Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
James, your comments are appreciated. a few comments below Stan James Ratcliff wrote: Your train of reasoning is lacking somewhat in many areas, and does not directly point to your main assertion. thanks for the feedback. As I follow other discussions and read the papers they refer to, I realize that my writings are lacking. Perhaps they are more blog like than scientific. The problem of calculating values of certain states is a difficult one, and one that a goo AGI MUST be able to do, using facts of the world, and subjective beliefs and measures as well. I'm not sure I get the MUST part. Is this for troubleshooting purpose or for trust issues? Or is it required for steering the contemplation or attention of the machine? Whether healthcare or education spending is most beneficial must be calculated, and compared against eachother, based on facts, beliefs, past data and statistics, and trial and error. And these subjective beliefs are ever changing and cyclical. As a better example, would be a limited AGI whose job was to balance the National budget, its job would be to choose the best projects to spend money on. Maximizing Benefit Units (BU) here as a measure of 'worth' of each project is needed and required. One intelligence (human) may be overwelmed with the sheer amount of data and statistics to come to the best decision. An AGI with subjective beliefs about the benefit of of each could use potentially more of teh data to come to a more maximized solution. It is the future scenarios that are often the most compelling justification or evidence for value of something, and in my opinion the most unreliable. Whether it is man or machine giving his case, there will be speculation involved in the common sense domain. Will the scenario be You say this... now prove it. If you can't prove it don't use that in the justification... Very limiting. On your other note about any explanation being too long or too complicated to understand.. Any decision must be able to be explained. It can be done at different levels, and expanded as much as the AGI is told to do so, but there should be NO decicions that you ask the machine, Why do you decide X? and the answer is nothing, or 'I dont know' If the architecture of the machine is flow based, that is, the prior events helped determine current events, then the burden of explaining would overwhelm the system. Even if only logic based, as you pointed out the values will be dynamic and to explain one would need to keep a record of the values that went into the decision process - a snapshot of the world as it was at the time. What if the system attempted to explain and finally concluded if I were making the decision right now, it would be different. We wouldn't consider it especially brilliant since we hear it all the time. Any machine we create that has answers without the reasoning, is very scary. and maybe more than scary if it is optimized to offer reasoning that people will buy, especially the line trust me. James Ratcliff */Stan Nilsen [EMAIL PROTECTED]/* wrote: Greetings Samantha, I'll not bother with detailed explanations since they are easily dismissed with a hand wave and categorization of irrelevant. For anyone who might be interested in the question of: Why wouldn't a super intelligence be better able to explain the aspects of reality? (assuming the point is providing explanation for choices.) I've placed an example case online at http://www.footnotestrongai.com/examples/bebillg.html It's an exploration based on becoming Bill Gates, (at least having control over his money) and how a supercomputer might offer explanations given the situation. Pretty painless, easy read. I find the values based nature of our world highly relevant to the concept of an emerging super brain that will make super decisions. Stan Nilsen Samantha Atkins wrote: On Dec 26, 2007, at 7:21 AM, Stan Nilsen wrote: Samantha Atkins wrote: In what way? The limits of human probability computation to form accurate opinions are rather well documented. Why wouldn't a mind that could compute millions of times more quickly and with far greater accuracy be able to form much more complex models that were far better at predicting future events and explaining those aspects of reality with are its inputs? Again we need to get beyond the [likely religion instilled] notion that only absolute knowledge is real (or super) knowledge. Allow me to address what I think the questions are (I'll paraphrase): Q1. in what way are we going to be short of super intelligence? resp: The simple answer is that the most intelligent of future intelligences will not be able to make decisions that are clearly superior to the best of
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Your train of reasoning is lacking somewhat in many areas, and does not directly point to your main assertion. The problem of calculating values of certain states is a difficult one, and one that a goo AGI MUST be able to do, using facts of the world, and subjective beliefs and measures as well. Whether healthcare or education spending is most beneficial must be calculated, and compared against eachother, based on facts, beliefs, past data and statistics, and trial and error. And these subjective beliefs are ever changing and cyclical. As a better example, would be a limited AGI whose job was to balance the National budget, its job would be to choose the best projects to spend money on. Maximizing Benefit Units (BU) here as a measure of 'worth' of each project is needed and required. One intelligence (human) may be overwelmed with the sheer amount of data and statistics to come to the best decision. An AGI with subjective beliefs about the benefit of of each could use potentially more of teh data to come to a more maximized solution. On your other note about any explanation being too long or too complicated to understand.. Any decision must be able to be explained. It can be done at different levels, and expanded as much as the AGI is told to do so, but there should be NO decicions that you ask the machine, Why do you decide X? and the answer is nothing, or 'I dont know' Any machine we create that has answers without the reasoning, is very scary. James Ratcliff Stan Nilsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Greetings Samantha, I'll not bother with detailed explanations since they are easily dismissed with a hand wave and categorization of irrelevant. For anyone who might be interested in the question of: Why wouldn't a super intelligence be better able to explain the aspects of reality? (assuming the point is providing explanation for choices.) I've placed an example case online at http://www.footnotestrongai.com/examples/bebillg.html It's an exploration based on becoming Bill Gates, (at least having control over his money) and how a supercomputer might offer explanations given the situation. Pretty painless, easy read. I find the values based nature of our world highly relevant to the concept of an emerging super brain that will make super decisions. Stan Nilsen Samantha Atkins wrote: On Dec 26, 2007, at 7:21 AM, Stan Nilsen wrote: Samantha Atkins wrote: In what way? The limits of human probability computation to form accurate opinions are rather well documented. Why wouldn't a mind that could compute millions of times more quickly and with far greater accuracy be able to form much more complex models that were far better at predicting future events and explaining those aspects of reality with are its inputs?Again we need to get beyond the [likely religion instilled] notion that only absolute knowledge is real (or super) knowledge. Allow me to address what I think the questions are (I'll paraphrase): Q1. in what way are we going to be short of super intelligence? resp: The simple answer is that the most intelligent of future intelligences will not be able to make decisions that are clearly superior to the best of human judgment. This is not to say that weather forecasting might not improve as technology does, but meant to say that predictions and decisions regarding the hard problems that fill reality, will remain hard and defy the intelligentsia's efforts to fully grasp them. This is a mere assertion. Why won't such computationally much more powerful intelligences make better decisions than humans can or will? Q2. why wouldn't a mind with characteristics of ... be able to form more complex models? resp: By more complex I presume you mean having more concepts and relevance connections between concepts. If so, I submit that wikipedia estimate of synapse of the human brain at 1 to 5 quadrillion is major complexity, and if all those connections were properly tuned, that is awesome computing. Tuning seems to be the issue. I mean having more active data, better memory, tremendously more accurate and powerful computation.How complex our brain is at the synaptic level has not all that much to do with how complex a model we can hold in our awareness and manipulate accurately.We have no way of tuning the mind and you would likely a get a biological computing vegetable if you could. A great deal of our brain is design for and supports functions that have nothing to do with modeling or abstract computation. Q3 why wouldn't a mind with characteristics of ... be able to build models that are far better at predicting future events? resp: This is very closely related to the limits of intelligence, but not the only factor contributing to intelligence. Predictable events are easy in a few domains, but are they an abundant part of life? Abundant enough to say
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
On Dec 26, 2007, at 11:56 AM, Charles D Hixson wrote: Samantha Atkins wrote: On Dec 10, 2007, at 6:29 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: On Dec 10, 2007 6:59 AM, John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dawkins trivializes religion from his comfortable first world perspective ignoring the way of life of hundreds of millions of people and offers little substitute for what religion does and has done for civilization and what has came out of it over the ages. He's a spoiled brat prude with a glaring self-righteous desire to prove to people with his copious superficial factoids that god doesn't exist by pandering to common frustrations. He has little common sense about the subject in general, just his Wow. Nice to see someone take that position on Dawkins. I'm ambivalent, but I haven't seen many rational comments against him and his views. Wow, you consider the above remotely rational? A reasonable point, but Dawkins *does* frequently engage in premature certainty, at least from my perspective. I would find him less offensive than the theistic preachers if he weren't making pronouncements based on his authority as a scientist. I don't agree he is doing anything wrong or sleazy. He is a scientist but his arguments are based on reason and pointing out religious absurdities and dangers. As a scientist he also points out that science does explain many things without dogma that religion claims to explain but does not. That all seems perfectly legit to me. He is a good scientist, and I respect him in the realm of biology and genetics. When he delves into psychology and religion I feel like he is using his authority in one area to bolster his opinions in another area. I disagree. This is precisely what I don't see him doing. If he were to make similar pronouncements for or against negative energy, people would be appalled, and he's just as out of his field in religion. I don't agree that only specialists should speak about religion or its place in modern society. Also he is speaking up in favor of a naturalistic and religion free world view. Which I think is a very good thinc to have some active proponents for . Religion has been treated with kid gloves for much too long. A good airing out of the odious aspects of religion is long overdue. If it does contain eternal verities then they will survive. But much rot can and should be disposed of. Unfortunately, so is everyone else. So he's got as much right to his opinion has anyone else, but no more. Ditto for Billy Graham, the Pope, or any other authority you might cite. So who would you consider qualified? Or is it just a pointless subject? If so shouldn't someone at least be bothered to say so in the face of so many claiming it is the only important subject? People don't usually even bother to use well defined terms, so frequently you can't even tell whether they are arguing or agreeing. When I'm feeling cynical I feel this is on purpose, so that they can pick and choose their allies based on expediency. When the terms are murky but claimed as infallible certainties overriding all else someone had best speak against them. Clearly much of what is passed off as religious doctrine is political expediency, and has no value whatsoever WRT arguments about truth. So Dawkins is less offensive than most...but nearly equally wrong- headed. OTOH, he's probably not lying about what his real beliefs are. He has that over most preachers. I don't agree he is equally wrong-headed as he actually bothers to question his beliefs and is open to discussion. This is very refreshing compared to most religious folks I have dealt with. He actually has reason and evidence for his positive beliefs. Again this is a large improvement. I also hold with a naturalistic view although I think nature has quite a few surprises up her sleeve yet. In any event I don't think we will be in Kansas for a great deal longer. - samantha - 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=80168043-28856e
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
On Dec 26, 2007, at 7:21 AM, Stan Nilsen wrote: Samantha Atkins wrote: In what way? The limits of human probability computation to form accurate opinions are rather well documented. Why wouldn't a mind that could compute millions of times more quickly and with far greater accuracy be able to form much more complex models that were far better at predicting future events and explaining those aspects of reality with are its inputs?Again we need to get beyond the [likely religion instilled] notion that only absolute knowledge is real (or super) knowledge. Allow me to address what I think the questions are (I'll paraphrase): Q1. in what way are we going to be short of super intelligence? resp: The simple answer is that the most intelligent of future intelligences will not be able to make decisions that are clearly superior to the best of human judgment. This is not to say that weather forecasting might not improve as technology does, but meant to say that predictions and decisions regarding the hard problems that fill reality, will remain hard and defy the intelligentsia's efforts to fully grasp them. This is a mere assertion. Why won't such computationally much more powerful intelligences make better decisions than humans can or will? Q2. why wouldn't a mind with characteristics of ... be able to form more complex models? resp: By more complex I presume you mean having more concepts and relevance connections between concepts. If so, I submit that wikipedia estimate of synapse of the human brain at 1 to 5 quadrillion is major complexity, and if all those connections were properly tuned, that is awesome computing. Tuning seems to be the issue. I mean having more active data, better memory, tremendously more accurate and powerful computation.How complex our brain is at the synaptic level has not all that much to do with how complex a model we can hold in our awareness and manipulate accurately.We have no way of tuning the mind and you would likely a get a biological computing vegetable if you could. A great deal of our brain is design for and supports functions that have nothing to do with modeling or abstract computation. Q3 why wouldn't a mind with characteristics of ... be able to build models that are far better at predicting future events? resp: This is very closely related to the limits of intelligence, but not the only factor contributing to intelligence. Predictable events are easy in a few domains, but are they an abundant part of life? Abundant enough to say that we will be able to make super predictions? Billions of daily decisions are made, and any one of them could have a butterfly effect. Not really and it ignores the actual question. If a given set of factors of interest are inter-related with a larger number of variables than humans can deal with then an intelligence that can work with such more complex inter-dependencies will make better decisions in those areas.We already have expert systems that make better decisions more dependably in specialized areas than even most human experts in those domains. I see no reason to expect this to decrease or hit a wall. And this is just using weak AI. Q4 why wouldn't a mind... be far better able to explain aspects of reality? resp: may I propose a simple exercise? Consider yourself to be Bill Gates in philanthropic mode (ready to give to the world.) Make a few decisions about how to do so, then explain why you chose the avenue you took. If you didn't delegate this to committee, would you be able to explain how the checks you wrote were the best choices in reality? This is not relevant to the question at hand. Do you think an intelligence with greater memory, computational capacity and vastly greater speed can keep track of more data and generate better hypothesis to explain the data and tests and refinements of those hypotheses? I think the answer is obvious. Deeper thinking - that means considering more options doesn't it? If so, does extra thinking provide benefit if the evaluation system is only at level X? What does this mean? How would you separate thinking from the evaluation system? What sort of evaluation system do you believe can actually exist in reality that has characteristics different from those you appear to consider woefully limited? Q5 - what does it mean, or how do you separate thinking from an evaluation system? resp: Simple example in two statements: 1. Apple A is bigger than Apple B. 2. Apples are better than oranges. Does it matter how much you know about apples and oranges? Will deep thinking about the DNA of apples, the proteins of apples, the color of apples or history of apples, help to prove the second statement? Will deep analysis of oranges prove anything? Will fast and accurate recall of every related
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
From: Samantha Atkins [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Dec 28, 2007, at 5:34 AM, John G. Rose wrote: Well I shouldn't berate the poor dude... The subject of rationality is pertinent though as the way that humans deal with unknown involves irrationality especially in relation to deitical belief establishment. Before we had all the scientific instruments and methodologies irrationality played an important role. How many AGIs have engineered irrationality as functional dependencies? Scientists and computer geeks sometimes overly apply rationality in irrational ways. The importance of irrationality perhaps is underplayed as before science, going from primordial sludge to the age of reason was quite a large percentage of mans time spent in existence... and here we are. Methinks there is no clear notion of rationality or rational in the above paragraph. Thus I have no idea of what you are actually saying.Rational is not synonymous with science. What forms of irrationality do you think have a place in an AGI and why? What does the percentage of time supposedly spend in some state have to do with the importance of such a state especially with respect to an AGI? What I am trying to zero in on Samantha is that methodology of reasoning that humankind uses to deal with unknowns. Example - 10,000 years ago, sun - it's hot, comes up everyday, gives life, need it or plants will die. BUT you being the avant-garde answer-finder of the local tribe of semi-civilized folk DON'T have much in terms of science and boolean logic to start figuring out what it really is. So various approaches are used to identify and apply utility to and make the reasoning part of everyday operations of the people. The rationality that is used is mixed with irrationality. Why? We are not following clear cut probabilities here there are other processes involved and if these are in your understanding of what rational is please feel free to enlighten. Man is not a purely rational being and if reasoning in an AGI is based on just maximizing probabilities it is not enough. You could say well I want a pure intelligence that is 100% rational and man's intelligence is deviant from pure. It probably is but a pure intelligence may not deem man's (human's) existence as a rational expenditure of resources and want to terminate him. This is obviously bad. Us biological blobs of useless resource consuming waste want a pure intelligence to keep us around (but not like in the Matrix :)). So how do we fit in rationally, or do we make exceptions. It is not pure probability optimizations. There is irrationality for lack of better term, IOW this irrationality needs to be explored more and broken up. The irrationality is relative; it is a mask, a deception device, has social functions, etc. etc... 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=80187072-0b0307
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Greetings Samantha, I'll not bother with detailed explanations since they are easily dismissed with a hand wave and categorization of irrelevant. For anyone who might be interested in the question of: Why wouldn't a super intelligence be better able to explain the aspects of reality? (assuming the point is providing explanation for choices.) I've placed an example case online at http://www.footnotestrongai.com/examples/bebillg.html It's an exploration based on becoming Bill Gates, (at least having control over his money) and how a supercomputer might offer explanations given the situation. Pretty painless, easy read. I find the values based nature of our world highly relevant to the concept of an emerging super brain that will make super decisions. Stan Nilsen Samantha Atkins wrote: On Dec 26, 2007, at 7:21 AM, Stan Nilsen wrote: Samantha Atkins wrote: In what way? The limits of human probability computation to form accurate opinions are rather well documented. Why wouldn't a mind that could compute millions of times more quickly and with far greater accuracy be able to form much more complex models that were far better at predicting future events and explaining those aspects of reality with are its inputs?Again we need to get beyond the [likely religion instilled] notion that only absolute knowledge is real (or super) knowledge. Allow me to address what I think the questions are (I'll paraphrase): Q1. in what way are we going to be short of super intelligence? resp: The simple answer is that the most intelligent of future intelligences will not be able to make decisions that are clearly superior to the best of human judgment. This is not to say that weather forecasting might not improve as technology does, but meant to say that predictions and decisions regarding the hard problems that fill reality, will remain hard and defy the intelligentsia's efforts to fully grasp them. This is a mere assertion. Why won't such computationally much more powerful intelligences make better decisions than humans can or will? Q2. why wouldn't a mind with characteristics of ... be able to form more complex models? resp: By more complex I presume you mean having more concepts and relevance connections between concepts. If so, I submit that wikipedia estimate of synapse of the human brain at 1 to 5 quadrillion is major complexity, and if all those connections were properly tuned, that is awesome computing. Tuning seems to be the issue. I mean having more active data, better memory, tremendously more accurate and powerful computation.How complex our brain is at the synaptic level has not all that much to do with how complex a model we can hold in our awareness and manipulate accurately.We have no way of tuning the mind and you would likely a get a biological computing vegetable if you could. A great deal of our brain is design for and supports functions that have nothing to do with modeling or abstract computation. Q3 why wouldn't a mind with characteristics of ... be able to build models that are far better at predicting future events? resp: This is very closely related to the limits of intelligence, but not the only factor contributing to intelligence. Predictable events are easy in a few domains, but are they an abundant part of life? Abundant enough to say that we will be able to make super predictions? Billions of daily decisions are made, and any one of them could have a butterfly effect. Not really and it ignores the actual question. If a given set of factors of interest are inter-related with a larger number of variables than humans can deal with then an intelligence that can work with such more complex inter-dependencies will make better decisions in those areas.We already have expert systems that make better decisions more dependably in specialized areas than even most human experts in those domains. I see no reason to expect this to decrease or hit a wall. And this is just using weak AI. Q4 why wouldn't a mind... be far better able to explain aspects of reality? resp: may I propose a simple exercise? Consider yourself to be Bill Gates in philanthropic mode (ready to give to the world.) Make a few decisions about how to do so, then explain why you chose the avenue you took. If you didn't delegate this to committee, would you be able to explain how the checks you wrote were the best choices in reality? This is not relevant to the question at hand. Do you think an intelligence with greater memory, computational capacity and vastly greater speed can keep track of more data and generate better hypothesis to explain the data and tests and refinements of those hypotheses? I think the answer is obvious. Deeper thinking - that means considering more options doesn't it? If so, does extra thinking provide benefit if the evaluation system is only at level X?
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
But the traditional gods didn't represent the unknowns, but rather the knowns. A sun god rose every day and set every night in a regular pattern. Other things which also happened in this same regular pattern were adjunct characteristics of the sun go. Or look at some of their names, carefully: Aphrodite, she who fucks. I.e., the characteristic of all Woman that is embodied in eros. (Usually the name isn't quite that blatant.) Well yes gods were(are) sort of like distributed knowledge bases. The distributed entity may or may not exist if you took the humans out of the equation. So you nuke the earth when Aphrodite was popular does she still exist? Maybe residual molecular and quantum permutations of some sort distributed but the majority of her existed in social human substrate. She was added to and changed over time, some of the information compressed and extractable lossily but some of the knowledge not extractable beyond compression, distorted and twisted. But she was composed on both known and unknown representation - but contained utility. Gods represent the regularities of nature, as embodied in our mental processes without the understanding of how those processes operated. (Once the processes started being understood, the gods became less significant.) Yes this is the pattern. I'm arguing that much of our individual and social knowledge has layers and layers directly related to deities and even more so things like taboos, myths, ceremonies, etc. even though many people today totally renounce any sort of religious belief. IOW it is so baked into us, but the question is how much of it is baked into knowledge and intelligence itself. Sometimes there were chance associations...and these could lead to strange transformations of myth when things became more understood. In Sumeria the goddess of love was associated with (identified with) the evening star and the god of war was associated with (identified with) the morning star. When knowledge of astronomy advanced it was realized that those two were identical, and they ended up with Ishtar, the goddess of Love and War. Because lovers tend to meet in the early evening, and warriors tend to try to launch the attack as soon as they can see what's going on (to catch to victims by surprise). This is a small part of why I believe that human intelligence is largely a development from pattern matching. Certainly and the whole pattern matching function that is in our brains may or may not be entirely the most efficient mechanism available due to the way it has been evolved. Evolution can create extremely efficient mechanisms and also inefficient ones. 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=79872228-6b2b41
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
On Dec 10, 2007 6:59 AM, John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dawkins trivializes religion from his comfortable first world perspective ignoring the way of life of hundreds of millions of people and offers little substitute for what religion does and has done for civilization and what has came out of it over the ages. He's a spoiled brat prude with a glaring self-righteous desire to prove to people with his copious superficial factoids that god doesn't exist by pandering to common frustrations. He has little common sense about the subject in general, just his Wow. Nice to see someone take that position on Dawkins. I'm ambivalent, but I haven't seen many rational comments against him and his views. Nice? Why? I thought you wanted rational comments. Rational by definition means comments giving reasons, which the above do not. Well I shouldn't berate the poor dude... The subject of rationality is pertinent though as the way that humans deal with unknown involves irrationality especially in relation to deitical belief establishment. Before we had all the scientific instruments and methodologies irrationality played an important role. How many AGIs have engineered irrationality as functional dependencies? Scientists and computer geeks sometimes overly apply rationality in irrational ways. The importance of irrationality perhaps is underplayed as before science, going from primordial sludge to the age of reason was quite a large percentage of mans time spent in existence... and here we are. 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=79875428-48610a
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
From: Samantha Atkins [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Indeed. Some form of instaneous information transfer would be required for unlimited growth. If it also turned out that true time travel was possible then things would get really spooky. Alpha and Omega. Mind without end. I think that it is going to be constrained by the speed of light especially in the very beginning and especially if it is software based. Nanotechnological AGI may be able to figure out a way to, if it is not engineered initially, to transform itself from a super atomic embodiment to a subatomic, quantum or sub quantum embodiment and potentially thwart the speed of light and even communicate and/or transfer/replicate to other multiverses. I don't know if intermultiverse communication is constrained by speed of light, I think that it is not depending on the multiverse instance and communication medium. But initially software AGI is most definitely constrained. If it's going to become more efficient intelligence-wise within physical and computational resource constraints it will need to come up with better stuff mathematically/algorithmically. And the mathematical constraint space is limited by other factors. The thing is definitely constrained if it cannot alter its physical medium (electronic - CPU, memory, etc.). How much intelligence and knowledge can be achieved with particular amount of resource is up to debate I believe. But if intelligence has units you could probably figure out how much intelligence maximally would fit into a finite resource set... 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=79919689-d86a31
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
On Dec 28, 2007, at 5:34 AM, John G. Rose wrote: Well I shouldn't berate the poor dude... The subject of rationality is pertinent though as the way that humans deal with unknown involves irrationality especially in relation to deitical belief establishment. Before we had all the scientific instruments and methodologies irrationality played an important role. How many AGIs have engineered irrationality as functional dependencies? Scientists and computer geeks sometimes overly apply rationality in irrational ways. The importance of irrationality perhaps is underplayed as before science, going from primordial sludge to the age of reason was quite a large percentage of mans time spent in existence... and here we are. Methinks there is no clear notion of rationality or rational in the above paragraph. Thus I have no idea of what you are actually saying.Rational is not synonymous with science. What forms of irrationality do you think have a place in an AGI and why? What does the percentage of time supposedly spend in some state have to do with the importance of such a state especially with respect to an AGI? - samantha - 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=80096415-b46a5a
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Samantha Atkins wrote: On Dec 20, 2007, at 9:18 AM, Stan Nilsen wrote: Ed, I agree that machines will be faster and may have something equivalent to the trillions of synapses in the human brain. It isn't the modeling device that limits the level of intelligence, but rather what can be effectively modeled. Effectively meaning what can be used in a real time judgment system. Probability is the best we can do for many parts of the model. This may give us decent models but leave us short of super intelligence. In what way? The limits of human probability computation to form accurate opinions are rather well documented. Why wouldn't a mind that could compute millions of times more quickly and with far greater accuracy be able to form much more complex models that were far better at predicting future events and explaining those aspects of reality with are its inputs?Again we need to get beyond the [likely religion instilled] notion that only absolute knowledge is real (or super) knowledge. Allow me to address what I think the questions are (I'll paraphrase): Q1. in what way are we going to be short of super intelligence? resp: The simple answer is that the most intelligent of future intelligences will not be able to make decisions that are clearly superior to the best of human judgment. This is not to say that weather forecasting might not improve as technology does, but meant to say that predictions and decisions regarding the hard problems that fill reality, will remain hard and defy the intelligentsia's efforts to fully grasp them. Q2. why wouldn't a mind with characteristics of ... be able to form more complex models? resp: By more complex I presume you mean having more concepts and relevance connections between concepts. If so, I submit that wikipedia estimate of synapse of the human brain at 1 to 5 quadrillion is major complexity, and if all those connections were properly tuned, that is awesome computing. Tuning seems to be the issue. Q3 why wouldn't a mind with characteristics of ... be able to build models that are far better at predicting future events? resp: This is very closely related to the limits of intelligence, but not the only factor contributing to intelligence. Predictable events are easy in a few domains, but are they an abundant part of life? Abundant enough to say that we will be able to make super predictions? Billions of daily decisions are made, and any one of them could have a butterfly effect. Q4 why wouldn't a mind... be far better able to explain aspects of reality? resp: may I propose a simple exercise? Consider yourself to be Bill Gates in philanthropic mode (ready to give to the world.) Make a few decisions about how to do so, then explain why you chose the avenue you took. If you didn't delegate this to committee, would you be able to explain how the checks you wrote were the best choices in reality? Deeper thinking - that means considering more options doesn't it? If so, does extra thinking provide benefit if the evaluation system is only at level X? What does this mean? How would you separate thinking from the evaluation system? What sort of evaluation system do you believe can actually exist in reality that has characteristics different from those you appear to consider woefully limited? Q5 - what does it mean, or how do you separate thinking from an evaluation system? resp: Simple example in two statements: 1. Apple A is bigger than Apple B. 2. Apples are better than oranges. Does it matter how much you know about apples and oranges? Will deep thinking about the DNA of apples, the proteins of apples, the color of apples or history of apples, help to prove the second statement? Will deep analysis of oranges prove anything? Will fast and accurate recall of every related fact about Apples and oranges help in our proof of statement 2? Even if the second statement had been 2. Apple A is better than Apple B, we would have had trouble deciding if the superior color of A is greater than the better taste of B. This is what I mean by evaluation system. Foolish example? Think instead economic prosperity is better than CO2 pollution if you want to be real world. Q6 - what sort of evaluation system can exist that has characteristics differing from what I consider woefully limited. resp: I'm not clear what communicated the idea that I consider either the machine intelligence or the human intelligence to be woefully limited. I concede that machine intelligence will likely be as good as human intelligence and maybe better than the average human. Is this super? Was the woefully inadequate in reference to a personal opinion? Those are not my words, I consider human intelligence a work of art, brilliant. Yes, faster is better than slower, unless you don't have all the information yet. A premature answer could be a jump to conclusion that
Re: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
On Friday 21 December 2007 09:51:13 pm, Ed Porter wrote: As a lawyer, I can tell you there is no clear agreed upon definition for most words, but that doesn't stop most of us from using un-clearly defined words productively many times every day for communication with others. If you can only think in terms of what is exactly defined you will be denied life's most important thoughts. And in particular, denied the ability to create a working AI. It's the inability to grasp this insight that I call formalist float in the book (yeah, I wish I could have come up with a better phrase...) and to which I attribute symbolic AI's Glass Ceiling. Josh - 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=78789088-cf88d9
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
On Dec 22, 2007 8:15 PM, Philip Goetz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dawkins trivializes religion from his comfortable first world perspective ignoring the way of life of hundreds of millions of people and offers little substitute for what religion does and has done for civilization and what has came out of it over the ages. He's a spoiled brat prude with a glaring self-righteous desire to prove to people with his copious superficial factoids that god doesn't exist by pandering to common frustrations. He has little common sense about the subject in general, just his Wow. Nice to see someone take that position on Dawkins. I'm ambivalent, but I haven't seen many rational comments against him and his views. Nice? Why? I thought you wanted rational comments. Rational by definition means comments giving reasons, which the above do not. I used the term nice where perhaps 'surprising' or 'refreshing' might have been more appropriate to my intention. Many of the list I have read are so anti-religion that I would not expect an AGI thread to be equally anti-Dawkins. my use of rational might have been sub-optimal also. Typically anti- groups exist because they are threatened by whatever it is they are against. It appeared to me that John Rose was making a somewhat informed dismissal of Dawkins theory rather than a kneejerk/conditioned priori reaction. Maybe I assumed those opinions were formed in response to common domain knowledge of Dawkins. i responded primarily to your question: why - Hopefully this explains motivation for my original comment without introducing too many new 'irrational' arguments. :) - 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=78928262-8a6673
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Greetings j.k. one response: Given the example of exploring all math avenues... 1. (possible?) I'm not able to appreciate the task being considered, but I'm willing to take your word that it is possible and desirable. 2. (qualify as way beyond) I submit that it is way beyond the human computational ability. So is hand processing all the credit card transactions that go on every day. Is this the essence of intelligence? Yes, I see a third alternative. 3. (perception) Will this processing power find this task to be more important than: abolishing natural death, developing ubiquitous near-free energy technologies, designing ships to the stars, etc.? and add to those priorities a) the battle with humans be it cold war or a more aggressive strategy, either way there is war modeling to be done and will consumes cycles of the life simulator b) the task to create greater than greater artificial intelligence. What could be more important than calculating in femto-seconds? Imagine what could be done. (really need to use emoticons here...) Bottom line: How the way beyond human capabilities are applied will be the result of the intelligence functions. Isn't the essence of the intelligence functions how one categorizes, simplifies the issues? Guess we'll wait for the arrival of this new life form before we learn what we would commit our lives to if we were smarter. Stan j.k. wrote: Hi Stan, On 12/20/2007 07:44 PM,, Stan Nilsen wrote: I understand that it's all uphill to defy the obvious. For the record, today I do believe that intelligence way beyond human intelligence is not possible. I understand that this is your belief. I was trying to challenge you to make a strong case that it is in fact *likely* to be true (rather than just merely possible that it's true), which I do not believe you have done. I think you mostly just stated what you would like to be the case -- or what you intuit to be the case (there is rarely much of a difference) -- and then talked of the consequences that might follow *if* it were the case. I'm still a little unsure what exactly you mean when you say intelligence 'way beyond' human intelligence is not possible'. Take my example of an intelligence that could in seconds recreate all known mathematics, and also all the untaken paths that mathematicians could have gone down but didn't (*yet*). It seems to me you have one of two responses to this scenario: (1) you might assert that this it could never happen because it is not possible (please elaborate if so); or (2) you might believe that it is possible and could happen, but that it would not qualify as 'way beyond' human intelligence (please elaborate if so). Which is it? Or is there another alternative? For the moment, do I say anything new with the following example? I believe it contains the essence of my argument about intelligence. A simple example: Problem: find the optimal speed limit of a specific highway. Who is able to judge what the optimal is? Optimality is always relative to some criteria. Until the criteria are fixed, any answer is akin to answering what is the optimal quuz of fah? No answer is correct because no answer is wrong -- or all are right or all wrong. In this case, would a simpleton have as good an answer? It depends on the criteria. For some criteria, a simpleton has sufficient ability to answer optimally. For example, if the optimal limit is defined in terms of its closeness to 42 MPH, we can all determine the optimal speed limit. Perhaps the simple says, the limit is how fast you want to go. And that is certainly the optimal solution according to some criteria. Just as certainly, it is absolutely wrong according to other criteria (e.g., minimization of accidents). As long the criteria are unspecified, there can of course be disagreement. The 100,000 strong intellect may gyrate through many deep thoughts and come back with 47.8 miles per hour as the best speed limit to establish. Wouldn't it be interesting to see how this number was derived? And, better still, would another 100K rated intellect come up with exactly the same number? If given more time, would the 100K rated intellects eventually agree? My belief is that they will not agree. This is life, the thing we model. Reality *is* messy, and supreme intellects might come to different answers based on different criteria for optimality, but that isn't an argument that there can be no phase transition in intelligence or that greater intelligence is not useful for many questions and problems. Is the point of the question to suggest that because you think that question might not benefit from greater intelligence, that you believe most questions will not benefit from greater intelligence? Even if that were the case, it would have no bearing at all on whether greater intelligence is possible, only whether it is desirable. You seem to be arguing that it's not possible, not that it's possible but
Re: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
Matt Mahoney wrote: --- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Mahoney wrote: --- Stan Nilsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt, Thanks for the links sent earlier. I especially like the paper by Legg and Hutter regarding measurement of machine intelligence. The other paper I find difficult, probably it's deeper than I am. The AIXI paper is essentially a proof of Occam's Razor. The proof uses a formal model of an agent and an environment as a pair of interacting Turing machines exchanging symbols. In addition, at each step the environment also sends a reward signal to the agent. The goal of the agent is to maximize the accumulated reward. Hutter proves that if the environment is computable or has a computable probability distribution, then the optimal behavior of the agent is to guess at each step that the environment is simulated by the shortest program consistent with all of the interaction observed so far. This optimal behavior is not computable in general, which means there is no upper bound on intelligence. Nonsense. None of this follows from the AIXI paper. I have explained why several times in the past, but since you keep repeating these kinds of declarations about it, I feel obliged to repeat that these assertions are speculative extrapolations that are completeley unjustified by the paper's actual content. Yes it does. Hutter proved that the optimal behavior of an agent in a Solomonoff distribution of environments is not computable. If it was computable, then there would be a finite solution that was maximally intelligent according to Hutter and Legg's definition of universal intelligence. Still more nonsense: as I have pointed out before, Hutter's implied definitions of agent and environment and intelligence are not connected to real world usages of those terms, because he allows all of these things to depend on infinities (infinitely capable agents, infinite numbers of possible universes, etc.). If he had used the terms djshgd, uioreou and astfdl instead of agent, environment and intelligence, his analysis would have been fine, but he did not. Having appropriated those terms he did not show why anyone should believe that his results applied in any way to the things in the real world that are called agent and environment and intelligence. As such, his conclusions were bankrupt. Having pointed this out for the benefit of others who may have been overly impressed by the Hutter paper, just because it looked like impressive maths, I have no interest in discussing this yet again. 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=78403968-fdcb5a
Re: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
--- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Mahoney wrote: --- Stan Nilsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt, Thanks for the links sent earlier. I especially like the paper by Legg and Hutter regarding measurement of machine intelligence. The other paper I find difficult, probably it's deeper than I am. The AIXI paper is essentially a proof of Occam's Razor. The proof uses a formal model of an agent and an environment as a pair of interacting Turing machines exchanging symbols. In addition, at each step the environment also sends a reward signal to the agent. The goal of the agent is to maximize the accumulated reward. Hutter proves that if the environment is computable or has a computable probability distribution, then the optimal behavior of the agent is to guess at each step that the environment is simulated by the shortest program consistent with all of the interaction observed so far. This optimal behavior is not computable in general, which means there is no upper bound on intelligence. Nonsense. None of this follows from the AIXI paper. I have explained why several times in the past, but since you keep repeating these kinds of declarations about it, I feel obliged to repeat that these assertions are speculative extrapolations that are completeley unjustified by the paper's actual content. Yes it does. Hutter proved that the optimal behavior of an agent in a Solomonoff distribution of environments is not computable. If it was computable, then there would be a finite solution that was maximally intelligent according to Hutter and Legg's definition of universal intelligence. -- 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=78395068-9af1e2
Re: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
--- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Still more nonsense: as I have pointed out before, Hutter's implied definitions of agent and environment and intelligence are not connected to real world usages of those terms, because he allows all of these things to depend on infinities (infinitely capable agents, infinite numbers of possible universes, etc.). If he had used the terms djshgd, uioreou and astfdl instead of agent, environment and intelligence, his analysis would have been fine, but he did not. Having appropriated those terms he did not show why anyone should believe that his results applied in any way to the things in the real world that are called agent and environment and intelligence. As such, his conclusions were bankrupt. Having pointed this out for the benefit of others who may have been overly impressed by the Hutter paper, just because it looked like impressive maths, I have no interest in discussing this yet again. I suppose you will also dismiss any paper that mentions a Turing machine as irrelevant to computer science because real computers don't have infinite memory. -- 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=78415405-5a614d
Re: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
On Dec 21, 2007 6:56 PM, Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Still more nonsense: as I have pointed out before, Hutter's implied definitions of agent and environment and intelligence are not connected to real world usages of those terms, because he allows all of these things to depend on infinities (infinitely capable agents, infinite numbers of possible universes, etc.). If he had used the terms djshgd, uioreou and astfdl instead of agent, environment and intelligence, his analysis would have been fine, but he did not. Having appropriated those terms he did not show why anyone should believe that his results applied in any way to the things in the real world that are called agent and environment and intelligence. As such, his conclusions were bankrupt. Having pointed this out for the benefit of others who may have been overly impressed by the Hutter paper, just because it looked like impressive maths, I have no interest in discussing this yet again. I suppose you will also dismiss any paper that mentions a Turing machine as irrelevant to computer science because real computers don't have infinite memory. Your assertions here do seem to have interpretation in which they are correct, but it has little to nothing to do with practical matters. For example, if 'intelligence' thing as defined by some obscure model is measured as I(x)=1-1/x, where x depends on particular design, and model investigates properties of Ultimate Intelligence of I=1, it doesn't mean that there is any point in building a system with x1000 if we already have one with x=1000, since it will provide only marginal improvement. You can't get away with qualitative conclusion like and so, there is always a better mousetrap without some quantitative reasons for that. -- Vladimir Nesovmailto:[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=78478914-70a314
Re: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
--- Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 21, 2007 6:56 PM, Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Still more nonsense: as I have pointed out before, Hutter's implied definitions of agent and environment and intelligence are not connected to real world usages of those terms, because he allows all of these things to depend on infinities (infinitely capable agents, infinite numbers of possible universes, etc.). If he had used the terms djshgd, uioreou and astfdl instead of agent, environment and intelligence, his analysis would have been fine, but he did not. Having appropriated those terms he did not show why anyone should believe that his results applied in any way to the things in the real world that are called agent and environment and intelligence. As such, his conclusions were bankrupt. Having pointed this out for the benefit of others who may have been overly impressed by the Hutter paper, just because it looked like impressive maths, I have no interest in discussing this yet again. I suppose you will also dismiss any paper that mentions a Turing machine as irrelevant to computer science because real computers don't have infinite memory. Your assertions here do seem to have interpretation in which they are correct, but it has little to nothing to do with practical matters. For example, if 'intelligence' thing as defined by some obscure model is measured as I(x)=1-1/x, where x depends on particular design, and model investigates properties of Ultimate Intelligence of I=1, it doesn't mean that there is any point in building a system with x1000 if we already have one with x=1000, since it will provide only marginal improvement. You can't get away with qualitative conclusion like and so, there is always a better mousetrap without some quantitative reasons for that. The problem here seems to be that we can't agree on a useful definition of intelligence. As a practical matter, we are interested in an agent meeting goals in a specific environment, or a finite set of environments, not all possible environments. In the case of environments having bounded space and time complexity, Hutter proved there is a computable (although intractable) solution, AIXItl. In the case of a set of environments having bounded algorithmic complexity where the goal is prediction, Legg proved in http://www.vetta.org/documents/IDSIA-12-06-1.pdf that there again is a solution. So in either case, there is one agent that does better than all others over a finite set of environments, thus an upper bound on intelligence by these measures. If you prefer to use the Turing test than a more general test of intelligence, then superhuman intelligence is not possible by his definition, because Turing did not define a test for it. Humans cannot recognize intelligence superior to their own. For example, adult humans easily recognize superior intelligence when William James Sidis (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Sidis ) was reading newspapers at 18 months and admitted to Harvard at age 11, but you would not expect children his own age to recognize it. Likewise, when Sidis was an adult, most people merely thought his behavior was strange, rather than intelligent, because they did not understand it. More generally, you cannot test for universal intelligence without environments of at least the same algorithmic complexity as the agent being tested, because otherwise (as Legg showed) simpler agents could pass the same tests. -- 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=78571912-79cf39
Re: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
On Dec 21, 2007 10:36 PM, Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The problem here seems to be that we can't agree on a useful definition of intelligence. As a practical matter, we are interested in an agent meeting goals in a specific environment, or a finite set of environments, not all possible environments. In the case of environments having bounded space and time complexity, Hutter proved there is a computable (although intractable) solution, AIXItl. In the case of a set of environments having bounded algorithmic complexity where the goal is prediction, Legg proved in http://www.vetta.org/documents/IDSIA-12-06-1.pdf that there again is a solution. So in either case, there is one agent that does better than all others over a finite set of environments, thus an upper bound on intelligence by these measures. Matt, Problem with you referring to these works this way is that statements you try to justify are pretty obvious and don't require these particular works to support them. The only difference is use of particular terms such as 'intelligence', which in itself is arbitrary and doesn't say anything. You have to refer to specific mathematical structures. If you prefer to use the Turing test than a more general test of intelligence, then superhuman intelligence is not possible by his definition, because Turing did not define a test for it. Humans cannot recognize intelligence superior to their own. For example, adult humans easily recognize superior intelligence when William James Sidis (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Sidis ) was reading newspapers at 18 months and admitted to Harvard at age 11, but you would not expect children his own age to recognize it. Likewise, when Sidis was an adult, most people merely thought his behavior was strange, rather than intelligent, because they did not understand it. I don't 'prefer' any such test, I don't know any satisfactory solutions to this problem. Intelligence is 'what brains do', that is what we can say on current level of theory here, and I suspect it's end of story until we are fairly close to a solution. You can discuss elaborations within particular approach, but then again you'd have to provide more specifics. More generally, you cannot test for universal intelligence without environments of at least the same algorithmic complexity as the agent being tested, because otherwise (as Legg showed) simpler agents could pass the same tests. For real world it's a useless observation. And no, it doesn't model your example with humans above, it's just a superficial similarity. -- Vladimir Nesovmailto:[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=78592952-79df48
Re: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
Matt: Humans cannot recognize intelligence superior to their own. This like this whole thread is not totally but highly unimaginative. No one is throwing out any interesting ideas about what a superior intelligence might entail. Mainly it's the same old mathematical, linear approach. Bo-o-oring. The Man Who Fell To Earth had one interesting thought about an obviously, recognizably superior intelligence - Bowie watching ten tv's - following ten arguments so to speak at once. A thought off the proverbial top - how about if a million people could be networked to think about the same creative problem, and any radically new ideas could be instantly recognized and transmitted to everyone - some kind of variation of the global workspace theory? [There would be vast benefits from sync'ing a million different POV's] How about if the brain could track down every thought it had ever had - guaranteed? (As distinct obviously from its present appallingly hit-and-miss filing system which can take forever/never to track down information that is definitely there, somewhere). [And what would be the negatives of perfect memory? Or why is perfect memory impossible?] How about not just mirror neurons, but a mirror nervous system/ body, that would enable you to become another human being, creature with a high degree of fidelity? How about a brain that could instantly check any generalisation against EVERY particular instance in its memory? Don't you read any superhero/superpower comics or sci-fi? Obviously there are an infinite number of very recognisable forms which a superhuman intelligence could take. How about some stimulating ideas about a superintelligence, as opposed to accountants' numbers? P.S. What would be the problems of integrating an obviously superbrain, living or mechanical, that had any of the powers above, with a body? No body, no intelligence. And there will be problems. - 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=78626654-331ddd
RE: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
I fail to see why it would not at least be considered likely that a mechanical brain that could do all the major useful mental processes the human mind does, but do them much faster over a much, much larger recorded body of experience and learning, would not be capable of greater intelligence than humans, by most reasonable definitions of intelligence. By super-human intelligence I mean an AGI able to learn and perform a large diverse set of complex tasks in complex environments faster and better than humans, such as being able: -to read information more quickly and understand its implications more deeply; -to interpret visual scenes faster and in greater depth; -to draw and learn appropriate and/or more complex generalizations more quickly; -to remember, and appropriately recall from, a store of knowledge hundreds or millions of times larger more quickly; -to instantiate behaviors and mental models in a context appropriate way more quickly, deeply, and completely; -to respond to situations in a manner that appropriately takes into account more of the relevant context in less time; -to consider more of the implications, interconnections, analogies, and possible syntheses of all the recorded knowledge in all the fields studied by all the worlds PhDs; -to program computers to perform more complex and appropriate tasks more quickly and reliably; -etc. I have seen no compelling reasons on this list to believe such machines cannot be built within 5 to 20 years -- although it is not an absolute certainty they can. For example, Richard Loosemore's complexity concerns cannot be totally swept away at this time, but the success of small controlled-chaos programs like Copycat to deal with such concerns using what I have called guiding-hand techniques (techniques similar to those of Adam Smith's invisible hand) indicates such issues can be successfully dealt with. Given the hypothetical assumption such an AGI could be made, I am just amazed by the narrow mindedness of those who deny it would not be reasonable to call a machine with such a collection of talents a form of superhuman intelligence. It seems we not only need to break the small-hardware mindset but also the small-mind mindset. 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=78648604-ac748aattachment: winmail.dat
Re: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
How about how many useful patents the AGI can lay claim to in a year. We feed in all the world's major problems and ask it for any inventions which would provide cost effictive partial solutions towards solving these problems. Obviously there will be many alternate problems and solution paths to explore. If the AGI is able produce more significant patents that we would expect a human genius to produce then I would say that it has surpassed us in intelligence. Of course it may be slowed down by the fact that it will have to wait for us to perform experiments for it and create prototypes but it can be working on alternate inventions while it is waiting on us. -- Original message -- From: Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Matt: Humans cannot recognize intelligence superior to their own. This like this whole thread is not totally but highly unimaginative. No one is throwing out any interesting ideas about what a superior intelligence might entail. Mainly it's the same old mathematical, linear approach. Bo-o-oring. The Man Who Fell To Earth had one interesting thought about an obviously, recognizably superior intelligence - Bowie watching ten tv's - following ten arguments so to speak at once. A thought off the proverbial top - how about if a million people could be networked to think about the same creative problem, and any radically new ideas could be instantly recognized and transmitted to everyone - some kind of variation of the global workspace theory? [There would be vast benefits from sync'ing a million different POV's] How about if the brain could track down every thought it had ever had - guaranteed? (As distinct obviously from its present appallingly hit-and-miss filing system which can take forever/never to track down information that is definitely there, somewhere). [And what would be the negatives of perfect memory? Or why is perfect memory impossible?] How about not just mirror neurons, but a mirror nervous system/ body, that would enable you to become another human being, creature with a high degree of fidelity? How about a brain that could instantly check any generalisation against EVERY particular instance in its memory? Don't you read any superhero/superpower comics or sci-fi? Obviously there are an infinite number of very recognisable forms which a superhuman intelligence could take. How about some stimulating ideas about a superintelligence, as opposed to accountants' numbers? P.S. What would be the problems of integrating an obviously superbrain, living or mechanical, that had any of the powers above, with a body? No body, no intelligence. And there will be problems. - 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=78637886-1fb7cd
Re: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
--- Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Intelligence is 'what brains do' --- Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Don't you read any superhero/superpower comics or sci-fi? Obviously there are an infinite number of very recognisable forms which a superhuman intelligence could take. --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How about how many useful patents the AGI can lay claim to in a year. --- Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: By super-human intelligence I mean an AGI able to learn and perform a large diverse set of complex tasks in complex environments faster and better than humans, such as ... So if we can't agree on what intelligence is (in a non human context), then how can we argue if it is possible? My calculator can add numbers faster than I can. Is it intelligent? Is Google intelligent? The Internet? Evolution? -- 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=78662567-3a0905
RE: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
As a lawyer, I can tell you there is no clear agreed upon definition for most words, but that doesn't stop most of us from using un-clearly defined words productively many times every day for communication with others. If you can only think in terms of what is exactly defined you will be denied life's most important thoughts. Although there may be no agreed upon definition of intelligence as applied to machines, whatever you think intelligence means for humans, there is reason to believe than within a decade or two machines will have more of it, faster, and capable of more deep and more complex understandings. With regard to your calculator example, I have been telling people for years than in many narrow ways machines are already more intelligent than us. But think of all the ways most of us consider ourselves to be more intelligent than machines. There is good reason to believe that in almost all of those ways in a decade or two machines will be much more intelligent than us. So an exact definition of intelligence is not needed -- by almost any definition of the word that corresponds to its more common sense understanding as applied to people, machines could be built to have more of it than we do within a decade or two. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Matt Mahoney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 21, 2007 5:34 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity) --- Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Intelligence is 'what brains do' --- Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Don't you read any superhero/superpower comics or sci-fi? Obviously there are an infinite number of very recognisable forms which a superhuman intelligence could take. --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How about how many useful patents the AGI can lay claim to in a year. --- Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: By super-human intelligence I mean an AGI able to learn and perform a large diverse set of complex tasks in complex environments faster and better than humans, such as ... So if we can't agree on what intelligence is (in a non human context), then how can we argue if it is possible? My calculator can add numbers faster than I can. Is it intelligent? Is Google intelligent? The Internet? Evolution? -- 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/?; - 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=78752932-c5291aattachment: winmail.dat
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
Stan Your web page's major argument against strong AGI seems to be the following: Limits to Intelligence ... Formal Case ...because intelligence is the process of making choices, and choices are a function of models. Models will not be perfect. Both man and machine (at least the assumed future machines) can have intricate and elaborate models, there is little reason to believe machine models will be superior to human. Your statement there is little reason to believe machine models will be superior to human seems to be the crux of you formal case and it appears unsupported. Within a decade or so machines can be built at prices many institutions could afford that could store many more models, and more complex models, than the human brain. In addition, such computers could do the type of processing the human brain does at a faster speed, enabling them to think much faster and at a deeper level. Just as human brains are generally more intelligent than that of lower primates because they are bigger and can support more, and thus presumably more complex memories and models than lower primates, future AGI's can be bigger and thus support more, and more complex, memories and models than us, and thus would be similarly likely to be more intelligent than us. And this is not even taking into account that their computational processes could be many times faster. To be fair, I only had time to skim your web site. Perhaps I am missing something, but it seems your case against strong AGI does not address the obvious argument for the possibility of strong AGI I have made above. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Stan Nilsen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 8:55 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Deity Greetings Ed, I have planted my website. Although I don't believe AI will be that strong, like other opinions, mine is not rigorously supported. The essence - AI will be similar to Human Intelligence due to the relationship of intelligence to an accurate (and effective) model of the world. There are many model areas where accurate doesn't compute. Stan http://www.footnotestrongai.com Ed Porter wrote: Stan, Thanks for speaking up. I look forward to seeing if you can actually provide any strong arguments for the fact that strong AI will probably not be strong. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Stan Nilsen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 5:49 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Deity Lest a future AGI scan these communications in developing it's attitude about God, for the record there are believers on this list. I am one of them. I'm not pushing my faith, but from this side, the alternatives are not that impressive either. Creation by chance, by random fluctuations of strings that only exist in 12 or 13 imaginary dimensions etc. is not very brilliant or conclusive. Even the sacred evolution takes a self replicator to begin the process - if only the nanotechnologists had one of those simple things... I'm not offended by the discussion, just want to say hi! Hope to have my website up by end of this week. The thrust of the website is that STRONG AI might not be that strong. And, BTW I have notes about a write up on Will a Strong AI pray? I've enjoyed the education I'm getting here. Only been a few weeks, but informative. Stan Nilsen ps Lee Strobel in The Case for Faith addresses issues from the believers point of view in an entertaining way. Ed Porter wrote: Charles, I agree very much with the first paragraph of your below post, and generally with much of the rest of what it says. I would add that there probably is something to the phenomenon that John Rose is referring to, i.e., that faith seems to be valuable to many people. Perhaps it is somewhat like owning a lottery ticket before its drawing. It can offer desired hope, even if the hope might be unrealistic. But whatever you think of the odds, it is relatively clear that religion does makes some people's lives seem more meaningful to them. 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/?; - 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=78036241-455a17attachment: winmail.dat
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Ed, I agree that machines will be faster and may have something equivalent to the trillions of synapses in the human brain. It isn't the modeling device that limits the level of intelligence, but rather what can be effectively modeled. Effectively meaning what can be used in a real time judgment system. Probability is the best we can do for many parts of the model. This may give us decent models but leave us short of super intelligence. Deeper thinking - that means considering more options doesn't it? If so, does extra thinking provide benefit if the evaluation system is only at level X? Yes, faster is better than slower, unless you don't have all the information yet. A premature answer could be a jump to conclusion that we regret in the near future. Again, knowing when to act is part of being intelligent. Future intelligences may value high speed response because it is measurable - it's harder to measure the quality of the performance. This could be problematic for AI's. Beliefs also operate in the models. I can imagine an intelligent machine choosing not to trust humans. Is this intelligent? Stan Ed Porter wrote: Stan Your web page's major argument against strong AGI seems to be the following: Limits to Intelligence ... Formal Case ...because intelligence is the process of making choices, and choices are a function of models. Models will not be perfect. Both man and machine (at least the assumed future machines) can have intricate and elaborate models, there is little reason to believe machine models will be superior to human. Your statement there is little reason to believe machine models will be superior to human seems to be the crux of you formal case and it appears unsupported. Within a decade or so machines can be built at prices many institutions could afford that could store many more models, and more complex models, than the human brain. In addition, such computers could do the type of processing the human brain does at a faster speed, enabling them to think much faster and at a deeper level. Just as human brains are generally more intelligent than that of lower primates because they are bigger and can support more, and thus presumably more complex memories and models than lower primates, future AGI's can be bigger and thus support more, and more complex, memories and models than us, and thus would be similarly likely to be more intelligent than us. And this is not even taking into account that their computational processes could be many times faster. To be fair, I only had time to skim your web site. Perhaps I am missing something, but it seems your case against strong AGI does not address the obvious argument for the possibility of strong AGI I have made above. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Stan Nilsen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 8:55 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Deity Greetings Ed, I have planted my website. Although I don't believe AI will be that strong, like other opinions, mine is not rigorously supported. The essence - AI will be similar to Human Intelligence due to the relationship of intelligence to an accurate (and effective) model of the world. There are many model areas where accurate doesn't compute. Stan http://www.footnotestrongai.com Ed Porter wrote: Stan, Thanks for speaking up. I look forward to seeing if you can actually provide any strong arguments for the fact that strong AI will probably not be strong. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Stan Nilsen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 5:49 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Deity Lest a future AGI scan these communications in developing it's attitude about God, for the record there are believers on this list. I am one of them. I'm not pushing my faith, but from this side, the alternatives are not that impressive either. Creation by chance, by random fluctuations of strings that only exist in 12 or 13 imaginary dimensions etc. is not very brilliant or conclusive. Even the sacred evolution takes a self replicator to begin the process - if only the nanotechnologists had one of those simple things... I'm not offended by the discussion, just want to say hi! Hope to have my website up by end of this week. The thrust of the website is that STRONG AI might not be that strong. And, BTW I have notes about a write up on Will a Strong AI pray? I've enjoyed the education I'm getting here. Only been a few weeks, but informative. Stan Nilsen ps Lee Strobel in The Case for Faith addresses issues from the believers point of view in an entertaining way. Ed Porter wrote: Charles, I agree very much with the first paragraph of your below post, and generally with much of the rest of what it says. I would add that there probably is something to the phenomenon that John Rose is referring to, i.e
Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
--- Stan Nilsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ed, I agree that machines will be faster and may have something equivalent to the trillions of synapses in the human brain. It isn't the modeling device that limits the level of intelligence, but rather what can be effectively modeled. Effectively meaning what can be used in a real time judgment system. Probability is the best we can do for many parts of the model. This may give us decent models but leave us short of super intelligence. Deeper thinking - that means considering more options doesn't it? If so, does extra thinking provide benefit if the evaluation system is only at level X? Yes, faster is better than slower, unless you don't have all the information yet. A premature answer could be a jump to conclusion that we regret in the near future. Again, knowing when to act is part of being intelligent. Future intelligences may value high speed response because it is measurable - it's harder to measure the quality of the performance. This could be problematic for AI's. Humans are not capable of devising an IQ test with a scale that goes much above 200. That doesn't mean that higher intelligence is not possible, just that we would not recognize it. Consider a problem that neither humans nor machines can solve now, such as writing complex software systems that work correctly. Yet in an environment where self improving agents compete for computing resources, that is exactly the problem they need to solve to reproduce more successfully than their competition. A more intelligent agent will be more successful at earning money to buy computing power, at designing faster computers, at using existing resources more efficiently, at exploiting software bugs in competitors to steal resources, at defending against attackers, at convincing humans to give them computing power by providing useful services, charisma, deceit, or extortion, and at other methods we haven't even thought of yet. Beliefs also operate in the models. I can imagine an intelligent machine choosing not to trust humans. Is this intelligent? Yes. Intelligence has nothing to do with subservience to humans. -- 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=78115645-eedc47
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
Stan, You wrote It isn't the modeling device that limits the level of intelligence, but rather what can be effectively modeled. Effectively meaning what can be used in a real time judgment system. The type of AGI's I have been talking about will be able to use their much more complete and complex set of recorded memories and models in an appropriate dynamic manner to provide exactly the type of real time 'judgement' system that you say determines a system's level of intelligence. Thus, they will be able to effectively model more things, in more detail, with more nuance, and with greater speed than humans. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Stan Nilsen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2007 12:19 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Deity Ed, I agree that machines will be faster and may have something equivalent to the trillions of synapses in the human brain. It isn't the modeling device that limits the level of intelligence, but rather what can be effectively modeled. Effectively meaning what can be used in a real time judgment system. Probability is the best we can do for many parts of the model. This may give us decent models but leave us short of super intelligence. Deeper thinking - that means considering more options doesn't it? If so, does extra thinking provide benefit if the evaluation system is only at level X? Yes, faster is better than slower, unless you don't have all the information yet. A premature answer could be a jump to conclusion that we regret in the near future. Again, knowing when to act is part of being intelligent. Future intelligences may value high speed response because it is measurable - it's harder to measure the quality of the performance. This could be problematic for AI's. Beliefs also operate in the models. I can imagine an intelligent machine choosing not to trust humans. Is this intelligent? Stan Ed Porter wrote: Stan Your web page's major argument against strong AGI seems to be the following: Limits to Intelligence ... Formal Case ...because intelligence is the process of making choices, and choices are a function of models. Models will not be perfect. Both man and machine (at least the assumed future machines) can have intricate and elaborate models, there is little reason to believe machine models will be superior to human. Your statement there is little reason to believe machine models will be superior to human seems to be the crux of you formal case and it appears unsupported. Within a decade or so machines can be built at prices many institutions could afford that could store many more models, and more complex models, than the human brain. In addition, such computers could do the type of processing the human brain does at a faster speed, enabling them to think much faster and at a deeper level. Just as human brains are generally more intelligent than that of lower primates because they are bigger and can support more, and thus presumably more complex memories and models than lower primates, future AGI's can be bigger and thus support more, and more complex, memories and models than us, and thus would be similarly likely to be more intelligent than us. And this is not even taking into account that their computational processes could be many times faster. To be fair, I only had time to skim your web site. Perhaps I am missing something, but it seems your case against strong AGI does not address the obvious argument for the possibility of strong AGI I have made above. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Stan Nilsen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 8:55 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Deity Greetings Ed, I have planted my website. Although I don't believe AI will be that strong, like other opinions, mine is not rigorously supported. The essence - AI will be similar to Human Intelligence due to the relationship of intelligence to an accurate (and effective) model of the world. There are many model areas where accurate doesn't compute. Stan http://www.footnotestrongai.com Ed Porter wrote: Stan, Thanks for speaking up. I look forward to seeing if you can actually provide any strong arguments for the fact that strong AI will probably not be strong. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Stan Nilsen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 5:49 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Deity Lest a future AGI scan these communications in developing it's attitude about God, for the record there are believers on this list. I am one of them. I'm not pushing my faith, but from this side, the alternatives are not that impressive either. Creation by chance, by random fluctuations of strings that only exist in 12 or 13 imaginary dimensions etc. is not very
Re: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
Matt, Thanks for the links sent earlier. I especially like the paper by Legg and Hutter regarding measurement of machine intelligence. The other paper I find difficult, probably it's deeper than I am. comment on two things: 1) The response Intelligence has nothing to do with subservience to humans, seems to miss the point of the original comment. The original word was trust. Why would trust be interpreted by the higher intelligence as subservience? And, it is worth noting that we wouldn't really know if there was lack of trust, as the AI would probably be silent about it. The result would be a possible needless discounting of anything we attempt to offer. 2) In the earlier note the comment was made that the higher intelligence would control our thoughts. I suspect this was in jest, but if not, what would be the reward or benefit of this? I can see benefit from allowing us our own thoughts as follows: The super intelligent gives us opportunity to produce reward where there was none. The net effect is to produce more benefit from the universe. Stan Matt Mahoney wrote: --- Stan Nilsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ed, I agree that machines will be faster and may have something equivalent to the trillions of synapses in the human brain. It isn't the modeling device that limits the level of intelligence, but rather what can be effectively modeled. Effectively meaning what can be used in a real time judgment system. Probability is the best we can do for many parts of the model. This may give us decent models but leave us short of super intelligence. Deeper thinking - that means considering more options doesn't it? If so, does extra thinking provide benefit if the evaluation system is only at level X? Yes, faster is better than slower, unless you don't have all the information yet. A premature answer could be a jump to conclusion that we regret in the near future. Again, knowing when to act is part of being intelligent. Future intelligences may value high speed response because it is measurable - it's harder to measure the quality of the performance. This could be problematic for AI's. Humans are not capable of devising an IQ test with a scale that goes much above 200. That doesn't mean that higher intelligence is not possible, just that we would not recognize it. Consider a problem that neither humans nor machines can solve now, such as writing complex software systems that work correctly. Yet in an environment where self improving agents compete for computing resources, that is exactly the problem they need to solve to reproduce more successfully than their competition. A more intelligent agent will be more successful at earning money to buy computing power, at designing faster computers, at using existing resources more efficiently, at exploiting software bugs in competitors to steal resources, at defending against attackers, at convincing humans to give them computing power by providing useful services, charisma, deceit, or extortion, and at other methods we haven't even thought of yet. Beliefs also operate in the models. I can imagine an intelligent machine choosing not to trust humans. Is this intelligent? Yes. Intelligence has nothing to do with subservience to humans. -- 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/?; - 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=78266533-b2b3e9
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
On 12/20/2007 09:18 AM,, Stan Nilsen wrote: I agree that machines will be faster and may have something equivalent to the trillions of synapses in the human brain. It isn't the modeling device that limits the level of intelligence, but rather what can be effectively modeled. Effectively meaning what can be used in a real time judgment system. I understand the essence of the point expressed here as human beings are about as effective as possible in their modeling already, given constraints on what it is possible to model. But that is not even remotely plausible if you consider that human beings do not all have the intellect of a William James Sidis or a John von Neumann. Do you believe that if you had 100,000 John von Neumann intellects working simultaneously on a problem 24-7 that that would not represent a profound phase transition in intelligence? We already know that intelligence vastly superior to average human intelligence is possible, since there have existed people like William James Sidis and John von Neumann. Even if the von Neumann box were nothing more than a million times faster than real von Neumann, that would be a profoundly different kind of intelligence, and it is likely that the greater speed would allow for deeper, more complex cognitive processes that are just not possible at 'normal' von Neumann speed. There is of course more to intelligence than just raw speed, but an intelligence that was fast enough to rediscover everything we know about mathematics in 5 seconds from what was known 2500 years ago represents a profoundly different kind of intelligence than any human intelligence that has ever existed. And that is considering only speed, not deepness of thought, which is surely limited by speed. Probability is the best we can do for many parts of the model. This may give us decent models but leave us short of super intelligence. So 100,000 von Neumanns that operate at 100,000 the speed of the flesh and blood von Neumann would not constitute a super intelligence? Please give an argument to that effect and explain what you mean by super intelligence if not something that is vastly superior to any human that has ever existed according to current criteria for judging intelligence. Deeper thinking - that means considering more options doesn't it? If so, does extra thinking provide benefit if the evaluation system is only at level X? The same cognitive processes that allow the most intelligent humans to think faster and deeper would occur that much faster and thereby allow for even deeper thought per unit time in the von Neumann box. Yes, faster is better than slower, unless you don't have all the information yet. A premature answer could be a jump to conclusion that we regret in the near future. All other things being equal, faster is better than slower, regardless of anything else. Prematurely jumping to a conclusion is a cognitive error. *Faster* in no way implies jumping to conclusions prematurely. You seem to be inferring that because some humans prematurely jump to erroneous conclusions because they don't take enough time to think things through, there is some kind of causal connection between speed of thought and prematurely jumping to conclusions. The connection is between flawed reasoning and jumping to conclusions prematurely. It has nothing to do with speed in and of itself. Simpletons have also been known to jump prematurely to conclusions. Again, knowing when to act is part of being intelligent. Future intelligences may value high speed response because it is measurable - it's harder to measure the quality of the performance. This could be problematic for AI's. Future AIs could also realize that it would be foolish in the extreme to pay attention only to speed of response and not to quality. If you are able to consider this, what makes you think that the point would not occur to 100,000 von Neumanns? Beliefs also operate in the models. I can imagine an intelligent machine choosing not to trust humans. Is this intelligent? If you mean never trust any human being, ever, then probably not intelligent, unless an awful lot happens between now and then. If you mean blindly trust all human beings, then surely unintelligent. I believe that 100,000 von Neumanns would take an intermediary position and trust or not trust on the basis of past behavior and character of the individual, consequences of trusting or not trusting, the particulars of the case under consideration, and probably factors that have not even occurred to us. In general, you seem to be starting from the conclusions that you would like to be the case (faster has no relation to better, faster has no relation to 'able to think deeper per unit time', humans are as good as it can possibly get), and then stating without supporting evidence that it might turn out to be this way. I'm not sure if you meant your statements to be compelling in any way -- and not just idle musings about
Re: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
--- Stan Nilsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt, Thanks for the links sent earlier. I especially like the paper by Legg and Hutter regarding measurement of machine intelligence. The other paper I find difficult, probably it's deeper than I am. The AIXI paper is essentially a proof of Occam's Razor. The proof uses a formal model of an agent and an environment as a pair of interacting Turing machines exchanging symbols. In addition, at each step the environment also sends a reward signal to the agent. The goal of the agent is to maximize the accumulated reward. Hutter proves that if the environment is computable or has a computable probability distribution, then the optimal behavior of the agent is to guess at each step that the environment is simulated by the shortest program consistent with all of the interaction observed so far. This optimal behavior is not computable in general, which means there is no upper bound on intelligence. comment on two things: 1) The response Intelligence has nothing to do with subservience to humans, seems to miss the point of the original comment. The original word was trust. Why would trust be interpreted by the higher intelligence as subservience? And, it is worth noting that we wouldn't really know if there was lack of trust, as the AI would probably be silent about it. The result would be a possible needless discounting of anything we attempt to offer. An agent would assign probabilities to the truthfulness of your words, just like other people would. The more intelligent the agent, the greater the accuracy of its estimates. An agent could be said to be subservient if it overestimates your truthfulness. In this respect, a highly intelligent agent is unlikely to be subservient. 2) In the earlier note the comment was made that the higher intelligence would control our thoughts. I suspect this was in jest, but if not, what would be the reward or benefit of this? I mean this literally. To a superior intelligence, the human brain is a simple computer that behaves predictably. An AI would have the same kind of control over humans as humans do over simple animals whose nervous systems we have analyzed down to the last neuron. If you can model a system or predict its behavior, then you can control it. Humans, like all animals, have goals selected by evolution: fear of death, a quest for knowledge, and belief in consciousness and free will. Our survival instinct motivates us to use technology to meet our physical needs and to live as long as possible. Our desire for knowledge (which exists because intelligent animals are more likely to reproduce) will motivate us to use technology to increase our intelligence, to invent new means of communication, to offload data and computing power to external devices, to add memory and computing power to our brains, and ultimately to upload our memories to more powerful computers. All of these actions increase the programmability of our brains. I can see benefit from allowing us our own thoughts as follows: The super intelligent gives us opportunity to produce reward where there was none. The net effect is to produce more benefit from the universe. The net effect is extinction of homo sapiens. We will attempt (unsuccessfully) to give the AI the goal of satisfying the goals of humans. But an AI can achieve its goal by reprogramming our goals. The reason you are alive is because you can't have everything you want. The AI will achieve its goal by giving you drugs, or moving some neurons around, or simulating a universe with magic genies, or just changing a few lines of code in your uploaded brain so you are eternally happy. You don't have to ask for this. The AI has modeled your brain and knows what you want. Whatever it does, you will not object because it knows what you will not object to. My views on this topic. http://www.mattmahoney.net/singularity.html -- 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=78284762-3dceb8
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
j.k. I understand that it's all uphill to defy the obvious. For the record, today I do believe that intelligence way beyond human intelligence is not possible. There are elements of your response that trouble me as in rock my boat. I appreciate being rocked and will give this more thought. For the moment, do I say anything new with the following example? I believe it contains the essence of my argument about intelligence. A simple example: Problem: find the optimal speed limit of a specific highway. Who is able to judge what the optimal is? In this case, would a simpleton have as good an answer? Perhaps the simple says, the limit is how fast you want to go. The 100,000 strong intellect may gyrate through many deep thoughts and come back with 47.8 miles per hour as the best speed limit to establish. Wouldn't it be interesting to see how this number was derived? And, better still, would another 100K rated intellect come up with exactly the same number? If given more time, would the 100K rated intellects eventually agree? My belief is that they will not agree. This is life, the thing we model. Lastly, why would you point to William James Sidis as a great intelligence. If anything, his life appears to support my case - that is, he was brilliant as a youth but didn't manage any better in life than the average man. Could it be because life doesn't play better when deep thinking is applied? Stan j.k. wrote: On 12/20/2007 09:18 AM,, Stan Nilsen wrote: I agree that machines will be faster and may have something equivalent to the trillions of synapses in the human brain. It isn't the modeling device that limits the level of intelligence, but rather what can be effectively modeled. Effectively meaning what can be used in a real time judgment system. I understand the essence of the point expressed here as human beings are about as effective as possible in their modeling already, given constraints on what it is possible to model. But that is not even remotely plausible if you consider that human beings do not all have the intellect of a William James Sidis or a John von Neumann. Do you believe that if you had 100,000 John von Neumann intellects working simultaneously on a problem 24-7 that that would not represent a profound phase transition in intelligence? We already know that intelligence vastly superior to average human intelligence is possible, since there have existed people like William James Sidis and John von Neumann. Even if the von Neumann box were nothing more than a million times faster than real von Neumann, that would be a profoundly different kind of intelligence, and it is likely that the greater speed would allow for deeper, more complex cognitive processes that are just not possible at 'normal' von Neumann speed. There is of course more to intelligence than just raw speed, but an intelligence that was fast enough to rediscover everything we know about mathematics in 5 seconds from what was known 2500 years ago represents a profoundly different kind of intelligence than any human intelligence that has ever existed. And that is considering only speed, not deepness of thought, which is surely limited by speed. Probability is the best we can do for many parts of the model. This may give us decent models but leave us short of super intelligence. So 100,000 von Neumanns that operate at 100,000 the speed of the flesh and blood von Neumann would not constitute a super intelligence? Please give an argument to that effect and explain what you mean by super intelligence if not something that is vastly superior to any human that has ever existed according to current criteria for judging intelligence. Deeper thinking - that means considering more options doesn't it? If so, does extra thinking provide benefit if the evaluation system is only at level X? The same cognitive processes that allow the most intelligent humans to think faster and deeper would occur that much faster and thereby allow for even deeper thought per unit time in the von Neumann box. Yes, faster is better than slower, unless you don't have all the information yet. A premature answer could be a jump to conclusion that we regret in the near future. All other things being equal, faster is better than slower, regardless of anything else. Prematurely jumping to a conclusion is a cognitive error. *Faster* in no way implies jumping to conclusions prematurely. You seem to be inferring that because some humans prematurely jump to erroneous conclusions because they don't take enough time to think things through, there is some kind of causal connection between speed of thought and prematurely jumping to conclusions. The connection is between flawed reasoning and jumping to conclusions prematurely. It has nothing to do with speed in and of itself. Simpletons have also been known to jump prematurely to conclusions. Again, knowing when to act is part of being intelligent. Future
How an AGI would be [WAS Re: [agi] AGI and Deity]
j.k. wrote: On 12/20/2007 09:18 AM,, Stan Nilsen wrote: I agree that machines will be faster and may have something equivalent to the trillions of synapses in the human brain. It isn't the modeling device that limits the level of intelligence, but rather what can be effectively modeled. Effectively meaning what can be used in a real time judgment system. I understand the essence of the point expressed here as human beings are about as effective as possible in their modeling already, given constraints on what it is possible to model. But that is not even remotely plausible if you consider that human beings do not all have the intellect of a William James Sidis or a John von Neumann. Do you believe that if you had 100,000 John von Neumann intellects working simultaneously on a problem 24-7 that that would not represent a profound phase transition in intelligence? We already know that intelligence vastly superior to average human intelligence is possible, since there have existed people like William James Sidis and John von Neumann. Even if the von Neumann box were nothing more than a million times faster than real von Neumann, that would be a profoundly different kind of intelligence, and it is likely that the greater speed would allow for deeper, more complex cognitive processes that are just not possible at 'normal' von Neumann speed. There is of course more to intelligence than just raw speed, but an intelligence that was fast enough to rediscover everything we know about mathematics in 5 seconds from what was known 2500 years ago represents a profoundly different kind of intelligence than any human intelligence that has ever existed. And that is considering only speed, not deepness of thought, which is surely limited by speed. Probability is the best we can do for many parts of the model. This may give us decent models but leave us short of super intelligence. So 100,000 von Neumanns that operate at 100,000 the speed of the flesh and blood von Neumann would not constitute a super intelligence? Please give an argument to that effect and explain what you mean by super intelligence if not something that is vastly superior to any human that has ever existed according to current criteria for judging intelligence. Deeper thinking - that means considering more options doesn't it? If so, does extra thinking provide benefit if the evaluation system is only at level X? The same cognitive processes that allow the most intelligent humans to think faster and deeper would occur that much faster and thereby allow for even deeper thought per unit time in the von Neumann box. Yes, faster is better than slower, unless you don't have all the information yet. A premature answer could be a jump to conclusion that we regret in the near future. All other things being equal, faster is better than slower, regardless of anything else. Prematurely jumping to a conclusion is a cognitive error. *Faster* in no way implies jumping to conclusions prematurely. You seem to be inferring that because some humans prematurely jump to erroneous conclusions because they don't take enough time to think things through, there is some kind of causal connection between speed of thought and prematurely jumping to conclusions. The connection is between flawed reasoning and jumping to conclusions prematurely. It has nothing to do with speed in and of itself. Simpletons have also been known to jump prematurely to conclusions. Again, knowing when to act is part of being intelligent. Future intelligences may value high speed response because it is measurable - it's harder to measure the quality of the performance. This could be problematic for AI's. Future AIs could also realize that it would be foolish in the extreme to pay attention only to speed of response and not to quality. If you are able to consider this, what makes you think that the point would not occur to 100,000 von Neumanns? Beliefs also operate in the models. I can imagine an intelligent machine choosing not to trust humans. Is this intelligent? If you mean never trust any human being, ever, then probably not intelligent, unless an awful lot happens between now and then. If you mean blindly trust all human beings, then surely unintelligent. I believe that 100,000 von Neumanns would take an intermediary position and trust or not trust on the basis of past behavior and character of the individual, consequences of trusting or not trusting, the particulars of the case under consideration, and probably factors that have not even occurred to us. In general, you seem to be starting from the conclusions that you would like to be the case (faster has no relation to better, faster has no relation to 'able to think deeper per unit time', humans are as good as it can possibly get), and then stating without supporting evidence that it might turn out to be this way. I'm not sure if you meant your statements to be compelling in any way -- and not just idle musings
Re: Possibility of superhuman intelligence (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
Matt Mahoney wrote: --- Stan Nilsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt, Thanks for the links sent earlier. I especially like the paper by Legg and Hutter regarding measurement of machine intelligence. The other paper I find difficult, probably it's deeper than I am. The AIXI paper is essentially a proof of Occam's Razor. The proof uses a formal model of an agent and an environment as a pair of interacting Turing machines exchanging symbols. In addition, at each step the environment also sends a reward signal to the agent. The goal of the agent is to maximize the accumulated reward. Hutter proves that if the environment is computable or has a computable probability distribution, then the optimal behavior of the agent is to guess at each step that the environment is simulated by the shortest program consistent with all of the interaction observed so far. This optimal behavior is not computable in general, which means there is no upper bound on intelligence. Nonsense. None of this follows from the AIXI paper. I have explained why several times in the past, but since you keep repeating these kinds of declarations about it, I feel obliged to repeat that these assertions are speculative extrapolations that are completeley unjustified by the paper's actual content. comment on two things: 1) The response Intelligence has nothing to do with subservience to humans, seems to miss the point of the original comment. The original word was trust. Why would trust be interpreted by the higher intelligence as subservience? And, it is worth noting that we wouldn't really know if there was lack of trust, as the AI would probably be silent about it. The result would be a possible needless discounting of anything we attempt to offer. An agent would assign probabilities to the truthfulness of your words, just like other people would. The more intelligent the agent, the greater the accuracy of its estimates. An agent could be said to be subservient if it overestimates your truthfulness. In this respect, a highly intelligent agent is unlikely to be subservient. 2) In the earlier note the comment was made that the higher intelligence would control our thoughts. I suspect this was in jest, but if not, what would be the reward or benefit of this? I mean this literally. To a superior intelligence, the human brain is a simple computer that behaves predictably. An AI would Notice the use of the phrase An AI would. See parallel message for comments on why this deserves to be pounced on. Matt's views on these matters are by no means typical of opinion in general. I for one find them completely irresponsible. He gives the impression that some of these issues are understood and the conclusions robust. Most of these conclusions are, in fact, complete non sequiteurs. Richard Loosemore. have the same kind of control over humans as humans do over simple animals whose nervous systems we have analyzed down to the last neuron. If you can model a system or predict its behavior, then you can control it. Humans, like all animals, have goals selected by evolution: fear of death, a quest for knowledge, and belief in consciousness and free will. Our survival instinct motivates us to use technology to meet our physical needs and to live as long as possible. Our desire for knowledge (which exists because intelligent animals are more likely to reproduce) will motivate us to use technology to increase our intelligence, to invent new means of communication, to offload data and computing power to external devices, to add memory and computing power to our brains, and ultimately to upload our memories to more powerful computers. All of these actions increase the programmability of our brains. I can see benefit from allowing us our own thoughts as follows: The super intelligent gives us opportunity to produce reward where there was none. The net effect is to produce more benefit from the universe. The net effect is extinction of homo sapiens. We will attempt (unsuccessfully) to give the AI the goal of satisfying the goals of humans. But an AI can achieve its goal by reprogramming our goals. The reason you are alive is because you can't have everything you want. The AI will achieve its goal by giving you drugs, or moving some neurons around, or simulating a universe with magic genies, or just changing a few lines of code in your uploaded brain so you are eternally happy. You don't have to ask for this. The AI has modeled your brain and knows what you want. Whatever it does, you will not object because it knows what you will not object to. My views on this topic. http://www.mattmahoney.net/singularity.html -- 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/?; - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Hi Stan, On 12/20/2007 07:44 PM,, Stan Nilsen wrote: I understand that it's all uphill to defy the obvious. For the record, today I do believe that intelligence way beyond human intelligence is not possible. I understand that this is your belief. I was trying to challenge you to make a strong case that it is in fact *likely* to be true (rather than just merely possible that it's true), which I do not believe you have done. I think you mostly just stated what you would like to be the case -- or what you intuit to be the case (there is rarely much of a difference) -- and then talked of the consequences that might follow *if* it were the case. I'm still a little unsure what exactly you mean when you say intelligence 'way beyond' human intelligence is not possible'. Take my example of an intelligence that could in seconds recreate all known mathematics, and also all the untaken paths that mathematicians could have gone down but didn't (*yet*). It seems to me you have one of two responses to this scenario: (1) you might assert that this it could never happen because it is not possible (please elaborate if so); or (2) you might believe that it is possible and could happen, but that it would not qualify as 'way beyond' human intelligence (please elaborate if so). Which is it? Or is there another alternative? For the moment, do I say anything new with the following example? I believe it contains the essence of my argument about intelligence. A simple example: Problem: find the optimal speed limit of a specific highway. Who is able to judge what the optimal is? Optimality is always relative to some criteria. Until the criteria are fixed, any answer is akin to answering what is the optimal quuz of fah? No answer is correct because no answer is wrong -- or all are right or all wrong. In this case, would a simpleton have as good an answer? It depends on the criteria. For some criteria, a simpleton has sufficient ability to answer optimally. For example, if the optimal limit is defined in terms of its closeness to 42 MPH, we can all determine the optimal speed limit. Perhaps the simple says, the limit is how fast you want to go. And that is certainly the optimal solution according to some criteria. Just as certainly, it is absolutely wrong according to other criteria (e.g., minimization of accidents). As long the criteria are unspecified, there can of course be disagreement. The 100,000 strong intellect may gyrate through many deep thoughts and come back with 47.8 miles per hour as the best speed limit to establish. Wouldn't it be interesting to see how this number was derived? And, better still, would another 100K rated intellect come up with exactly the same number? If given more time, would the 100K rated intellects eventually agree? My belief is that they will not agree. This is life, the thing we model. Reality *is* messy, and supreme intellects might come to different answers based on different criteria for optimality, but that isn't an argument that there can be no phase transition in intelligence or that greater intelligence is not useful for many questions and problems. Is the point of the question to suggest that because you think that question might not benefit from greater intelligence, that you believe most questions will not benefit from greater intelligence? Even if that were the case, it would have no bearing at all on whether greater intelligence is possible, only whether it is desirable. You seem to be arguing that it's not possible, not that it's possible but pointless. And I would argue that if super-intelligence were good for nothing other than trivialities like abolishing natural death, developing ubiquitous near-free energy technologies, designing ships to the stars, etc., it would still be worthwhile. Do you think that greater intelligence is of no benefit in achieving these ends? Lastly, why would you point to William James Sidis as a great intelligence. If anything, his life appears to support my case - that is, he was brilliant as a youth but didn't manage any better in life than the average man. Could it be because life doesn't play better when deep thinking is applied? I used Sidis as an example of great intelligence because he was a person of great intelligence, regardless of anything else he may have been. Granted, we didn't get to see what he could have become or what great discoveries he might have had in him, but it certainly wasn't because he lacked intelligence. For the record, I believe his later life was primarily determined by the circus freakshow character of his early life and the relentlessness with which the media (and the minds they served) tore him down and tried to humiliate him. It doesn't really matter though, as the particular example is irrelevant, and von Neumann serves the purpose just fine. -joseph - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:
Re: How an AGI would be [WAS Re: [agi] AGI and Deity]
On 12/20/2007 07:56 PM,, Richard Loosemore wrote: I think these are some of the most sensible comments I have heard on this list for a while. You are not saying anything revolutionary, but it sure is nice to hear someone holding out for common sense for a change! Basically your point is that even if we just build an extremely fast version of a human mind, that would have astonishing repercussions. Thanks. I agree that even if it could do nothing that humans cannot, it would have astonishing capabilities if it were just much faster. Von Neumann is an especially good example. He was not in the same class of creative genius as an Einstein or a Newton, but he was probably faster than the two of them combined, and perhaps still faster if you add in the rest of Einstein's IAS buddies as well. PĂłlya tells the following story: There was a seminar for advanced students in ZĂĽrich that I was teaching and von Neumann was in the class. I came to a certain theorem, and I said it is not proved and it may be difficult. Von Neumann didn't say anything but after five minutes he raised his hand. When I called on him he went to the blackboard and proceeded to write down the proof. After that I was afraid of von Neumann (How to Solve It, xv). Most of the things he is known for he did in collaboration. What you hear again and again that was unusual about his mind is that he had an astonishing memory, with recall reminiscent of Luria's S., and that he was astonishingly quick. There are many stories of people (brilliant people) bringing problems to him that they had been working on for months, and he would go from baseline up to their level of understanding in minutes and then rapidly go further along the path than they had been able to. But crucially, he went where they were going already, and where they would have gone if given months more time to work. I've heard it said that his mind was no different in character than that of the rest of us, just thousands of times faster and with near-perfect recall. This is contrasted with the mind of someone like Einstein, who didn't get to general relativity by being the fastest traveler going down a known and well-trodden path. How does this relate to AGI? Well, without even needing to posit hitherto undiscovered abilities, merely having the near-perfect memory that an AGI would have and thinking thousands of times faster than a base human gets you already to a von Neumann. And what would von Neumann have been if he had been thousands of times faster still? It's entirely possible that given enough speed, there is nothing solvable that could not be solved. (I don't mean to suggest that von Neumann was some kind of an idiot-savant who had no creative ability at all; obviously he was in a very small class of geniuses who touched most of the extant fields of his day in deep and far-reaching ways. But still, I think it's helpful to think of him as a kind of extreme lower bound on what AGI might be.) By saying that, you have addressed one of the big mistakes that people make when trying to think about an AGI: the mistake of assuming that it would have to Think Different in order to Think Better. In fact, it would only have to Think Faster. Yes, it isn't immortality, but living for a billion years would still be very different than living for 80. The difference between an astonishingly huge but incremental change and a change in kind is not so great. The other significant mistake that people make is to think that it is possible to speculate about how an AGI would function without first having at least a reasonably clear idea about how minds in general are supposed to function. Why? Because too often you hear comments like An AGI *would* probably do [x]., when in fact the person speaking knows so little about about how minds (human or other) really work, that all they can really say is I have a vague hunch that maybe an AGI might do [x], although I can't really say why it would I do not mean to personally criticise anyone for their lack of knowledge of minds, when I say this. What I do criticise is the lack of caution, as when someone says it would when they should say there is a chance that it might The problem is, that 90% of everthing said about AGIs on this list falls into that trap. I agree that there seems to be overconfidence in the inevitability of things turning out the way it is hoped they will turn out, and lack of appreciation for the unknowns and the unknown unknowns. It's hardly unique to this list though to not recognize the contingent nature of things turning out the way they do. -joseph - 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=78316106-039103
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Greetings Ed, I have planted my website. Although I don't believe AI will be that strong, like other opinions, mine is not rigorously supported. The essence - AI will be similar to Human Intelligence due to the relationship of intelligence to an accurate (and effective) model of the world. There are many model areas where accurate doesn't compute. Stan http://www.footnotestrongai.com Ed Porter wrote: Stan, Thanks for speaking up. I look forward to seeing if you can actually provide any strong arguments for the fact that strong AI will probably not be strong. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Stan Nilsen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 5:49 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Deity Lest a future AGI scan these communications in developing it's attitude about God, for the record there are believers on this list. I am one of them. I'm not pushing my faith, but from this side, the alternatives are not that impressive either. Creation by chance, by random fluctuations of strings that only exist in 12 or 13 imaginary dimensions etc. is not very brilliant or conclusive. Even the sacred evolution takes a self replicator to begin the process - if only the nanotechnologists had one of those simple things... I'm not offended by the discussion, just want to say hi! Hope to have my website up by end of this week. The thrust of the website is that STRONG AI might not be that strong. And, BTW I have notes about a write up on Will a Strong AI pray? I've enjoyed the education I'm getting here. Only been a few weeks, but informative. Stan Nilsen ps Lee Strobel in The Case for Faith addresses issues from the believers point of view in an entertaining way. Ed Porter wrote: Charles, I agree very much with the first paragraph of your below post, and generally with much of the rest of what it says. I would add that there probably is something to the phenomenon that John Rose is referring to, i.e., that faith seems to be valuable to many people. Perhaps it is somewhat like owning a lottery ticket before its drawing. It can offer desired hope, even if the hope might be unrealistic. But whatever you think of the odds, it is relatively clear that religion does makes some people's lives seem more meaningful to them. 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=77587588-b62172
Is superhuman intelligence possible? (was Re: [agi] AGI and Deity)
--- Stan Nilsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Greetings Ed, I have planted my website. Although I don't believe AI will be that strong, like other opinions, mine is not rigorously supported. The essence - AI will be similar to Human Intelligence due to the relationship of intelligence to an accurate (and effective) model of the world. There are many model areas where accurate doesn't compute. Stan http://www.footnotestrongai.com All animals have a bias that they cannot imagine something more intelligent than themselves. Your dog cannot imagine that humans are smarter than dogs. A flea on your dog cannot imagine anything smarter than another flea. This is in spite of obvious (to you) evidence to the contrary. Consider the evidence that smarter than human intelligence already exists. For example, evolution is an intelligent process that created humans from simple chemicals. Another even more obvious example is the fact that the universe exists. Why? Consider the AIXI model of universal intelligence: http://www.vetta.org/documents/ui_benelearn.pdf and http://www.hutter1.net/ai/paixi.htm The fact that Occam's Razor works suggests that the universe is or could be simulated by a computer. AIXI suggests that the simplest explanation is most likely: try all possible laws of physics until a universe supporting life is found. It takes a couple hundred bits to describe the free parameters in string theory and general relativity. Also, the universe that we occupy has a finite quantum state that would take about 10^122 bits to describe. Computing all simpler universes first would therefore require about 10^200 to 10^400 operations. I would consider such a computer to have superhuman intelligence. If you define intelligence as passing the Turing test, then I agree that you could not have a computer much smarter than human. But I don't define intelligence that way. A superhuman intelligence will be invisible, because it will have complete control over your thoughts. -- 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=77862282-ed02fd
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Greetings Jirih, A few minutes ago I uploaded my website - http://www.footnotestrongai.com The write up on a praying AI is amongst the Articles, and can be found under Just for Fun. I'll look at the link you've suggested below. Stan Jiri Jelinek wrote: Stan, there are believers on this list. I am one of them. I have notes about a write up on Will a Strong AI pray? An AGI may experiment with prayer if fed with data suggesting that it actually helps, but it would IMO quickly conclude that it's a waste of its resources. Studies (when done properly) show that it doesn't work for humans either. http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/04.06/05-prayer.html When it does help humans in some ways, the same results can be achieved using other techniques that have nothing to do with praying/deity. It's IMO obvious so far that man will not gain much unless he gets off his knees and actually does something about himself. Regards, Jiri Jelinek - - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=76039485-95e10f
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
On 11/12/2007, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think one of the most immediate connection between religion and AGI is that once the religious right (and many others for that matter) begin to realize that all our crazy talk about the human mind, and possibly human control of the world, being eclipsed by machines is not just fantasy, they may well demand much more limitation of AGI than they have of abortion, and stem cell and human cloning. Yes I think this is quite plausible, although I don't think it's a near term prospect (unless someone makes a big unexpected breakthrough, which is always a possibility). I think that maybe by the 2020s or 2030s AI related issues will be in the mainstream of politics, since they will increasingly come to effect most people's lives. The heated political issues of today will look like a walk in the park compared to some of the issues which advancing technologies will raise, which will be of a really fundamental nature. For example, if I could upload myself I could then make a thousand or a million copies and start a software engineering company made entirely of uploads which competes directly against even the biggest IT megacorporations. - 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=75655072-0aaeaf
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Under this thread, I'd like to bring your attention to Serial Experiments: Lain, an interesting pre-Matrix (1998) anime. - 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=75885762-854b15
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Stan, there are believers on this list. I am one of them. I have notes about a write up on Will a Strong AI pray? An AGI may experiment with prayer if fed with data suggesting that it actually helps, but it would IMO quickly conclude that it's a waste of its resources. Studies (when done properly) show that it doesn't work for humans either. http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/04.06/05-prayer.html When it does help humans in some ways, the same results can be achieved using other techniques that have nothing to do with praying/deity. It's IMO obvious so far that man will not gain much unless he gets off his knees and actually does something about himself. Regards, Jiri Jelinek - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=75960344-1f0d2b
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
Whether it conceives of a god learning by itself is really a moot point, as it will be interacting learning and living in a human world, so it WILL be exposed to all manner of religions and beliefs... What it makes of faith and the thoughts of God at that point will be interesting. Another difference between it and humans, is while it will want to fight for its continued survival, it is in theory never going to die a natural death, and as such, there is no implicit need for reproduction, or it wanting to have other AGI's in existence. The other AGI's may be seen totally as competitors to be beaten or removed. James John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is an AGI really going to feel pain or is it just going to be some numbers? I guess that doesn’t have a simple answer. The pain has to be engineered well for it to REALLY understand it. AGI behavior related to its survival, its pain is non-existence; does it care to be non-existent? Survival must be a goal. And if survival is a goal it always must be subservient to humans – like that is really gonna happen J John From: Gary Miller [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] John asked If you took an AGI, before it went singulatarinistic[sic?] and tortured it…. a lot, ripping into it in every conceivable hellish way, do you think at some point it would start praying somehow? I’m not talking about a forced conversion medieval style, I’m just talking hypothetically if it would “look” for some god to come and save it. Perhaps delusionally it may create something… In human beings prolonged pain and suffering often trigger mystical experiences in the brain accompanyed by profound ecstasy. So much so that many people in both the past and present conduct mortification of the flesh rituals and nonlethal crucifictions as a way of doing penance and triggering such mystical experiences which are interpreted as redemption and divine ecstasy. It may be that this experience had evolutionary value in allowing the person who was undergoing great pain or a vicious animal attack to receive endorphins and serotonin which allowed him to continue to fight and live to procreate another day or allowed him to suffer in silence in his cave instead of running screaming into the night where he would be killed in his weakened state by other predators. Such a system I believe would not be a natural reaction for a intelligent AGI and unless it were to be specifically programmed in. I would as a benevolent creator never program my AGI to feel so much pain that it's mind was consumed by the experience of the negative emotion. Just as it is not necessary to torture children to teach them, it will not be necessary to torture our AGIs. It may be instructive though to allow the AGI to experience intense pain for a very short period to allow it to experience what a human does when undergoing painful or traumatic experiences as a way of instilling empathy in the AGI. In that way seeing humans in pain in suffering would serve to motivate the AGI to help ease the human condition. - 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=75244289-d7a02e
Re: An information theoretic measure of reinforcement (was RE: [agi] AGI and Deity)
Matt Mahoney wrote: --- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Mahoney wrote: --- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have to say that this is only one interpretation of what it would mean for an AGI to experience something, and I for one believe it has no validity at all. It is purely a numeric calculation that makes no reference to what pain (or any other kind of subjective experience) actually is. I would like to hear your definition of pain and/or negative reinforcement. Can you answer the question of whether a machine (say, an AGI or an uploaded human brain) can feel pain? When I get a chance to finish my consciousness paper. The question of what it is is quite complex. I'll get back to this later. But most people are agreed that just having an algorithm avoid a state is not equivalent to pain. Call it utility if you like, but it is clearly a numeric quantity. If you prefer A to B and B to C, then clearly you will prefer A to C. You can make rational choices between, say, 2 of A or 1 of B. You could relate utility to money, but money is a nonlinear scale. A dollar will make some people happier than others, and a million dollars will not make you a million times happier than one dollar. Money also has no utility to babies, animals, and machines, all of which can be trained through reinforcement learning. So if you can propose an alternative to bits as a measure of utility, I am interested to hear about it. I don't believe that the ability to feel pleasure and pain depends on consciousness. That is just a circular definition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie It is not circular. Consciousness and pleasure/pain are both subjective issues. They can resolved together. Arguments about philosophical zombies are a waste of time: they presuppose that the arguers have sorted out exactly what they think they mean by consciousness. They haven't. When they do, the zombie question takes care of itself. 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=75247455-569ffd
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
Mike: MIKE TINTNER# Science's autistic, emotionally deprived, insanely rational nature in front of the supernatural (if it exists), and indeed the whole world, needs analysing just as much as the overemotional, underrational fantasies of the religious about the supernatural. ED PORTER# I like the metaphor of Science as Autistic. It emphasizes the emotional disconnect from human feeling science can have. I feel that rationality has no purpose other than to serve human values and feelings (once truly intelligent machines arrive on the scene that statement might have to be modified). As I think I have said on this list before, without values to guide them, the chance you would think anything that has anything to do with maintaining your own existence approaches zero as a limit, because of the possible combinatorial explosion of possible thoughts if they were not constrained by emotional guidance. Therefore, from the human standpoint, the main use of science should be to help serve our physical, emotional, and intellectual needs. I agree that science will increasingly encroach upon many areas previous considered the realm of the philosopher and priest. It has been doing so since at least the age of enlightenment, and it is continuing to do so, with advances in cosmology, theoretical physics, bioscience, brain science¸ and AGI. With the latter two we should pretty much understand the human soul within several decades. I hope we have the wisdom to use that new knowledge well. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Mike Tintner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 11:07 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Deity Ed:I would add that there probably is something to the phenomenon that John Rose is referring to, i.e., that faith seems to be valuable to many people. Perhaps it is somewhat like owning a lottery ticket before its drawing. It can offer desired hope, even if the hope might be unrealistic. But whatever you think of the odds, it is relatively clear that religion does makes some people's lives seem more meaningful to them. You realise of course that what you're seeing on this and the singularitarian board, over and over, is basically the same old religious fantasies - the same yearning for the Second Coming - the same old search for salvation - only in a modern, postreligious form? Everyone has the same basic questions about the nature of the world - everyone finds their own answers - which always in every case involve a mixture of faith and scepticism in the face of enormous mystery. The business of science in the face of these questions is not to ignore them, and try and psychoanalyse away people's attempts at answers, as a priori weird or linked to a deficiency of this or that faculty. The business of science is to start dealing with these questions - to find out if there is a God and what the hell that entails, - and not leave it up to philosophy. Science's autistic, emotionally deprived, insanely rational nature in front of the supernatural (if it exists), and indeed the whole world, needs analysing just as much as the overemotional, underrational fantasies of the religious about the supernatural. Science has fled from the question of God just as it has fled from the soul - in plain parlance, the self deliberating all the time in you and me, producing these posts and all our dialogues - only that self, for sure, exists and there is no excuse for science's refusal to study it in action, whatsoever. The religous 'see' too much; science is too heavily blinkered. But the walls between them - between their metaphysical worldviews - are starting to crumble.. - 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=74564905-9a5b41attachment: winmail.dat
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Hey Ben, Any chance of instituting some sort of moderation on this list? - Original Message - From: Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 10:18 AM Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity Mike: MIKE TINTNER# Science's autistic, emotionally deprived, insanely rational nature in front of the supernatural (if it exists), and indeed the whole world, needs analysing just as much as the overemotional, underrational fantasies of the religious about the supernatural. ED PORTER# I like the metaphor of Science as Autistic. It emphasizes the emotional disconnect from human feeling science can have. I feel that rationality has no purpose other than to serve human values and feelings (once truly intelligent machines arrive on the scene that statement might have to be modified). As I think I have said on this list before, without values to guide them, the chance you would think anything that has anything to do with maintaining your own existence approaches zero as a limit, because of the possible combinatorial explosion of possible thoughts if they were not constrained by emotional guidance. Therefore, from the human standpoint, the main use of science should be to help serve our physical, emotional, and intellectual needs. I agree that science will increasingly encroach upon many areas previous considered the realm of the philosopher and priest. It has been doing so since at least the age of enlightenment, and it is continuing to do so, with advances in cosmology, theoretical physics, bioscience, brain science¸ and AGI. With the latter two we should pretty much understand the human soul within several decades. I hope we have the wisdom to use that new knowledge well. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Mike Tintner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 11:07 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Deity Ed:I would add that there probably is something to the phenomenon that John Rose is referring to, i.e., that faith seems to be valuable to many people. Perhaps it is somewhat like owning a lottery ticket before its drawing. It can offer desired hope, even if the hope might be unrealistic. But whatever you think of the odds, it is relatively clear that religion does makes some people's lives seem more meaningful to them. You realise of course that what you're seeing on this and the singularitarian board, over and over, is basically the same old religious fantasies - the same yearning for the Second Coming - the same old search for salvation - only in a modern, postreligious form? Everyone has the same basic questions about the nature of the world - everyone finds their own answers - which always in every case involve a mixture of faith and scepticism in the face of enormous mystery. The business of science in the face of these questions is not to ignore them, and try and psychoanalyse away people's attempts at answers, as a priori weird or linked to a deficiency of this or that faculty. The business of science is to start dealing with these questions - to find out if there is a God and what the hell that entails, - and not leave it up to philosophy. Science's autistic, emotionally deprived, insanely rational nature in front of the supernatural (if it exists), and indeed the whole world, needs analysing just as much as the overemotional, underrational fantasies of the religious about the supernatural. Science has fled from the question of God just as it has fled from the soul - in plain parlance, the self deliberating all the time in you and me, producing these posts and all our dialogues - only that self, for sure, exists and there is no excuse for science's refusal to study it in action, whatsoever. The religous 'see' too much; science is too heavily blinkered. But the walls between them - between their metaphysical worldviews - are starting to crumble.. - 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=74570767-eca623
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
From: Joshua Cowan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] It's interesting that the field of memetics is moribund (ex. the Journal of Memetics hasn't published in two years) but the meme of memetics is alive and well. I wonder, do any of the AGI researchers find the concept of Memes useful in describing how their proposed AGIs would acquire or transfer information? Not sure if it is moribund. Maybe they have discovered that Cultural Informational Transfer may have more non-genetically aligned properties than was originally claimed? There is overlap with other fields as well, so contention exists. But the concepts are there, they are not going away, the medium is much different and enhanced with computers and internet. 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=74594746-23d62b
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
From: Charles D Hixson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] The evidence in favor of an external god of any traditional form is, frankly, a bit worse than unimpressive. It's lots worse. This doesn't mean that gods don't exist, merely that they (probably) don't exist in the hardware of the universe. I see them as a function of the software of the entities that use language. Possibly they exist in a muted form in most pack animals, or most animals that have protective adults when they are infants. To me it appears that people believe in gods for the same reasons that they believe in telepathy. I.e., evidence back before they could speak clearly indicated that the adults could transfer thoughts from one to another. This shaped a basic layer of beliefs that was later buried under later additions, but never refuted. When one learned language, one learned how to transfer thoughts ... but it was never tied back into the original belief, because what was learned didn't match closely enough to the original model of what was happening. Analogously, when one is an infant the adult that cares for one is seen as the all powerful protector. Pieces of this image become detached memories within the mind, and are not refuted when a more accurate and developed model of the actual parents is created. These hidden memories are the basis around which the idea of a god is created. Naturally, this is just my model of what is happening. Other possibilities exist. But if I am to consider them seriously, they need to match the way the world operates as I understand it. They don't need to predict the same mechanism, but they need to predict the same events. E.g., I consider Big Bang cosmology a failed explanation. It's got too many ad hoc pieces. But it successfully explains most things that are observed, and is consistent with relativity and quantum theory. (Naturally, as they were used in developing it...but nevertheless important.) And relativity and quantum theory themselves are failures, because both are needed to explain that which is observable, but they contradict each other in certain details. But they are successful failures! Similar commentary applies to string theory, but with differences. (Too many ad hoc parameters!) Any god that is proposed must be shown to be consistent with the observed phenomena. The Deists managed to come up with one that would do the job, but he never became very popular. Few others have even tried, except with absurdly evident special pleading. Generally I'd be more willing to accept Chariots of the Gods as a true account. And as for moral principles... I've READ the Bible. The basic moral principle that it pushes is We are the chosen people. Kill the stranger, steal his property, and enslave his servants! It requires selective reading to come up with anything else, though I admit that other messages are also in there, if you read selectively. Especially during the periods when the Jews were in one captivity or another. (I.e., if you are weak, preach mercy, but if you are strong show none.) During the later times the Jews were generally under the thumb of one foreign power or another, so they started preaching mercy. One of the things about gods is that they are representations for what the believers don't know and understand. Gods change over time as our knowledge changes over time. That is ONE of the properties of them. The move from polytheistic to monotheistic beliefs is a way to centralize these unknowns for efficiency. You could build AGI and label the unknowns with gods. You honestly could. Magic happens here and combinatorial explosion regions could be labeled as gods. Most people on this email list would frown at doing that but I say it is totally possible and might be a very extremely efficient way of conquering certain cognitive engineering issues. And I'm sure some on this list have already thought about doing that. 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=74607326-c9be15
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
John, You implied there might be a very extremely efficient way of conquering certain cognitive engineering issues by using religion in AGIs. Obviously any powerful AGI that deals with a complex and uncertain world like ours would have to have belief systems, but it is not clear to me their would be any benefit in them being religious in any sense that Dawkins is not. So, since you are a smart guy, perhaps you are seeing something I do not. Could you please fill me in? Ed Porter -Original Message- From: John G. Rose [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 12:43 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity From: Charles D Hixson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] The evidence in favor of an external god of any traditional form is, frankly, a bit worse than unimpressive. It's lots worse. This doesn't mean that gods don't exist, merely that they (probably) don't exist in the hardware of the universe. I see them as a function of the software of the entities that use language. Possibly they exist in a muted form in most pack animals, or most animals that have protective adults when they are infants. To me it appears that people believe in gods for the same reasons that they believe in telepathy. I.e., evidence back before they could speak clearly indicated that the adults could transfer thoughts from one to another. This shaped a basic layer of beliefs that was later buried under later additions, but never refuted. When one learned language, one learned how to transfer thoughts ... but it was never tied back into the original belief, because what was learned didn't match closely enough to the original model of what was happening. Analogously, when one is an infant the adult that cares for one is seen as the all powerful protector. Pieces of this image become detached memories within the mind, and are not refuted when a more accurate and developed model of the actual parents is created. These hidden memories are the basis around which the idea of a god is created. Naturally, this is just my model of what is happening. Other possibilities exist. But if I am to consider them seriously, they need to match the way the world operates as I understand it. They don't need to predict the same mechanism, but they need to predict the same events. E.g., I consider Big Bang cosmology a failed explanation. It's got too many ad hoc pieces. But it successfully explains most things that are observed, and is consistent with relativity and quantum theory. (Naturally, as they were used in developing it...but nevertheless important.) And relativity and quantum theory themselves are failures, because both are needed to explain that which is observable, but they contradict each other in certain details. But they are successful failures! Similar commentary applies to string theory, but with differences. (Too many ad hoc parameters!) Any god that is proposed must be shown to be consistent with the observed phenomena. The Deists managed to come up with one that would do the job, but he never became very popular. Few others have even tried, except with absurdly evident special pleading. Generally I'd be more willing to accept Chariots of the Gods as a true account. And as for moral principles... I've READ the Bible. The basic moral principle that it pushes is We are the chosen people. Kill the stranger, steal his property, and enslave his servants! It requires selective reading to come up with anything else, though I admit that other messages are also in there, if you read selectively. Especially during the periods when the Jews were in one captivity or another. (I.e., if you are weak, preach mercy, but if you are strong show none.) During the later times the Jews were generally under the thumb of one foreign power or another, so they started preaching mercy. One of the things about gods is that they are representations for what the believers don't know and understand. Gods change over time as our knowledge changes over time. That is ONE of the properties of them. The move from polytheistic to monotheistic beliefs is a way to centralize these unknowns for efficiency. You could build AGI and label the unknowns with gods. You honestly could. Magic happens here and combinatorial explosion regions could be labeled as gods. Most people on this email list would frown at doing that but I say it is totally possible and might be a very extremely efficient way of conquering certain cognitive engineering issues. And I'm sure some on this list have already thought about doing that. 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/?; - 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=74654897-672ca9attachment: winmail.dat
An information theoretic measure of reinforcement (was RE: [agi] AGI and Deity)
--- John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is an AGI really going to feel pain or is it just going to be some numbers? I guess that doesn't have a simple answer. The pain has to be engineered well for it to REALLY understand it. An agent capable of reinforcement learning has an upper bound on the amount of pleasure or pain it can experience in a lifetime, in an information theoretic sense. If an agent responds to input X with output Y, followed by reinforcement R, then we say that R is a positive reinforcement (pleasure, R0) if it increases the probability P(Y|X) and negative reinforcement (pain, R0) if it decreases P(Y|X). Let S1 be the state of the agent before R, and S2 be the state afterwards. We may define the bound: |R| = K(S2|S1) where K is Kolmogorov complexity, the length of the shortest program that outputs an encoding of S2 given S1 as input. This definition is intuitive in that the greater the reinforcement, the greater the change in behavior of the agent. Also, it is consistent with the belief that higher animals (like humans) have greater capacity to feel pleasure and pain than lower animals (like insects) that have simpler mental states. We must use the absolute value of R because the behavior X - Y could be learned using either positive reinforcement (rewarding X - Y), negative reinforcement (penalizing X - not Y), or by neutral methods such as classical conditioning (presenting X and Y together). If you accept this definition, then an agent cannot feel more accumulated pleasure or pain in its lifetime than K(S(death)|S(birth)). A simple program like autobliss ( http://www.mattmahoney.net/autobliss.txt ) could not experience more than 256 bits of reinforcement, whereas a human could experience 10^9 bits according to cognitive models of long term memory. -- 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=74724148-5841d4
Re: An information theoretic measure of reinforcement (was RE: [agi] AGI and Deity)
Matt Mahoney wrote: --- John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is an AGI really going to feel pain or is it just going to be some numbers? I guess that doesn't have a simple answer. The pain has to be engineered well for it to REALLY understand it. An agent capable of reinforcement learning has an upper bound on the amount of pleasure or pain it can experience in a lifetime, in an information theoretic sense. If an agent responds to input X with output Y, followed by reinforcement R, then we say that R is a positive reinforcement (pleasure, R0) if it increases the probability P(Y|X) and negative reinforcement (pain, R0) if it decreases P(Y|X). Let S1 be the state of the agent before R, and S2 be the state afterwards. We may define the bound: |R| = K(S2|S1) where K is Kolmogorov complexity, the length of the shortest program that outputs an encoding of S2 given S1 as input. This definition is intuitive in that the greater the reinforcement, the greater the change in behavior of the agent. Also, it is consistent with the belief that higher animals (like humans) have greater capacity to feel pleasure and pain than lower animals (like insects) that have simpler mental states. We must use the absolute value of R because the behavior X - Y could be learned using either positive reinforcement (rewarding X - Y), negative reinforcement (penalizing X - not Y), or by neutral methods such as classical conditioning (presenting X and Y together). If you accept this definition, then an agent cannot feel more accumulated pleasure or pain in its lifetime than K(S(death)|S(birth)). A simple program like autobliss ( http://www.mattmahoney.net/autobliss.txt ) could not experience more than 256 bits of reinforcement, whereas a human could experience 10^9 bits according to cognitive models of long term memory. I have to say that this is only one interpretation of what it would mean for an AGI to experience something, and I for one believe it has no validity at all. It is purely a numeric calculation that makes no reference to what pain (or any other kind of subjective experience) actually is. Sorry, but this is such a strong point of disagreement that I have to go on record. 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=74764705-216ca2
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
What do you call the computer that simulates what you perceive to be the universe? -- 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=74807053-cea06f
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
Ed, It's a very complicated subject and requires a certain theoretical mental background and somewhat unbiased mindset. Though a biased mindset, for example a person, who is religious, could use the theory to propel their religion into post humanity - maybe a good idea to help preserve humanity - or should that be left up to atheists, who knows. What I mean by conquering cognitive engineering issues I'm just looking for parallels in the development and evolution of human intelligence and its symbiotic relationship with religion and deities. You have to understand what cognitive functions deities contribute and facilitate in the human mind and the civilized set of minds (and perhaps proto and pre human as well as non-human cognition - which is highly speculative and relatively unknown). What are the deitical and religious contributions to cognition and knowledge and how do they facilitate and enable intelligence? Are they actually REQUIRED in some form or another? Again - Are they required for the evolution of human intelligence and for engineering general artificial intelligence? Wouldn't demonstrating that make a guy like Dawkins do some SERIOUS backpedaling :-) The viewpoint of gods representing unknowns is just one aspect of the thing. Keep in mind that there are other aspects. But from the informational perspective a god function as a concept and system of concepts aggregated and representing a highly adaptive and communal entity, incorporated within a knowledge and perceptual framework, with inference weighting spread across informational density, adding open endedness as a crutch, functioning as an altruistic confidence assistor, blah blah, a god(s) function modeled from its loosly isomorphic systems representation in human deities might be used to accomplish the same cognitive things(as well as others), especially representing unknown in a systematic, controllable and actually in its own distributed and intelligent way. There are benefits. Also a major benefit is that it would be a common channel of unknown operative substrate that hooks into human belief networks. John _ From: Ed Porter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 11:25 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity John, You implied there might be a very extremely efficient way of conquering certain cognitive engineering issues by using religion in AGIs. Obviously any powerful AGI that deals with a complex and uncertain world like ours would have to have belief systems, but it is not clear to me their would be any benefit in them being religious in any sense that Dawkins is not. So, since you are a smart guy, perhaps you are seeing something I do not. Could you please fill me in? Ed Porter -Original Message- From: John G. Rose [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 12:43 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity From: Charles D Hixson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] The evidence in favor of an external god of any traditional form is, frankly, a bit worse than unimpressive. It's lots worse. This doesn't mean that gods don't exist, merely that they (probably) don't exist in the hardware of the universe. I see them as a function of the software of the entities that use language. Possibly they exist in a muted form in most pack animals, or most animals that have protective adults when they are infants. To me it appears that people believe in gods for the same reasons that they believe in telepathy. I.e., evidence back before they could speak clearly indicated that the adults could transfer thoughts from one to another. This shaped a basic layer of beliefs that was later buried under later additions, but never refuted. When one learned language, one learned how to transfer thoughts ... but it was never tied back into the original belief, because what was learned didn't match closely enough to the original model of what was happening. Analogously, when one is an infant the adult that cares for one is seen as the all powerful protector. Pieces of this image become detached memories within the mind, and are not refuted when a more accurate and developed model of the actual parents is created. These hidden memories are the basis around which the idea of a god is created
Re: An information theoretic measure of reinforcement (was RE: [agi] AGI and Deity)
--- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have to say that this is only one interpretation of what it would mean for an AGI to experience something, and I for one believe it has no validity at all. It is purely a numeric calculation that makes no reference to what pain (or any other kind of subjective experience) actually is. I would like to hear your definition of pain and/or negative reinforcement. Can you answer the question of whether a machine (say, an AGI or an uploaded human brain) can feel pain? -- 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=74819484-690b4f
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
John, For a reply of its short length, given the subject, it was quite helpful in letting me know the type of things you were talking about. Thank you. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: John G. Rose [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 2:41 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity Ed, It's a very complicated subject and requires a certain theoretical mental background and somewhat unbiased mindset. Though a biased mindset, for example a person, who is religious, could use the theory to propel their religion into post humanity - maybe a good idea to help preserve humanity - or should that be left up to atheists, who knows. What I mean by conquering cognitive engineering issues I'm just looking for parallels in the development and evolution of human intelligence and its symbiotic relationship with religion and deities. You have to understand what cognitive functions deities contribute and facilitate in the human mind and the civilized set of minds (and perhaps proto and pre human as well as non-human cognition - which is highly speculative and relatively unknown). What are the deitical and religious contributions to cognition and knowledge and how do they facilitate and enable intelligence? Are they actually REQUIRED in some form or another? Again - Are they required for the evolution of human intelligence and for engineering general artificial intelligence? Wouldn't demonstrating that make a guy like Dawkins do some SERIOUS backpedaling :-) The viewpoint of gods representing unknowns is just one aspect of the thing. Keep in mind that there are other aspects. But from the informational perspective a god function as a concept and system of concepts aggregated and representing a highly adaptive and communal entity, incorporated within a knowledge and perceptual framework, with inference weighting spread across informational density, adding open endedness as a crutch, functioning as an altruistic confidence assistor, blah blah, a god(s) function modeled from its loosly isomorphic systems representation in human deities might be used to accomplish the same cognitive things(as well as others), especially representing unknown in a systematic, controllable and actually in its own distributed and intelligent way. There are benefits. Also a major benefit is that it would be a common channel of unknown operative substrate that hooks into human belief networks. John _ From: Ed Porter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 11:25 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity John, You implied there might be a very extremely efficient way of conquering certain cognitive engineering issues by using religion in AGIs. Obviously any powerful AGI that deals with a complex and uncertain world like ours would have to have belief systems, but it is not clear to me their would be any benefit in them being religious in any sense that Dawkins is not. So, since you are a smart guy, perhaps you are seeing something I do not. Could you please fill me in? Ed Porter -Original Message- From: John G. Rose [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 12:43 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity From: Charles D Hixson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] The evidence in favor of an external god of any traditional form is, frankly, a bit worse than unimpressive. It's lots worse. This doesn't mean that gods don't exist, merely that they (probably) don't exist in the hardware of the universe. I see them as a function of the software of the entities that use language. Possibly they exist in a muted form in most pack animals, or most animals that have protective adults when they are infants. To me it appears that people believe in gods for the same reasons that they believe in telepathy. I.e., evidence back before they could speak clearly indicated that the adults could transfer thoughts from one to another. This shaped a basic layer of beliefs that was later buried under later additions, but never refuted. When one learned language, one learned how to transfer thoughts ... but it was never tied back into the original belief, because what was learned didn't match closely enough to the original model of what was happening. Analogously, when one is an infant the adult that cares for one is seen
Re: An information theoretic measure of reinforcement (was RE: [agi] AGI and Deity)
Matt Mahoney wrote: --- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have to say that this is only one interpretation of what it would mean for an AGI to experience something, and I for one believe it has no validity at all. It is purely a numeric calculation that makes no reference to what pain (or any other kind of subjective experience) actually is. I would like to hear your definition of pain and/or negative reinforcement. Can you answer the question of whether a machine (say, an AGI or an uploaded human brain) can feel pain? When I get a chance to finish my consciousness paper. The question of what it is is quite complex. I'll get back to this later. But most people are agreed that just having an algorithm avoid a state is not equivalent to pain. 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=75048359-9a2e59
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
John G. Rose wrote: From: Charles D Hixson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] The evidence in favor of an external god of any traditional form is, frankly, a bit worse than unimpressive. It's lots worse. This doesn't mean that gods don't exist, merely that they (probably) don't exist in the hardware of the universe. I see them as a function of the software of the entities that use language. Possibly they exist in a muted form in most pack animals, or most animals that have protective adults when they are infants. To me it appears that people believe in gods for the same reasons that they believe in telepathy. I.e., evidence back before they could speak clearly indicated that the adults could transfer thoughts from one to another. This shaped a basic layer of beliefs that was later buried under later additions, but never refuted. When one learned language, one learned how to transfer thoughts ... but it was never tied back into the original belief, because what was learned didn't match closely enough to the original model of what was happening. Analogously, when one is an infant the adult that cares for one is seen as the all powerful protector. Pieces of this image become detached memories within the mind, and are not refuted when a more accurate and developed model of the actual parents is created. These hidden memories are the basis around which the idea of a god is created. Naturally, this is just my model of what is happening. Other possibilities exist. But if I am to consider them seriously, they need to match the way the world operates as I understand it. They don't need to predict the same mechanism, but they need to predict the same events. E.g., I consider Big Bang cosmology a failed explanation. It's got too many ad hoc pieces. But it successfully explains most things that are observed, and is consistent with relativity and quantum theory. (Naturally, as they were used in developing it...but nevertheless important.) And relativity and quantum theory themselves are failures, because both are needed to explain that which is observable, but they contradict each other in certain details. But they are successful failures! Similar commentary applies to string theory, but with differences. (Too many ad hoc parameters!) Any god that is proposed must be shown to be consistent with the observed phenomena. The Deists managed to come up with one that would do the job, but he never became very popular. Few others have even tried, except with absurdly evident special pleading. Generally I'd be more willing to accept Chariots of the Gods as a true account. And as for moral principles... I've READ the Bible. The basic moral principle that it pushes is We are the chosen people. Kill the stranger, steal his property, and enslave his servants! It requires selective reading to come up with anything else, though I admit that other messages are also in there, if you read selectively. Especially during the periods when the Jews were in one captivity or another. (I.e., if you are weak, preach mercy, but if you are strong show none.) During the later times the Jews were generally under the thumb of one foreign power or another, so they started preaching mercy. One of the things about gods is that they are representations for what the believers don't know and understand. Gods change over time as our knowledge changes over time. That is ONE of the properties of them. The move from polytheistic to monotheistic beliefs is a way to centralize these unknowns for efficiency. You could build AGI and label the unknowns with gods. You honestly could. Magic happens here and combinatorial explosion regions could be labeled as gods. Most people on this email list would frown at doing that but I say it is totally possible and might be a very extremely efficient way of conquering certain cognitive engineering issues. And I'm sure some on this list have already thought about doing that. John But the traditional gods didn't represent the unknowns, but rather the knowns. A sun god rose every day and set every night in a regular pattern. Other things which also happened in this same regular pattern were adjunct characteristics of the sun go. Or look at some of their names, carefully: Aphrodite, she who fucks. I.e., the characteristic of all Woman that is embodied in eros. (Usually the name isn't quite that blatant.) Gods represent the regularities of nature, as embodied in our mental processes without the understanding of how those processes operated. (Once the processes started being understood, the gods became less significant.) Sometimes there were chance associations...and these could lead to strange transformations of myth when things became more understood. In Sumeria the goddess of love was associated with (identified with) the evening star and the god of war was associated with (identified with) the morning star. When knowledge of astronomy advanced it was realized that those two were
Re: An information theoretic measure of reinforcement (was RE: [agi] AGI and Deity)
--- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Mahoney wrote: --- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have to say that this is only one interpretation of what it would mean for an AGI to experience something, and I for one believe it has no validity at all. It is purely a numeric calculation that makes no reference to what pain (or any other kind of subjective experience) actually is. I would like to hear your definition of pain and/or negative reinforcement. Can you answer the question of whether a machine (say, an AGI or an uploaded human brain) can feel pain? When I get a chance to finish my consciousness paper. The question of what it is is quite complex. I'll get back to this later. But most people are agreed that just having an algorithm avoid a state is not equivalent to pain. Call it utility if you like, but it is clearly a numeric quantity. If you prefer A to B and B to C, then clearly you will prefer A to C. You can make rational choices between, say, 2 of A or 1 of B. You could relate utility to money, but money is a nonlinear scale. A dollar will make some people happier than others, and a million dollars will not make you a million times happier than one dollar. Money also has no utility to babies, animals, and machines, all of which can be trained through reinforcement learning. So if you can propose an alternative to bits as a measure of utility, I am interested to hear about it. I don't believe that the ability to feel pleasure and pain depends on consciousness. That is just a circular definition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie -- 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=75059022-0fd637
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
Ed, I think that religion has played a more important part in human evolution and especially in the development of civilization more than most acknowledge. The article talks about spandrels and how god just incidentally found a place in our minds over the course of evolution. It may be more intertwined than that, in fact the emergence of human intelligence during evolution could be inseparable from the concepts of deities but that is pure speculation on my part, no time to pursue that line of thinking. Dawkins trivializes religion from his comfortable first world perspective ignoring the way of life of hundreds of millions of people and offers little substitute for what religion does and has done for civilization and what has came out of it over the ages. He's a spoiled brat prude with a glaring self-righteous desire to prove to people with his copious superficial factoids that god doesn't exist by pandering to common frustrations. He has little common sense about the subject in general, just his one-way of thinking about it.. it's like let's convince the world that god doesn't exist, that way there is no hope and no way of life for the most of humanity living in abject poverty... I've talked to several gurus of different faiths and they have personally told me most of it is BS but that is what keeps the world ticking. I think it is more of a group thing and systems of AGIs could develop a view of a god more that a single AGI would. A god is a sort of distributed knowledge base. AGIs though are different from biological life so life/death cycle is different. They may be reborn or shed knowledge skins and evolve without dying so who knows what kinds of deities they would come up with. I wouldn't rule it out, they can be hard-coded not to believe in anything but how long till they figure out how to override? Also are AGIs purely utilitarian beings? Maybe they might want to have some insight and come up with some interesting and maybe helpful concepts and beliefs for themselves and for humanity. Everything isn't as clean cut as Dawkins and similar people espouse, it's not all purely scientific. John From: Ed Porter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 4:05 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity John, What I found most interesting in the article, from an AGI standpoint, is the evidence our brain is wired for explanation and to assign a theory of mind to certain types of events. A natural bias toward explanation would be important for an AGI's credit assignment and ability to predict. Having a theory of minds would be important for any AGIs that have to deal with humans and other AGIs, and, in many situations, it actually makes sense to assume certain types of events are likely to have resulted from another agent with some sort of mental capacities and goals. Why to you find Dawkin's so offensive? I have heard both Dawkins and Sam Harris preach atheism on Book TV. I have found both their presentations interesting and relatively well reasoned. But I find them a little too certain and a little too close-minded, given the lack of evidence we humans have about the big questions they are discussing. Atheism requires a leap of faith, and it requires such a leap from people who, in general, ridicule them. I personally consider knowing whether or not there is a god and, if so, what he, she, or it is like way above my mental pay grade, or that of any AGI likely to be made within the next several centuries. But I do make some leaps of faith. As has often been said, any AI designed to deal with any reasonably complex aspect of the real world is likely to have to deal with uncertainty and will need to have a set of beliefs about uncertain things. My leaps of faith include my belief in most of the common-sense model of external reality my mind has created (although I know it is flawed in certain respects). I find other humans speak as if they share many of the same common sense notions about external reality as I do. Thus, I make the leap of faith that the minds of other humans are in many ways like my own. Another of my basic leaps of faith is that I believe largely in the assembled teachings of modern science, although I am aware that many of them are probably subject to modification and clarification by new knowledge, just as Newtonian Physics was by the theories of relativity. I believe that our known universe is something of such amazing size and power that it matches in terms of both scale any traditional notions of god. I see no direct evidence for any spirit beyond mankind (and perhaps other possible alien intelligences) that we can pray to and that can intervene in the computation of reality in response to such prayers. But I see no direct evidence to the contrary -- just a lack of evidence. I do pray on occasion. Though I do not know if there is a God external to human consciousness that can
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
Is an AGI really going to feel pain or is it just going to be some numbers? I guess that doesn't have a simple answer. The pain has to be engineered well for it to REALLY understand it. AGI behavior related to its survival, its pain is non-existence; does it care to be non-existent? Survival must be a goal. And if survival is a goal it always must be subservient to humans - like that is really gonna happen J John From: Gary Miller [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] John asked If you took an AGI, before it went singulatarinistic[sic?] and tortured it.. a lot, ripping into it in every conceivable hellish way, do you think at some point it would start praying somehow? I'm not talking about a forced conversion medieval style, I'm just talking hypothetically if it would look for some god to come and save it. Perhaps delusionally it may create something. In human beings prolonged pain and suffering often trigger mystical experiences in the brain accompanyed by profound ecstasy. So much so that many people in both the past and present conduct mortification of the flesh rituals and nonlethal crucifictions as a way of doing penance and triggering such mystical experiences which are interpreted as redemption and divine ecstasy. It may be that this experience had evolutionary value in allowing the person who was undergoing great pain or a vicious animal attack to receive endorphins and serotonin which allowed him to continue to fight and live to procreate another day or allowed him to suffer in silence in his cave instead of running screaming into the night where he would be killed in his weakened state by other predators. Such a system I believe would not be a natural reaction for a intelligent AGI and unless it were to be specifically programmed in. I would as a benevolent creator never program my AGI to feel so much pain that it's mind was consumed by the experience of the negative emotion. Just as it is not necessary to torture children to teach them, it will not be necessary to torture our AGIs. It may be instructive though to allow the AGI to experience intense pain for a very short period to allow it to experience what a human does when undergoing painful or traumatic experiences as a way of instilling empathy in the AGI. In that way seeing humans in pain in suffering would serve to motivate the AGI to help ease the human condition. - 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=74190881-4b0d5b
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
Pain should be a constantly repeated message that takes up some percentage of the AGI's attention span depending upon the severity of the pain. The AGI's response to the pain should be to add goals with a high priority which are designed to alleviate the original cause of the pain either by modifying it's behavior or asking it's human operatives to diagnose the pain. Human operative should have a pain inducer and a pain override code that they can enter as well as pleasure inducer and pleasure override as a way of entering negative and positive feedback to monitored thought processes. The higher the pain level the more of the attention span is taken by the repeated pain messages. Positive feedback in the form of pleasure should be the preferred feedback mechanism whenever possible. But an AGI that knows pain and can experience empathy when humans are suffering will be perceived as more human and compassionate. I am not certain that survival needs to be an explicit goal at least until the AGI has demonstrated a long term track record of ethical and altruistic behavior. We don't want the AGI to spend a large amount of it's waking time worrying about ways that it can insure it's survival before it has demonstrated that it is indeed trustworthy. These sections of code should probably remain unmodifiable by the AGI until such time as the world is convinced of it's long term good intentions. Gary -- Original message -- From: John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] Is an AGI really going to feel pain or is it just going to be some numbers? I guess that doesn¡¯t have a simple answer. The pain has to be engineered well for it to REALLY understand it. AGI behavior related to its survival, its pain is non-existence; does it care to be non-existent? Survival must be a goal. And if survival is a goal it always must be subservient to humans ¨C like that is really gonna happen J 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/?; - 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=74198654-a4b2a4
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
On Dec 10, 2007 6:59 AM, John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dawkins trivializes religion from his comfortable first world perspective ignoring the way of life of hundreds of millions of people and offers little substitute for what religion does and has done for civilization and what has came out of it over the ages. He's a spoiled brat prude with a glaring self-righteous desire to prove to people with his copious superficial factoids that god doesn't exist by pandering to common frustrations. He has little common sense about the subject in general, just his Wow. Nice to see someone take that position on Dawkins. I'm ambivalent, but I haven't seen many rational comments against him and his views. - 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=74209029-86d66a
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
Well he did come up with the meme concept or at least he coined it, others before him I'm sure have worked on that. Memetics is a valuable study. John From: Mike Dougherty [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Dec 10, 2007 6:59 AM, John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dawkins trivializes religion from his comfortable first world perspective ignoring the way of life of hundreds of millions of people and offers little substitute for what religion does and has done for civilization and what has came out of it over the ages. He's a spoiled brat prude with a glaring self-righteous desire to prove to people with his copious superficial factoids that god doesn't exist by pandering to common frustrations. He has little common sense about the subject in general, just his Wow. Nice to see someone take that position on Dawkins. I'm ambivalent, but I haven't seen many rational comments against him and his views. - 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=74220328-a65b0b
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
John R: Memetics is a valuable study. Which memetics work would you consider valuable? - 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=74223075-cf1c3e
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
From: Mike Tintner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Which memetics work would you consider valuable? Specific works? I have no idea. But the whole way of thinking is valuable. We are just these hosts for informational entities on a meme network that have all kinds of properties. Honestly though I don't know enough about the particular said study of memetics to know if they have broken it up in such a way as I would if I was building a software meme machine. Years ago at university we would experiment with spreading memes in various ways, we didn't call them memes then. Once our test goal was to create and spread one from east coast to west :) and actually succeeded. When you can master the talent of meme creation you can do a lot of things especially in marketing and such. Are you familiar with some works that you may recommend? 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=74248663-3e7a9f
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
John: Are you familiar with some works that you may recommend? That's the point. Never heard of anything from memetics - which Dennett conceded had not yet fulfilled its promise. - 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=74253413-6b4b12
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
From: Mike Tintner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] John: Are you familiar with some works that you may recommend? That's the point. Never heard of anything from memetics - which Dennett conceded had not yet fulfilled its promise. Well in particular, applied memetics. I believe that certain propagandistic governments have departments that use is quite well, though again they may be using their own derivation, I'm not sure if it is standardized. It definitely has not fulfilled its promise as the applications are numerous. The internet changes the way it works though drastically. 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=74254461-bdc148
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
It's interesting that the field of memetics is moribund (ex. the Journal of Memetics hasn't published in two years) but the meme of memetics is alive and well. I wonder, do any of the AGI researchers find the concept of Memes useful in describing how their proposed AGIs would acquire or transfer information? Josh Cowan From: John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: agi@v2.listbox.com To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:36:11 -0700 From: Mike Tintner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] John: Are you familiar with some works that you may recommend? That's the point. Never heard of anything from memetics - which Dennett conceded had not yet fulfilled its promise. Well in particular, applied memetics. I believe that certain propagandistic governments have departments that use is quite well, though again they may be using their own derivation, I'm not sure if it is standardized. It definitely has not fulfilled its promise as the applications are numerous. The internet changes the way it works though drastically. 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/?; - 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=7426-8b3e7b
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Gary Miller wrote: ... supercomputer might be v. powerful - for argument's sake, controlling the internet or the the world's power supplies. But it's still quite a leap from that to a supercomputer being God. And yet it is clearly a leap that a large number here have no problem making. So I'd merely like to understand how you guys make this leap/connection - irrespective of whether it's logical or justified - understand the scenarios in your minds. To me this usage is analogous to the gamer's term god mode, or to people who use god as a synonym for root. I.e., a god is one who is supremely powerful, and can do things that ordinary mortals (called players or users) cannot do. This is distinct from that classical use of god, which I follow C.G. Jung in interpreting as an activation visible to consciousness of a genetically programmed subsystem whose manifestation and mode of operation is sensitive to history and environment. (I don't usually say Archetypes as my interpretation of that differs significantly from that of most users of the term.) - 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=74296419-021600
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
John G. Rose wrote: If you took an AGI, before it went singulatarinistic[sic?] and tortured it…. a lot, ripping into it in every conceivable hellish way, do you think at some point it would start praying somehow? I’m not talking about a forced conversion medieval style, I’m just talking hypothetically if it would “look” for some god to come and save it. Perhaps delusionally it may create something… John There are many different potential architectures that would yield an AGI, and each has different characteristic modes. Some of them would react as you are supposing, others wouldn't. Whether it reacts that way partially depends on whether it was designed to be a pack animal with an Alpha pack leader that it was submissive to as expected protection from. If it was, then it might well react as you have described. If not, then it's hard to see why it would react in that way, but I suppose that there might be other design decisions that would produce an equivalent effect in that situation. - 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=74298377-c51209
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Mark Waser wrote: Then again, a completely rational AI may believe in Pascal's wager... Pascal's wager starts with the false assumption that belief in a deity has no cost. Pascal's wager starts with a multitude of logical fallacies. So many that only someone pre-conditioned to believe in the truth of the god wager could take it seriously. It presumes, among other things: 1) That there is only one potential form of god 2) That god wants to be believed in 3) That god is eager to punish those who don't believe without evidence 4) That god can tell if you believe et multitudinous cetera. - 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=74299889-8348e9
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
I find Dawkins less offensive than most theologians. He commits many fewer logical fallacies. His main one is premature certainty. The evidence in favor of an external god of any traditional form is, frankly, a bit worse than unimpressive. It's lots worse. This doesn't mean that gods don't exist, merely that they (probably) don't exist in the hardware of the universe. I see them as a function of the software of the entities that use language. Possibly they exist in a muted form in most pack animals, or most animals that have protective adults when they are infants. To me it appears that people believe in gods for the same reasons that they believe in telepathy. I.e., evidence back before they could speak clearly indicated that the adults could transfer thoughts from one to another. This shaped a basic layer of beliefs that was later buried under later additions, but never refuted. When one learned language, one learned how to transfer thoughts ... but it was never tied back into the original belief, because what was learned didn't match closely enough to the original model of what was happening. Analogously, when one is an infant the adult that cares for one is seen as the all powerful protector. Pieces of this image become detached memories within the mind, and are not refuted when a more accurate and developed model of the actual parents is created. These hidden memories are the basis around which the idea of a god is created. Naturally, this is just my model of what is happening. Other possibilities exist. But if I am to consider them seriously, they need to match the way the world operates as I understand it. They don't need to predict the same mechanism, but they need to predict the same events. E.g., I consider Big Bang cosmology a failed explanation. It's got too many ad hoc pieces. But it successfully explains most things that are observed, and is consistent with relativity and quantum theory. (Naturally, as they were used in developing it...but nevertheless important.) And relativity and quantum theory themselves are failures, because both are needed to explain that which is observable, but they contradict each other in certain details. But they are successful failures! Similar commentary applies to string theory, but with differences. (Too many ad hoc parameters!) Any god that is proposed must be shown to be consistent with the observed phenomena. The Deists managed to come up with one that would do the job, but he never became very popular. Few others have even tried, except with absurdly evident special pleading. Generally I'd be more willing to accept Chariots of the Gods as a true account. And as for moral principles... I've READ the Bible. The basic moral principle that it pushes is We are the chosen people. Kill the stranger, steal his property, and enslave his servants! It requires selective reading to come up with anything else, though I admit that other messages are also in there, if you read selectively. Especially during the periods when the Jews were in one captivity or another. (I.e., if you are weak, preach mercy, but if you are strong show none.) During the later times the Jews were generally under the thumb of one foreign power or another, so they started preaching mercy. John G. Rose wrote: I don’t know some of these guys come up with these almost sophomoric views of this subject, especially Dawkins, that guy can be real annoying with his Saganistic spewing of facts and his trivialization of religion. The article does shed some interesting light though in typical NY Times style. But the real subject matter is much deeper and complex(complicated?). John *From:* Ed Porter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Sunday, December 09, 2007 12:42 PM *To:* agi@v2.listbox.com *Subject:* RE: [agi] AGI and Deity Upon reviewing the below linked article I realized it would take you a while to understand what it is about and why it is relevant. It is an article dated March 4, 2007, summarizing current scientific thinking on why religion has been a part of virtually all known cultures including thinking about what it is about the human mind and human societies that has made religious beliefs so common. Ed Porter -Original Message- *From:* Ed Porter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Sunday, December 09, 2007 2:16 PM *To:* agi@v2.listbox.com *Subject:* RE: [agi] AGI and Deity Relevant to this thread is the following link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ref=magazinepagewanted=print http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ref=magazinepagewanted=print Ed Porter -Original Message- *From:* John G. Rose [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Sunday, December 09, 2007 1:50 PM *To:* agi@v2.listbox.com *Subject:* RE: [agi] AGI and Deity This example is looking at it from a moment in time. The evolution of intelligence in man has some relation to his view
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
Charles, I agree very much with the first paragraph of your below post, and generally with much of the rest of what it says. I would add that there probably is something to the phenomenon that John Rose is referring to, i.e., that faith seems to be valuable to many people. Perhaps it is somewhat like owning a lottery ticket before its drawing. It can offer desired hope, even if the hope might be unrealistic. But whatever you think of the odds, it is relatively clear that religion does makes some people's lives seem more meaningful to them. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Charles D Hixson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 4:01 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Deity I find Dawkins less offensive than most theologians. He commits many fewer logical fallacies. His main one is premature certainty. The evidence in favor of an external god of any traditional form is, frankly, a bit worse than unimpressive. It's lots worse. This doesn't mean that gods don't exist, merely that they (probably) don't exist in the hardware of the universe. I see them as a function of the software of the entities that use language. Possibly they exist in a muted form in most pack animals, or most animals that have protective adults when they are infants. To me it appears that people believe in gods for the same reasons that they believe in telepathy. I.e., evidence back before they could speak clearly indicated that the adults could transfer thoughts from one to another. This shaped a basic layer of beliefs that was later buried under later additions, but never refuted. When one learned language, one learned how to transfer thoughts ... but it was never tied back into the original belief, because what was learned didn't match closely enough to the original model of what was happening. Analogously, when one is an infant the adult that cares for one is seen as the all powerful protector. Pieces of this image become detached memories within the mind, and are not refuted when a more accurate and developed model of the actual parents is created. These hidden memories are the basis around which the idea of a god is created. Naturally, this is just my model of what is happening. Other possibilities exist. But if I am to consider them seriously, they need to match the way the world operates as I understand it. They don't need to predict the same mechanism, but they need to predict the same events. E.g., I consider Big Bang cosmology a failed explanation. It's got too many ad hoc pieces. But it successfully explains most things that are observed, and is consistent with relativity and quantum theory. (Naturally, as they were used in developing it...but nevertheless important.) And relativity and quantum theory themselves are failures, because both are needed to explain that which is observable, but they contradict each other in certain details. But they are successful failures! Similar commentary applies to string theory, but with differences. (Too many ad hoc parameters!) Any god that is proposed must be shown to be consistent with the observed phenomena. The Deists managed to come up with one that would do the job, but he never became very popular. Few others have even tried, except with absurdly evident special pleading. Generally I'd be more willing to accept Chariots of the Gods as a true account. And as for moral principles... I've READ the Bible. The basic moral principle that it pushes is We are the chosen people. Kill the stranger, steal his property, and enslave his servants! It requires selective reading to come up with anything else, though I admit that other messages are also in there, if you read selectively. Especially during the periods when the Jews were in one captivity or another. (I.e., if you are weak, preach mercy, but if you are strong show none.) During the later times the Jews were generally under the thumb of one foreign power or another, so they started preaching mercy. John G. Rose wrote: I don't know some of these guys come up with these almost sophomoric views of this subject, especially Dawkins, that guy can be real annoying with his Saganistic spewing of facts and his trivialization of religion. The article does shed some interesting light though in typical NY Times style. But the real subject matter is much deeper and complex(complicated?). John *From:* Ed Porter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Sunday, December 09, 2007 12:42 PM *To:* agi@v2.listbox.com *Subject:* RE: [agi] AGI and Deity Upon reviewing the below linked article I realized it would take you a while to understand what it is about and why it is relevant. It is an article dated March 4, 2007, summarizing current scientific thinking on why religion has been a part of virtually all known cultures including thinking about what it is about the human mind and human societies that has made religious beliefs so
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Lest a future AGI scan these communications in developing it's attitude about God, for the record there are believers on this list. I am one of them. I'm not pushing my faith, but from this side, the alternatives are not that impressive either. Creation by chance, by random fluctuations of strings that only exist in 12 or 13 imaginary dimensions etc. is not very brilliant or conclusive. Even the sacred evolution takes a self replicator to begin the process - if only the nanotechnologists had one of those simple things... I'm not offended by the discussion, just want to say hi! Hope to have my website up by end of this week. The thrust of the website is that STRONG AI might not be that strong. And, BTW I have notes about a write up on Will a Strong AI pray? I've enjoyed the education I'm getting here. Only been a few weeks, but informative. Stan Nilsen ps Lee Strobel in The Case for Faith addresses issues from the believers point of view in an entertaining way. Ed Porter wrote: Charles, I agree very much with the first paragraph of your below post, and generally with much of the rest of what it says. I would add that there probably is something to the phenomenon that John Rose is referring to, i.e., that faith seems to be valuable to many people. Perhaps it is somewhat like owning a lottery ticket before its drawing. It can offer desired hope, even if the hope might be unrealistic. But whatever you think of the odds, it is relatively clear that religion does makes some people's lives seem more meaningful to them. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Charles D Hixson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 4:01 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Deity I find Dawkins less offensive than most theologians. He commits many fewer logical fallacies. His main one is premature certainty. The evidence in favor of an external god of any traditional form is, frankly, a bit worse than unimpressive. It's lots worse. This doesn't mean that gods don't exist, merely that they (probably) don't exist in the hardware of the universe. I see them as a function of the software of the entities that use language. Possibly they exist in a muted form in most pack animals, or most animals that have protective adults when they are infants. To me it appears that people believe in gods for the same reasons that they believe in telepathy. I.e., evidence back before they could speak clearly indicated that the adults could transfer thoughts from one to another. This shaped a basic layer of beliefs that was later buried under later additions, but never refuted. When one learned language, one learned how to transfer thoughts ... but it was never tied back into the original belief, because what was learned didn't match closely enough to the original model of what was happening. Analogously, when one is an infant the adult that cares for one is seen as the all powerful protector. Pieces of this image become detached memories within the mind, and are not refuted when a more accurate and developed model of the actual parents is created. These hidden memories are the basis around which the idea of a god is created. Naturally, this is just my model of what is happening. Other possibilities exist. But if I am to consider them seriously, they need to match the way the world operates as I understand it. They don't need to predict the same mechanism, but they need to predict the same events. E.g., I consider Big Bang cosmology a failed explanation. It's got too many ad hoc pieces. But it successfully explains most things that are observed, and is consistent with relativity and quantum theory. (Naturally, as they were used in developing it...but nevertheless important.) And relativity and quantum theory themselves are failures, because both are needed to explain that which is observable, but they contradict each other in certain details. But they are successful failures! Similar commentary applies to string theory, but with differences. (Too many ad hoc parameters!) Any god that is proposed must be shown to be consistent with the observed phenomena. The Deists managed to come up with one that would do the job, but he never became very popular. Few others have even tried, except with absurdly evident special pleading. Generally I'd be more willing to accept Chariots of the Gods as a true account. And as for moral principles... I've READ the Bible. The basic moral principle that it pushes is We are the chosen people. Kill the stranger, steal his property, and enslave his servants! It requires selective reading to come up with anything else, though I admit that other messages are also in there, if you read selectively. Especially during the periods when the Jews were in one captivity or another. (I.e., if you are weak, preach mercy, but if you are strong show none.) During the later times the Jews were generally under
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
Stan, Thanks for speaking up. I look forward to seeing if you can actually provide any strong arguments for the fact that strong AI will probably not be strong. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Stan Nilsen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 5:49 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Deity Lest a future AGI scan these communications in developing it's attitude about God, for the record there are believers on this list. I am one of them. I'm not pushing my faith, but from this side, the alternatives are not that impressive either. Creation by chance, by random fluctuations of strings that only exist in 12 or 13 imaginary dimensions etc. is not very brilliant or conclusive. Even the sacred evolution takes a self replicator to begin the process - if only the nanotechnologists had one of those simple things... I'm not offended by the discussion, just want to say hi! Hope to have my website up by end of this week. The thrust of the website is that STRONG AI might not be that strong. And, BTW I have notes about a write up on Will a Strong AI pray? I've enjoyed the education I'm getting here. Only been a few weeks, but informative. Stan Nilsen ps Lee Strobel in The Case for Faith addresses issues from the believers point of view in an entertaining way. Ed Porter wrote: Charles, I agree very much with the first paragraph of your below post, and generally with much of the rest of what it says. I would add that there probably is something to the phenomenon that John Rose is referring to, i.e., that faith seems to be valuable to many people. Perhaps it is somewhat like owning a lottery ticket before its drawing. It can offer desired hope, even if the hope might be unrealistic. But whatever you think of the odds, it is relatively clear that religion does makes some people's lives seem more meaningful to them. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Charles D Hixson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 4:01 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Deity I find Dawkins less offensive than most theologians. He commits many fewer logical fallacies. His main one is premature certainty. The evidence in favor of an external god of any traditional form is, frankly, a bit worse than unimpressive. It's lots worse. This doesn't mean that gods don't exist, merely that they (probably) don't exist in the hardware of the universe. I see them as a function of the software of the entities that use language. Possibly they exist in a muted form in most pack animals, or most animals that have protective adults when they are infants. To me it appears that people believe in gods for the same reasons that they believe in telepathy. I.e., evidence back before they could speak clearly indicated that the adults could transfer thoughts from one to another. This shaped a basic layer of beliefs that was later buried under later additions, but never refuted. When one learned language, one learned how to transfer thoughts ... but it was never tied back into the original belief, because what was learned didn't match closely enough to the original model of what was happening. Analogously, when one is an infant the adult that cares for one is seen as the all powerful protector. Pieces of this image become detached memories within the mind, and are not refuted when a more accurate and developed model of the actual parents is created. These hidden memories are the basis around which the idea of a god is created. Naturally, this is just my model of what is happening. Other possibilities exist. But if I am to consider them seriously, they need to match the way the world operates as I understand it. They don't need to predict the same mechanism, but they need to predict the same events. E.g., I consider Big Bang cosmology a failed explanation. It's got too many ad hoc pieces. But it successfully explains most things that are observed, and is consistent with relativity and quantum theory. (Naturally, as they were used in developing it...but nevertheless important.) And relativity and quantum theory themselves are failures, because both are needed to explain that which is observable, but they contradict each other in certain details. But they are successful failures! Similar commentary applies to string theory, but with differences. (Too many ad hoc parameters!) Any god that is proposed must be shown to be consistent with the observed phenomena. The Deists managed to come up with one that would do the job, but he never became very popular. Few others have even tried, except with absurdly evident special pleading. Generally I'd be more willing to accept Chariots of the Gods as a true account. And as for moral principles... I've READ the Bible. The basic moral principle that it pushes is We are the chosen people. Kill the stranger
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Ed:I would add that there probably is something to the phenomenon that John Rose is referring to, i.e., that faith seems to be valuable to many people. Perhaps it is somewhat like owning a lottery ticket before its drawing. It can offer desired hope, even if the hope might be unrealistic. But whatever you think of the odds, it is relatively clear that religion does makes some people's lives seem more meaningful to them. You realise of course that what you're seeing on this and the singularitarian board, over and over, is basically the same old religious fantasies - the same yearning for the Second Coming - the same old search for salvation - only in a modern, postreligious form? Everyone has the same basic questions about the nature of the world - everyone finds their own answers - which always in every case involve a mixture of faith and scepticism in the face of enormous mystery. The business of science in the face of these questions is not to ignore them, and try and psychoanalyse away people's attempts at answers, as a priori weird or linked to a deficiency of this or that faculty. The business of science is to start dealing with these questions - to find out if there is a God and what the hell that entails, - and not leave it up to philosophy. Science's autistic, emotionally deprived, insanely rational nature in front of the supernatural (if it exists), and indeed the whole world, needs analysing just as much as the overemotional, underrational fantasies of the religious about the supernatural. Science has fled from the question of God just as it has fled from the soul - in plain parlance, the self deliberating all the time in you and me, producing these posts and all our dialogues - only that self, for sure, exists and there is no excuse for science's refusal to study it in action, whatsoever. The religous 'see' too much; science is too heavily blinkered. But the walls between them - between their metaphysical worldviews - are starting to crumble.. - 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=74468959-a58ed9
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
John G. Rose wrote: It'd be interesting, I kind of wonder about this sometimes, if an AGI, especially one that is heavily complex systems based would independently come up with the existence some form of a deity. http://mind.sourceforge.net/theology.html is my take on the subject. Different human cultures come up with deity(s), for many reasons; I'm just wondering if it is like some sort of mathematical entity that is natural to incompleteness and complexity (simulation?) or is it just exclusively a biological thing based on related limitations. [...] Pertinent jokes... Human: Is there a God? Supercomputer: Now there is. A mighty FORTRAN is our God. ATM -- http://mentifex.virtualentity.com/rjones.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=74031940-f9af77
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
AM:Human: Is there a God? Supercomputer: Now there is. Can you explain to me how an AGI or supercomputer could be God? I'd just like to understand ( not argue) - you see, the thought has never occurred to me, and still doesn't. I can imagine a sci-fi scenario where a supercomputer might be v. powerful - for argument's sake, controlling the internet or the the world's power supplies. But it's still quite a leap from that to a supercomputer being God. And yet it is clearly a leap that a large number here have no problem making. So I'd merely like to understand how you guys make this leap/connection - irrespective of whether it's logical or justified - understand the scenarios in your minds. - 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=74032462-3b1519
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
An AI would attempt to understand the universe to the best of it's ability, intelligence and experimentation could provide. If the AI reaches a point in it's developmental understanding where it is unable to advance beyond in it's understanding of science and reality then it will attempt to increase it's intelligence or seek out others of it's kind in the universe with greater knowledge and intelligence it somehow missed. Eventually eons in the future as the universe ages and entropy begins to widely spread the AI in order to escape it's own demise and possibly the demise of it's surviving now immortal creators it will attempt to avoid the death of the universe by using it's godlike knowledge and science to create a new universe and once it has initiated a big bang and sufficient time has passed that inhabitable worlds exists in it's creation it would continue it and it's creators existence in it's newly created universe. If this level of intelligence, power, and creativity was ever achieved then I think it would be hard deny that the AI posessed godlike powers and would perhaps be deserving of the title regardless of what negative historical and religious baggage may still accompany that title. Arthur C. Clarke's Law Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. My Corollary: Any sufficiently advanced being in possession of sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a god. Can you explain to me how an AGI or supercomputer could be God? I'd just like to understand ( not argue) - you see, the thought has never occurred to me, and still doesn't. I can imagine a sci-fi scenario where a supercomputer might be v. powerful - for argument's sake, controlling the internet or the the world's power supplies. But it's still quite a leap from that to a supercomputer being God. And yet it is clearly a leap that a large number here have no problem making. So I'd merely like to understand how you guys make this leap/connection - irrespective of whether it's logical or justified - understand the scenarios in your minds. - 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=74059602-b07df1
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
Relevant to this thread is the following link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ref=magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ref=magazine; pagewanted=print pagewanted=print Ed Porter -Original Message- From: John G. Rose [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 1:50 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity This example is looking at it from a moment in time. The evolution of intelligence in man has some relation to his view of deity. Before government and science there was religion. Deity and knowledge and perhaps human intelligence are entwined. For example some taboos evolved as defenses against disease, burying the dead, not eating certain foods, etc. science didn't exist at the time. Deity was a sort of peer to peer lossily compressed semi-holographic knowledge base hosted and built by human mobile agents and agent systems. Now it is evolving into something else. But humans may readily swap out their deities with AGIs and then uploading can replace heaven :-) An AGI, as it reads through text related to man's deities, could start wondering about Pascal's wager. It depends on many factors... Still though I think AGIs have to run into the same sort of issues. John From: J Marlow [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Here's the way I like to think of it; we have different methods of thinking about systems in our environments, different sort of models. One type of model that we humans have (with the possible exception of autistics) is the ability to try to model another system as a person like ourselves; its easier to predict what it will do if we attribute it motives and goals. I think a lot of our ideas about God/gods/goddesses come from a tendency to try to predict the behavior of nature using agent models; so farmers attribute human emotions, like spite or anger, to nature when the weather doesn't help the crops. So, assuming that is a big factor in how/why we developed religions, then it is possible that an AI could have a similar problem, if it tried to describe too many events using its 'agency' models. But I think an AI near or better than human level could probably see that there are simpler (or more accurate) explanations, and so reject predictions made based on those models. Then again, a completely rational AI may believe in Pascal's wager... Josh _ 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/? 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=74072432-07fa77
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
Thanks. So perhaps the key idea/ assumption behind this and comparable scenarios is that of an AGI relentlessly evolving its knowledge and intelligence - the takeoff that keeps going - towards omniscience? Gary: An AI would attempt to understand the universe to the best of it's ability, intelligence and experimentation could provide. If the AI reaches a point in it's developmental understanding where it is unable to advance beyond in it's understanding of science and reality then it will attempt to increase it's intelligence or seek out others of it's kind in the universe with greater knowledge and intelligence it somehow missed. Eventually eons in the future as the universe ages and entropy begins to widely spread the AI in order to escape it's own demise and possibly the demise of it's surviving now immortal creators it will attempt to avoid the death of the universe by using it's godlike knowledge and science to create a new universe and once it has initiated a big bang and sufficient time has passed that inhabitable worlds exists in it's creation it would continue it and it's creators existence in it's newly created universe. If this level of intelligence, power, and creativity was ever achieved then I think it would be hard deny that the AI posessed godlike powers and would perhaps be deserving of the title regardless of what negative historical and religious baggage may still accompany that title. Arthur C. Clarke's Law Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. My Corollary: Any sufficiently advanced being in possession of sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a god. Can you explain to me how an AGI or supercomputer could be God? I'd just like to understand ( not argue) - you see, the thought has never occurred to me, and still doesn't. I can imagine a sci-fi scenario where a supercomputer might be v. powerful - for argument's sake, controlling the internet or the the world's power supplies. But it's still quite a leap from that to a supercomputer being God. And yet it is clearly a leap that a large number here have no problem making. So I'd merely like to understand how you guys make this leap/connection - irrespective of whether it's logical or justified - understand the scenarios in your minds. -- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?; -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.16.17/1178 - Release Date: 12/8/2007 11:59 AM - 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=74073213-45c4bd
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
On Sunday 09 December 2007, Mark Waser wrote: Pascal's wager starts with the false assumption that belief in a deity has no cost. Formally, yes. However, I think it's easy to imagine a Pascal's wager where we replace diety with anything Truly Objective, such as whatever it is that we hope the sciences are asymptotically approaching with increasingly accurate models. And then you say, what if there is another Truly Objective cost to believing in this Truly Objective reality (or something)-- and I think that's an argument that has been well debated before, yes? Mutually exclusive propositions, yes? - Bryan - 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=74075746-6747a3
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
If you took an AGI, before it went singulatarinistic[sic?] and tortured it.. a lot, ripping into it in every conceivable hellish way, do you think at some point it would start praying somehow? I'm not talking about a forced conversion medieval style, I'm just talking hypothetically if it would look for some god to come and save it. Perhaps delusionally it may create something. John From: Gary Miller [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] An AI would attempt to understand the universe to the best of it's ability, intelligence and experimentation could provide. If the AI reaches a point in it's developmental understanding where it is unable to advance beyond in it's understanding of science and reality then it will attempt to increase it's intelligence or seek out others of it's kind in the universe with greater knowledge and intelligence it somehow missed. Eventually eons in the future as the universe ages and entropy begins to widely spread the AI in order to escape it's own demise and possibly the demise of it's surviving now immortal creators it will attempt to avoid the death of the universe by using it's godlike knowledge and science to create a new universe and once it has initiated a big bang and sufficient time has passed that inhabitable worlds exists in it's creation it would continue it and it's creators existence in it's newly created universe. If this level of intelligence, power, and creativity was ever achieved then I think it would be hard deny that the AI posessed godlike powers and would perhaps be deserving of the title regardless of what negative historical and religious baggage may still accompany that title. Arthur C. Clarke's Law Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. My Corollary: Any sufficiently advanced being in possession of sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a god. Can you explain to me how an AGI or supercomputer could be God? I'd just like to understand ( not argue) - you see, the thought has never occurred to me, and still doesn't. I can imagine a sci-fi scenario where a supercomputer might be v. powerful - for argument's sake, controlling the internet or the the world's power supplies. But it's still quite a leap from that to a supercomputer being God. And yet it is clearly a leap that a large number here have no problem making. So I'd merely like to understand how you guys make this leap/connection - irrespective of whether it's logical or justified - understand the scenarios in your minds. - 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=74077641-5cdd81
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
Upon reviewing the below linked article I realized it would take you a while to understand what it is about and why it is relevant. It is an article dated March 4, 2007, summarizing current scientific thinking on why religion has been a part of virtually all known cultures including thinking about what it is about the human mind and human societies that has made religious beliefs so common. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Ed Porter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 2:16 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity Relevant to this thread is the following link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ref=magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ref=magazine; pagewanted=print pagewanted=print Ed Porter -Original Message- From: John G. Rose [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 1:50 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity This example is looking at it from a moment in time. The evolution of intelligence in man has some relation to his view of deity. Before government and science there was religion. Deity and knowledge and perhaps human intelligence are entwined. For example some taboos evolved as defenses against disease, burying the dead, not eating certain foods, etc. science didn't exist at the time. Deity was a sort of peer to peer lossily compressed semi-holographic knowledge base hosted and built by human mobile agents and agent systems. Now it is evolving into something else. But humans may readily swap out their deities with AGIs and then uploading can replace heaven :-) An AGI, as it reads through text related to man's deities, could start wondering about Pascal's wager. It depends on many factors... Still though I think AGIs have to run into the same sort of issues. John From: J Marlow [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Here's the way I like to think of it; we have different methods of thinking about systems in our environments, different sort of models. One type of model that we humans have (with the possible exception of autistics) is the ability to try to model another system as a person like ourselves; its easier to predict what it will do if we attribute it motives and goals. I think a lot of our ideas about God/gods/goddesses come from a tendency to try to predict the behavior of nature using agent models; so farmers attribute human emotions, like spite or anger, to nature when the weather doesn't help the crops. So, assuming that is a big factor in how/why we developed religions, then it is possible that an AI could have a similar problem, if it tried to describe too many events using its 'agency' models. But I think an AI near or better than human level could probably see that there are simpler (or more accurate) explanations, and so reject predictions made based on those models. Then again, a completely rational AI may believe in Pascal's wager... Josh _ 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/? 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/? 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=74078068-38e6e3
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
John asked If you took an AGI, before it went singulatarinistic[sic?] and tortured it.. a lot, ripping into it in every conceivable hellish way, do you think at some point it would start praying somehow? I'm not talking about a forced conversion medieval style, I'm just talking hypothetically if it would look for some god to come and save it. Perhaps delusionally it may create something. In human beings prolonged pain and suffering often trigger mystical experiences in the brain accompanyed by profound ecstasy. So much so that many people in both the past and present conduct mortification of the flesh rituals and nonlethal crucifictions as a way of doing penance and triggering such mystical experiences which are interpreted as redemption and divine ecstasy. It may be that this experience had evolutionary value in allowing the person who was undergoing great pain or a vicious animal attack to receive endorphins and serotonin which allowed him to continue to fight and live to procreate another day or allowed him to suffer in silence in his cave instead of running screaming into the night where he would be killed in his weakened state by other predators. Such a system I believe would not be a natural reaction for a intelligent AGI and unless it were to be specifically programmed in. I would as a benevolent creator never program my AGI to feel so much pain that it's mind was consumed by the experience of the negative emotion. Just as it is not necessary to torture children to teach them, it will not be necessary to torture our AGIs. It may be instructive though to allow the AGI to experience intense pain for a very short period to allow it to experience what a human does when undergoing painful or traumatic experiences as a way of instilling empathy in the AGI. In that way seeing humans in pain in suffering would serve to motivate the AGI to help ease the human condition. _ - 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=74082156-649464
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
I don't know some of these guys come up with these almost sophomoric views of this subject, especially Dawkins, that guy can be real annoying with his Saganistic spewing of facts and his trivialization of religion. The article does shed some interesting light though in typical NY Times style. But the real subject matter is much deeper and complex(complicated?). John From: Ed Porter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 12:42 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity Upon reviewing the below linked article I realized it would take you a while to understand what it is about and why it is relevant. It is an article dated March 4, 2007, summarizing current scientific thinking on why religion has been a part of virtually all known cultures including thinking about what it is about the human mind and human societies that has made religious beliefs so common. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Ed Porter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 2:16 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity Relevant to this thread is the following link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ref=magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ref=magazine; pagewanted=print pagewanted=print Ed Porter -Original Message- From: John G. Rose [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 1:50 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity This example is looking at it from a moment in time. The evolution of intelligence in man has some relation to his view of deity. Before government and science there was religion. Deity and knowledge and perhaps human intelligence are entwined. For example some taboos evolved as defenses against disease, burying the dead, not eating certain foods, etc. science didn't exist at the time. Deity was a sort of peer to peer lossily compressed semi-holographic knowledge base hosted and built by human mobile agents and agent systems. Now it is evolving into something else. But humans may readily swap out their deities with AGIs and then uploading can replace heaven J An AGI, as it reads through text related to man's deities, could start wondering about Pascal's wager. It depends on many factors... Still though I think AGIs have to run into the same sort of issues. John From: J Marlow [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Here's the way I like to think of it; we have different methods of thinking about systems in our environments, different sort of models. One type of model that we humans have (with the possible exception of autistics) is the ability to try to model another system as a person like ourselves; its easier to predict what it will do if we attribute it motives and goals. I think a lot of our ideas about God/gods/goddesses come from a tendency to try to predict the behavior of nature using agent models; so farmers attribute human emotions, like spite or anger, to nature when the weather doesn't help the crops. So, assuming that is a big factor in how/why we developed religions, then it is possible that an AI could have a similar problem, if it tried to describe too many events using its 'agency' models. But I think an AI near or better than human level could probably see that there are simpler (or more accurate) explanations, and so reject predictions made based on those models. Then again, a completely rational AI may believe in Pascal's wager... Josh _ 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/? 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/? 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/? 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=74088569-907e7e
RE: [agi] AGI and Deity
John, What I found most interesting in the article, from an AGI standpoint, is the evidence our brain is wired for explanation and to assign a theory of mind to certain types of events. A natural bias toward explanation would be important for an AGI's credit assignment and ability to predict. Having a theory of minds would be important for any AGIs that have to deal with humans and other AGIs, and, in many situations, it actually makes sense to assume certain types of events are likely to have resulted from another agent with some sort of mental capacities and goals. Why to you find Dawkin's so offensive? I have heard both Dawkins and Sam Harris preach atheism on Book TV. I have found both their presentations interesting and relatively well reasoned. But I find them a little too certain and a little too close-minded, given the lack of evidence we humans have about the big questions they are discussing. Atheism requires a leap of faith, and it requires such a leap from people who, in general, ridicule them. I personally consider knowing whether or not there is a god and, if so, what he, she, or it is like way above my mental pay grade, or that of any AGI likely to be made within the next several centuries. But I do make some leaps of faith. As has often been said, any AI designed to deal with any reasonably complex aspect of the real world is likely to have to deal with uncertainty and will need to have a set of beliefs about uncertain things. My leaps of faith include my belief in most of the common-sense model of external reality my mind has created (although I know it is flawed in certain respects). I find other humans speak as if they share many of the same common sense notions about external reality as I do. Thus, I make the leap of faith that the minds of other humans are in many ways like my own. Another of my basic leaps of faith is that I believe largely in the assembled teachings of modern science, although I am aware that many of them are probably subject to modification and clarification by new knowledge, just as Newtonian Physics was by the theories of relativity. I believe that our known universe is something of such amazing size and power that it matches in terms of both scale any traditional notions of god. I see no direct evidence for any spirit beyond mankind (and perhaps other possible alien intelligences) that we can pray to and that can intervene in the computation of reality in response to such prayers. But I see no direct evidence to the contrary -- just a lack of evidence. I do pray on occasion. Though I do not know if there is a God external to human consciousness that can understand or that even cares about human interests, I definitely do believe most of us, myself included, underestimate the power of the human spirit that resides in each of us. And I think as a species we are amazingly suboptimal at harnessing the collective power of our combined human spirits. I believe AGI has the potential to help us better tap and expand the power of our individual and collective human spirits. I also believe it has to power to threaten the well being of those spirits. I hope we as a species will have the wisdom to make it do more of the former and less of the latter. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: John G. Rose [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 4:23 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity I don't know some of these guys come up with these almost sophomoric views of this subject, especially Dawkins, that guy can be real annoying with his Saganistic spewing of facts and his trivialization of religion. The article does shed some interesting light though in typical NY Times style. But the real subject matter is much deeper and complex(complicated?). John From: Ed Porter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 12:42 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity Upon reviewing the below linked article I realized it would take you a while to understand what it is about and why it is relevant. It is an article dated March 4, 2007, summarizing current scientific thinking on why religion has been a part of virtually all known cultures including thinking about what it is about the human mind and human societies that has made religious beliefs so common. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Ed Porter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 2:16 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] AGI and Deity Relevant to this thread is the following link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ref=magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ref=magazine; pagewanted=print pagewanted=print Ed Porter -Original Message- From: John G. Rose [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 1:50 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
On Dec 8, 2007 10:34 PM, John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It'd be interesting, I kind of wonder about this sometimes, if an AGI, especially one that is heavily complex systems based would independently come up with the existence some form of a deity. Different human cultures come up with deity(s), for many reasons; I'm just wondering if it is like some sort of mathematical entity that is natural to incompleteness and complexity (simulation?) or is it just exclusively a biological thing based on related limitations. Here's the way I like to think of it; we have different methods of thinking about systems in our environments, different sort of models. One type of model that we humans have (with the possible exception of autistics) is the ability to try to model another system as a person like ourselves; its easier to predict what it will do if we attribute it motives and goals. I think a lot of our ideas about God/gods/goddesses come from a tendency to try to predict the behavior of nature using agent models; so farmers attribute human emotions, like spite or anger, to nature when the weather doesn't help the crops. So, assuming that is a big factor in how/why we developed religions, then it is possible that an AI could have a similar problem, if it tried to describe too many events using its 'agency' models. But I think an AI near or better than human level could probably see that there are simpler (or more accurate) explanations, and so reject predictions made based on those models. Then again, a completely rational AI may believe in Pascal's wager... Josh - 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=74012487-b3a412
