Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
*I just want to jump in here and say I appreciate the content of this post as opposed to many of the posts of late which were just name calling and bickering... hope to see more content instead.* Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ed Porter wrote: Jean-Paul, Although complexity is one of the areas associated with AI where I have less knowledge than many on the list, I was aware of the general distinction you are making. What I was pointing out in my email to Richard Loosemore what that the definitions in his paper Complex Systems, Artificial Intelligence and Theoretical Psychology, for irreducible computability and global-local interconnect themselves are not totally clear about this distinction, and as a result, when Richard says that those two issues are an unavoidable part of AGI design that must be much more deeply understood before AGI can advance, by the more loose definitions which would cover the types of complexity involved in large matrix calculations and the design of a massive supercomputer, of course those issues would arise in AGI design, but its no big deal because we have a long history of dealing with them. But in my email to Richard I said I was assuming he was not using this more loose definitions of these words, because if he were, they would not present the unexpected difficulties of the type he has been predicting. I said I though he was dealing with more the potentially unruly type of complexity, I assume you were talking about. I am aware of that type of complexity being a potential problem, but I have designed my system to hopefully control it. A modern-day well functioning economy is complex (people at the Santa Fe Institute often cite economies as examples of complex systems), but it is often amazingly unchaotic considering how loosely it is organized and how many individual entities it has in it, and how many transitions it is constantly undergoing. Unsually, unless something bangs on it hard (such as having the price of a major commodity all of a sudden triple), it has a fair amount of stability, while constantly creating new winners and losers (which is a productive form of mini-chaos). Of course in the absence of regulation it is naturally prone to boom and bust cycles. Ed, I now understand that you have indeed heard of complex systems before, but I must insist that in your summary above you have summarized what they are in such a way that completely contradicts what they are! A complex system such as the economy can and does have stable modes in which it appears to be stable. This does not constradict the complexity at all. A system is not complex because it is unstable. I am struggling here, Ed. I want to go on to explain exactly what I mean (and what complex systems theorists mean) but I cannot see a way to do it without writing half a book this afternoon. Okay, let me try this. Imagine that we got a bunch of computers and connected them with a network that allowed each one to talk to (say) the ten nearest machines. Imagine that each one is running a very simple program: it keeps a handful of local parameters (U, V, W, X, Y) and it updates the values of its own parameters according to what the neighboring machines are doing with their parameters. How does it do the updating? Well, imagine some really messy and bizarre algorithm that involves looking at the neighbors' values, then using them to cross reference each other, and introduce delays and gradients and stuff. On the face of it, you might think that the result will be that the U V W X Y values just show a random sequence of fluctuations. Well, we know two things about such a system. 1) Experience tells us that even though some systems like that are just random mush, there are some (a noticeably large number in fact) that have overall behavior that shows 'regularities'. For example, much to our surprise we might see waves in the U values. And every time two waves hit each other, a vortex is created for exactly 20 minutes, then it stops. I am making this up, but that is the kind of thing that could happen. 2) The algorithm is so messy that we cannot do any math to analyse and predict the behavior of the system. All we can do is say that we have absolutely no techniques that will allow us to mathematical progress on the problem today, and we do not know if at ANY time in future history there will be a mathematics that will cope with this system. What this means is that the waves and vortices we observed cannot be explained in the normal way. We see them happening, but we do not know why they do. The bizzare algorithm is the low level mechanism and the waves and vortices are the high level behavior, and when I say there is a Global-Local Disconnect in this system, all I mean is that we are completely stuck when it comes to explaining the high level in terms of the low level. Believe me, it is childishly easy
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
However, part of the key to intelligence is **self-tuning**. I believe that if an AGI system is built the right way, it can effectively tune its own parameters, hence adaptively managing its own complexity. I agree with Ben here, isnt one of the core concepts of AGI the ability to modify its behavior and to learn? This will have to be done with a large amount of self-tuning, as we will not be changing parameters for every action, that wouldnt be efficient. (this part does not require actual self-code writing just yet) Its more a matter of finding out a way to guide the AGI in changing the parameters, checking the changes and reflecting back over the changes to see if they are effective for future events. What is needed at some point is being able to converse at a high level with the AGI, and correcting their behaviour, such as Dont touch that, cause it will have a bad effect and having the AGI do all of the parameter changing and link building and strengthening/weakening necessary in its memory. It may do this in a very complex way and may effect many parts of its systems, but by multiple reinforcement we should be able to guide the overall behaviour if not all of the parameters directly. James Ratcliff Benjamin Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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'll try, though, to more concisely frame the reason I think your argument is wrong. 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**. I believe that if an AGI system is built the right way, it can effectively tune its own parameters, hence adaptively managing its own complexity. Now you may say there's a problem here: If AGI component A2 is to tune the parameters of AGI component A1, and A1 is complex, then A2 has got to also be complex ... and who's gonna tune its parameters? So the answer has got to be that: To effectively tune the parameters of an AGI component of complexity X, requires an AGI component of complexity a bit less than X. Then one can build a self-tuning AGI system, if one does the job right. Now, I'm not saying that Novamente (for instance) is explicitly built according to this architecture: it doesn't have N components wherein component A_N tunes the parameters of component A_(N+1). But in many ways, throughout the architecture, it relies on this sort of fundamental logic. Obviously it is not the case that every system of complexity X can be parameter-tuned by a system of complexity less than X. The question however is whether an AGI system can be built of such components. I suggest the answer is yes -- and furthermore suggest that this is pretty much the ONLY way to do it... Your intuition is that this is not possible, but you don't have a proof of this... And yes, I realize the above argument of mine is conceptual only -- I haven't given a formal definition of complexity. There are many, but that would lead into a mess of math that I don't have time to deal with right now, in the context of answering an email... -- Ben G - 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/?; - Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. - 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=74588401-fe7760
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
James Ratcliff wrote: However, part of the key to intelligence is **self-tuning**. I believe that if an AGI system is built the right way, it can effectively tune its own parameters, hence adaptively managing its own complexity. I agree with Ben here, isnt one of the core concepts of AGI the ability to modify its behavior and to learn? That might sound like a good way to proceed, but now consider this. Suppose that the AGI is designed with a symbol system in which the symbols are very much mainstream-style symbols, and one aspect of them is that there are truth-values associated with the statements that use those symbols (as in I like cats, t=0.9). Now suppose that the very fact that truth values were being *explicitly* represented and manipulated by the system was causing it to run smack bang into the Complex Systems Problem. In other words, suppose that you cannot get that kind of design to work because when it scales up the whole truth-value maintenance mechanism just comes apart. Suppose, further, that the only AGI systems that really do work are ones in which the symbols never use truth values but use other stuff (for which there is no interpretation) and that the thing we call a truth value is actually the result of an operator that can be applied to a bunch of connected symbols. This [truth-value = external operator] idea is fundamentally different from [truth-value = internal parameter] idea, obviously. Now here is my problem: how would parameter-tuning ever cause that first AGI design to realise that it had to abandon one bit of its architecture and redesign itself? Surely this is more than parameter tuning? There is no way it could simply stop working and completely redesign all of its internal architecture to not use the t-values, and make the operators etc etc.! So here is the rub: if the CSP does cause this kind of issue (and that is why I invented the CSP idea in the first place, because it was precisely those kinds of architectural issues that seemed wrong), then parameter tuning will never be good enough, it will have to be a huge and very serious new approach to making our AGI designs flexible at the design level. Does that make sense? Richard Loosemore This will have to be done with a large amount of self-tuning, as we will not be changing parameters for every action, that wouldnt be efficient. (this part does not require actual self-code writing just yet) Its more a matter of finding out a way to guide the AGI in changing the parameters, checking the changes and reflecting back over the changes to see if they are effective for future events. What is needed at some point is being able to converse at a high level with the AGI, and correcting their behaviour, such as Dont touch that, cause it will have a bad effect and having the AGI do all of the parameter changing and link building and strengthening/weakening necessary in its memory. It may do this in a very complex way and may effect many parts of its systems, but by multiple reinforcement we should be able to guide the overall behaviour if not all of the parameters directly. James Ratcliff */Benjamin Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED]/* wrote: 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'll try, though, to more concisely frame the reason I think your argument is wrong. 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**. I believe that if an AGI system is built the right way, it can effectively tune its own parameters, hence adaptively managing its own complexity. Now you may say there's a problem here: If AGI component A2 is to tune the parameters of AGI component A1, and A1 is complex, then A2 has got to also be complex ... and who's gonna tune its parameters? So the answer has got to be that: To effectively tune the parameters of an AGI component of complexity X, requires an AGI component of complexity a bit less than X. Then one can build a self-tuning AGI system, if one does the job right. Now, I'm not saying that Novamente (for instance) is explicitly built
Re: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
irrationality - is used to describe thinking and actions which are, or appear to be, less useful or logical than the other alternatives. and rational would be the opposite of that. This line of thinking is more concerned with the behaviour of the entities, which requires Goal orienting and other things. An irrational being is NOT working effectively towards the goal according to this. This may be necessary in order to determine new routes, unique solutions to a problem, and according to the description will be included in most AGI's I have heard described so far. The other definition which seems to be in the air around here is irrational - acting without reason or logic. An entity that acts without reason or logic entirely is a totally random being, will choose to do something for no reason, and will not ever find any goals or solutions without accidentily hitting them. In AGI terms, any entity given multiple equally rewarding alternative paths to a goal may randomly select any of them. This may be considered acting without reason, as there was no real basis for choosing 1 as opposed to 2, but it also may be very reasonable, as given any situation where either path can be chosen, choosing one is reasonable. (choosing no path at that point would indeed be irrational and pointless) I havnt seen any solutions proposed that require any real level of acting without reason and neural nets and others are all reasonable, though the reasoning may be complex and hidden from us, or hard to understand. The example given previously about the computer system that changes its thinking in the middle of discovering a solution, is not irrational, as it is just contuing to follow its rules, it can still change those rules as it allows, and may have very good reason for doing so. James Ratcliff Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Richard: Mike, I think you are going to have to be specific about what you mean by irrational because you mostly just say that all the processes that could possibly exist in computers are rational, and I am wondering what else is there that irrational could possibly mean. I have named many processes that seem to me to fit the irrational definition, but without being too clear about it you have declared them all to be just rational, so now I have no idea what you can be meaning by the word. Richard, Er, it helps to read my posts. From my penultimate post to you: If a system can change its approach and rules of reasoning at literally any step of problem-solving, then it is truly crazy/ irrational (think of a crazy path). And it will be capable of producing all the human irrationalities that I listed previously - like not even defining or answering the problem. It will by the same token have the capacity to be truly creative, because it will ipso facto be capable of lateral thinking at any step of problem-solving. Is your system capable of that? Or anything close? Somehow I doubt it, or you'd already be claiming the solution to both AGI and computational creativity. A rational system follows a set of rules in solving a problem (which can incl. rules that self-modify according to metarules) ; a creative, irrational system can change/break/create any and all rules (incl. metarules) at any point of solving a problem - the ultimate, by definition, in adaptivity. (Much like you, and indeed all of us, change the rules of engagement much of the time in our discussions here). Listen, no need to reply - because you're obviously not really interested. To me that's ironic, though, because this is absolutely the most central issue there is in AGI. But no matter. - 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/?; - Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. - 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=74598181-2b0ae5
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Richard: Suppose, further, that the only AGI systems that really do work are ones in which the symbols never use truth values but use other stuff (for which there is no interpretation) and that the thing we call a truth value is actually the result of an operator that can be applied to a bunch of connected symbols. This [truth-value = external operator] idea is fundamentally different from [truth-value = internal parameter] idea, obviously. I almost added to my last post that another reason the brain never seizes up is that its concepts ( its entire representational operations) are open-ended trees, relatively ill-defined and ill-structured, and therefore endlessly open to reinterpretation. Supergeneral concepts like Go away, Come here, put this over there, or indeed is that true? enable it to be flexible and creatively adaptive, especially if it gets stuck - and find other ways, for example, to go come, put or deem as true etc. Is this something like what you are on about? - 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=74601069-e39ad4
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
James: Either of these systems described will have a Complexity Problem, any AGI will because it is a very complex system. System 1 I dont believe is strictly practical, as few Truth values can be stored locally directly to the frame. More realistic is there may be a temporary value such as: I like cats t=0.9 Which is calculated from some other backing facts, such as I said I like cats. t=1.0 I like Rosemary (a cat) t=0.8 then parameter tuning will never be good enough, it will have to be a huge and very serious new approach to making our AGI designs flexible at the design level. System 2, though it uses unnamed parameters, would still need to determine these temporary values. Any representation system must have parameter tuning in some form. Either of these systems has the same problem though, of updating the information, such as Seen: I dont like Ganji (a cat) both systems must update their representation to update with this new information. Neither a symbol-system nor a neural network (closest you mean by system 2?) has been shown able to scale up to a larger system needed for an AGI, but neither has been shown ineffective I dont believe either. Whether a system explicity or implicitly stores the information I believe you must be able to ask it the reasoning behind any thought process. This can be done with either system, and may give a very long answer, but once you get a system that makes decicions and cannot explain its reasoning, that is a very scary thought, and it is truly acting irrationaly as I see it. While you cant extract a small portion of the representation from system 1 or two outside of the whole, you must be able to print out the calculated values that a Frame type system shows. James Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: James Ratcliff wrote: However, part of the key to intelligence is **self-tuning**. I believe that if an AGI system is built the right way, it can effectively tune its own parameters, hence adaptively managing its own complexity. I agree with Ben here, isnt one of the core concepts of AGI the ability to modify its behavior and to learn? That might sound like a good way to proceed, but now consider this. System 1: Suppose that the AGI is designed with a symbol system in which the symbols are very much mainstream-style symbols, and one aspect of them is that there are truth-values associated with the statements that use those symbols (as in I like cats, t=0.9). Now suppose that the very fact that truth values were being *explicitly* represented and manipulated by the system was causing it to run smack bang into the Complex Systems Problem. In other words, suppose that you cannot get that kind of design to work because when it scales up the whole truth-value maintenance mechanism just comes apart. System 2: Suppose, further, that the only AGI systems that really do work are ones in which the symbols never use truth values but use other stuff (for which there is no interpretation) and that the thing we call a truth value is actually the result of an operator that can be applied to a bunch of connected symbols. This [truth-value = external operator] idea is fundamentally different from [truth-value = internal parameter] idea, obviously. Now here is my problem: how would parameter-tuning ever cause that first AGI design to realise that it had to abandon one bit of its architecture and redesign itself? Surely this is more than parameter tuning? There is no way it could imply stop working and completely redesign all of its internal architecture to not use the t-values, and make the operators etc etc.! So here is the rub: if the CSP does cause this kind of issue (and that is why I invented the CSP idea in the first place, because it was precisely those kinds of architectural issues that seemed wrong), then parameter tuning will never be good enough, it will have to be a huge and very serious new approach to making our AGI designs flexible at the design level. Does that make sense? Richard Loosemore This will have to be done with a large amount of self-tuning, as we will not be changing parameters for every action, that wouldnt be efficient. (this part does not require actual self-code writing just yet) Its more a matter of finding out a way to guide the AGI in changing the parameters, checking the changes and reflecting back over the changes to see if they are effective for future events. What is needed at some point is being able to converse at a high level with the AGI, and correcting their behaviour, such as Dont touch that, cause it will have a bad effect and having the AGI do all of the parameter changing and link building and strengthening/weakening necessary in its memory. It may do this in a very complex way and may effect many parts of its systems, but by multiple reinforcement we should be able to guide the overall behaviour if not all of the
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Well, this wasn't quite what I was pointing to: there will always be a need for parameter tuning. That goes without saying. The point was that if an AGI developer were to commit to system 1, they are never going to get to the (hypothetical) system 2 by anything as trivial as parameter tuning. Therefore parameter tuning is useless for curing the complex systems problem. That is why I do not accept that parameter tuning is an adequate response to the problem. Richard Loosemore James Ratcliff wrote: James: Either of these systems described will have a Complexity Problem, any AGI will because it is a very complex system. System 1 I dont believe is strictly practical, as few Truth values can be stored locally directly to the frame. More realistic is there may be a temporary value such as: I like cats t=0.9 Which is calculated from some other backing facts, such as I said I like cats. t=1.0 I like Rosemary (a cat) t=0.8 then parameter tuning will never be good enough, it will have to be a huge and very serious new approach to making our AGI designs flexible at the design level. System 2, though it uses unnamed parameters, would still need to determine these temporary values. Any representation system must have parameter tuning in some form. Either of these systems has the same problem though, of updating the information, such as Seen: I dont like Ganji (a cat) both systems must update their representation to update with this new information. Neither a symbol-system nor a neural network (closest you mean by system 2?) has been shown able to scale up to a larger system needed for an AGI, but neither has been shown ineffective I dont believe either. Whether a system explicity or implicitly stores the information I believe you must be able to ask it the reasoning behind any thought process. This can be done with either system, and may give a very long answer, but once you get a system that makes decicions and cannot explain its reasoning, that is a very scary thought, and it is truly acting irrationaly as I see it. While you cant extract a small portion of the representation from system 1 or two outside of the whole, you must be able to print out the calculated values that a Frame type system shows. James */Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED]/* wrote: James Ratcliff wrote: However, part of the key to intelligence is **self-tuning**. I believe that if an AGI system is built the right way, it can effectively tune its own parameters, hence adaptively managing its own complexity. I agree with Ben here, isnt one of the core concepts of AGI the ability to modify its behavior and to learn? That might sound like a good way to proceed, but now consider this. System 1: Suppose that the AGI is designed with a symbol system in which the symbols are very much mainstream-style symbols, and one aspect of them is that there are truth-values associated with the statements that use those symbols (as in I like cats, t=0.9). Now suppose that the very fact that truth values were being *explicitly* represented and manipulated by the system was causing it to run smack bang into the Complex Systems Problem. In other words, suppose that you cannot get that kind of design to work because when it scales up the whole truth-value maintenance mechanism just comes apart. System 2: Suppose, further, that the only AGI systems that really do work are ones in which the symbols never use truth values but use other stuff (for which there is no interpretation) and that the thing we call a truth value is actually the result of an operator that can be applied to a bunch of connected symbols. This [truth-value = external operator] idea is fundamentally different from [truth-value = internal parameter] idea, obviously. Now here is my problem: how would parameter-tuning ever cause that first AGI design to realise that it had to abandon one bit of its architecture and redesign itself? Surely this is more than parameter tuning? There is no way it could imply stop working and completely redesign all of its internal architecture to not use the t-values, and make the operators etc etc.! So here is the rub: if the CSP does cause this kind of issue (and that is why I invented the CSP idea in the first place, because it was precisely those kinds of architectural issues that seemed wrong), then parameter tuning will never be good enough, it will have to be a huge and very serious new approach to making our AGI designs flexible at the design level. Does that make sense? Richard Loosemore This will have to be done with a large amount of self-tuning, as we will not be changing parameters for every action, that wouldnt be efficient. (this part does not require actual self-code
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
James Ratcliff wrote: What I dont see then, is anywhere where System 2 ( a neural net?) is better than system 1, or where it avoids the complexity issues. I was just giving an example of the degree of flexibility required - the exact details of this example are not important. My point was that dealing with the complex systems problem requires you to explore an extremely lareg range of *architectural* choices, and there is no way that these could be explored by parameter tuning (at least the way that this phrase is being used here). What I am devising is a systematic way to parameterize those architectural choices, but that is orders of magnitude more sophisticated than the kind of paramter tuning that Ben (and others) would talk about. I dont have a goal of system 2 from system one yet. And I can't parse this sentence. Richard Loosemore James */Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED]/* wrote: Well, this wasn't quite what I was pointing to: there will always be a need for parameter tuning. That goes without saying. The point was that if an AGI developer were to commit to system 1, they are never going to get to the (hypothetical) system 2 by anything as trivial as parameter tuning. Therefore parameter tuning is useless for curing the complex systems problem. That is why I do not accept that parameter tuning is an adequate response to the problem. Richard Loosemore James Ratcliff wrote: James: Either of these systems described will have a Complexity Problem, any AGI will because it is a very complex system. System 1 I dont believe is strictly practical, as few Truth values can be stored locally directly to the frame. More realistic is there may be a temporary value such as: I like cats t=0.9 Which is calculated from some other backing facts, such as I said I like cats. t=1.0 I like Rosemary (a cat) t=0.8 then parameter tuning will never be good enough, it will have to be a huge and very serious new approach to making our AGI designs flexible at the design level. System 2, though it uses unnamed parameters, would still need to determine these temporary values. Any representation system must have parameter tuning in some form. Either of these systems has the same problem though, of updating the information, such as Seen: I dont like Ganji (a cat) both systems must update their representation to update with this new information. Neither a symbol-system nor a neural network (closest you mean by system 2?) has been shown able to scale up to a larger system needed for an AGI, but neither has been shown ineffective I dont believe either. Whether a system explicity or implicitly stores the information I believe you must be able to ask it the reasoning behind any thought process. This can be done with either system, and may give a very long answer, but once you get a system that makes decicions and cannot explain its reasoning, that is a very scary thought, and it is truly acting irrationaly as I see it. While you cant extract a small portion of the representation from system 1 or two outside of the whole, you must be able to print out the calculated values that a Frame type system shows. James */Richard Loosemore /* wrote: James Ratcliff wrote: However, part of the key to intelligence is **self-tuning**. I believe that if an AGI system is built the right way, it can effectively tune its own parameters, hence adaptively managing its own complexity. I agree with Ben here, isnt one of the core concepts of AGI the ability to modify its behavior and to learn? That might sound like a good way to proceed, but now consider this. System 1: Suppose that the AGI is designed with a symbol system in which the symbols are very much mainstream-style symbols, and one aspect of them is that there are truth-values associated with the statements that use those symbols (as in I like cats, t=0.9). Now suppose that the very fact that truth values were being *explicitly* represented and manipulated by the system was causing it to run smack bang into the Complex Systems Problem. In other words, suppose that you cannot get that kind of design to work because when it scales up the whole truth-value maintenance mechanism just comes apart. System 2: Suppose, further, that the only AGI systems that really do work are ones in which the symbols never use truth values but use other stuff (for which there is no interpretation) and that the thing we call a truth value is actually the result of an
Re: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Richard: If someone asked that, I couldn't think of anything to say except ... why *wouldn't* it be possible? It would strike me as just not a question that made any sense, to ask for the exact reasons why it is possible to paint things that are not representational. Jeez, Richard, of course, it's possible... we all agree that AGI is possible (well in my case, only with a body). The question is - how? !*? That's what we're here for - to have IDEAS.. rather than handwave... (see, I knew you would) ...in this case, about how a program can be maximally adaptive - change course at any point Okay here's my v.v. rough idea - the core two lines or principles of a much more complex program - for engaging in any activity, solving any problem - with maximum adaptivity 1. Choose any reasonable path - and any reasonable way to move along it - to the goal. [and then move] [reasonable = likely to be as or more profitable than any of the other paths you have time to consider] 2. If you have not yet reached the goal, and if you have not any other superior goals [anything better to do], choose any other reasonable path - and way of moving - that will lead you closer to the goal. This presupposes what the human brain clearly has - the hierarchical ability to recognize literally ANYTHING as a thing, path, way of moving/ move or goal. It can perceive literally anything from these multifunctional perspectives. This presupposes that something like these concepts are fundamental to the brain's operation. This also presupposes what you might say are - roughly - the basic principles of neuroeconomics and decision theory - that the brain does and any adaptive brain must, continually assess every action for profitability - for its rewards, risks and costs. [The big deal here is those two words any - and any path etc that is as profitable - those two words/ concepts give maximal freedom and adaptivity - and true freedom] What we're talking about here BTW is when you think about it, a truly universal program for soving, and learning how to solve, literally any problem. [Oh, there has to be a third line or clause - and a lot more too of course - that says: 1a. If you can't see any reasonable paths etc - look for some.] So what are your ideas, Richard, here? Have you actually thought about it? Jeez, what do we pay you all this money for? - 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=73929597-fb8991
Re: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Mike Tintner wrote: Richard: If someone asked that, I couldn't think of anything to say except ... why *wouldn't* it be possible? It would strike me as just not a question that made any sense, to ask for the exact reasons why it is possible to paint things that are not representational. Jeez, Richard, of course, it's possible... we all agree that AGI is possible (well in my case, only with a body). The question is - how? !*? That's what we're here for - to have IDEAS.. rather than handwave... (see, I knew you would) ...in this case, about how a program can be maximally adaptive - change course at any point Hold on a minute there. What I have been addressing is just your initial statement: Cognitive science treats the human mind as basically a programmed computational machine much like actual programmed computers - and programs are normally conceived of as rational. - coherent sets of steps etc. The *only* point I have been trying to establish is that when you said and programs are normally conceived of as rational this made no sense because programs can do anything at all, rational or irrational. Now you say Jeez, Richard, of course, it's possible [to build programs that are either rational or irrational] . The question is - how? !*? No, that is another question, one that I have not been addressing. My only goal was to establish that you cannot say that programs built by cognitive scientists are *necessarily* rational (in you usage), or that they are normally conceived of as rational. Most of the theories/models/programs built by cognitive scientists are completely neutral on the question of rational issues of the sort you talk about, because they are about small aspects of cognition where those issues don't have any bearing. There are an infinite number of ways to build a cognitive model in such a way that it fits your definition of irrational, just as there are an infinite number of ways to use paint in such a way that the resulting picture is abstract rather than representational. Nothing would be proved by my producing an actual example of an irrational cognitive model, just as nothing would be proved by my painting an abstract painting just to prove that that is possible. I think you have agreed that computers and computational models can in principle be used to produce systems that fit your definition of irrational, and since that is what I was trying to establish, I think we're done, no? If you don't agree, then there is probably something wrong with your picture of what computers can do (how they can be programmed), and it would be helpful if you would say what exactly it is about them that makes you think this is not possible. Looking at your suggestion below, I am guessing that you might see an AGI program as involving explicit steps of the sort If x is true, then consider these factors and then proceed to the next step. That is an extrarodinarily simplistic picture of what copmputers systems, in general are able to do. So simplistic as to be not general at all. For example, in my system, decisions about what to do next are the result of hundreds or thousands of atoms (basic units of knowledge, all of which are active processors) coming together in a very context-dependent way and trying to form coherent models of the situation. This cloud of knowledge atoms will cause an outcome to emerge, but they almost never go through a sequence of steps, like a linear computer program, to generate an outcome. As a result I cannot exactly predict what they will do on a particular occasion (they will have a general consistency in their behavior, but that consistency is not imposed by a sequence of machine instructions, it is emergent). One of my problems is that it is so obvious to me that programs can do things that do not look rule governed that I can hardly imagine anyone would think otherwise. Perhaps that is the source of the misunderstanding here. Richard Loosemore Okay here's my v.v. rough idea - the core two lines or principles of a much more complex program - for engaging in any activity, solving any problem - with maximum adaptivity 1. Choose any reasonable path - and any reasonable way to move along it - to the goal. [and then move] [reasonable = likely to be as or more profitable than any of the other paths you have time to consider] 2. If you have not yet reached the goal, and if you have not any other superior goals [anything better to do], choose any other reasonable path - and way of moving - that will lead you closer to the goal. This presupposes what the human brain clearly has - the hierarchical ability to recognize literally ANYTHING as a thing, path, way of moving/ move or goal. It can perceive literally anything from these multifunctional perspectives. This presupposes that something like these concepts are fundamental to the brain's operation. This also presupposes what you
Re: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Richard: in my system, decisions about what to do next are the result of hundreds or thousands of atoms (basic units of knowledge, all of which are active processors) coming together in a very context-dependent way and trying to form coherent models of the situation. This cloud of knowledge atoms will cause an outcome to emerge, but they almost never go through a sequence of steps, like a linear computer program, to generate an outcome. As a result I cannot exactly predict what they will do on a particular occasion (they will have a general consistency in their behavior, but that consistency is not imposed by a sequence of machine instructions, it is emergent). Sounds - just a tad - like somewhat recent Darwinian selection ideas of how the brain thinks. Do you think the brain actually thinks in your way? Doesn't have to - but you claim to be based on the brain. (You don't have a self engaged in conscious, to be or not to be,decisionmaking, I take it?) - 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=73983345-d15736
RE: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Mike, When I write about my system, (which sounds like it is designed somewhat like yours), I am talking about a system that has only been thought about deeply, but never yet built. When you write about my system do you actually have something up and running? If so, hats off to you. And, if so, how much do you have up and running, how much of it can you describe, and what sorts of things can it do and how well does it work? Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Mike Tintner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 08, 2007 4:16 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ..] Richard: in my system, decisions about what to do next are the result of hundreds or thousands of atoms (basic units of knowledge, all of which are active processors) coming together in a very context-dependent way and trying to form coherent models of the situation. This cloud of knowledge atoms will cause an outcome to emerge, but they almost never go through a sequence of steps, like a linear computer program, to generate an outcome. As a result I cannot exactly predict what they will do on a particular occasion (they will have a general consistency in their behavior, but that consistency is not imposed by a sequence of machine instructions, it is emergent). Sounds - just a tad - like somewhat recent Darwinian selection ideas of how the brain thinks. Do you think the brain actually thinks in your way? Doesn't have to - but you claim to be based on the brain. (You don't have a self engaged in conscious, to be or not to be,decisionmaking, I take it?) - 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=73985772-4d045e
Re: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Ed Porter wrote: Mike, When I write about my system, (which sounds like it is designed somewhat like yours), I am talking about a system that has only been thought about deeply, but never yet built. When you write about my system do you actually have something up and running? If so, hats off to you. And, if so, how much do you have up and running, how much of it can you describe, and what sorts of things can it do and how well does it work? Ed Porter You presumably meant the question for me, since I was the one who said my system in the quote below. The answer is that I do have a great deal of code implementing various aspects of my system, but questions like how well does it work are premature: I am experimenting with mechanisms, and building all the tools needed to do more systematic experiments on those mechanisms, not attempting to build the entire system yet. For the most part, though, I use the phrase my system to mean the architecture, which is more detailed than the particular code I have written. Richard Loosemore -Original Message- From: Mike Tintner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 08, 2007 4:16 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ..] Richard: in my system, decisions about what to do next are the result of hundreds or thousands of atoms (basic units of knowledge, all of which are active processors) coming together in a very context-dependent way and trying to form coherent models of the situation. This cloud of knowledge atoms will cause an outcome to emerge, but they almost never go through a sequence of steps, like a linear computer program, to generate an outcome. As a result I cannot exactly predict what they will do on a particular occasion (they will have a general consistency in their behavior, but that consistency is not imposed by a sequence of machine instructions, it is emergent). Sounds - just a tad - like somewhat recent Darwinian selection ideas of how the brain thinks. Do you think the brain actually thinks in your way? Doesn't have to - but you claim to be based on the brain. (You don't have a self engaged in conscious, to be or not to be,decisionmaking, I take it?) - 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/?; - 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=74001696-312be4
Re: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Mike Tintner wrote: Well, I'm not sure if not doing logic necessarily means a system is irrational, i.e if rationality equates to logic. Any system consistently followed can classify as rational. If for example, a program consistently does Freudian free association and produces nothing but a chain of associations with some connection: bird - - feathers - four..tops or on the contrary, a 'nonsense' chain where there is NO connection.. logic.. sex... ralph .. essence... pi... Loosemore... then it is rational - it consistently follows a system with a set of rules. And the rules could, for argument's sake, specify that every step is illogical - as in breaking established rules of logic - or that steps are alternately logical and illogical. That too would be rational. Neural nets from the little I know are also rational inasmuch as they follow rules. Ditto Hofstadter Johnson-Laird from again the little I know also seem rational - Johnson-Laird's jazz improvisation program from my cursory reading seemed rational and not truly creative. Sorry to be brief, but: This raises all sorts of deep issues about what exactly you would mean by rational. If a bunch of things (computational processes) come together and each contribute something to a decision that results in an output, and the exact output choice depends on so many factors coming together that it would not necessarily be the same output if roughly the same situation occurred another time, and if none of these things looked like a rule of any kind, then would you still call it rational? If the answer is yes then whatever would count as not rational? Richard Loosemore I do not know enough to pass judgment on your system, but you do strike me as a rational kind of guy (although probably philosophically much closer to me than most here as you seem to indicate). Your attitude to emotions seems to me rational, and your belief that you can produce an AGI that will almost definitely be cooperative , also bespeaks rationality. In the final analysis, irrationality = creativity (although I'm using the word with a small c, rather than the social kind, where someone produces a new idea that no one in society has had or published before). If a system can change its approach and rules of reasoning at literally any step of problem-solving, then it is truly crazy/ irrational (think of a crazy path). And it will be capable of producing all the human irrationalities that I listed previously - like not even defining or answering the problem. It will by the same token have the capacity to be truly creative, because it will ipso facto be capable of lateral thinking at any step of problem-solving. Is your system capable of that? Or anything close? Somehow I doubt it, or you'd already be claiming the solution to both AGI and computational creativity. But yes, please do send me your paper. P.S. I hope you won't - I actually don't think - that you will get all pedantic on me like so many AI-ers say ah but we already have programs that can modify their rules. Yes, but they do that according to metarules - they are still basically rulebound. A crazy/ creative program is rulebreaking (and rulecreating) - can break ALL the rules, incl. metarules. Rulebound/rulebreaking is one of the most crucial differences between narrow AI/AGI. Richard: In the same way computer programs are completely neutral and can be used to build systems that are either rational or irrational. My system is not rational in that sense at all. Richard, Out of interest, rather than pursuing the original argument: 1) Who are these programmers/ systembuilders who try to create programs (and what are the programs/ systems) that are either irrational or non-rational (and described as such)? I'm a little partied out right now, so all I have time for is to suggest: Hofstadter's group builds all kinds of programs that do things without logic. Phil Johnson-Laird (and students) used to try to model reasoning ability using systems that did not do logic. All kinds of language processing people use various kinds of neural nets: see my earlier research papers with Gordon Brown et al, as well as folks like Mark Seidenberg, Kim Plunkett etc. Marslen-Wilson and Tyler used something called a Cohort Model to describe some aspects of language. I am just dragging up the name of anyone who has ever done any kind of computer modelling of some aspect of cognition: all of these people do not use systems that do any kind of logical processing. I could go on indefinitely. There are probably hundreds of them. They do not try to build complete systems, of course, just local models. When I have proposed (in different threads) that the mind is not rationally, algorithmically programmed I have been met with uniform and often fierce resistance both on this and another AI forum. Hey, join the club! You have read my little brouhaha with
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
On Dec 6, 2007 8:06 PM, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben, To the extent it is not proprietary, could you please list some of the types of parameters that have to be tuned, and the types, if any, of Loosemore-type complexity problems you envision in Novamente or have experienced with WebMind, in such tuning and elsewhere? Ed Porter A specific list of parameters would have no meaning without a huge explanation which I don't have time to give... Instead I'll list a few random areas where choices need to be made, that appear localized at first but wind up affecting the whole -- attention allocation is handled by an artificial economy mechanism, which has the same sorts of parameters as any economic system (analogues of interest rates, rent rates, etc.) -- program trees representing internal procedures are normalized via a set of normalization rules, which collectively cast procedures into a certain normal form. There are many ways to do this. -- the pruning of (backward and forward chaining) inference trees uses a statistical bandit problem methodology, which requires a priori probabilities to be ascribed to various inference steps Fortunately though in each of the above three examples there is theory that can guide parameter tning (different theories in the three cases -- dynamic systems theory for the artificial economy; formal computer science and language theory for program tree reduction; and Bayesian stats for the pruning issue) Webmind AI Engine had too many parameters and too much coupling between subsystems. We cast parameter optimization as an AI learning problem but it was a hard one, though we did make headway on it. Novamente Engine has much coupling btw subsystems, but no unnecessary coupling; and many fewer parameters on which system behavior can sensitively depend. Definitely, minimization of the number of needful-of-adjustment parameters is a very key aspect of AGI system design. -- 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/?member_id=8660244id_secret=73598324-4bf78b
Re: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Mike, I think you are going to have to be specific about what you mean by irrational because you mostly just say that all the processes that could possibly exist in computers are rational, and I am wondering what else is there that irrational could possibly mean. I have named many processes that seem to me to fit the irrational definition, but without being too clear about it you have declared them all to be just rational, so now I have no idea what you can be meaning by the word. Richard Loosemore Mike Tintner wrote: Richard:This raises all sorts of deep issues about what exactly you would mean by rational. If a bunch of things (computational processes) come together and each contribute something to a decision that results in an output, and the exact output choice depends on so many factors coming together that it would not necessarily be the same output if roughly the same situation occurred another time, and if none of these things looked like a rule of any kind, then would you still call it rational?If the answer is yes then whatever would count as not rational? I'm not sure what you mean - but this seems consistent with other impressions I've been getting of your thinking. Let me try and cut through this: if science were to change from its prevailing conception of the human mind as a rational, computational machine to what I am suggesting - i.e. a creative, compositional, irrational machine - we would be talking of a major revolution that would impact right through the sciences - and radically extend the scope of scientific investigation into human thought. It would be the end of the deterministic conception of humans and animals and ultimately be a revolution of Darwinian proportions. Hofstadter co are absolutely not revolutionaries. Johnson-Laird conceives of the human mind as an automaton. None of them are fundamentally changing the prevailing conceptions of cognitive science. No one has reacted to them with shock or horror or delight. I suspect that what you are talking about is loosely akin to the ideas of some that quantum mechanics has changed scientific determinism. It hasn't - the fact that we can't measure certain quantum phenomena with precision does not mean that they are not fundamentally deterministic. And science remains deterministic. Similarly, if you make a computer system very complex, keep changing the factors involved in computations, add random factors whatever, you are not necessarily making it non-rational. You make it v. difficult to understand the computer's rationality, (and possibly extend our conception of rationality), but the system may still be basically rational, just as quantum particles are still in all probability basically deterministic. As a side-issue, I don't believe that human reasoning, conscious and unconscious, is remotely, even infinitesimally as complex as that of the AI systems you guys all seem to be building. The human brain surely never seizes up with the kind of complex, runaway calculations that y'all have been conjuring up in your arguments. That only happens when you have a rational system that obeys basically rigid (even if complex) rules. The human brain is cleverer than that - it doesn't have any definite rules for any activities. In fact, you should be so lucky as to have a nice, convenient set of rules, even complex ones, to guide you when you sit down to write your computer programs. - 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=73610112-93352e
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Jean-Paul Van Belle wrote: 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 :) Interesting thoughts: remind me, if I forget, that when I get my website functioning and can put longer papers into a permanent repository, that we all need to have a forward-looking discussion about some of the detailed issues that might arise here. That is, going beyond merely arguing about whether or not there is a problem. I have many thoughts about what you say, but no time right now, so I will come back to this. The short version of my thoughts is that we need to look into some of the details of what I propose to do, and try to evaluate the possible dangers of not taking the path I suggest. Richard Loosemore - 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=73591687-f58813
Re: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Mike Tintner wrote: Richard: Mike, I think you are going to have to be specific about what you mean by irrational because you mostly just say that all the processes that could possibly exist in computers are rational, and I am wondering what else is there that irrational could possibly mean. I have named many processes that seem to me to fit the irrational definition, but without being too clear about it you have declared them all to be just rational, so now I have no idea what you can be meaning by the word. Richard, Er, it helps to read my posts. From my penultimate post to you: If a system can change its approach and rules of reasoning at literally any step of problem-solving, then it is truly crazy/ irrational (think of a crazy path). And it will be capable of producing all the human irrationalities that I listed previously - like not even defining or answering the problem. It will by the same token have the capacity to be truly creative, because it will ipso facto be capable of lateral thinking at any step of problem-solving. Is your system capable of that? Or anything close? Somehow I doubt it, or you'd already be claiming the solution to both AGI and computational creativity. A rational system follows a set of rules in solving a problem (which can incl. rules that self-modify according to metarules) ; a creative, irrational system can change/break/create any and all rules (incl. metarules) at any point of solving a problem - the ultimate, by definition, in adaptivity. (Much like you, and indeed all of us, change the rules of engagement much of the time in our discussions here). Listen, no need to reply - because you're obviously not really interested. To me that's ironic, though, because this is absolutely the most central issue there is in AGI. But no matter. No, I am interested, I was just confused, and I did indeed miss the above definition (got a lot I have to do right now, so am going very fast through my postings) -- sorry about that. The fact is that the computational models I mentioned (those by Hofstadter etc) are all just attempts to understand part of the problem of how a cognitive system works, and all of them are consistent with the design of a system that is irrational accroding to your above definition. They may look rational, but that is just an illusion: every one of them is so small that it is completely neutral with respect to the rationality of a complete system. They could be used by someone who wanted to build a rational system or an irrational system, it does not matter. For my own system (and for Hofstadter too), the natural extension of the system to a full AGI design would involve a system [that] can change its approach and rules of reasoning at literally any step of problem-solving it will be capable of producing all the human irrationalities that I listed previously - like not even defining or answering the problem. It will by the same token have the capacity to be truly creative, because it will ipso facto be capable of lateral thinking at any step of problem-solving. This is very VERY much part of the design. I prefer not to use the term irrational to describe it (because that has other connotations), but using your definition, it would be irrational. There is not any problem with doing all of this. Does this clarify the question? I think really I would reflect the question back at you and ask why you would think that this is a difficult thing to do? It is not difficult to design a system this way: some people like the trad-AI folks don't do it (yet), and appear not to be trying, but there is nothing in principle that makes it difficult to build a system of this sort. Richard Loosemore - 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=73685934-1acb8b
Re: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Richard: Mike, I think you are going to have to be specific about what you mean by irrational because you mostly just say that all the processes that could possibly exist in computers are rational, and I am wondering what else is there that irrational could possibly mean. I have named many processes that seem to me to fit the irrational definition, but without being too clear about it you have declared them all to be just rational, so now I have no idea what you can be meaning by the word. Richard, Er, it helps to read my posts. From my penultimate post to you: If a system can change its approach and rules of reasoning at literally any step of problem-solving, then it is truly crazy/ irrational (think of a crazy path). And it will be capable of producing all the human irrationalities that I listed previously - like not even defining or answering the problem. It will by the same token have the capacity to be truly creative, because it will ipso facto be capable of lateral thinking at any step of problem-solving. Is your system capable of that? Or anything close? Somehow I doubt it, or you'd already be claiming the solution to both AGI and computational creativity. A rational system follows a set of rules in solving a problem (which can incl. rules that self-modify according to metarules) ; a creative, irrational system can change/break/create any and all rules (incl. metarules) at any point of solving a problem - the ultimate, by definition, in adaptivity. (Much like you, and indeed all of us, change the rules of engagement much of the time in our discussions here). Listen, no need to reply - because you're obviously not really interested. To me that's ironic, though, because this is absolutely the most central issue there is in AGI. But no matter. - 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=73661748-adcbd5
Re: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Mike Tintner wrote: Richard:For my own system (and for Hofstadter too), the natural extension of the system to a full AGI design would involve a system [that] can change its approach and rules of reasoning at literally any step of problem-solving it will be capable of producing all the human irrationalities that I listed previously - like not even defining or answering the problem. It will by the same token have the capacity to be truly creative, because it will ipso facto be capable of lateral thinking at any step of problem-solving. This is very VERY much part of the design. There is not any problem with doing all of this. Does this clarify the question? I think really I would reflect the question back at you and ask why you would think that this is a difficult thing to do? Richard, Fine. Sounds interesting. But you don't actually clarify or explain anything. Why don't you explain how you or anyone else can fundamentally change your approach/rules at any point of solving a problem? Why don't you, just in plain English, - in philosophical as opposed to programming form - set out the key rules or principles that allow you or anyone else to do this? I have never seen such key rules or principles anywhere, nor indeed even adumbrated anywhere. (Fancy word, but it just came to mind). And since they are surely a central problem for AGI - and no one has solved AGI - how on earth could I not think this a difficult matter? I have some v. rough ideas about this, which I can gladly set out. But I'd like to hear yours - you should be able to do it briefly. But please, no handwaving. I will try to think about your question when I can but meanwhile think about this: if we go back to the analogy of painting and whether or not it can be used to depict things that are abstract or non-representational, how would you respond to someone who wanted exact details of how come painting could allow that to be possible.? If someone asked that, I couldn't think of anything to say except ... why *wouldn't* it be possible? It would strike me as just not a question that made any sense, to ask for the exact reasons why it is possible to paint things that are not representational. I simply cannot understand why anyone would think it not possible to do that. It is possible: it is not easy to do it right, but that's not the point. Computers can be used to program systems of any sort (including deeply irrational things like Microsoft Office), so why would anyone think that AGI systems must exhibit only a certain sort of design? This isn't handwaving, it is just genuine bafflement. Richard Loosemore - 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=73903282-a471b6
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Ben: To publish your ideas in academic journals, you need to ground them in the existing research literature, not in your own personal introspective observations. Big mistake. Think what would have happened if Freud had omitted the 40-odd examples of slips in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (if I've got the right book!) The scientific heavyweights are the people who are heavily grounded. The big difference between Darwin and Wallace is all those examples/research, and not the creative idea. And what I didn't explain in my simple, but I believe important, two-stage theory of creative development is that there's an immense psychological resistance to moving onto the second stage. You have enough psychoanalytical understanding, I think, to realise that the unusual length of your reply to me may possibly be a reflection of that resistance and an inner conflict. The resistance occurs inpart because you have to privilege a normally underderprivileged level of the mind - the level that provides and seeks actual, historical examples of generalisations, as opposed to the normally more privileged level that provides hypothetical, made-up examples . Look at philosophers and you will see virtually an entire profession/field that has not moved beyond providing hypothetical examples. It's much harder to deal in actual examples/ evidence - things that have actually happened - because they take longer to locate in memory. You have to be patient while your brain drags them out. But you can normally make up examples almost immediately. (If only Richard's massive parallel, cerebral computation were true!) But BTW an interesting misunderstanding on your part is that evidence here means *introspective* observations. Freud's evidence for the unconscious consisted entirely of publicly observable events - the slips. You must do similarly for your multiple selves - not tell me, say, how fragmented you feel! Try and produce such evidence I think you'll find you will rapidly lose enthusiasm for your idea. Stick to the same single, but divided self described with extraordinary psychological consistency by every great religion over 1000's of years and a whole string of humanist psychologists including Freud, - and make sure your AGI has something similar. P.S. Just recalling a further difference between the original and the creative thinker - the creative one has greater *complexes* of ideas - it usually doesn't take just one idea to produce major creative work, as people often think, but a whole interdependent network of them. That, too, is v. hard. - 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=73122427-f045c6
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
JVPB:You seem to have missed what many A(G)I people (Ben, Richard, etc.) mean by 'complexity' (as opposed to the common usage of complex meaning difficult). Well, I as an ignoramus, was wondering about this - so thankyou. And it wasn't clear at all to me from Richard's paper what he meant. What I'm taking out from your account is that it involves random inputs...? Is there a fuller account of it? Is it the random dimension that he/others hope will produce emergent/human-like behaviour? (..because if so, I'd disagree - I'd argue the complications of human behaviour flow from conflict/ conflicting goals - which happens to be signally missing from his (and cognitive science's) ideas about emotions). - 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=73135416-76c456
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
ATM: http://mentifex.virtualentity.com/mind4th.html -- an AGI prototype -- has just gone through a major bug-solving update, and is now much better at maintaining chains of continuous thought -- after the user has entered sufficient knowledge for the AI to think about. It doesn't have - you didn't try to give it - independent curiosity (like an infant)? - 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=73137353-3f3449
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
On Dec 5, 2007 6:23 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben: To publish your ideas in academic journals, you need to ground them in the existing research literature, not in your own personal introspective observations. Big mistake. Think what would have happened if Freud had omitted the 40-odd examples of slips in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (if I've got the right book!) Obviously, Freud's reliance on introspection and qualitative experience had plusses and minuses. He generated a lot of nonsense as well as some brilliant ideas. But anyway, I was talking about style of exposition, not methodology of doing work. If Freud were a professor today, he would write in a different style in order to get journal publications; though he might still write some books in a more expository style as well. I was pointing out that, due to the style of exposition required in contemporary academic culture, one can easily get a false impression that no one in academia is doing original thinking -- but the truth is that, even if you DO original thinking, you are required in writing your ideas up for publication to give them the appearance of minimal originality via grounding them exorbitantly in the prior literature (even if in fact their conception had nothing, or very little, to do with the prior literature). I'm not saying I like this -- I'm just describing the reality. Also, in the psych literature, grounding an idea in your own personal observations is not acceptable and is not going to get you published -- unless of course you're a clinical psychologist, which I am not. The scientific heavyweights are the people who are heavily grounded. The big difference between Darwin and Wallace is all those examples/research, and not the creative idea. That is an unwarranted overgeneralization. Anyway YOU were the one who was harping on the lack of creativity in AGI. Now you've changed your tune and are harping on the lack of {creativity coupled with a lot of empirical research} Ever consider that this research is going on RIGHT NOW? I don't know why you think it should be instantaneous. A number of us are doing concrete research work aimed at investigating our creative ideas about AGI. Research is hard. It takes time. Darwin's research took time. The Manhattan Project took time. etc. And what I didn't explain in my simple, but I believe important, two-stage theory of creative development is that there's an immense psychological resistance to moving onto the second stage. You have enough psychoanalytical understanding, I think, to realise that the unusual length of your reply to me may possibly be a reflection of that resistance and an inner conflict. What is bizarre to me, in this psychoanalysis of Ben Goertzel that you present, is that you overlook the fact that I am spending most of my time on concrete software projects, not on abstract psychological/philosophical theory Including the Novamente Cognition Engine project which is aimed precisely at taking some of my creative ideas about AGI and realizing them in useful software As it happens, my own taste IS more for theory, math and creative arts than software development -- but, I decided some time ago that the most IMPORTANT thing I could do would be to focus a lot of attention on implementation and detailed design rather than just generating more and more funky ideas. It is always tempting to me to consider my role as being purely that of a thinker, and leave all practical issues to others who like that sort of thing better -- but I consider the creation of AGI *so* important that I've been willing to devote the bulk of my time to activities that run against my personal taste and inclination, for some years now And fortunately I have found some great software engineers as collaborators. P.S. Just recalling a further difference between the original and the creative thinker - the creative one has greater *complexes* of ideas - it usually doesn't take just one idea to produce major creative work, as people often think, but a whole interdependent network of them. That, too, is v. hard. Mike, you can make a lot of valid criticisms against me, but I don't think you can claim I have not originated an interdependent network of creative ideas. I certainly have done so. You may not like or believe my various ideas, but for sure they form an interdependent network. Read The Hidden Pattern for evidence. -- Ben Goertzel - 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=73146505-9fe3b7
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
On Dec 6, 2007 8:23 AM, Benjamin Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 5, 2007 6:23 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: resistance to moving onto the second stage. You have enough psychoanalytical understanding, I think, to realise that the unusual length of your reply to me may possibly be a reflection of that resistance and an inner conflict. What is bizarre to me, in this psychoanalysis of Ben Goertzel that you present, is that you overlook [snip] Mike, you can make a lot of valid criticisms against me, but I don't think you can claim I have not originated an interdependent network of creative ideas. I certainly have done so. You may not like or believe my various ideas, but for sure they form an interdependent network. Read The Hidden Pattern for evidence. I just wanted to comment on how well Ben accepted Mike's 'analysis.' Personally, I was offended by Mike's inconsiderate use of language. Apparently we have different ideas of etiquette, so that's all I'll say about it. (rather than be drawn into a completely off-topic pissing contest over who is right to say what, etc.) - 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=73157985-48127a
RE: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Jean-Paul, Although complexity is one of the areas associated with AI where I have less knowledge than many on the list, I was aware of the general distinction you are making. What I was pointing out in my email to Richard Loosemore what that the definitions in his paper Complex Systems, Artificial Intelligence and Theoretical Psychology, for irreducible computability and global-local interconnect themselves are not totally clear about this distinction, and as a result, when Richard says that those two issues are an unavoidable part of AGI design that must be much more deeply understood before AGI can advance, by the more loose definitions which would cover the types of complexity involved in large matrix calculations and the design of a massive supercomputer, of course those issues would arise in AGI design, but its no big deal because we have a long history of dealing with them. But in my email to Richard I said I was assuming he was not using this more loose definitions of these words, because if he were, they would not present the unexpected difficulties of the type he has been predicting. I said I though he was dealing with more the potentially unruly type of complexity, I assume you were talking about. I am aware of that type of complexity being a potential problem, but I have designed my system to hopefully control it. A modern-day well functioning economy is complex (people at the Santa Fe Institute often cite economies as examples of complex systems), but it is often amazingly unchaotic considering how loosely it is organized and how many individual entities it has in it, and how many transitions it is constantly undergoing. Unsually, unless something bangs on it hard (such as having the price of a major commodity all of a sudden triple), it has a fair amount of stability, while constantly creating new winners and losers (which is a productive form of mini-chaos). Of course in the absence of regulation it is naturally prone to boom and bust cycles. So the system would need regulation. Most of my system operates on a message passing system with little concern for synchronization, it does not require low latencies, most of its units, operate under fairly similar code. But hopefully when you get it all working together it will be fairly dynamic, but that dynamism with be under multiple controls. I think we are going to have to get such systems up and running to find you just how hard or easy they will be to control, which I acknowledged in my email to Richard. I think that once we do we will be in a much better position to think about what is needed to control them. I believe such control will be one of the major intellectual challenges to getting AGI to function at a human-level. This issue is not only preventing runaway conditions, it is optimizing the intelligence of the inferencing, which I think will be even more import and diffiducle. (There are all sorts of damping mechanisms and selective biasing mechanism that should be able to prevent many types of chaotic behaviors.) But I am quite confident with multiple teams working on it, these control problems could be largely overcome in several years, with the systems themselves doing most of the learning. Even a little OpenCog AGI on a PC, could be interesting first indication of the extent to which complexity will present control problems. As I said if you had 3G of ram for representation, that should allow about 50 million atoms. Over time you would probably end up with at least hundreds of thousand of complex patterns, and it would be interesting to see how easy it would be to properly control them, and get them to work together as a properly functioning thought economy in what ever small interactive world they developed their self-organizing pattern base. Of course on such a PC based system you would only, on average, be able to do about 10million pattern to pattern activations a second, so you would be talking about a fairly trivial system, but with say 100K patterns, it would be a good first indication of how easy or hard agi systems will be to control. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Jean-Paul Van Belle [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 1:34 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] None of you seem to be able ... Hi Ed You seem to have missed what many A(G)I people (Ben, Richard, etc.) mean by 'complexity' (as opposed to the common usage of complex meaning difficult). It is not the *number* of calculations or interconnects that gives rise to complexity or chaos, but their nature. E.g. calculating the eigen-values of a n=10^1 matrix is *very* difficult but not complex. So the large matrix calculations, map-reduces or BleuGene configuration are very simple. A map-reduce or matrix calculation is typically one line of code (at least in Python - which is where Google probably gets the idea from :) To make them complex, you need to go beyond. E.g. a 500K-node 3 layer
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
, 2007 1:34 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] None of you seem to be able ... Hi Ed You seem to have missed what many A(G)I people (Ben, Richard, etc.) mean by 'complexity' (as opposed to the common usage of complex meaning difficult). It is not the *number* of calculations or interconnects that gives rise to complexity or chaos, but their nature. E.g. calculating the eigen-values of a n=10^1 matrix is *very* difficult but not complex. So the large matrix calculations, map-reduces or BleuGene configuration are very simple. A map-reduce or matrix calculation is typically one line of code (at least in Python - which is where Google probably gets the idea from :) To make them complex, you need to go beyond. E.g. a 500K-node 3 layer neural network is simplistic (not simple:), chaining only 10K NNs together (each with 10K input/outputs) in a random network (with only a few of these NNs serving as input or output modules) would produce complex behaviour, especially if for each iteration, the input vector changes dynamically. Note that the latter has FAR FEWER interconnects i.e. would need much fewer calculations but its behaviour would be impossible to predict (you can only simulate it) whereas the behaviour of the 500K is much more easily understood. BlueGene has a simple architecture, a network of computers who do mainly the same thing (e.g the GooglePlex) has predictive behaviour, however if each computer acts/behaves very differently (I guess on the internet we could classify users into a number of distinct agent-like behaviours), you'll get complex behaviour. It's the difference in complexity between a 8Gbit RAM chip and say an old P3 CPU chip. The latter has less than one-hundredth of the transistors but is far more complex and displays interesting behaviour, the former doesn't. Jean-Paul On 2007/12/05 at 23:12, in message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes, my vision of a human AGI would be a very complex machine. Yes, a lot of its outputs could only be made with human level reasonableness after a very large amount of computation. I know of no shortcuts around the need to do such complex computation. So it arguably falls in to what you say Wolfram calls computational irreducibility. But the same could be said for any of many types of computations, such as large matrix equations or Google's map-reduces, which are routinely performed on supercomputers. So if that is how you define irreducibility, its not that big a deal. It just means you have to do a lot of computing to get an answer, which I have assumed all along for AGI (Remember I am the one pushing for breaking the small hardware mindset.) But it doesn't mean we don't know how to do such computing or that we have to do a lot more complexity research, of the type suggested in your paper, before we can successfully designing AGIs. [...] Although it is easy to design system where the systems behavior would be sufficiently chaotic that such design would be impossible, it seems likely that it is also possible to design complex system in which the behavior is not so chaotic or unpredictable. Take the internet. Something like 10^8 computers talk to each other, and in general it works as designed. Take IBM's supercomputer BlueGene L, 64K dual core processor computer each with at least 256MBytes all capable of receiving and passing messages at 4Ghz on each of over 3 dimensions, and capable of performing 100's of trillions of FLOP/sec. Such a system probably contains at least 10^14 non-linear separately functional elements, and yet it works as designed. If there is a global-local disconnect in the BlueGene L, which there could be depending on your definition, it is not a problem for most of the computation it does. -- 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/?; - 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=73163220-1ae588
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Mike Tintner wrote: Richard: Now, interpreting that result is not easy, Richard, I get the feeling you're getting understandably tired with all your correspondence today. Interpreting *any* of the examples of *hard* cog sci that you give is not easy. They're all useful, stimulating stuff, but they don't add up to a hard pic. of the brain's cognitive architecture. Perhaps Ben will back me up on this - it's a rather important point - our overall *integrated* picture of the brain's cognitive functioning is really v. poor, although certainly we have a wealth of details about, say, which part of the brain is somehow connected to a given operation. You make an important point, but in your haste to make it you may have overlooked the fact that I really agree with you ... and have gone on to say that I am trying to fix that problem. What I mean by that: if you look at cog psy/cog sci in a superficial way you might come awy with the strong impression that they don't add up to a hard pic. of the brain's cognitive architecture. Sure. But that is what I meant when I said that cog sci has a huge amount of information stashed away, but it is in a format that makes it very hard for someone trying to build an intelligent system to actually use. I believe I can see deeper into this problem, and I think that cog sci can be made to add up to a consistent picture, but it requires an extra organizational ingredient that I am in the process of adding right now. The root of the problem is that the cog sci and AI communities both have extremely rigid protocols about how to do research, which are incompatible with each other. In cog sci you are expected to produce a micro-theory for every experimental result, and efforts to work on larger theories or frameworks without introducing new experimental results that are directly explained are frowned upon. The result is a style of work that produces local patch theories that do not have any generality. The net result of all this is that when you say that our overall *integrated* picture of the brain's cognitive functioning is really v. poor I would point out that this is only true if you replace the our with the AI community's. Richard:I admit that I am confused right now: in the above paragraphs you say that your position is that the human mind is 'rational' and then later that it is 'irrational' - was the first one of those a typo? Richard, No typo whatsoever if you just reread. V. clear. I say and said: *scientific pychology* and *cog sci* treat the mind as rational. I am the weirdo who is saying this is nonsense - the mind is irrational/crazy/creative - rationality is a major *achievement* not something that comes naturally. Mike Tintner= crazy/irrational- somehow, I don't think you'll find that hard to remember. The problem here is that I am not sure in what sense you are using the word rational. There are many usages. One of those usages is very common in cog sci, and if I go with *that* usage your claim is completely wrong: you can pick up an elementary cog psy textbook and find at least two chapters dedicated to a discussion about the many ways that humans are (according to the textbook) irrational. I suspect what is happening is that you are using the term in a different way, and that this is the cause of the confusion. Since you are making the claim, I think the ball is in your court: please try to explain why this discrepency arises so I can understand you claim. Take a look at e.g. Eysenck and Keane (Cognitive Psychology) and try to reconcile what you say with what they say. Richard Loosemore - 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=73173298-c0f919
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
confabulation, it would share certain important similarities. And although the complexity issues in appropriately controlling the inferencing a human-level Novamente-type machine will be challenging, it is far from clear that such design will require substantial advances in the understanding of global-local interconnect. I am confident that valuable (though far less than human-level) computation can be done in a Novamente type system with relatively simple control mechanisms. So I think it is worth designing such Novamente-type systems and saving the fine tuning of the inference control system until we have systems to tests such control systems on. And I think it is best to save whatever study of complexity that may be needed to get such control systems to operate relatively optimally in a dynamic manner until we actually have initial such control systems up and running, so that we have a better idea about what complexity issues we are really dealing with. I think this make much more sense than spending a lot of time now exploring the -- it would seem to me -- extremely very large space of possible global-local disconnects. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Richard Loosemore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 10:41 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ... Ed Porter wrote: RICHARD LOOSEMOORE There is a high prima facie *risk* that intelligence involves a significant amount of irreducibility (some of the most crucial characteristics of a complete intelligence would, in any other system, cause the behavior to show a global-local disconnect), ED PORTER= Richard, prima facie means obvious on its face. The above statement and those that followed it below may be obvious to you, but it is not obvious to a lot of us, and at least I have not seen (perhaps because of my own ignorance, but perhaps not) any evidence that it is obvious. Apparently Ben also does not find your position to be obvious, and Ben is no dummy. Richard, did you ever just consider that it might be turtles all the way down, and by that I mean experiential patterns, such as those that could be represented by Novamente atoms (nodes and links) in a gen/comp hierarchy all the way down. In such a system each level is quite naturally derived from levels below it by learning from experience. There is a lot of dynamic activity, but much of it is quite orderly, like that in Hecht-Neilsen's Confabulation. There is no reason why there has to be a GLOBAL-LOCAL DISCONNECT of the type you envision, i.e., one that is totally impossible to architect in terms of until one totally explores global-local disconnect space (just think how large an exploration space that might be). So if you have prima facie evidence to support your claim (other than your paper which I read which does not meet that standard Ed, Could you please summarize for me what your understandig is of my claim for the prima facie evidence (that I gave in that paper), and then, if you would, please explain where you believe the claim goes wrong. With that level of specificity, we can discuss it. Many thanks, Richard Loosemore ), then present it. If you make me eat my words you will have taught me something sufficiently valuable that I will relish the experience. - 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/?; - 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=73176111-22c48d
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Mike Tintner wrote: JVPB:You seem to have missed what many A(G)I people (Ben, Richard, etc.) mean by 'complexity' (as opposed to the common usage of complex meaning difficult). Well, I as an ignoramus, was wondering about this - so thankyou. And it wasn't clear at all to me from Richard's paper what he meant. Well, to be fair to me, I pointed out in a footnote at the very beginning of the paper that the term complex system was being sued in the technical sense, and then shortly afterwards I gave some references to anyone who needed to figure out what that technical sense actually was... Could I have done more? Look up the Waldrop book that I gave as a reference: at least that is a nice non-technical read. Richard Loosemore What I'm taking out from your account is that it involves random inputs...? Is there a fuller account of it? Is it the random dimension that he/others hope will produce emergent/human-like behaviour? (..because if so, I'd disagree - I'd argue the complications of human behaviour flow from conflict/ conflicting goals - which happens to be signally missing from his (and cognitive science's) ideas about emotions). - 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=73179225-6ab0e8
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Mike Tintner wrote on Thu, 6 Dec 2007: ATM: http://mentifex.virtualentity.com/mind4th.html -- an AGI prototype -- has just gone through a major bug-solving update, and is now much better at maintaining chains of continuous thought -- after the user has entered sufficient knowledge for the AI to think about. It doesn't have - you didn't try to give it - independent curiosity (like an infant)? No, sorry, but the Forthmind does have an Ask module at http://mentifex.virtualenty.com/ask.html for asking questions -- which, come to think of it, may be a form of innate curiosity. Meanwhile a year and a half after receiving a bug report, the current bug-solving update has been posted at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/win32forth/message/13048 as follows FYI: OK, the audRecog subroutine is not totally bugfree when it comes to distinguishing certain sequences of ASCII characters. It may be necessary to not use MACHINES or SERVE if these words confuse the AI. In past years I have spent dozens of painful hours fiddling with the audRecog subroutine, and usually the slightest change breaks it worse than it was before. It works properly probably eighty percent of the time, if not more. Even though the audRecog module became suspect to me over time, I pressed on for True AI. On 14 June 2006 I responded above to a post by FJR. Yesterday -- a year and a half later -- I finally tracked down and eliminated the bug in question. http://mind.sourceforge.net/audrecog.html -- the auditory recognition audRecog module -- was sometimes malfunctioning by misrecognizing one word of input as the word of a different concept, usually if both words ended the same. The solution was to base the selection of an auditory recognition upon finding the candidate word-match with the highest incremental activation, rather than merely taking the most recent match. By what is known as serendipity or sheer luck, the present solution to the old audRecog problem opens up a major new possibility for a far more advanced version of the audRecog module -- one that can recognize the concept of, say, book as input of either the word book or books. Since audRecog now recognizes a word by using incremental activation, it should not be too hard to switch the previous pattern-recognition algorithm into one that no longer insists upon dealing only with entire words, but can instead recognize less than an entire word because so much incremental activation has built up. The above message may not be very crystal clear, and so it is posted here mainly as a show of hope and as a forecasting of what may yet come. http://mind.sourceforge.net/mind4th.html is the original Mind.Forth with the new audRecog. http://AIMind-I.com is FJR's AI Mind in Forth. (Sorry I can't help in the matter of timers.) ATM -- http://mentifex.virtualentity.com/mind4th.html - 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=73193379-092711
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Ed Porter wrote: Jean-Paul, Although complexity is one of the areas associated with AI where I have less knowledge than many on the list, I was aware of the general distinction you are making. What I was pointing out in my email to Richard Loosemore what that the definitions in his paper Complex Systems, Artificial Intelligence and Theoretical Psychology, for irreducible computability and global-local interconnect themselves are not totally clear about this distinction, and as a result, when Richard says that those two issues are an unavoidable part of AGI design that must be much more deeply understood before AGI can advance, by the more loose definitions which would cover the types of complexity involved in large matrix calculations and the design of a massive supercomputer, of course those issues would arise in AGI design, but its no big deal because we have a long history of dealing with them. But in my email to Richard I said I was assuming he was not using this more loose definitions of these words, because if he were, they would not present the unexpected difficulties of the type he has been predicting. I said I though he was dealing with more the potentially unruly type of complexity, I assume you were talking about. I am aware of that type of complexity being a potential problem, but I have designed my system to hopefully control it. A modern-day well functioning economy is complex (people at the Santa Fe Institute often cite economies as examples of complex systems), but it is often amazingly unchaotic considering how loosely it is organized and how many individual entities it has in it, and how many transitions it is constantly undergoing. Unsually, unless something bangs on it hard (such as having the price of a major commodity all of a sudden triple), it has a fair amount of stability, while constantly creating new winners and losers (which is a productive form of mini-chaos). Of course in the absence of regulation it is naturally prone to boom and bust cycles. Ed, I now understand that you have indeed heard of complex systems before, but I must insist that in your summary above you have summarized what they are in such a way that completely contradicts what they are! A complex system such as the economy can and does have stable modes in which it appears to be stable. This does not constradict the complexity at all. A system is not complex because it is unstable. I am struggling here, Ed. I want to go on to explain exactly what I mean (and what complex systems theorists mean) but I cannot see a way to do it without writing half a book this afternoon. Okay, let me try this. Imagine that we got a bunch of computers and connected them with a network that allowed each one to talk to (say) the ten nearest machines. Imagine that each one is running a very simple program: it keeps a handful of local parameters (U, V, W, X, Y) and it updates the values of its own parameters according to what the neighboring machines are doing with their parameters. How does it do the updating? Well, imagine some really messy and bizarre algorithm that involves looking at the neighbors' values, then using them to cross reference each other, and introduce delays and gradients and stuff. On the face of it, you might think that the result will be that the U V W X Y values just show a random sequence of fluctuations. Well, we know two things about such a system. 1) Experience tells us that even though some systems like that are just random mush, there are some (a noticeably large number in fact) that have overall behavior that shows 'regularities'. For example, much to our surprise we might see waves in the U values. And every time two waves hit each other, a vortex is created for exactly 20 minutes, then it stops. I am making this up, but that is the kind of thing that could happen. 2) The algorithm is so messy that we cannot do any math to analyse and predict the behavior of the system. All we can do is say that we have absolutely no techniques that will allow us to mathematical progress on the problem today, and we do not know if at ANY time in future history there will be a mathematics that will cope with this system. What this means is that the waves and vortices we observed cannot be explained in the normal way. We see them happening, but we do not know why they do. The bizzare algorithm is the low level mechanism and the waves and vortices are the high level behavior, and when I say there is a Global-Local Disconnect in this system, all I mean is that we are completely stuck when it comes to explaining the high level in terms of the low level. Believe me, it is childishly easy to write down equations/algorithms for a system like this that are so profoundly intractable that no mathematician would even think of touching them. You have to trust me on this. Call your local Math department at Harvard or somewhere, and check with them
RE: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Ben, You below email is a much more concise statement of the basic point I was trying to make Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Benjamin Goertzel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 9:45 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ... There is no doubt that complexity, in the sense typically used in dynamical-systems-theory, presents a major issue for AGI systems. Any AGI system with real potential is bound to have a lot of parameters with complex interdependencies between them, and tuning these parameters is going to be a major problem. The question is whether one has an adequate theory of one's system to allow one to do this without an intractable amount of trial and error. Loosemore -- if I interpret him correctly -- seems to be suggesting that for powerful AGI systems no such theory can exist, on principle. I doubt very much this is correct. -- Ben G On Dec 6, 2007 9:40 AM, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jean-Paul, Although complexity is one of the areas associated with AI where I have less knowledge than many on the list, I was aware of the general distinction you are making. What I was pointing out in my email to Richard Loosemore what that the definitions in his paper Complex Systems, Artificial Intelligence and Theoretical Psychology, for irreducible computability and global-local interconnect themselves are not totally clear about this distinction, and as a result, when Richard says that those two issues are an unavoidable part of AGI design that must be much more deeply understood before AGI can advance, by the more loose definitions which would cover the types of complexity involved in large matrix calculations and the design of a massive supercomputer, of course those issues would arise in AGI design, but its no big deal because we have a long history of dealing with them. But in my email to Richard I said I was assuming he was not using this more loose definitions of these words, because if he were, they would not present the unexpected difficulties of the type he has been predicting. I said I though he was dealing with more the potentially unruly type of complexity, I assume you were talking about. I am aware of that type of complexity being a potential problem, but I have designed my system to hopefully control it. A modern-day well functioning economy is complex (people at the Santa Fe Institute often cite economies as examples of complex systems), but it is often amazingly unchaotic considering how loosely it is organized and how many individual entities it has in it, and how many transitions it is constantly undergoing. Unsually, unless something bangs on it hard (such as having the price of a major commodity all of a sudden triple), it has a fair amount of stability, while constantly creating new winners and losers (which is a productive form of mini-chaos). Of course in the absence of regulation it is naturally prone to boom and bust cycles. So the system would need regulation. Most of my system operates on a message passing system with little concern for synchronization, it does not require low latencies, most of its units, operate under fairly similar code. But hopefully when you get it all working together it will be fairly dynamic, but that dynamism with be under multiple controls. I think we are going to have to get such systems up and running to find you just how hard or easy they will be to control, which I acknowledged in my email to Richard. I think that once we do we will be in a much better position to think about what is needed to control them. I believe such control will be one of the major intellectual challenges to getting AGI to function at a human-level. This issue is not only preventing runaway conditions, it is optimizing the intelligence of the inferencing, which I think will be even more import and diffiducle. (There are all sorts of damping mechanisms and selective biasing mechanism that should be able to prevent many types of chaotic behaviors.) But I am quite confident with multiple teams working on it, these control problems could be largely overcome in several years, with the systems themselves doing most of the learning. Even a little OpenCog AGI on a PC, could be interesting first indication of the extent to which complexity will present control problems. As I said if you had 3G of ram for representation, that should allow about 50 million atoms. Over time you would probably end up with at least hundreds of thousand of complex patterns, and it would be interesting to see how easy it would be to properly control them, and get them to work together as a properly functioning thought economy in what ever small interactive world they developed their self-organizing pattern base. Of course on such a PC based system you would only, on average, be able to do about 10million pattern to pattern activations
RE: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Richard, I read your core definitions of computationally irreducabile and global-local disconnect and by themselves they really don't distinguish very well between complicated and complex. But I did assume from your paper and other writings you meant complex although your core definitions are not very clear about the distinction. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Richard Loosemore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 10:31 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ... Ed Porter wrote: Richard, I quickly reviewed your paper, and you will be happy to note that I had underlined and highlighted it so such skimming was more valuable that it otherwise would have been. With regard to COMPUTATIONAL IRREDUCIBILITY, I guess a lot depends on definition. Yes, my vision of a human AGI would be a very complex machine. Yes, a lot of its outputs could only be made with human level reasonableness after a very large amount of computation. I know of no shortcuts around the need to do such complex computation. So it arguably falls in to what you say Wolfram calls computational irreducibility. But the same could be said for any of many types of computations, such as large matrix equations or Google's map-reduces, which are routinely performed on supercomputers. So if that is how you define irreducibility, its not that big a deal. It just means you have to do a lot of computing to get an answer, which I have assumed all along for AGI (Remember I am the one pushing for breaking the small hardware mindset.) But it doesn't mean we don't know how to do such computing or that we have to do a lot more complexity research, of the type suggested in your paper, before we can successfully designing AGIs. With regard to GLOBAL-LOCAL DISCONNECT, again it depends what you mean. You define it as The GLD merely signifies that it might be difficult or impossible to derive analytic explanations of global regularities that we observe in the system, given only a knowledge of the local rules that drive the system. I don't know what this means. Even the game of Life referred to in your paper can be analytically explained. It is just that some of the things that happen are rather complex and would take a lot of computing to analyze. So does the global-local disconnect apply to anything where an explanation requires a lot of analysis? If that is the case than any large computation, of the type which mankind does and designs every day, would have a global-local disconnect. If that is the case, the global-local disconnect is no big deal. We deal with it every day. Forgive, but I am going to have to interrupt at this point. Ed, what is going on here is that my paper is about complex systems but you are taking that phrase to mean something like complicated systems rather than the real meaning -- the real meaning is very much not complicated systems, it has to do with a particular class of systems that are labelled complex BECAUSE they show overall behavior that appears to be disconnected from the mechanisms out of which the systems are made up. The problem is that complex systems has a specific technical meaning. If you look at the footnote in my paper (I think it is on page one), you will find that the very first time I use the word complex I make sure that my audience does not take it the wrong way by explaining that it does not refer to complicated system. Everything you are saying here in this post is missing the point, so could I request that you do some digging around to figure out what complex systems are, and then make a second attempt? I am sorry: I do not have the time to write a long introductory essay on complex systems right now. Without this understanding, the whole of my paper will seem like gobbledegook. I am afraid this is the result of skimming through the paper. I am sure you would have noticed the problem if you had gone more slowly. Richard Loosemore. I don't know exactly what you mean by regularities in the above definition, but I think you mean something equivalent to patterns or meaningful generalizations. In many types of computing commonly done, you don't know what the regularizes will be without tremendous computing. For example in principal component analysis, you often don't know what the major dimensions of a distribution will be until you do a tremendous amount of computation. Does that mean there is a GLD in that problem? If so, it doesn't seem to be a big deal. PCA is done all the time, as are all sorts of other complex matrix computations. But you have implied multiple times that you think the global-local disconnect is a big, big deal. You have implied multiple times it presents a major problem to developing AGI. If I interpret your prior
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Ed Porter wrote: Richard, I read your core definitions of computationally irreducabile and global-local disconnect and by themselves they really don't distinguish very well between complicated and complex. That paper was not designed to be a complex systems for absolute beginners paper, so these definitions work very well for anyone who has even a little background knowledge of complex systems. Richard Loosemore But I did assume from your paper and other writings you meant complex although your core definitions are not very clear about the distinction. Ed Porter - 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=73230463-32f239
RE: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Richard, You will be happy to note that I have copied the text of your reply to my Valuable Clippings From AGI Mailing List file. Below are some comments. RICHARD LOOSEMORE= I now understand that you have indeed heard of complex systems before, but I must insist that in your summary above you have summarized what they are in such a way that completely contradicts what they are! A complex system such as the economy can and does have stable modes in which it appears to be stable. This does not constradict the complexity at all. A system is not complex because it is unstable. ED PORTER= Richard, I was citing a relatively stable economies as exactly what you say they are, an example of a complex system that is relatively stable. So why is it that my summary summarized what they are in such a way that completely contradicts what they are!? I implied that economies have traditionally had instabilities, such as boom and bust cycles, and I am aware that even with all our controls, other major instabilities could strike, in much the same ways that people can have nervous breakdowns. ED PORTER= With regard to the rest of your paper I find it one of your better reasoned discussions of the problem of complexity. I like Ben, agree it is a potential problem. I said that in the email you were responding to. My intuition, like Ben's, tells me we probably be able to deal with it, but your paper is correct to point out that such intuitions are really largely guesses. RICHARD LOOSEMORE=how can someone know that how much impact the complexity is going to have, when in the same breath they will admit that NOBODY currently understands just how much of an impact the complexity has. the best that anyone can do is point to other systems in which there is a small amount of complexity and say: Well, these folks managed to understand their systems without getting worried about complexity, so why don't we assume that our problem is no worse than theirs? For example, someone could point to the dynamics of planetary systems and say that there is a small bit of complexity there, but it is a relatively small effect in the grand scheme of things. ED PORTER= A better example would be the world economy. Its got 6 billion highly autonomous players. It has all sorts of non-linearities and complex connections. Although it has fits and starts is has surprising stability considering everything that is thrown at it (Not clear how far this stability will hold into the singularity future) but still it is an instructive example of how extremely complex things, with lots of non-linearities, can work relatively well if there are the proper motivations and controls. RICHARD LOOSEMORE=Problem with that line of argument is that there are NO other examples of an engineering system with as much naked funkiness in the interactions between the low level components. ED PORTER= The key is try to avoid and/or control funkiness in your components. Remember that an experiential system derives most of its behavior by re-enacting, largely through substitutions and probabilistic-transition-based synthesis, from past experience, with a bias toward past experiences that have worked in some sense meaningful to the machine. These creates a tremendous bias toward desirable, vs. funky, behaviors. So, net, net, Richard, re-reading your paper and reading your below long post have increased my respect for your arguments. I am somewhat more afraid of complexity gotchas than I was two days ago. But I still am pretty confident (without anything beginning to approach proof) such gotchas will not prevent use from making useful human level AGI within the decade if AGI got major funding. But I have been afraid for a long time that even the other type of complexity (i.e., complication, which often involves some risk of complexity) means that it may be very difficult for us humans to keep control of superhuman-level AGI's for very long, so I have always worried about that sort of complexity Gotcha. But with regard to the complexity problem, it seems to me that we should design systems with an eye to reducing their knarlyness, including planning multiple types of control systems, and then once we get initial such system up and running try to find out what sort of complexity problems we have. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Richard Loosemore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 11:46 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ... Ed Porter wrote: Jean-Paul, Although complexity is one of the areas associated with AI where I have less knowledge than many on the list, I was aware of the general distinction you are making. What I was pointing out in my email to Richard Loosemore what that the definitions in his paper Complex Systems, Artificial Intelligence and Theoretical Psychology, for irreducible computability and global-local interconnect
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
and intelligence, period. IOW sci psych's concept of intelligence basically ignores the divergent/ fluid half of intelligence. Scientific pyschology does not in any way study the systematic and inevitable irrationality of how people actually solve divergent problems. To do that, you would have to look, for example, at how people solve problems like essays from beginning to end - involving hundreds to thousands of lines of thought. That would be much, much too complex for present-day psychology which concentrates on simple problems and simple aspects of problemsolving. I can go on at much greater length, incl. explaining how I think the mind is actually programmed, and the positive, creative side of its irrationality, but by now you should have the beginning of an understanding of what I'm on about and mean by rational/irrational. There really is no question that science does currently regard the human mind as rational - (it's called rational, not irrational, decision theory and science talks of rational, not irrational, agents ) - and to do otherwise would challenge the foundations of cognitive science. AI in general does not seek to produce irrational programs - and it remains a subject of intense debate as to whether it can produce creative programs. When you have a machine that can solve divergent problems - incl. writing essays and having free-flowing conversations - and do so as irrationally/creatively as humans do, you will have solved the problem of AGI. - Original Message - From: Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 3:19 PM Subject: Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ... Mike Tintner wrote: Richard: Now, interpreting that result is not easy, Richard, I get the feeling you're getting understandably tired with all your correspondence today. Interpreting *any* of the examples of *hard* cog sci that you give is not easy. They're all useful, stimulating stuff, but they don't add up to a hard pic. of the brain's cognitive architecture. Perhaps Ben will back me up on this - it's a rather important point - our overall *integrated* picture of the brain's cognitive functioning is really v. poor, although certainly we have a wealth of details about, say, which part of the brain is somehow connected to a given operation. You make an important point, but in your haste to make it you may have overlooked the fact that I really agree with you ... and have gone on to say that I am trying to fix that problem. What I mean by that: if you look at cog psy/cog sci in a superficial way you might come awy with the strong impression that they don't add up to a hard pic. of the brain's cognitive architecture. Sure. But that is what I meant when I said that cog sci has a huge amount of information stashed away, but it is in a format that makes it very hard for someone trying to build an intelligent system to actually use. I believe I can see deeper into this problem, and I think that cog sci can be made to add up to a consistent picture, but it requires an extra organizational ingredient that I am in the process of adding right now. The root of the problem is that the cog sci and AI communities both have extremely rigid protocols about how to do research, which are incompatible with each other. In cog sci you are expected to produce a micro-theory for every experimental result, and efforts to work on larger theories or frameworks without introducing new experimental results that are directly explained are frowned upon. The result is a style of work that produces local patch theories that do not have any generality. The net result of all this is that when you say that our overall *integrated* picture of the brain's cognitive functioning is really v. poor I would point out that this is only true if you replace the our with the AI community's. Richard:I admit that I am confused right now: in the above paragraphs you say that your position is that the human mind is 'rational' and then later that it is 'irrational' - was the first one of those a typo? Richard, No typo whatsoever if you just reread. V. clear. I say and said: *scientific pychology* and *cog sci* treat the mind as rational. I am the weirdo who is saying this is nonsense - the mind is irrational/crazy/creative - rationality is a major *achievement* not something that comes naturally. Mike Tintner= crazy/irrational- somehow, I don't think you'll find that hard to remember. The problem here is that I am not sure in what sense you are using the word rational. There are many usages. One of those usages is very common in cog sci, and if I go with *that* usage your claim is completely wrong: you can pick up an elementary cog psy textbook and find at least two chapters dedicated to a discussion about the many ways that humans are (according to the textbook) irrational. I suspect what is happening is that you
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
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'll try, though, to more concisely frame the reason I think your argument is wrong. 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**. I believe that if an AGI system is built the right way, it can effectively tune its own parameters, hence adaptively managing its own complexity. Now you may say there's a problem here: If AGI component A2 is to tune the parameters of AGI component A1, and A1 is complex, then A2 has got to also be complex ... and who's gonna tune its parameters? So the answer has got to be that: To effectively tune the parameters of an AGI component of complexity X, requires an AGI component of complexity a bit less than X. Then one can build a self-tuning AGI system, if one does the job right. Now, I'm not saying that Novamente (for instance) is explicitly built according to this architecture: it doesn't have N components wherein component A_N tunes the parameters of component A_(N+1). But in many ways, throughout the architecture, it relies on this sort of fundamental logic. Obviously it is not the case that every system of complexity X can be parameter-tuned by a system of complexity less than X. The question however is whether an AGI system can be built of such components. I suggest the answer is yes -- and furthermore suggest that this is pretty much the ONLY way to do it... Your intuition is that this is not possible, but you don't have a proof of this... And yes, I realize the above argument of mine is conceptual only -- I haven't given a formal definition of complexity. There are many, but that would lead into a mess of math that I don't have time to deal with right now, in the context of answering an email... -- Ben G - 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=73243865-194e0e
RE: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Richard Loosemore writes: Okay, let me try this. Imagine that we got a bunch of computers [...] Thanks for taking the time to write that out. I think it's the most understandable version of your argument that you have written yet. Put it on the web somewhere and link to it whenever the issue comes up again in the future. If you are right, you may have to resort to told you so when other projects fail to produce the desired emergent intelligence. No matter what you do, system builders can and do and will say that either their system is probably not heavily impacted by the issue, or that the issue itself is overstated for AGI development, and I doubt that most will be convinced otherwise. By making such a clear exposition, at least the issue is out there for people to think about. I have no position myself on whether Novamente (for example) is likely to be slain by its own complexity, but it is interesting to ponder. - 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=73249587-454993
Re: Last word for the time being [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Show me ONE other example of the reverse engineering of a system in which the low level mechanisms show as many complexity-generating characteristics as are found in the case of intelligent systems, and I will gladly learn from the experience of the team that did the job. I do not believe you can name a single one. Well, I am not trying to reverse engineer the brain. Any more than the Wright Brothers were trying to reverse engineer a bird -- though I do imagine the latter will eventually be possible. You know, I sympathize with you in a way. You are trying to build an AGI system using a methodology that you are completely committed to. And here am I coming along like Bertrand Russell writing his letter to Frege, just as poor Frege was about to publish his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, pointing out that everything in the new book was undermined by a paradox. How else can you respond except by denying the idea as vigorously as possible? It's a deeply flawed analogy. Russell's paradox is a piece of math and once Frege was confronted with it he got it. The discussion between the two of them did not devolve into long, rambling dialogues about the meanings of terms and the uncertainties of various intuitions. -- 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/?member_id=8660244id_secret=73249230-63bddf
Last word for the time being [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Benjamin Goertzel wrote: Richard, Well, I'm really sorry to have offended you so much, but you seem to be a mighty easy guy to offend! I know I can be pretty offensive at times; but this time, I wasn't even trying ;-) The argument I presented was not a conjectural assertion, it made the following coherent case: 1) There is a high prima facie *risk* that intelligence involves a significant amount of irreducibility (some of the most crucial characteristics of a complete intelligence would, in any other system, cause the behavior to show a global-local disconnect), and The above statement contains two fuzzy terms -- high and significant ... You have provided no evidence for any particular quantification of these terms... your evidence is qualitative/intuitive, so far as I can tell... Your quantification of these terms seems to me a conjectural assertion unsupported by evidence. [This is going to cross over your parallel response to a different post. No time to address that other argument, but the comments made here are not affected by what is there.] I have answered this point very precisely on many occasions, including in the paper. Here it is again: If certain types of mechanisms do indeed give rise to complexity (as all the complex systems theorist agree), then BY DEFINITION it will never be possible to quantify the exact relationship between: 1) The precise characteristics of the low-level mechanisms (both the type and the quantity) that would lead us to expect complexity, and 2) The amount of complexity thereby caused in the high-level behavior. Even if the complex systems effect were completely real, the best we could ever do would be to come up with suggestive characteristics that lead to complexity. Nevertheless, there is a long list of such suggestive characteristics, and everyone (including you) agree that all those suggestive characteristics are present in the low level mechanisms that must be in an AGI. So the one most important thing we know about complex systems is that if complex systems really do exist, then we CANNOT say Give me precise quantitative evidence that we should expect complexity in this particular system. And what is your response to this most important fact about complex systems? Your response is: Give me precise quantitative evidence that we should expect complexity in this particular system. And then, when I explain all of the above (as I have done before, many times), you go on to conclude: [You are giving] a conjectural assertion unsupported by evidence. Which is, in the context of my actual argument, a serious little bit of sleight-of-hand (to be as polite as possible about it). 2) Because of the unique and unusual nature of complexity there is only a vanishingly small chance that we will be able to find a way to assess the exact degree of risk involved, and 3) (A corollary of (2)) If the problem were real, but we were to ignore this risk and simply continue with an engineering approach (pretending that complexity is insignificant), The engineering approach does not pretend that complexity is insignificant. It just denies that the complexity of intelligent systems leads to the sort of irreducibility you suggest it does. It denies it? Based on what? My argument above makes it crystal clear that if the engineering approach is taking that attitude, then it does so purely on the basis of wishful thinking, whilst completely ignoring the above argument. The engineering approach would be saying: We understand complex systems well enough to know that there isn't a problem in this case a nonsensical position when by definition it is not possible for anyone to really understand the connection, and the best evidence we can get is actually pointing to the opposite conclusion. So this comes back to the above argument: the engineering approach has to address that first, before it can make any such claim. Some complex systems can be reverse-engineered in their general principles even if not in detail. And that is all one would need to do in order to create a brain emulation (not that this is what I'm trying to do) --- assuming one's goal was not to exactly emulate some specific human brain based on observing the behaviors it generates, but merely to emulate the brainlike character of the system... This has never been done, but that is exactly what I am trying to do. Show me ONE other example of the reverse engineering of a system in which the low level mechanisms show as many complexity-generating characteristics as are found in the case of intelligent systems, and I will gladly learn from the experience of the team that did the job. I do not believe you can name a single one. then the *only* evidence we would ever get that irreducibility was preventing us from building a complete intelligence would be the fact that we would simply run around in circles all the time,
Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Mike Tintner wrote: Richard, The problem here is that I am not sure in what sense you are using the word rational. There are many usages. One of those usages is very common in cog sci, and if I go with *that* usage your claim is completely wrong: you can pick up an elementary cog psy textbook and find at least two chapters dedicated to a discussion about the many ways that humans are (according to the textbook) irrational. This is a subject of huge importance, and it shouldn't be hard to reach a mutual understanding at least. Rational in general means that a system or agent follows a coherent and systematic set of steps in solving a problem. The social sciences treat humans as rational agents maximising or boundedly satisficing their utilities in taking decisions - coherently systematically finding solutions for their needs,( there is much controversy about this - everyone knows it ain't right, but no substitute has been offered) Cognitive science treats the human mind as basically a programmed computational machine much like actual programmed computers - and programs are normally conceived of as rational. - coherent sets of steps etc. Both cog sci and sci psych. generally endlessly highlight irrationalities in our decisionmaking/problemsolving processes - but these are only in *parts* of those processes, not the processes as a whole. They're like bugs in the program, but the program and mind as a whole are basically rational - following coherent sets of steps - it's just that the odd heuristic/ attitude/ assumption is wrong (or perhaps they have a neurocognitive deficit). Mike, What is happening here is that you have gotten an extremely oversimplified picture of what cognitive science is claiming. This particular statement of yours focusses on the key misunderstanding: Cognitive science treats the human mind as basically a programmed computational machine much like actual programmed computers - and programs are normally conceived of as rational. - coherent sets of steps etc. Programs IN GENERAL are not rational, it is just that the folks who tried to AI and build models of mind in the very very early years started out with simple programs that tried to do reasoning-like computations, and as a result you have seen this as everything that computers do. This would be analogous to someone saying Paint is used to build pictures that directly represent objects in the world. This would not be true: paint is completely neutral and can be used to either represent real things, or represent non-real things, or represent nothing at all. In the same way computer programs are completely neutral and can be used to build systems that are either rational or irrational. My system is not rational in that sense at all. Just because some paintings represent things, that does not mean that paint only does that. Just because some people tried to use computers to build rational-looking models of mind, that does not mean that computers in general do that. Richard Loosemore - 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=73344123-2104e3
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Derek Zahn wrote: Richard Loosemore writes: Okay, let me try this. Imagine that we got a bunch of computers [...] Thanks for taking the time to write that out. I think it's the most understandable version of your argument that you have written yet. Put it on the web somewhere and link to it whenever the issue comes up again in the future. Thanks: I will do that very soon. If you are right, you may have to resort to told you so when other projects fail to produce the desired emergent intelligence. No matter what you do, system builders can and do and will say that either their system is probably not heavily impacted by the issue, or that the issue itself is overstated for AGI development, and I doubt that most will be convinced otherwise. By making such a clear exposition, at least the issue is out there for people to think about. True. I have to go further than that if I want to get more people involved in working on this project though. People with money listen to the mainstream voice and want nothing to do with an idea so heavily criticised, no matter that the criticism comes from those with a vested interest in squashing it. I have no position myself on whether Novamente (for example) is likely to be slain by its own complexity, but it is interesting to ponder. I would rather it did not, and I hope Ben is right in being so optimistic. I just know that it is a dangerous course to follow if you actually don't want to run the risk of another 50 years of running around in circles. Richard Loosemore. - 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=73348560-68439c
Re: Last word for the time being [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Benjamin Goertzel wrote: Show me ONE other example of the reverse engineering of a system in which the low level mechanisms show as many complexity-generating characteristics as are found in the case of intelligent systems, and I will gladly learn from the experience of the team that did the job. I do not believe you can name a single one. Well, I am not trying to reverse engineer the brain. Any more than the Wright Brothers were trying to reverse engineer a bird -- though I do imagine the latter will eventually be possible. You know, I sympathize with you in a way. You are trying to build an AGI system using a methodology that you are completely committed to. And here am I coming along like Bertrand Russell writing his letter to Frege, just as poor Frege was about to publish his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, pointing out that everything in the new book was undermined by a paradox. How else can you respond except by denying the idea as vigorously as possible? It's a deeply flawed analogy. Russell's paradox is a piece of math and once Frege was confronted with it he got it. The discussion between the two of them did not devolve into long, rambling dialogues about the meanings of terms and the uncertainties of various intuitions. Believe me, I know: which is why I envy Russell for the positive response he got from Frege. You could help the discussion enormously by not pushing it in the direction of long rambling dialogues, and by not trying to argue about the meanings of terms and the uncertainties of various intuitions, which have nothing to do with the point that I made. I for one hate that kind of pointless discussion, which is why I keep trying to make you address the key point. Unfortunately, you never do address the key point: in the above, you ignored it completely! (Again!) At least Frege did actually get it. Richard Loosemore - 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=73346948-931def
Re: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Richard: In the same way computer programs are completely neutral and can be used to build systems that are either rational or irrational. My system is not rational in that sense at all. Richard, Out of interest, rather than pursuing the original argument: 1) Who are these programmers/ systembuilders who try to create programs (and what are the programs/ systems) that are either irrational or non-rational (and described as such)? When I have proposed (in different threads) that the mind is not rationally, algorithmically programmed I have been met with uniform and often fierce resistance both on this and another AI forum. My argument re the philosophy of mind of cog sci other sciences is of course not based on such reactions, but they do confirm my argument. And the position you at first appear to be adopting is unique both in my experience and my reading. 2) How is your system not rational? Does it not use algorithms? And could you give a specific example or two of the kind of problem that it deals with - non-rationally? (BTW I don't think I've seen any problem examples for your system anywhere, period - for all I know, it could be designed to read children' stories, bomb Iraq, do syllogisms, work out your domestic budget, or work out the meaning of life - or play and develop in virtual worlds). - 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=73382084-a9590d
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Hi Richard, On Dec 6, 2007 8:46 AM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Try to think of some other example where we have tried to build a system that behaves in a certain overall way, but we started out by using components that interacted in a completely funky way, and we succeeded in getting the thing working in the way we set out to. In all the history of engineering there has never been such a thing. I would argue that, just as we don't have to fully understand the complexity posed by the interaction of subatomic particles to make predictions about the way molecular systems behave, we don't have to fully understand the complexity of interactions between neurons to make predictions about how cognitive systems behave. Many researchers are attempting to create cognitive models that don't necessarily map directly back to low-level neural activity in biological organisms. Doesn't this approach mitigate some of the risk posed by complexity in neural systems? -- Scott - 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=73399933-fcedd2
Re: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Mike Tintner wrote: Richard: In the same way computer programs are completely neutral and can be used to build systems that are either rational or irrational. My system is not rational in that sense at all. Richard, Out of interest, rather than pursuing the original argument: 1) Who are these programmers/ systembuilders who try to create programs (and what are the programs/ systems) that are either irrational or non-rational (and described as such)? I'm a little partied out right now, so all I have time for is to suggest: Hofstadter's group builds all kinds of programs that do things without logic. Phil Johnson-Laird (and students) used to try to model reasoning ability using systems that did not do logic. All kinds of language processing people use various kinds of neural nets: see my earlier research papers with Gordon Brown et al, as well as folks like Mark Seidenberg, Kim Plunkett etc. Marslen-Wilson and Tyler used something called a Cohort Model to describe some aspects of language. I am just dragging up the name of anyone who has ever done any kind of computer modelling of some aspect of cognition: all of these people do not use systems that do any kind of logical processing. I could go on indefinitely. There are probably hundreds of them. They do not try to build complete systems, of course, just local models. When I have proposed (in different threads) that the mind is not rationally, algorithmically programmed I have been met with uniform and often fierce resistance both on this and another AI forum. Hey, join the club! You have read my little brouhaha with Yudkowsky last year I presume? A lot of AI people have their heads up their asses, so yes, they believe that rationality is God. It does depend how you put it though: sometimes you use rationality to not mean what they mean, so that might explain the ferocity. My argument re the philosophy of mind of cog sci other sciences is of course not based on such reactions, but they do confirm my argument. And the position you at first appear to be adopting is unique both in my experience and my reading. 2) How is your system not rational? Does it not use algorithms? It uses dynamic relaxation in a generalized neural net. Too much to explain in a hurry. And could you give a specific example or two of the kind of problem that it deals with - non-rationally? (BTW I don't think I've seen any problem examples for your system anywhere, period - for all I know, it could be designed to read children' stories, bomb Iraq, do syllogisms, work out your domestic budget, or work out the meaning of life - or play and develop in virtual worlds). I am playing this close, for the time being, but I have released a small amount of it in a forthcoming neuroscience paper. I'll send it to you tomorrow if you like, but it does not go into a lot of detail. Richard Loosemore - 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=73425500-35e13a
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Scott Brown wrote: Hi Richard, On Dec 6, 2007 8:46 AM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Try to think of some other example where we have tried to build a system that behaves in a certain overall way, but we started out by using components that interacted in a completely funky way, and we succeeded in getting the thing working in the way we set out to. In all the history of engineering there has never been such a thing. I would argue that, just as we don't have to fully understand the complexity posed by the interaction of subatomic particles to make predictions about the way molecular systems behave, we don't have to fully understand the complexity of interactions between neurons to make predictions about how cognitive systems behave. Many researchers are attempting to create cognitive models that don't necessarily map directly back to low-level neural activity in biological organisms. Doesn't this approach mitigate some of the risk posed by complexity in neural systems? I completely agree that the neural-level stuff does not have to impact cognitive-level stuff: that is why I work at the cognitive level and do not bother too much with exact neural architecture. The only problem with your statement was the last sentence: when I say that there is a complex systems problem, I only mean complexity at the cognitive level, not complexity at the neural level. I am not too worried about any complexity that might exist down at the neural level because as far as I can tell that level is not *dominated* by complex effects. At the cognitive level, on the other hand, there is a strong possibility that what happens when the mind builds a model of some situation, it gets a large nummber of concepts to come together and try to relax into a stable representation, and that relaxation process is potentially sensitive to complex effects (some small parameter in the design of the concepts could play a crucial role in ensuring that the relaxation process goes properly, for example). I am being rather terse here due to lack of time, but that is the short answer. Richard Loosemore - 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=73430502-7926e9
Re: Human Irrationality [WAS Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...]
Well, I'm not sure if not doing logic necessarily means a system is irrational, i.e if rationality equates to logic. Any system consistently followed can classify as rational. If for example, a program consistently does Freudian free association and produces nothing but a chain of associations with some connection: bird - - feathers - four..tops or on the contrary, a 'nonsense' chain where there is NO connection.. logic.. sex... ralph .. essence... pi... Loosemore... then it is rational - it consistently follows a system with a set of rules. And the rules could, for argument's sake, specify that every step is illogical - as in breaking established rules of logic - or that steps are alternately logical and illogical. That too would be rational. Neural nets from the little I know are also rational inasmuch as they follow rules. Ditto Hofstadter Johnson-Laird from again the little I know also seem rational - Johnson-Laird's jazz improvisation program from my cursory reading seemed rational and not truly creative. I do not know enough to pass judgment on your system, but you do strike me as a rational kind of guy (although probably philosophically much closer to me than most here as you seem to indicate). Your attitude to emotions seems to me rational, and your belief that you can produce an AGI that will almost definitely be cooperative , also bespeaks rationality. In the final analysis, irrationality = creativity (although I'm using the word with a small c, rather than the social kind, where someone produces a new idea that no one in society has had or published before). If a system can change its approach and rules of reasoning at literally any step of problem-solving, then it is truly crazy/ irrational (think of a crazy path). And it will be capable of producing all the human irrationalities that I listed previously - like not even defining or answering the problem. It will by the same token have the capacity to be truly creative, because it will ipso facto be capable of lateral thinking at any step of problem-solving. Is your system capable of that? Or anything close? Somehow I doubt it, or you'd already be claiming the solution to both AGI and computational creativity. But yes, please do send me your paper. P.S. I hope you won't - I actually don't think - that you will get all pedantic on me like so many AI-ers say ah but we already have programs that can modify their rules. Yes, but they do that according to metarules - they are still basically rulebound. A crazy/ creative program is rulebreaking (and rulecreating) - can break ALL the rules, incl. metarules. Rulebound/rulebreaking is one of the most crucial differences between narrow AI/AGI. Richard: In the same way computer programs are completely neutral and can be used to build systems that are either rational or irrational. My system is not rational in that sense at all. Richard, Out of interest, rather than pursuing the original argument: 1) Who are these programmers/ systembuilders who try to create programs (and what are the programs/ systems) that are either irrational or non-rational (and described as such)? I'm a little partied out right now, so all I have time for is to suggest: Hofstadter's group builds all kinds of programs that do things without logic. Phil Johnson-Laird (and students) used to try to model reasoning ability using systems that did not do logic. All kinds of language processing people use various kinds of neural nets: see my earlier research papers with Gordon Brown et al, as well as folks like Mark Seidenberg, Kim Plunkett etc. Marslen-Wilson and Tyler used something called a Cohort Model to describe some aspects of language. I am just dragging up the name of anyone who has ever done any kind of computer modelling of some aspect of cognition: all of these people do not use systems that do any kind of logical processing. I could go on indefinitely. There are probably hundreds of them. They do not try to build complete systems, of course, just local models. When I have proposed (in different threads) that the mind is not rationally, algorithmically programmed I have been met with uniform and often fierce resistance both on this and another AI forum. Hey, join the club! You have read my little brouhaha with Yudkowsky last year I presume? A lot of AI people have their heads up their asses, so yes, they believe that rationality is God. It does depend how you put it though: sometimes you use rationality to not mean what they mean, so that might explain the ferocity. My argument re the philosophy of mind of cog sci other sciences is of course not based on such reactions, but they do confirm my argument. And the position you at first appear to be adopting is unique both in my experience and my reading. 2) How is your system not rational? Does it not use algorithms? It uses dynamic relaxation in a generalized neural
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] None of you seem to be able ...
Ben: Obviously the brain contains answers to many of the unsolved problems of AGI (not all -- e.g. not the problem of how to create a stable goal system under recursive self-improvement). However, current neuroscience does NOT contain these answers. And neither you nor anyone else has ever made a cogent argument that emulating the brain is the ONLY route to creating powerful AGI. Absolutely agree re neuroscience's lack of answers (hence Richard's assertion that his system is based on what cognitive science knows about brain architecture is not a smart one - the truth is not much at all.) The cogent argument for emulating the brain - in brief - is simply that it's the only *all-rounder* cognitive system, the only multisensory, multimedia, multisignsystem that can solve problems in language AND maths AND (arithmetic/algebra/geometry) AND diagrams AND maps AND photographs AND cinema AND painting AND sculpture 3-D models AND body language etc - and switch from solving problems in any one sign or sensory system to solving the same problems in any other sign or sensory system. And it's by extension the only truly multidomain system that can switch from solving problems in any one subject domain to any other, from solving problems of how to play football to how to marshall troops on a battlefield to how to do geometry, applying the same knowledge across domains. (I'm just formulating this argument for the first time - so it will no doubt need revisions!) But - correct me - I don't think there's any AI system that's a two-rounder, able to work across two domains and sign systems, let alone, of course all of them. (And it's taken a billion years to evolve this all-round system which is clearly grounded in a body) It LOOKS relatively straightforward to emulate or suspersede this system, when you make the cardinal error of drawing specialist comparisons - your we-can-make-a-plane-that-flies-faster-than-a-bird argument (and of course we already have machines that can think billions of times faster than the brain). But inventing general, all-round systems that are continually alive, complex psychoeconomies managing whole sets of complex activities in the real, as opposed to artificial world(s) and not just isolated tasks, is a whole different ballgame, to inventing specialist systems. It represents a whole new stage of machine evolution - a step as drastic as the evolution of life from matter - and you, sir, :), have scant respect for the awesomeness of the undertaking (even though, paradoxically, you're much more aware than most of its complexity). Respect to the brain, bro! It's a little as if you - not, I imagine, the very finest athletic specimen - were to say: hey, I can take the heavyweight champ of the world ... AND Federer... AND Tiger Woods... AND the champ of every other sport. Well, yeah, you can indeed box and play tennis and actually do every other sport, but there's an awful lot more to beating even one of those champs let alone all or a selection of them than meets the eye (even if you were in addition to have a machine that could throw super-powerful punches or play superfast backhands). Ben/MT: none of the unsolved problems are going to be solved - without major creative leaps. Just look even at the ipod iphone - major new technology never happens without such leaps. Ben:The above sentence is rather hilarious to me. If the Ipod and Iphone are your measure for creative leaps then there have been loads and loads of major creative leaps in AGI and narrow-AI research. As an example of a creative leap (that is speculative and may be wrong, but is certainly creative), check out my hypothesis of emergent social-psychological intelligence as related to mirror neurons and octonion algebras: http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2007/mirrorself.pdf Ben, Name ONE major creative leap in AGI (in narrow AI, no question, there's loads). Some background here: I am deeply interested in, have done a lot of work, on the psychology philosophy of creativity, as well as intelligence. So your creative paper is interesting to me, because it helps refine definitions of creativity and creative leaps. The ipod iphone do indeed represent brilliant leaps in terms of interfaces - with the touch-wheel and the pinch touchscreen [as distinct from the touchscreen itself] - v. neat lateral ideas which worked. No, not revolutionary in terms of changing vast fields of technology, just v. lateral, unexpected, albeit simple ideas. I have seen no similarly lateral approaches in AGI. Your paper represents almost a literal application of the idea that creativity is ingenious/lateral. Hey it's no trick to be just ingenious/lateral or fantastic. How does memory work? - well, you see, there's this system of angels that ferry every idea you have and file it in an infinite set of multiverses...etc... Anyone can come up with fantastic ideas. The
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Ed Porter wrote: RICHARD LOOSEMOORE There is a high prima facie *risk* that intelligence involves a significant amount of irreducibility (some of the most crucial characteristics of a complete intelligence would, in any other system, cause the behavior to show a global-local disconnect), ED PORTER= Richard, prima facie means obvious on its face. The above statement and those that followed it below may be obvious to you, but it is not obvious to a lot of us, and at least I have not seen (perhaps because of my own ignorance, but perhaps not) any evidence that it is obvious. Apparently Ben also does not find your position to be obvious, and Ben is no dummy. Richard, did you ever just consider that it might be turtles all the way down, and by that I mean experiential patterns, such as those that could be represented by Novamente atoms (nodes and links) in a gen/comp hierarchy all the way down. In such a system each level is quite naturally derived from levels below it by learning from experience. There is a lot of dynamic activity, but much of it is quite orderly, like that in Hecht-Neilsen's Confabulation. There is no reason why there has to be a GLOBAL-LOCAL DISCONNECT of the type you envision, i.e., one that is totally impossible to architect in terms of until one totally explores global-local disconnect space (just think how large an exploration space that might be). So if you have prima facie evidence to support your claim (other than your paper which I read which does not meet that standard Ed, Could you please summarize for me what your understandig is of my claim for the prima facie evidence (that I gave in that paper), and then, if you would, please explain where you believe the claim goes wrong. With that level of specificity, we can discuss it. Many thanks, Richard Loosemore ), then present it. If you make me eat my words you will have taught me something sufficiently valuable that I will relish the experience. - 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=72269726-d5af19
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Mike Tintner wrote: Richard: science does too know a good deal about brain architecture!I *know* cognitive science. Cognitive science is a friend of mine. Mike, you are no cognitive scientist :-). Thanks, Richard, for keeping it friendly - but - are you saying cog sci knows the: *'engram' - how info is encoded *any precise cognitive form or level of the hierarchical processing vaguely defined by Hawkins et al *how ideas are compared at any level - *how analogies are produced *whether templates or similar are/are not used in visual object processing etc. etc ??? Well, you are crossing over between levels here in a way that confuses me. Did you mean brain architecture when you said brain architecture? that is, are you taking about brain-level stuff, or cognitive-level stuff? I took you to be talking quite literally about the neural level. More generally, though, we understand a lot, but of course the picture is extremely incomplete. But even though the picture is incomplete that would not mean that cognitive science knows almost nothing. My position is that cog sci has a *huge* amount of information stashed away, but it is in a format that makes it very hard for someone trying to build an intelligent system to actually use. AI people make very little use of this information at all. My goal is to deconstruct cog sci in such a way as to make it usable in AI. That is what I am doing now. Obviously, if science can't answer the engram question, it can hardly answer anything else. You are indeed a cognitive scientist but you don't seem to have a very good overall scientific/philosophical perspective on what that entails - and the status of cog. sci. is a fascinating one, philosophically. You see, I utterly believe in the cog. sci. approach of applying computational models to the brain and human thinking. But what that has produced is *not* hard knowledge. It has made us aware of the complexities of what is probably involved, got us to the point where we are, so to speak, v. warm / close to the truth. But no, as, I think Ben asserted, what we actually *know* for sure about the brain's information processing is v. v. little. (Just look at our previous dispute, where clearly there is no definite knowledge at all about how much parallel computation is involved in the brain's processing of any idea [like a sentence]). Those cog. sci, models are more like analogies than true theoretical models. And anyway most of the time though by no means all, cognitive scientists are like you Minsky - much more interested in the AI applications of their models than in their literal scientific truth. If you disagree, point to the hard knowledge re items like those listed above, which surely must be the basis of any AI system that can legitimately claim to be based on the brain's architecture. Well, it is difficult to know where to start. What about the word priming results? There is an enormous corpus of data concerning the time course of activation of words as a result of seeing/hearing other words. I can use some of that data to constrain my models of activation. Then there are studies of speech errors that show what kinds of events occur during attempts to articulate sentences: that data can be used to say a great deal about the processes involved in going from an intention to articulation. On and on the list goes: I could spend all day just writing down examples of cognitive data and how it relates to models of intelligence. Did you know, for example, that certain kinds of brain damage can leave a person with the ability to name a visually presented object, but then be unable to pick the object up and move it through space in a way that is consistent with the object's normal use . and that another type of brain damage can result in a person have exactly the opposite problem: they can look at an object and say I have no idea what that is, and yet when you ask them to pick the thing up and do what they would typically do with the object, they pick it up and show every sign that they know exactly what it is for (e.g. object is a key: they say they don't know what it is, but then they pick it up and put it straight into a nearby lock). Now, interpreting that result is not easy, but it does seem to tell us that there are two almost independent systems in the brain that handle vision-for-identification and vision-for-action. Why? I don't know, but I have some ideas, and those ideas are helping to constrain my framework. Another example of where you are not so hot on the *philosophy* of cog. sci. is our v. first dispute. I claimed and claim that it is fundamental to cog sci to treat the brain/mind as rational. And I'm right - and produced and can continue endlessly producing evidence. (It is fundamental to all the social sciences to treat humans as rational decisionmaking agents). Oh no it doesn't, you said, in
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Richard: science does too know a good deal about brain architecture!I *know* cognitive science. Cognitive science is a friend of mine. Mike, you are no cognitive scientist :-). Thanks, Richard, for keeping it friendly - but - are you saying cog sci knows the: *'engram' - how info is encoded *any precise cognitive form or level of the hierarchical processing vaguely defined by Hawkins et al *how ideas are compared at any level - *how analogies are produced *whether templates or similar are/are not used in visual object processing etc. etc ??? Obviously, if science can't answer the engram question, it can hardly answer anything else. You are indeed a cognitive scientist but you don't seem to have a very good overall scientific/philosophical perspective on what that entails - and the status of cog. sci. is a fascinating one, philosophically. You see, I utterly believe in the cog. sci. approach of applying computational models to the brain and human thinking. But what that has produced is *not* hard knowledge. It has made us aware of the complexities of what is probably involved, got us to the point where we are, so to speak, v. warm / close to the truth. But no, as, I think Ben asserted, what we actually *know* for sure about the brain's information processing is v. v. little. (Just look at our previous dispute, where clearly there is no definite knowledge at all about how much parallel computation is involved in the brain's processing of any idea [like a sentence]). Those cog. sci, models are more like analogies than true theoretical models. And anyway most of the time though by no means all, cognitive scientists are like you Minsky - much more interested in the AI applications of their models than in their literal scientific truth. If you disagree, point to the hard knowledge re items like those listed above, which surely must be the basis of any AI system that can legitimately claim to be based on the brain's architecture. Another example of where you are not so hot on the *philosophy* of cog. sci. is our v. first dispute. I claimed and claim that it is fundamental to cog sci to treat the brain/mind as rational. And I'm right - and produced and can continue endlessly producing evidence. (It is fundamental to all the social sciences to treat humans as rational decisionmaking agents). Oh no it doesn't, you said, in effect - sci psychology is obsessed with the irrationalities of the human mind. And that is true, too. If you hadn't gone off in high dudgeon, we could have resolved the apparent contradiction. Sci psych does indeed love to study and point out all kinds of illusions and mistakes of the human mind. But to cog. sci. these are all so many *bugs* in an otherwise rational system. The system as a whole is still rational, as far as cog sci is concerned, but some of its parts - its heuristics, attitudes etc - are not. They, however, can be fixed. So what I have been personally asserting elsewhere - namely that the brain is fundamentally irrational or crazy - that the human mind can't follow a logical, joined up train of reflective thought for more than a relatively few seconds on end - and is positively designed to be like that, and can't and isn't meant to be fixed - does indeed represent a fundamental challenge to cog. sci's current rational paradigm of mind. (The flip side of that craziness is that it is a fundamentally *creative* mind - this is utterly central to AGI) - 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=72344338-9fc6ac
RE: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
computing that a human could not in a human lifetime understand everything it was doing in a relatively short period of time. But because the system is an machine whose behavior is largely dominated by sensed experience, and by what behaviors and representations have proven themselves to be useful in that experience, and because the system has control mechanism, such as markets and currency control mechanisms, for modulating the general level of activity and discriminating against unproductive behaviors and parameter settings -- the chance of more than a small, and often beneficial, amount of chaotic behavior is greatly reduced. (But until we actually start running such systems we will not know for sure.) It seems to me (perhaps mistakenly) you have been saying, that the the global-local disconnect is some great dark chasm which has to be extensively explored before we humans can dare begin to seek to design complex AGI's. I have seen no evidence for that. It seems to me that chaotic behavior is, to a lesser degree, like combinatorial explosion. It is a problem we should always keep in mind, which limits some of the things we can do, but which in general we know how to avoid. More knowledge about it might be helpful, but it is not clear at this point how much it is needed, and, if it were needed, which particular aspects of it would be needed. Your paper says We sometimes talk of the basic units of knowledge-concepts or symbols- as if they have little or no internal structure, and as if they exist at the base level of description of our system. This could be wrong: we could be looking at the equivalent of the second level in the Life automaton, therefore seeing nothing more than an approximation of how the real system works. I don't see why the atoms (nodes and links) of an AGI cannot be represented as relatively straight forward digital representations, such as a struc or object class. A more complex NL-level concept (such as Iraq to use Ben's common example) might involve hundreds of thousands or millions of such nodes and links, but it seems to me there are ways to deal with such complexity in a relatively orderly, relatively computationally efficient (by that I mean scalable, but not computational cheap), manner. My approach would not involve anything as self-defeating as using a representation that has such a convoluted non-linear temporal causality as that in the Game of Life, as you quotation suggests. I have designed my system to largely avoid the unruliness of complexity whenever possible. Take Hecht-Neilsen's confabulation. It uses millions of inferences for each of the multiple words and phrases its selects when it generates an NL sentense. But unless his papers are dishonest, it does them on an overall manner that is amazingly orderly, despite the underlying complexity. Would such computation be irreducibly complex? Very arguably by the Wolfram definition, it would be. Would there be a global-local disconnect? It depends on the definition. The conceptual model of how the system works is relatively simple, but that actual inference-by-inference computation would be very difficult for a human to follow at a detailed level. But what is clear is that such a system was built without having to first research the global-local disconnect in any great depth, as your have suggested is necessary. Similarly, although the computation in a Novamente type AGI architecture would be much more complex than in Hecht-Neilsen's confabulation, it would share certain important similarities. And although the complexity issues in appropriately controlling the inferencing a human-level Novamente-type machine will be challenging, it is far from clear that such design will require substantial advances in the understanding of global-local interconnect. I am confident that valuable (though far less than human-level) computation can be done in a Novamente type system with relatively simple control mechanisms. So I think it is worth designing such Novamente-type systems and saving the fine tuning of the inference control system until we have systems to tests such control systems on. And I think it is best to save whatever study of complexity that may be needed to get such control systems to operate relatively optimally in a dynamic manner until we actually have initial such control systems up and running, so that we have a better idea about what complexity issues we are really dealing with. I think this make much more sense than spending a lot of time now exploring the -- it would seem to me -- extremely very large space of possible global-local disconnects. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Richard Loosemore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 10:41 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ... Ed Porter wrote
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Richard: Now, interpreting that result is not easy, Richard, I get the feeling you're getting understandably tired with all your correspondence today. Interpreting *any* of the examples of *hard* cog sci that you give is not easy. They're all useful, stimulating stuff, but they don't add up to a hard pic. of the brain's cognitive architecture. Perhaps Ben will back me up on this - it's a rather important point - our overall *integrated* picture of the brain's cognitive functioning is really v. poor, although certainly we have a wealth of details about, say, which part of the brain is somehow connected to a given operation. Richard:I admit that I am confused right now: in the above paragraphs you say that your position is that the human mind is 'rational' and then later that it is 'irrational' - was the first one of those a typo? Richard, No typo whatsoever if you just reread. V. clear. I say and said: *scientific pychology* and *cog sci* treat the mind as rational. I am the weirdo who is saying this is nonsense - the mind is irrational/crazy/creative - rationality is a major *achievement* not something that comes naturally. Mike Tintner= crazy/irrational- somehow, I don't think you'll find that hard to remember. - 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=72407413-5af67f
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Mike Tintner wrote: Ben: Obviously the brain contains answers to many of the unsolved problems of AGI (not all -- e.g. not the problem of how to create a stable goal system under recursive self-improvement). However, current neuroscience does NOT contain these answers. And neither you nor anyone else has ever made a cogent argument that emulating the brain is the ONLY route to creating powerful AGI. Absolutely agree re neuroscience's lack of answers (hence Richard's assertion that his system is based on what cognitive science knows about brain architecture is not a smart one - the truth is not much at all.) Um, excuse me? Let me just make sure I understand this: you say that it is not smart of me to say that my system is based on what cognitive science knows about brain architecture, because cognitive science knows not much at all about brain architecture? Number one: I don't actually say that (brain architecture is only a small part of what is involved in my system). Number two: Cognitive science does too know a good deal about brain architecture! I *know* cognitive science. Cognitive science is a friend of mine. Mike, you are no cognitive scientist :-). Richard Loosemore - 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=72293683-687e21
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Tintner wrote: Your paper represents almost a literal application of the idea that creativity is ingenious/lateral. Hey it's no trick to be just ingenious/lateral or fantastic. Ah ... before creativity was what was lacking. But now you're shifting arguments and it's something else that is lacking ;-) You clearly like producing new psychological ideas - from a skimming of your work, you've produced several. However, I didn't come across a single one that was grounded or where any attempt was made to ground them in direct, fresh observation (as opposed to occasionally referring to an existing scientific paper). That is a very strange statement. In fact nearly all my psychological ideas are grounded in direct, fresh **introspective** observation --- but they're not written up that way because that's not the convention in modern academia. To publish your ideas in academic journals, you need to ground them in the existing research literature, not in your own personal introspective observations. It is true that few of my psychological hypotheses are grounded in my own novel lab experiments, though. I did a little psych lab work in the late 90's, in the domain of perceptual illusions -- but the truth is that psych and neuroscience are not currently sophisticated enough to allow empirical investigation of really interesting questions about the nature of cognition, self, etc. Wait a couple decades, I guess. In terms of creative psychology, that is consistent with your resistance to producing prototypes - and grounding your invention/innovation. Well, I don't have any psychological resistance to producing working software, obviously. Most of my practical software work has been proprietary for customers; but, check out MOSES and OpenBiomind on Google Code -- two open-source projects that have emerged from my Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC work ... It just happens that AGI does not lend itself to prototyping, for reasons I've already tried and failed to explain to you We're gonna launch trainable, adaptive virtual animals in Second Life sometime in 2008 But I won't consider them real prototypes of Novamente AGI, even though in fact they will use several aspects of the Novamente Cognition Engine software. They won't embody the key emergent structures/dynamics that I believe need to be there to have human-level cognition -- and there is no simple prototype system that will do so. You celebrate Jeff Hawkins' prototype systems, but have you tried them? He's built (or, rather Dileep George has built) an image classification engine, not much different in performance from many others out there. It's nice work but it's not really an AGI prototype, it's an image classifiers. He may be sort-of labeling it a prototype of his AGI approach -- but really, it doesn't prove anything dramatic about his AGI approach. No one who inspected his code and ran it would think that it did provide such proof. There are at least two stages of creative psychological development - which you won't find in any literature. The first I'd call simply original thinking, the second is truly creative thinking. The first stage is when people realise they too can have new ideas and get hooked on the excitement of producing them. Only much later comes the second stage, when thinkers realise that truly creative ideas have to be grounded. Arguably, the great majority of people who may officially be labelled as creatives, never get beyond the first stage - you can make a living doing just that. But the most beautiful and valuable ideas come from being repeatedly refined against the evidence. People resist this stage because it does indeed mean a lot of extra work , but it's worth it. (And it also means developing that inner faculty which calls for actual evidence). OK, now you're making a very different critique than what you started with though. Before you were claiming there are no creative ideas in AGI. Now, when confronted with creative ideas, you're complaining that they're not grounded via experimental validation. Well, yeah... And the problem is that if one's creative ideas pertain to the dynamics of large-scale, complex software systems, then it takes either a lot of time or a lot of money to achieve this validation that you mention. It is not the case that I (and other AGI researchers) are somehow psychologically undesirous of seeing our creative ideas explored via experiment. It is, rather, the case that doing the relevant experiments requires a LOT OF WORK, and we are few in number with relatively scant resources. What I am working toward, with Novamente and soon with OpenCog as well, is precisely the empirical exploration of the various creative ideas of myself, others whose work has been built on in the Novamente design, and my colleagues... -- Ben G - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:
[agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Mike, Matt:: The whole point of using massive parallel computation is to do the hard part of the problem. The whole idea of massive parallel computation here, surely has to be wrong. And yet none of you seem able to face this to my mind obvious truth. Who do you mean under you in this context? Do you think that everyone here agrees with Matt on everyting? :-) Quite the opposite is true -- almost every AI researcher has his own unique set of believes. Some believes are shared with one set of researchers -- other with another set. Some believes may be even unique. For example, I disagree with Matt's claim that AGI research needs special hardware with massive computational capabilities. However I agree with Matt on quite large set of other issues. - 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=71955617-a244b4
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
--- Dennis Gorelik [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For example, I disagree with Matt's claim that AGI research needs special hardware with massive computational capabilities. I don't claim you need special hardware. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] - 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=72062645-1ca7c4
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Dennis: MT:none of you seem able to face this to my mind obvious truth. Who do you mean under you in this context? Do you think that everyone here agrees with Matt on everyting? Quite the opposite is true -- almost every AI researcher has his own unique set of believes. I'm delighted to be corrected, if wrong. My hypothesis was that in processing ideas - especially in searching for analogies - the brain will search through v. few examples in any given moment, all or almost all of them relevant, where computers will search blindly through vast numbers. (I'm just reading a neuroeconomics book which puts the ratio of computer communication speed to that of the brain at 30 million to one). It seems to me that the brain's principles of search are fundamentally different to those of computers. My impression is that none of you are able to face that particular truth - correct me . More generally, I don't perceive any readiness to recognize that the brain has the answers to all the many unsolved problems of AGI - answers which mostly if not entirely involve *very different kinds* of computation. I believe, for example, that the brain extensively uses direct shape-matching/ mappings to compare - and only some new form of analog computation will be able to handle that. I don't see anyone who's prepared for that kind of creative leap - for revolutionary new kinds of hardware and software. In general, everyone seems to be starting from the materials that exist, and praying to God that minor adaptations will work. (You too, no?) Even Richard who just possibly may agree with me on the importance of emulating the brain, opines that the brain uses massive parallel computation above - because, I would argue, that's what fits his materials - that's what he *wants* not knows to be true. I've argued about this with Ed - I think it should be obvious that AGI isn't going to happen - and none of the unsolved problems are going to be solved - without major creative leaps. Just look even at the ipod iphone - major new technology never happens without such leaps. Whom do you see as a creative high-jumper here - even in their philosophy? - 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=72098704-c6974e
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
More generally, I don't perceive any readiness to recognize that the brain has the answers to all the many unsolved problems of AGI - Obviously the brain contains answers to many of the unsolved problems of AGI (not all -- e.g. not the problem of how to create a stable goal system under recursive self-improvement). However, current neuroscience does NOT contain these answers. And neither you nor anyone else has ever made a cogent argument that emulating the brain is the ONLY route to creating powerful AGI. The closest thing to such an argument that I've seen was given by Eric Baum in his book What Is Thought?, and I note that Eric has backed away somewhat from that position lately. I think it should be obvious that AGI isn't going to happen - and none of the unsolved problems are going to be solved - without major creative leaps. Just look even at the ipod iphone - major new technology never happens without such leaps. The above sentence is rather hilarious to me. If the Ipod and Iphone are your measure for creative leaps then there have been loads and loads of major creative leaps in AGI and narrow-AI research. Anyway it seems to me that you're not just looking for creative leaps, you're looking for creative leaps that match your personal intuition. Perhaps the real problem is that your personal intuition about intelligence is largely off-base ;-) As an example of a creative leap (that is speculative and may be wrong, but is certainly creative), check out my hypothesis of emergent social-psychological intelligence as related to mirror neurons and octonion algebras: http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2007/mirrorself.pdf I happen to think the real subtlety of intelligence happens on the emergent level, and not on the level of the particulars of the system that gives rise to the emergent phenomena. That paper conjectures some example phenomena that I believe occur on the emergent level of intelligent systems. Loosemore agrees with me on the importance of emergence, but he feels there is a fundamental irreducibility that makes it pragmatically impossible to figure out via science, math and intuition which concrete structures/dynamics will give rise to the right emergent structures, without doing a massive body of simulation experiments. I think he overstates the degree of irreducibility. -- Ben G - 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=72114408-ae9503
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Benjamin Goertzel wrote: [snip] And neither you nor anyone else has ever made a cogent argument that emulating the brain is the ONLY route to creating powerful AGI. The closest thing to such an argument that I've seen was given by Eric Baum in his book What Is Thought?, and I note that Eric has backed away somewhat from that position lately. This is a pretty outrageous statement to make, given that you know full well that I have done exactly that. You may not agree with the argument, but that is not the same as asserting that the argument does not exist. Unless you were meaning emulating the brain in the sense of emulating it ONLY at the low level of neural wiring, which I do not advocate. Richard Loosemore - 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=72125338-4c83ae
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
On Dec 4, 2007 8:38 PM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Benjamin Goertzel wrote: [snip] And neither you nor anyone else has ever made a cogent argument that emulating the brain is the ONLY route to creating powerful AGI. The closest thing to such an argument that I've seen was given by Eric Baum in his book What Is Thought?, and I note that Eric has backed away somewhat from that position lately. This is a pretty outrageous statement to make, given that you know full well that I have done exactly that. You may not agree with the argument, but that is not the same as asserting that the argument does not exist. Unless you were meaning emulating the brain in the sense of emulating it ONLY at the low level of neural wiring, which I do not advocate. I don't find your nor Eric's nor anyone else's argument that brain-emulation is the golden path very strongly convincing... However, I found Eric's argument by reference to the compressed nature of the genome, more convincing than your argument via the hypothesis of irreducible emergent complexity... Sorry if my choice of words was not adequately politic. I find your argument interesting, but it's certainly just as speculative as the various AGI theories you dismiss It basically rests on a big assumption, which is that the complexity of human intelligence is analytically irreducible within pragmatic computational constraints. In this sense it's less an argument than a conjectural assertion, albeit an admirably bold one. -- Ben G - 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=72126612-7f96e4
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Benjamin Goertzel wrote: On Dec 4, 2007 8:38 PM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Benjamin Goertzel wrote: [snip] And neither you nor anyone else has ever made a cogent argument that emulating the brain is the ONLY route to creating powerful AGI. The closest thing to such an argument that I've seen was given by Eric Baum in his book What Is Thought?, and I note that Eric has backed away somewhat from that position lately. This is a pretty outrageous statement to make, given that you know full well that I have done exactly that. You may not agree with the argument, but that is not the same as asserting that the argument does not exist. Unless you were meaning emulating the brain in the sense of emulating it ONLY at the low level of neural wiring, which I do not advocate. I don't find your nor Eric's nor anyone else's argument that brain-emulation is the golden path very strongly convincing... However, I found Eric's argument by reference to the compressed nature of the genome, more convincing than your argument via the hypothesis of irreducible emergent complexity... Sorry if my choice of words was not adequately politic. I find your argument interesting, but it's certainly just as speculative as the various AGI theories you dismiss It basically rests on a big assumption, which is that the complexity of human intelligence is analytically irreducible within pragmatic computational constraints. In this sense it's less an argument than a conjectural assertion, albeit an admirably bold one. Ben, This is even worse. The argument I presented was not a conjectural assertion, it made the following coherent case: 1) There is a high prima facie *risk* that intelligence involves a significant amount of irreducibility (some of the most crucial characteristics of a complete intelligence would, in any other system, cause the behavior to show a global-local disconnect), and 2) Because of the unique and unusual nature of complexity there is only a vanishingly small chance that we will be able to find a way to assess the exact degree of risk involved, and 3) (A corollary of (2)) If the problem were real, but we were to ignore this risk and simply continue with an engineering approach (pretending that complexity is insignificant), then the *only* evidence we would ever get that irreducibility was preventing us from building a complete intelligence would be the fact that we would simply run around in circles all the time, wondering why, when we put large systems together, they didn't quite make it, and 4) Therefore we need to adopt a Precautionary Principle and treat the problem as if irreducibility really is significant. Whether you like it or not - whether you've got too much invested in the contrary point of view to admit it, or not - this is a perfectly valid and coherent argument, and your attempt to try to push it into some lesser realm of a conjectural assertion is profoundly insulting. Richard Loosemore - 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=72132038-3654d5
Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
Richard, Well, I'm really sorry to have offended you so much, but you seem to be a mighty easy guy to offend! I know I can be pretty offensive at times; but this time, I wasn't even trying ;-) The argument I presented was not a conjectural assertion, it made the following coherent case: 1) There is a high prima facie *risk* that intelligence involves a significant amount of irreducibility (some of the most crucial characteristics of a complete intelligence would, in any other system, cause the behavior to show a global-local disconnect), and The above statement contains two fuzzy terms -- high and significant ... You have provided no evidence for any particular quantification of these terms... your evidence is qualitative/intuitive, so far as I can tell... Your quantification of these terms seems to me a conjectural assertion unsupported by evidence. 2) Because of the unique and unusual nature of complexity there is only a vanishingly small chance that we will be able to find a way to assess the exact degree of risk involved, and 3) (A corollary of (2)) If the problem were real, but we were to ignore this risk and simply continue with an engineering approach (pretending that complexity is insignificant), The engineering approach does not pretend that complexity is insignificant. It just denies that the complexity of intelligent systems leads to the sort of irreducibility you suggest it does. Some complex systems can be reverse-engineered in their general principles even if not in detail. And that is all one would need to do in order to create a brain emulation (not that this is what I'm trying to do) --- assuming one's goal was not to exactly emulate some specific human brain based on observing the behaviors it generates, but merely to emulate the brainlike character of the system... then the *only* evidence we would ever get that irreducibility was preventing us from building a complete intelligence would be the fact that we would simply run around in circles all the time, wondering why, when we put large systems together, they didn't quite make it, and No. Experimenting with AI systems could lead to evidence that would support the irreducibility hypothesis more directly than that. I doubt they will but it's possible. For instance, we might discover that creating more and more intelligent systems inevitably presents more and more complex parameter-tuning problems, so that parameter-tuning appears to be the bottleneck. This would suggest that some kind of highly expensive evolutionary or ensemble approach as you're suggesting might be necessary. 4) Therefore we need to adopt a Precautionary Principle and treat the problem as if irreducibility really is significant. Whether you like it or not - whether you've got too much invested in the contrary point of view to admit it, or not - this is a perfectly valid and coherent argument, and your attempt to try to push it into some lesser realm of a conjectural assertion is profoundly insulting. The form of the argument is coherent and valid; but the premises involve fuzzy quantifiers whose values you are apparently setting by intuition, and whose specific values sensitively impact the truth value of the conclusion. -- 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/?member_id=8660244id_secret=72135696-ff196d
RE: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
RICHARD LOOSEMOORE There is a high prima facie *risk* that intelligence involves a significant amount of irreducibility (some of the most crucial characteristics of a complete intelligence would, in any other system, cause the behavior to show a global-local disconnect), ED PORTER= Richard, prima facie means obvious on its face. The above statement and those that followed it below may be obvious to you, but it is not obvious to a lot of us, and at least I have not seen (perhaps because of my own ignorance, but perhaps not) any evidence that it is obvious. Apparently Ben also does not find your position to be obvious, and Ben is no dummy. Richard, did you ever just consider that it might be turtles all the way down, and by that I mean experiential patterns, such as those that could be represented by Novamente atoms (nodes and links) in a gen/comp hierarchy all the way down. In such a system each level is quite naturally derived from levels below it by learning from experience. There is a lot of dynamic activity, but much of it is quite orderly, like that in Hecht-Neilsen's Confabulation. There is no reason why there has to be a GLOBAL-LOCAL DISCONNECT of the type you envision, i.e., one that is totally impossible to architect in terms of until one totally explores global-local disconnect space (just think how large an exploration space that might be). So if you have prima facie evidence to support your claim (other than your paper which I read which does not meet that standard), then present it. If you make me eat my words you will have taught me something sufficiently valuable that I will relish the experience. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Richard Loosemore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 9:17 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] None of you seem to be able ... Benjamin Goertzel wrote: On Dec 4, 2007 8:38 PM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Benjamin Goertzel wrote: [snip] And neither you nor anyone else has ever made a cogent argument that emulating the brain is the ONLY route to creating powerful AGI. The closest thing to such an argument that I've seen was given by Eric Baum in his book What Is Thought?, and I note that Eric has backed away somewhat from that position lately. This is a pretty outrageous statement to make, given that you know full well that I have done exactly that. You may not agree with the argument, but that is not the same as asserting that the argument does not exist. Unless you were meaning emulating the brain in the sense of emulating it ONLY at the low level of neural wiring, which I do not advocate. I don't find your nor Eric's nor anyone else's argument that brain-emulation is the golden path very strongly convincing... However, I found Eric's argument by reference to the compressed nature of the genome, more convincing than your argument via the hypothesis of irreducible emergent complexity... Sorry if my choice of words was not adequately politic. I find your argument interesting, but it's certainly just as speculative as the various AGI theories you dismiss It basically rests on a big assumption, which is that the complexity of human intelligence is analytically irreducible within pragmatic computational constraints. In this sense it's less an argument than a conjectural assertion, albeit an admirably bold one. Ben, This is even worse. The argument I presented was not a conjectural assertion, it made the following coherent case: 1) There is a high prima facie *risk* that intelligence involves a significant amount of irreducibility (some of the most crucial characteristics of a complete intelligence would, in any other system, cause the behavior to show a global-local disconnect), and 2) Because of the unique and unusual nature of complexity there is only a vanishingly small chance that we will be able to find a way to assess the exact degree of risk involved, and 3) (A corollary of (2)) If the problem were real, but we were to ignore this risk and simply continue with an engineering approach (pretending that complexity is insignificant), then the *only* evidence we would ever get that irreducibility was preventing us from building a complete intelligence would be the fact that we would simply run around in circles all the time, wondering why, when we put large systems together, they didn't quite make it, and 4) Therefore we need to adopt a Precautionary Principle and treat the problem as if irreducibility really is significant. Whether you like it or not - whether you've got too much invested in the contrary point of view to admit it, or not - this is a perfectly valid and coherent argument, and your attempt to try to push it into some lesser realm of a conjectural assertion is profoundly insulting. Richard Loosemore - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe
RE: [agi] None of you seem to be able ...
From: Benjamin Goertzel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] As an example of a creative leap (that is speculative and may be wrong, but is certainly creative), check out my hypothesis of emergent social- psychological intelligence as related to mirror neurons and octonion algebras: http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2007/mirrorself.pdf I happen to think the real subtlety of intelligence happens on the emergent level, and not on the level of the particulars of the system that gives rise to the emergent phenomena. That paper conjectures some example phenomena that I believe occur on the emergent level of intelligent systems. This paper really takes the reader though a detailed walk of a really nice application of octonionic structure applied to the mind. The concept of mirrorhouses is really creative and thought provoking especially applied in this way. I like thinking about a mind in this sort of crystallographic structure yet there is no way I could comb through the details like this. This type of methodology has so many advantages such as - * being visually descriptive yet highly complex * modular and building block friendly * computers love this sort of structure, it's what they do best * there is an enormous amount of math existing related to this already worked out * scalable, extremely extensible, systematic * it fibrillates out to sociologic systems * etc.. Even if this phenomena is not emergent or partially emergent, (I favor partially at this point as crystal clear can be a prefecture of emergence), you can build AGI based on optimal emergent structures that the human brain might be coalescing in a perfect world, and also come up with new and better ones that the human brain hasn't got to yet either by building them directly or baking new ones in a programmed complex system. John - 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=72153159-51ae59