; - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=70075803-05025f
Re: [agi] Do the inference rules.. P.S.
When commenting on a lot of different items in a posting, in-line responses make more sense and using ALL-CAPS in one accepted way of doing it in an email client/platform neutral manner. I for one do it often when responding to individual emails so I don't mind at all. I do *not* associate it with shouting in such a context - especially not in the light of the extremely high-quality contributions made by Edward on this list (I, for one, think that he has elevated the level of discussion here greatly and I have archived more of his postings than anyone else's). I do agree that small-caps is easier on the eye. However, Durk, if one wishes to comment on posting etiquette, I thought one other rule was to quote as little of the previous post as necessary to make one's point ... some members may still have bandwidth issues ;-) (just kidding!) And, for the record, after reading AI literature for well over 20 years and having done a lot of thinking, the AGI architecture I'm busy working on is strongly founded on insights (principles, axioms, hypotheses and assumptions:) many of which are remarkably similar to Edward's views (including those of the value of past AI research projects, the role of semantic networks and the possibility of symbolic grounding) though I (obviously) differ on some other aspects (e.g. complexity :). I hope to invite him and some others to comment on my prototype end-2008 (and possibly contribute thereafter :) ^.^ Jean-Paul Research Associate: CITANDA Department of Information Systems Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256 Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280 Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21 Kingma, D.P. [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2007/10/12 10:57 Dear Edward, may I ask why you regularly choose to type in all-caps? Do you have a broken keyboard? Otherwise, please restrain from doing so since (1) many people associate it with shouting and (2) small-caps is easier to read... Kind regards, Durk Kingma On 10/12/07, Edward W. Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is in response to Mike Tintner's 10/11/2007 7:53 PM post. My response is in all-caps. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=52799208-0a3398
Re: [agi] Conway's Game of Life and Turing machine equivalence
All interesting (and complex!) phenomena happen at the edges/fringe. Boundary conditions seem to be a requisite for complexity. Life originated on a planet (10E-10 of space), on its surface (10E-10 of its volume). 99.99+% of the fractal curve area is boring, it's just the edges of a very small area that's particularly interesting. 99.99% of life is not intelligent. 99.9% of possible computer programs are completely uninteresting. Hence 99.% of glider configurations will be completely uninteresting and utterly boring. Most of Wolfram's rules produce boring, predictable patterns too. =Jean-Paul -- On 2007/10/06 at 02:52, in message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Linas Vepstas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For the few times that gliders might collide, well, that's more complicated. But this is a corner-case, it's infrequent. Like collisions between planets, it can be handled as a special case. I mean, heck, there's only so many different ways a pair of glider can collide, and essentialy all of the collisions are fatal to both gliders. So, by this reasoning, GoL must be a low-complexity system. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=50732414-a6538f
Re: [agi] AGI Consortium
Well-said Samantha :-) On a different note: something YKY and Mark may want to read about a possible approach to running a new AGI consortium: eXtreme Research. A software methodology for applied research: eXtreme Researching vy Olivier Chirouze, David Cleary and George G. Mitchell (Software. Practice Experience 2005; 35:1441–1454 - try to get it from www.interscience.wiley.com). Some interesting ideas on building up research ideas prototypes systems from the ground up with a distributed group. Samantha Atkins [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/08/07 7:01 PM But I don't expect any great understanding about Open Source here. It is not the expertise or prime interest of the group. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=e9e40a7e
Re: [agi] How can you prove form/behaviour are disordered?
Hi Matt
Re Halting/non-halting programs:
This try-out works fine for small values of {program length}. For large values
the problem is essentially unsolvable, though I admit that you could get a fair
feeling for the distribution by simulating a large number of randomly generated
programs. The busy beaver sequence is (provably) the fastest growing number
sequence... (I know because I tried looking for that once but the best I could
come up was with what was apparently called the arrow notation.)
Re NL pattern finding:
The problem arises with:
- Apples are (the forbidden :) fruit. My laptop is an apple. Therefore my
laptop is (the forbidden) fruit.
- People have legs. Johnny the cripple is a person (a people?). Therefore...
- Eggs are white (or brown:). Yolk is in the egg. Therefore yolk is white.
Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/08/07 9:24 PM
What is the shortest C program that does not halt? Here are some 136 bit
programs:
What is the shortest halting program in Java? I can find 2916 programs of
length 360 bits, but nothing shorter, for example:
- Frogs are green. Kermit is a frog. Therefore Kermit is green.
- Cities have tall buildings. New York is a city. Therefore New York has
tall buildings.
- Summers are hot. July is in the summer. Therefore July is hot.
-
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Re: [agi] poll: what do you look for when joining an AGI group?
Hey but it makes for an excellent quote. Facts don't have to be true if they're beautiful or funny! ;-) Sorry Eliezer, but the more famous you become, the more these types of apocryphal facts will surface... most not even vaguely true... You should be proud and happy! To quote Mr Bean 'Well, I enjoyed it anyway.' Eliezer S. Yudkowsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/05/07 4:38 AM Mark Waser wrote: P.S. You missed the time where Eliezer said at Ben's AGI conference that he would sneak out the door before warning others that the room was on fire:-) This absolutely never happened. I absolutely do not say such things, even as a joke, because I understand the logic of the multiplayer iterated prisoner's dilemma - as soon as anyone defects, everyone gets hurt. Some people who did not understand the IPD, and hence could not conceive of my understanding the IPD, made jokes about that because they could not conceive of behaving otherwise in my place. But I never, ever said that, even as a joke, and was saddened but not surprised to hear it. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?; - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=e9e40a7e
Re: [agi] credit attribution method
Ok, Panu, I agree with *your statement* below. [Meta: Now how much credit do I get for operationalizing your idea?] Panu Horsmalahti [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/04/07 10:42 PM Now, all we need to do is find 2 AGI designers who agree on something. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=e9e40a7e
Re: [agi] Minimally ambiguous languages
Except that Ogden only included a very few verbs [be , have , come - go , put - take , give - get , make , keep , let , do , say , see , send , causeand because are occasionally used as operators; seem was later added.] So in practice people use about 60 of the nouns as verbs diminishing the 'unambiguity' somewhat. Also most words are seriously polysemous. But it is a very good/interesting starting point! = Jean-Paul Department of Information Systems Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256 Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280 Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21 BillK [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2007/06/05 11:18:49 On 6/5/07, Bob Mottram [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I remember last year there was some talk about possibly using Lojban as a possible language use to teach an AGI in a minimally ambiguous way. Does anyone know if the same level of ambiguity found in ordinary English language also applies to sign language? I know very little about sign language, but it seems possible that the constraints applied by the relatively long time periods needed to produce gestures with arms/hands compared to the time required to produce vocalizations may mean that sign language communication is more compact and maybe less ambiguous. Also, comparing the way that the same concepts are represented using spoken and sign language might reveal something about how we normally parse sentences. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English Ogden's rules of grammar for Basic English allows people to use the 850 words to talk about things and events in the normal English way. Ogden did not put any words into Basic English that could be paraphrased with other words, and he strove to make the words work for speakers of any other language. He put his set of words through a large number of tests and adjustments. He also simplified the grammar but tried to keep it normal for English users. More recently, it has influenced the creation of Simplified English, a standardized version of English intended for the writing of technical manuals. BillK - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?; - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=e9e40a7e
Re: [agi] Minimally ambiguous languages
Hi Mike Just Google 'Ogden' and/or Basic English - there's lots of info. And if you doubt that only a few verbs are sufficient, then obviously you need to do some reading: anyone interested in building AGI should be familiar with Schank's (1975) contextual dependency theory which deals with the representation of meaning in sentences. Building upon this framework, Schank Abelson (1977) introduced the concepts of scripts, plans and themes to handle story-level understanding. Later work (e.g., Schank, 1982,1986) elaborated the theory to encompass other aspects of cognition. [http://tip.psychology.org/schank.html] A number of other researchers have also worked on the concept of a few semantic primitives (one called them semantic primes) but I'd be a bad teacher if I did *your* homework for you... ;-) Jean-Paul Department of Information Systems Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256 Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280 Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21 Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2007/06/05 16:48:32 Except that Ogden only included a very few verbs [be , have , come - go , put - take , give - get , make , keep , let , do , say , see , send , causeand because are occasionally used as operators; seem was later added.] So in practice people use about 60 of the nouns as verbs diminishing the 'unambiguity' somewhat. Also most words are seriously polysemous. But it is a very good/interesting starting point! = Jean-Paul How does that work? The first 12 verbs above are among the most general, infinitely-meaningful and therefore ambiguous words in the language. There are an infinity of ways to come or go to a place. This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?; - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=e9e40a7e
Re: [agi] Minimally ambiguous languages
I think you are mis-interpreting me. I do *not* subscribe to the semantic primitives (I probably didn't put it clearly though). Just trying to answer your question re the sufficiency of 10 or so verbs. However, if you are considering any reduced vocabulary then you should be familiar with the literature/theories and *also* know why it failed. I think other people also mentioned that list readers should check old discredited approaches first and then see how your current approach is different/better. Jean-Paul Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/05/07 7:14 PM Thanks. But Schank has fallen into disuse, no? The ideas re script algorithms just don't work, do they? And what I was highlighting was one possible reason - those primitives are infinitely open-ended and can be, and are, repeatedly being used in new ways. That supposedly minimally ambiguous language looks, ironically, like it's maximally ambiguous. I agree that the primitives you list are extremely important - arguably central - in the development of human language. But to my mind, and I'll have to argue this at length, and elsewhere, they show something that you might not like - the impossibility of programming (in any conventional sense) a mind to handle them. - Original Message - From: Jean-Paul Van Belle To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 5:44 PM Subject: Re: [agi] Minimally ambiguous languages Hi Mike Just Google 'Ogden' and/or Basic English - there's lots of info. And if you doubt that only a few verbs are sufficient, then obviously you need to do some reading: anyone interested in building AGI should be familiar with Schank's (1975) contextual dependency theory which deals with the representation of meaning in sentences. Building upon this framework, Schank Abelson (1977) introduced the concepts of scripts, plans and themes to handle story-level understanding. Later work (e.g., Schank, 1982,1986) elaborated the theory to encompass other aspects of cognition. [http://tip.psychology.org/schank.html] A number of other researchers have also worked on the concept of a few semantic primitives (one called them semantic primes) but I'd be a bad teacher if I did *your* homework for you... ;-) Jean-Paul Department of Information Systems Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256 Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280 Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21 Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2007/06/05 16:48:32 Except that Ogden only included a very few verbs [be , have , come - go , put - take , give - get , make , keep , let , do , say , see , send , cause and because are occasionally used as operators; seem was later added.] So in practice people use about 60 of the nouns as verbs diminishing the 'unambiguity' somewhat. Also most words are seriously polysemous. But it is a very good/interesting starting point! = Jean-Paul How does that work? The first 12 verbs above are among the most general, infinitely-meaningful and therefore ambiguous words in the language. There are an infinity of ways to come or go to a place. -- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?; -- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?; -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.9/832 - Release Date: 04/06/2007 18:43 - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?; - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=e9e40a7e
Re: [agi] Minimally ambiguous languages
Sorry yes you're right, I should and would not call Schank's approach discredited (though he does have his critics). FWIW I think he got much closer than most of the GOFAIers i.e. he's one of my old school AI heroes :) I thought for a long time his approach was one of the quickest ways to AGI and I still think anyone studying AGI should definitely study his approach closely. In the end any would-be AGIst (?:) will have to decide whether she adopts conceptual primitives or not - probably, apart from ideological arguments, mainly on the basis of how she decides to (have her AGI) ground its/his/her concepts (or not, as the case may be). Personally I'd say that a lot of mental acts do not reduce to his primitives easily (without losing a lot in the translation, to paraphrase a good movie:) and mental acts are quite important in my AGI architecture. Just personal opinion of course. =Jean-Paul James Ratcliff [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/05/07 9:19 PM I wouldnt say discredited, though he has went off to study education more instead of AI now. Good article on Conceptual Reasoning http://library.thinkquest.org/18242/concept.shtml His SAM project was very interesting with Scripts back in '75, but for a very limited domain. My project has the ability for a KR to contain multiple scripts describing a similar event to allow reasoning and generalization of simple tasks. James Ratcliff Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: list readers should check old discredited approaches first Would you really call Schank discredited or is it just that his line of research petered out? - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?; ___ James Ratcliff - http://falazar.com Looking for something... - Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's Comedy with an Edge to see what's on, when. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?; - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=e9e40a7e
Re: [agi] poll: what do you look for when joining an AGI group?
Synergy or win-win between my work and the project i.e. if the project dovetails with what I am doing (or has a better approach). This would require some overlap between the project's architecture and mine. This would also require a clear vision and explicit 'clues' about deliverables/modules (i.e. both code and ideas). I would have to be able to use these (code, idea) *completely* freely as I would deem fit, and would, in return, happily exchange the portions of my work that are relevant to the project. Basically I agree with what the others wrote below - especially Ben. Except I would not work for a company that would aim to retain (exclusive or long-term) commercial rights to AGI design (and thus become rulers of the world :) nor would I accept funding from any source that aims to adopt AGI research outcomes for military purposes. Oh and yes, I'd like to be wealthy (definitely *not* rich and most definitely not famous - see the recent singularity discussion for a rationale on that one) but I already have the things I really need (not having to work for a regular income *would* be nice, tho) = Jean-Paul Justin Corwin wrote: If I had to find a new position tomorrow, I would try to find (or found) a group which I liked what they were 'doing', rather than their opinions, organization, or plans. Mark Waser wrote: important -- 6 which would necessarily include 8 and 9 Matt wrote: 12. A well defined project goal, including test criteria. Ben wrote: The most important thing by far is having an AGI design that seems feasible. For me, wanting to make a thinking machine is a far stronger motivator than wanting to get rich. The main use of being rich is if it helps to more effectively launch a positive Singularity, from my view... Eliezer wrote: Clues. Plural. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=e9e40a7e
Re: [agi] Open AGI Consortium
my 2 cents worth (both to Mark YKY): think of the people you are trying to co-opt onto the project. Some of us (most mid-lifers) have *some* income stream (regular job or otherwise) but are extremely committed to AGI as one of our main purposes of our life. Ideally we would want a rich donor to sponsor us to work full-time on AGI (though personally I doubt whether *I* could work 60-80 hours a week every week on AGI) but we are not really motivated by money (current or future income streams) - some of us only in due credit and some of the latter group perhaps in fame :) We are likely to not be interested in neither of your schemes because our philosophy is 'let's build a (couple of) prototype(s) first to see if our ideas work and take it from there - either fully proprietary or full OSS'. (Ok Ben got a bit further along that track than most of 'us'.) Many of the others, I suspect, (mainly the younger ones on the list) NEED a regular and solid immediate income stream and your models ALSO does not provide for that. So I am not sure what type of individuals (i.e. their personal circumstances) either of your schemes attracts/motivates. Perhaps it may be more productive to ask people on the list quickly to indicate their interest and/or willingness to participate in your scheme (by emailing either of you directly rather than the list)? Just my thoughts... =Jean-Paul Van Belle PS @Mike/J Stors - yes I remember the Hilbert spaces posting as well but skipped it (was way beyond my intellectual level/maths background) but it is definitely there in the archives (but perhaps one of the other lists?) PSS Ben I loved reading your blog. Pls keep it up. If you ever have time, let us know why, of the 3 different AGI approaches you entertained, you went with Novamente instead of the Hebbian neural net (and the theorem proving one)... us scruffies would like to know... is it just your mathematical bias/background or something more fundamental? PSSS :) Google is doing narrow AI, Semantic Web NLP, IBM is doing WebFountain (i.e. also semantic web) and autonomous computing. So neither seem to be in AGI. Anyone knows what M$ is up to? They have hired quite a few smart CS *and* psych people too... Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/02/07 11:56 PM Yes, I believe there're people capable of producing income-generating stuff in the interim. I can't predict how the project would evolve, but am optimistic. Ask Ben about how much that affects a project . . . . Note: Yes, I do have a serious mistrust of the legal system. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=e9e40a7e
Re: [agi] Paths not Taken to AGI
Thx for your response, Ben (and for the many other contributions on the list!) Re Hebbian neural – I assume you could calculate an eigenvalue matrix or some other heuristic approximation (to matrix**n) to speed up calculations. However, the matrix changes dynamically each time your AGI learns. Also, the evidence is that the mind switches dynamically quite easily between different ‘islands of stability’ so small changes in weights or inputs are likely to produce quite different eigenvalue values – if indeed it converges at all. Hence I’d venture to guess that it may be computationally less expensive to iterate than to calculate a reduced matrix each time. Despite this, personally I’d still prefer an activation (not necessarily Hebbian) spreading network (tho you have some of that in your Novamente architecture as well – for your patterns) especially for the ‘middle level’ (for my top-level I also favour a purely symbolic though much less formal one than Novamente/NARS/Cyc approach, mainly because I’m not smart and mathematically skilled enough :) Also I think it’s better for different people to try out different approaches so as to explore the AGI solution space a bit wider. PS Current theorem-proving approaches I always considered to be narrow-AI alternatively one of many specialized modules in an AGI tho obviously a computer-AGI c/would be much more efficient at theorem-proving than humans. Tho maths, being abstract, would indeed be one of the areas in which any computer AGI should excel (it should be one of her main hobbies:) Benjamin Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/03/07 3:02 PM of the 3 different AGI approaches you entertained, you went with Novamente instead of the Hebbian neural net (and the theorem proving one)... us scruffies would like to know... is it just your mathematical bias/background or something more fundamental? The Hebbian neural net approach seemed like it would be dramatically more computationally expensive, requiring a whole bundle of synapses to do what we can do with a single Novamente link. I.e., it's less natural for the von Neumann infrastructure we are stuck with at the moment. And, once you get beyond simple stuff, we don't know how the brain works so we need to invent stuff anyway, even in that plan (e.g. I have a scheme for doing higher-order logic in neural nets that involves feeding a dimensionally-reduced version of a neural net's connection matrix to the same network as an input vector ... but tuning that would take a lot of work, and there is no neuroscience to guide such work, at this point...) - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=e9e40a7e
RE: [agi] Bad Friendly AI poetry ;-)
The provable *social* AI was indeed a very sexy sheila but she became too emotional and her brain too irrational so her creator killda Department of Information Systems Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256 Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280 Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21 Derek Zahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2007/05/25 16:29:19 The Provably Friendly AI Was such a considerate guy! Upon introspection And careful reflection, It shut itself off with a sigh. This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?; - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=e9e40a7e
Re: [agi] Parsing theories
Check bigrams (or, more interestingly, trigrams) in computational linguistics. Department of Information Systems Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256 Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280 Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21 Eric Baum [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2007/05/23 15:36:20 One way to parametrize the likelihood of various arguments would be with a table over all two word combinations, the i,j entry gives the likelihood that the ith word and the jth word are the two arguments. But most likely, in reality, the likelihood of the jth word will be much pinned down conditional on the ith. Is there empirical work with this model? - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=e9e40a7e
Re: [agi] Write a doctoral dissertation, trigger a Singularity
Universal compassion and tolerance are the ultimate consequences of enlightenment which one Matt on the list equated IMHO erroneously to high-orbit intelligence methinx subtle humour is a much better proxy for intelligence Jean-Paul member of the 'let Murray stay' advocacy group aka 'the write 2 doctorates, trigger 2 singularities movement' just back from 2 weeks enlightenment-seeking in Indian ashram ;-) Department of Information Systems Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256 Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280 Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21 Benjamin Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2007/05/20 20:38:35 Personally, I find many of his posts highly entertaining... If your sense of humor differs, you can always use the DEL key ;-) -- Ben G On 5/20/07, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why is Murray allowed to remain on this mailing list, anyway? As a warning to others? The others don't appear to be taking the hint. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=e9e40a7e
Re: [agi] What would motivate you to put work into an AGI project?
Interesting question you raise there, Matt (vs :) YKY How many of us would be prepared to work FULL-TIME on AGI: (0) If a department of defense/military organisation paid you develop a secret AGI for national defense/intelligence purpose? (1) If a Microsoft, Google, Sun or IBM came along and hired you full-time to work on either (1a) Open-Source; or (1b) Proprietary AGI? (2) A more 'friendly' research group came along (e.g. University, government agency) to pay you fulltime (2a) on *their* design/architecture or (2b) on YOUR design but having to share your findings with the larger community (shared credit)? (3) If you had sufficient funds of your own? Re (3) I have often wondered how much time one could really spend continuously on working on AGI - refer to the Princeton Instititue of Advanced Studies where established geniuses (such as Einstein) were/are paid to devote fulltime efforts to thinking but actually not many earthshaking ideas have come out of it. Don't we need a lot of 'time wasted' on trivia such as a real job, leaking plumbing and family in order to have these 1 or 2 hours of creative thinking/work each day? Would it help to have consolidated 8 hour or longer blocks each day? Do people like Ben, Leitz and Peter (Voss) really have so much time to think creatively/design or is my suspicion right that a lot of their (your :) time is spent on fundraising, PR, communication, management? The grass always seems greener on the other side... Jean-Paul Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2007/05/07 03:47:28 I think we should not go FOSS just because we arn't confident of ourselves, or to try to avoid competition. We love our work and should go the extra miles to make it profitable. Those who're not interested in business matters can leave that to somebody else in the group. The problem with closed source is you have to pay your employees. Personally, I am not interested in making a lot of money. I already make enough to buy what I want. It is more important to have free time to pursue my interests. AGI, especially language, is one of my interests. But I don't want to build something aimlessly like Cyc. I would like to see an application, a goal in which progress can be measured. I currently use text compression for this purpose. Do you have a better idea? - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=fabd7936
Re: [agi] A New Approach to AGI: What to do and what not to do (includes my revised algorithm)
to find a word in a big list you should really use a dictionary / hash table instead of binary search... ;-) (ok i know that wasnt the point you were trying to make :) Jean-Paul PS: [META] - people pls to cut off long message includes - some of us don't enjoy always on high bandwidth :( a [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/06/07 2:36 AM For example, in computational linguistics, the algorithm can use a binary search to find records relating to a word, instead of scanning the whole database. What I mean is that the database can use indexes with a binary search algorithm to locate the word faster. This means that it avoids scanning each and every record of the database to find the pixel representation of the letters of the word (the bitmap image of the word). - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=fabd7936
Re: [agi] MONISTIC, CLOSED-ENDED AI VS PLURALISTIC, OPEN-ENDED AGI
You're mostly correct about the word symbols (barring onomatopoeic words such as bang hum clipclop boom hiss howl screech fizz murmur clang buzz whine tinkle sizzle twitter as well as prefixes, suffixes and derived wordforms which all allow one to derive some meaning). However you are NOT correct about NUMBERS, mathematical formulaes etc. Though they are abstract, a lot of their MEANING (semantics) is contained in their notation. Give me the binary number 1001011001 and I can immediately tell you its predecessor, int(log2()), whether it's even or divisible by (decimal) 256. Which is exactly why some among us like formal systems so much. As an aside, I remember once speculating/thinking/making a start about a language whereby the meaning (or rather 'code') of any word would be reflected in its notation/representation... it started off with a commitment to a rather unwieldy ontology. Think Dewey-system for words but also including verbs, adjectives and other word categories. That was 20-odd years ago yes I was quite naive in those days ;-) Jean-Paul Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/01/07 3:38 AM Symbols are ABSTRACT. Numbers included. Entirely abstract in relation to the signified. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=fabd7936
Re: [agi] HOW ADAPTIVE ARE YOU [NOVAMENTE] BEN?
Not quite on the grammar topic but on the related topic of 'restricted vocabulary': A couple of us have been/are considering using Simple (or the alternative Basic) English or other restricted vocabulary sets. IMHO There are actually two issues here: (1) you may wish to have a simplified (i.e. reduced) representation of the knowledge base i.e. using a minimal set of concepts/attributes/etc. as a starting point (for those of us who don't bootstrap *all* knowledge :) - in this case it is fine IMHO - the system can learn the new concepts later. (2) you may wish to restrict communication/interaction of humans with the system to the set of words. This is *NOT* a good idea: most words outside the simple/basic vocabulary set actually respond to refined concepts (usually as per definition of the word) and you will have to have - somewhere in your system, depending on your knowledge representation scheme - a pointer (or whatever) to the data item that representscorresponds to that (complex or composite) 'concept' ANYWAY. But then it is silly not to use the real english word as the token/label for that node in your database. BTW my two arguments for this are (2a) this is exactly the reason why kids can pick up new words at the rate of 10+/day ... they hear the word and it maps directly onto a construct/concept that is already present in their mind, they don't have to construct an entire new structure in their mind; (2b) when you look at these lists of proposed new (rather silly) words (a la the meaning of liff etc.) we *all* recognise the concepts/feelings/situations which these words map to and can see quite well why these should/could be given a special word. Jean-Paul Van Belle On 4/29/07, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The idea that human beings should constrain themselves to a simplified, artificial kind of speech in order to make life easier for an AI, is one of those Big Excuses that AI developers have made, over the years, to cover up the fact that they don't really know how to build a true AI. It is a temptation to be resisted. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=fabd7936
Re: [agi] rule-based NL system
@ Mike: remember that she wasn't blind/deaf from birth - read her autobiographical account (available on project gutenberg - which is an excellent corpus source btw - also available on DVD :) for how he finally hooked up the concept of words as tokens for real world concepts when linking the word water with her memory of water when she wasn't blind/deaf yet. it's a nice read for those who are interested in how 'grounding of concepts' happen (tho the nuggets are far and few inbetween). See below two extracts. @Matt: yes as far as i remember typical human neurons typically have a few 1000 to 1 synapses. But note that there are several other types of neurons - especially the ones linking different brain areas together as well as those relatively very rare (much less than 10) 'emotional state/feeling' neurons that hook up/traverse many different areas of the brain. Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/29/07 2:04 AM Helen Keller must have had a tough time existing without words. According to you she didn't know the shape of the chairs she sat on. She had no words. From Kellers autobiography: There was, however, one word the meaning of which I still remembered, WATER. I pronounced it wa-wa. Even this became less and less intelligible until the time when Miss Sullivan began to teach me. I stopped using it only after I had learned to spell the word on my fingers. (and much later) We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten--a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=fabd7936
Re: [agi] Low I.Q. AGI
Since I voiced my concern with the AGI Department of Information Systems Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256 Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280 Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21 = Singularity automatic assumption here earlier (give me 1000 times more time than Einstein to think up Relativity Theory and I still couldn't; give me 1000 times more data and I'll be seeing less, not more forest), let me add corollaries to/musings about Jef's argument: (1) if (by force) we confine a super-AGI to a single problem situation or even our own limited environment for long enough (ignore the ethical slavery aspect for a moment), won't it go crazy - just like many geniuses go crazy or at the very least very eccentric after a relatively short life of intensive intellectual creativity (2) will we recognise the difference between AGI genius and AGI craziness even at the early stage in its life - we hardly do recognize it in human geniuses (and remember that the parameters in a normal human only needs to be slightly off before (s)he is considered crazy - it'll be hard enough to get the parameters right for our human-level AGI) (3) once/if it goes off in its own super-intelligence space (likely to be in intellectual domains such as maths) I doubt that we will ever be able to recognize what it does (try reading an advanced maths, physics or theology/philosophy book) Jean-Paul Van Belle Jef Allbright [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2007/04/15 21:40:06 While such a machine intelligence will quickly far exceed human capabilities, from its own perspective it will rapidly hit a wall due to having exhausted all opportunities for effective interaction with its environment. It could then explore an open-ended possibility space à la schmidhuber, but such increasingly detached exploration will be increasingly detached from intelligence in an effective sense. On 4/15/07, Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However, to me Singularity is a stronger claim than superhuman intelligence. It implies that the intelligence of AI will increase exponentially, to a point that is shorter than what we can perceive or understand. That is what I'm not convinced. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415user_secret=fabd7936
Re: [agi] small code small hardware
I guess (50 to 100 modules) x (500 to 2500 locs) x fudge factor x language factor with fudge factor = 2 to 4 and language factor = 1 for eg Python; 5 for eg C++ i.e. minimum 50 klocs (Python) which is what i wishfully think; realistically probably closer to 5000 klocs C++ that's of course for the prototype which may or may not bootstrap. however, the devil's in the data (you're on the money there, Mark) and more importantly the architecture and algorithms. | YKY (Yan King Yin) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Information Systems Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256 Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280 Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21 om 2007/03/29 14:42:53 | What are other people's estimates? - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
Re: [agi] small code small hardware
Re number of modules - ask any neuroscientist how many modules there are in the brain... and see which you think you can do without. My approach was to list important brain modules, delete those that I thought I can do without, add a very few that they haven't located or seem needed. Some modules end up being split in smaller ones as you start delving into implementation issues. Re PYTHON - hey I though we just *had* the language debate. FWIW In a previous life I've coded in Fortran and various flavours of Basic. Python gives fast learning curve, high productivity, high readability (important if you have gaps between programming time), it *is* OO but also procedural/functional - i like that mesh -, self-modification, the efficient data structures which I need, and lots of community support e.g. MontyLingua gives you a natural language parser free. Low performance is an issue but one could always inline C. So Python it is for my first prototype. I don't recommend people change their current language tho if they're happy with it. Still early days for me. YKY (Yan King Yin) [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2007/03/29 15:58:45 On 3/29/07, Jean-Paul Van Belle [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I guess (50 to 100 modules) x (500 to 2500 locs) x fudge factor x language factor with fudge factor = 2 to 4 and language factor = 1 for eg Python; 5 for eg C++ 50-100 modules? Sounds like you have a very unconventional architecture. From what you say, Python sounds like a pretty good *procedural* language -- would you say it's the easiest way to build an AGI prototype? - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
Re: [agi] small code small hardware
IMHO IF you can provide a learning environment similar in complexity as our world THEN (maximum code size(zipped using Matt Mahoney algorithm) portion of non-redundant DNA devoted to brain /IMHO Some random thoughts. Any RAM location can link to any other RAM location so there are more interconnects. The structure of RAM can be described very succintly. A CPU has 800 million transistors - a much more generous instruction set than our brain. Most likely we're *all* way off the mark ;-) kevin.osborne [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2007/03/29 16:24:20 say 2.5^10e9 interconnects, which is a number too big for even a - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
Re: [agi] small code small hardware
Department of Information Systems Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256 Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280 Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21 kevin.osborne [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2007/03/28 15:57 as a techie: scepticism. I think the 'small code' and 'small hardware' people are kidding themselves. Kevin, you're most probably right there. But remember that us small code people *have* to have this belief in order to justify ourselves working as individuals / tiny teams often during spare time and snatched moments. As a small code person I think the chance of a small code project achieving AGI is probably 1% (still probably an optimistic estimate) that that of a larger, coordinated, well-funded and focussed research group. But some of us are loners, like it that way, keep dreaming and thinking away. Some of us have also seen how some really innovative ideas tend to get lost in larger groups due to the normalisation/group pressure. And we take heart in the fact that many of the big advances in history (i.e. the big ideas) were typically produced by single individuals or tiny teams. Not so sure about the small hardware bit. Singularity software will require massive distributed hardware IMHO but prototypes should run fine on tomorrow's PCs. When I get technical enough, I'll plan my nebulous design/architecture around ~2012 hardware: i.e. a couple of 64-processor 256GB RAM machines - gives me a realistic time horizon and something concrete. as a person: nihilism the human condition. crime, drugs, debauchery. self-destructive and life-endangering behaviour; rejection of social norms. the world as I know it is a rather petty, woeful place [...] hey i liked that bit ;-) most of the time i think the world is a great place tho. But that's probably because I'm living in paradise^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HCape Town ;-) Jean-Paul - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
Re: [agi] AGI interests
Derek, great idea. Here's my story/interest Ever since a kid (and playing with the very first computers) I have been fascinated intrigued by the concept of AGI (tho not necessarily by that name). I've had a number of different career paths and many different hobbies but my largely philosophical interest in AI remained probably the only constant in the last 30 years. I've pretty much kept up to date with AI, cognitive sciences incl computational linguistics etc. although always as an informed layman^H^H^Hperson. Like you (?) I believe that most current efforts are attempting to hard-code too much intelligence. In an earlier posting I also iterated my belief that we need to reconceptualize in intelligence if you want something that will evolve into a singularity - biologically-inspired designs are (IMHO of course) limited in intrensic IQ scaleability (human intelligence is a Bell-curve - twice the brain size or speed does not increase the intelligence level one iota) so I am still working on my architecture which is highly modular (looking at Brooke's success and also neuroscience inspired:) I believe intelligence can be grounded in an information-only world rather than trying to build a virtual world or going the robot embodiment route. Lots of interesting stuff going on in this list, I was actually quite interested in the language debate having changed languages several times. My three big questions at the moment are: - to validate/refine an AGI architecture (especially a highly modular one), are you better off using a simulating environment (say GoldSim) or building a prototype using a RAD language (say Python ;-) - what is the REAL reason highly talented AGI research groups keep pushing their deadlines back. E.g. Ben's announced imminent breakthrus several times ... the one fact he mentioned a few years back that made sense is the huge parameter space/degrees of freedom (you have at least 5 to 10 tunable parameters per module) but I wonder about the others he hasnt mentioned (barring the excuses) and even more so for other projects - newcomers might learn from concentrating their thinking on AGI aspects where current projects are weak. - how can I ever get this listserv to move to digest mode - i must have tried 20 times using both IE and FF to no avail (the singularity one works fine) ;-) Ok that was me. Others? Jean-Paul Van Belle Department of Information Systems Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (+27)-(0)21-6504256 Fax: (+27)-(0)21-6502280 Office: Leslie Commerce 4.21 DEREK ZAHN [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2007/03/26 19:07:25 What about the rest of you, what are your interests? - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
Re: [agi] Why evolution? Why not neuroscience?
I like the metaphor. The other good reason NOT to go for neuroscience (i.e. against Ray Kurzweil's uploading the human brain argument) is that it may *not* scaleable. Nature may well have pushed close to the limit of biological intelligence (argument in favour = superior intelligence is a strong survival trait). Double a neural network's size and it won't work twice as good. However evolutionary computing also has a problem: the space of possible algorithms/computer programs becomes gigantic - see the busy beaver function. So more complex algorithms necessary for A(G)I may never be found. My money (and, of course, personal AGI project ;-) bets on reverse engineering AI. Eugen Leitl [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2007/03/23 13:15:23 Why evolution? Why not neuroscience? I was reading about Numenta's NuPIC platform today, and it occurred to me that there are really two big promising directions in machine learning/AI today: evolutionary computation and brain reverse-engineering. Some readers might be curious as to why I'm working on evolutionary computation and not neuroscience-based approaches. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
