RE: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development.
Hi Ben, I think that true machine intelligence will be computationally demanding and will initially appear on expensive hardware available only to wealthy institutions like the government or corporations. Even when it is possible on commodity hardware, expensive hardware will still support much greater intelligence. I also think it is not realistic to imagine a small group creating machine intelligence in total secrecy. The right approach is to educate the public as widely and loudly as possible about the nature and dangers of machine intelligence. In the modern world, wide public education seems to be the best way to resist public dangers. As you said in another message, this is going to be a very difficult issue as time goes on. But I think military applications present a good opportunity for public education, since people already accept the idea that biological, chemical and nuclear weapons should not be used. Cheers, Bill On Mon, 2 Dec 2002, Ben Goertzel wrote: Regarding being wary about military apps of AI technology, it seems to me there are two different objectives one might pursue: 1) to avoid militarization of one's technology 2) to avoid the military achieving *exclusive* control over one's technology It seems to me that the first objective is very hard, regardless of whether one accepts military funding or not. The only ways that I can think of to achieve 1) would be 1a) total secrecy in one's project all the way 1b) extremely rapid ascendancy from proto-AGI to superhuman AGI -- i.e. reach the end goal before the military notices one's project. This relies on security through simply being ignored up to the proto-AGI phase... On the other hand, the second objective seems to me relatively easy. If one publishes one's work and involves a wide variety of developers in it, no one is going to achieve exclusive power to create AGI. AGI is not like nuclear weapons, at least not if a software-on-commodity-hardware approach works (as I think it well). Commodity hardware only is required, programming skills are common, and math/cog-sci skills are not all *that* rare... -- Ben G -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Alexander E. Richter Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 7:48 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development. At 07:18 02.12.02 -0500, Ben wrote: Can one use military funding for early-stage AGI work and then somehow delimitarize one's research once it reaches a certain point? One can try, but will one succeed? They will squeeze you out, like Lillian Reynolds and Michael Brace in BRAINSTORM (1983) (Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood) cu Alex --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development.
It is true that eventually this technology will be in the public domain and be available to DARPA. The important thing is to avoid DARPA getting it before everyone else does. The ***only*** way to do this is to avoid accepting funding from them. If this means that it takes 5 more years to develop, then so be it. If it means that you have to flip burgers by day, and code by night, then so be it. If someone makes a deal with the devil, they are only going to receive a bad result. Some people want to delude themselves that they are doing something good, but their real motives may lie $$$elsewhere$$$. (not referring to the Novamente team). Peace, Kevin - Original Message - From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 9:09 AM Subject: RE: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development. Regarding being wary about military apps of AI technology, it seems to me there are two different objectives one might pursue: 1) to avoid militarization of one's technology 2) to avoid the military achieving *exclusive* control over one's technology It seems to me that the first objective is very hard, regardless of whether one accepts military funding or not. The only ways that I can think of to achieve 1) would be 1a) total secrecy in one's project all the way 1b) extremely rapid ascendancy from proto-AGI to superhuman AGI -- i.e. reach the end goal before the military notices one's project. This relies on security through simply being ignored up to the proto-AGI phase... On the other hand, the second objective seems to me relatively easy. If one publishes one's work and involves a wide variety of developers in it, no one is going to achieve exclusive power to create AGI. AGI is not like nuclear weapons, at least not if a software-on-commodity-hardware approach works (as I think it well). Commodity hardware only is required, programming skills are common, and math/cog-sci skills are not all *that* rare... -- Ben G -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Alexander E. Richter Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 7:48 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development. At 07:18 02.12.02 -0500, Ben wrote: Can one use military funding for early-stage AGI work and then somehow delimitarize one's research once it reaches a certain point? One can try, but will one succeed? They will squeeze you out, like Lillian Reynolds and Michael Brace in BRAINSTORM (1983) (Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood) cu Alex --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development.
Stephen Read wrote: As Cycorp is the best funded company among those organizations with AGI as their primary goal, I would state that for us enrichment is not the motive. Steve, I accept this as an honest statement of your personal motivations. However, I'm not sure that Cycorp's investors would endorse such a statement, would they? I'm sure they would prefer to endorse a statement such as Cycorp's mission is to make a healthy profit via powerful AI technology. If given the choice between more profits and better AI, I am betting they would choose the former In the best of scenarios, profitability and scientific progress go hand in hand; but there are times in the history of almost any technology company when the two conflict as well. Having been on both the tech and biz sides of technology firms, I am aware of the difficulty of juggling one's responsibility to science with one's responsibility to shareholders. I'm not trying to say anything negative about Cycorp here -- I have the same issue with my own business pursuits, e.g. Biomind LLC, the company we've set up to pursue bioinformatics applications of Novamente technology. The Biomind investors love AGI and Novamente, but they also expect Biomind to provide a significant ROI. And building AGI while making money along the way is certainly a harder problem than building AGI -- which is a rather hard problem in itself!! -- Ben G --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development.
On 12/01 Ben Goertzel said: 2) to avoid the military achieving *exclusive* control over one's technology What I am about to say may sound blasphemous, but the military may be the group with resources to protect the technology! By publicizing and making AGI technology generally available other hostile governments/military may see AGI as a potential weapon and resort to traditional methods to acquire the technology, industrial espionage, kidnappings of key scientists. Or they may fear it as a another potential tool to reign in their aggression and target it for destruction which means facilities and people. If this sounds farfetched just look at the lengths certain countries go to acquire Plutonium. If the potential for AGI is seen as great and world changing. Who better to protect it or at least offer stewardship than the US or NATO military. What private or non-profit is prepared and qualified to protect the technology when it start's to get really interesting? There are a few possibilities of why DoD is currently a prime contributor to AI research. 1. They fear it (saw Terminator and War games), so they better damn keep an eye on it (Their paranoia). 2. They may have it already in the NSA basements and want to be control the direction of other research to keep their tactical advantage. (My paranoia) 3. They are starting to see the results of years of research in robotics and drone warriors in keeping the casualty counts down and the American public happy and look at AI as another way to continue this trend. 4. They are good at fumbling the ball when it comes to acting in a timely manner on terrorist threats and it's much easier to blame an AI when they screw up than risk their cushy jobs. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Ben Goertzel Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 9:09 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development. Regarding being wary about military apps of AI technology, it seems to me there are two different objectives one might pursue: 1) to avoid militarization of one's technology 2) to avoid the military achieving *exclusive* control over one's technology It seems to me that the first objective is very hard, regardless of whether one accepts military funding or not. The only ways that I can think of to achieve 1) would be 1a) total secrecy in one's project all the way 1b) extremely rapid ascendancy from proto-AGI to superhuman AGI -- i.e. reach the end goal before the military notices one's project. This relies on security through simply being ignored up to the proto-AGI phase... On the other hand, the second objective seems to me relatively easy. If one publishes one's work and involves a wide variety of developers in it, no one is going to achieve exclusive power to create AGI. AGI is not like nuclear weapons, at least not if a software-on-commodity-hardware approach works (as I think it well). Commodity hardware only is required, programming skills are common, and math/cog-sci skills are not all *that* rare... -- Ben G -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Alexander E. Richter Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 7:48 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development. At 07:18 02.12.02 -0500, Ben wrote: Can one use military funding for early-stage AGI work and then somehow delimitarize one's research once it reaches a certain point? One can try, but will one succeed? They will squeeze you out, like Lillian Reynolds and Michael Brace in BRAINSTORM (1983) (Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood) cu Alex --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED] BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:2.1 N:Miller;Gary;A. FN:Gary A. Miller ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ORG:New Millennium Consulting TITLE:Principal Consultant TEL;WORK;VOICE:(440) 942-9264 TEL;HOME;VOICE:(440) 942-9264 ADR;WORK:;;7222 Hodgson Rd.;Mentor;OH;44060;United States of America LABEL;WORK;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:7222 Hodgson Rd.=0D=0AMentor, OH 44060=0D=0AUnited States of America EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:[EMAIL PROTECTED] REV:20021108T231940Z END:VCARD
Re: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development.
We have a team of computational linguists who have added the vocabulary to make Cyc able to represent lexical concepts. But its still not the meta-vocabluary/meta-ontology that is required to whack the problem. In 2003, our data entry activities will be emphasized as a result of our participation in Darpa's Total Information Awarenesss program for which we will construct a Terrorism Knowledge Base, containing all the open-source terrorist individuals, organizations and events that we and our sub-contractor experts can input. It is hoped that the TKB will prove useful, by answering interesting paramertized questions, for US defense and intelligence communities. Working for the Ministry of Information, I see... I DON'T EVEN WANT TO KNOW YOU. =\ This is serious stuff. I would say that you have an ethical duity _NOT_ to aid in this monsterous abuse of power. -- pain (n): see Linux. http://users.rcn.com/alangrimes/ --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development.
Alan Grimes wrote: In 2003, our data entry activities will be emphasized as a result of our participation in Darpa's Total Information Awarenesss program for which we will construct a Terrorism Knowledge Base, containing all the open-source terrorist individuals, organizations and events that we and our sub-contractor experts can input. It is hoped that the TKB will prove useful, by answering interesting paramertized questions, for US defense and intelligence communities. Working for the Ministry of Information, I see... I DON'T EVEN WANT TO KNOW YOU. =\ This is serious stuff. I would say that you have an ethical duity _NOT_ to aid in this monsterous abuse of power. Alan, I agree that the TIA program is an ethical minefield. However, the situation doesn't seem as clear to me as it apparently does to you. On the one hand, terrorism is a real threat, and there's a real value in using information technology -- including AI -- to combat it. On the other hand, once a terrorism-focused DB is created, it's hard to argue that the intelligence community will necessarily ALWAYS use it ONLY for good purposes focusing on defense against terrorism. I think that if TIA databases and AI programs are constructed responsibly, they can serve as a force of net good, even though abuses will always be possible. -- Ben G --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development.
On Fri, 29 Nov 2002, Alan Grimes wrote: Jeremy Smith wrote: [...] He also seems to be just asking for a huge sum of money to implement it!!! Mentifex/Arthur here with an announcement. I'm asking for $17.95 U.S. The Mentifex AI Textbook has today Thurs.29.Nov.2002 just been published by iUniverse.com as AI4U: Mind-1.1 Programmer's Manual on the Web at http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0595259227 (q.v.). It would probably cost less to buy the print-on-demand (POD) textbook than to print out all the associated Mentifex pages on the Web. In a few weeks it should be possible for interested or curious parties to track AI4U on Amazon and see how many millions down it is ranked! /End interrupt mode -- Arthur T. Murray Perspective: The latest release of MS windows cost $2Billion... A typical internet start-up would receive anywhere from 20 to 50 million in VC. Heck, in the VC world you need to ask for large sums of money just to get people's attention. --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development.
On Fri, 29 Nov 2002, Alan Grimes wrote: Arthur T. Murray wrote: Mentifex/Arthur here with an announcement. I'm asking for $17.95 U.S. While a mind-forth isn't too far from where I am in my current thinking, I must ask you: Have you ever tested this idea on an actual robotic platform? Does it behave anthing like you would expect it would? ATM: No, I have not had the opportunity to test the AI on a robot. http://books.iuniverse.com/viewbooks.asp?isbn=0595259227page=20 is the Motorium module with plans and ideas for a robotic implementation. By all accounts the java-script applet that 9/10ths of the links on the menafex site point to is broken and simply doesn't work. Unless you can demonstrate a physical or virtual robot performing significantly non-trivial behaviors in a complex and dynamic environment I don't think you can justify writing a textbook on it at this juncture. http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/jsaimind.html is not broken, but it requires Microsoft Internet Explorer to work properly. I do want to see AGI move forward and I have no bias whatsoever against the Mentifex model. I just havn't seen any real evidence that your software has met any of its design goals. http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0595259227 AI4U is not only AI software, it is primarily an AI Theory of Mind, as shown in the 34 brain-mind diagrams that start all 34 chapters. (I have made similar responses directly to you over the course of the years). ATM: Yes, and I appreciate them. Bye for now. -Arthur -- pain (n): see Linux. http://users.rcn.com/alangrimes/ --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development.
FYI Arthur T. Murray I just tried to order your Metifex book at iUniverse, but the site was bombing at the checkout screen. I'll try again later but just wanted to let you know you might be losing orders! -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Arthur T. Murray Sent: Friday, November 29, 2002 11:38 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development. On Fri, 29 Nov 2002, Alan Grimes wrote: Jeremy Smith wrote: [...] He also seems to be just asking for a huge sum of money to implement it!!! Mentifex/Arthur here with an announcement. I'm asking for $17.95 U.S. The Mentifex AI Textbook has today Thurs.29.Nov.2002 just been published by iUniverse.com as AI4U: Mind-1.1 Programmer's Manual on the Web at http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0595259227 (q.v.). It would probably cost less to buy the print-on-demand (POD) textbook than to print out all the associated Mentifex pages on the Web. In a few weeks it should be possible for interested or curious parties to track AI4U on Amazon and see how many millions down it is ranked! /End interrupt mode -- Arthur T. Murray Perspective: The latest release of MS windows cost $2Billion... A typical internet start-up would receive anywhere from 20 to 50 million in VC. Heck, in the VC world you need to ask for large sums of money just to get people's attention. --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED] BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:2.1 N:Miller;Gary;A. FN:Gary A. Miller ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ORG:New Millennium Consulting TITLE:Principal Consultant TEL;WORK;VOICE:(440) 942-9264 TEL;HOME;VOICE:(440) 942-9264 ADR;WORK:;;7222 Hodgson Rd.;Mentor;OH;44060;United States of America LABEL;WORK;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:7222 Hodgson Rd.=0D=0AMentor, OH 44060=0D=0AUnited States of America EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:[EMAIL PROTECTED] REV:20021108T231940Z END:VCARD
