Re: Real-world vs. universal prior (was Re: [agi] Universal intelligence test benchmark)
On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: I wrote down my thoughts on this in a little more detail here (with some pastings from these emails plus some new info): http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2008/12/subtle-structure-of-physical-world.html I really liked this essay. I'm curious about the clarity of terms 'real world' and 'physical world' in some places. It seems that, to make its point, the essay requires 'real world' and 'physical world' mean only 'practical' or 'familiar physical reality', depending on context. Whereas, if 'real world' is reserved for a very broad definition of realities including physical realities (including classical, quantum mechanical and relativistic time and distance scales), peculiar human cultural realities, and other definable realities, it will be easier in follow-up essays to discuss AGI systems that can natively think simultaneously about any multitude of interrelated realities (a trick that humans are really bad at). I hope this makes sense... -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Real-world vs. universal prior (was Re: [agi] Universal intelligence test benchmark)
David, Good point... I'll revise the essay to account for it... The truth is, we just don't know -- but in taking the virtual world approach to AGI, we're very much **hoping** that a subset of human everyday physical reality is good enough. .. ben On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 6:46 AM, David Hart dh...@cogical.com wrote: On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: I wrote down my thoughts on this in a little more detail here (with some pastings from these emails plus some new info): http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2008/12/subtle-structure-of-physical-world.html I really liked this essay. I'm curious about the clarity of terms 'real world' and 'physical world' in some places. It seems that, to make its point, the essay requires 'real world' and 'physical world' mean only 'practical' or 'familiar physical reality', depending on context. Whereas, if 'real world' is reserved for a very broad definition of realities including physical realities (including classical, quantum mechanical and relativistic time and distance scales), peculiar human cultural realities, and other definable realities, it will be easier in follow-up essays to discuss AGI systems that can natively think simultaneously about any multitude of interrelated realities (a trick that humans are really bad at). I hope this makes sense... -dave -- *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI b...@goertzel.org I intend to live forever, or die trying. -- Groucho Marx --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Real-world vs. universal prior (was Re: [agi] Universal intelligence test benchmark)
Dave -- See mildly revised version, where I replaced real world with everyday world (and defined the latter term explicitly), and added a final section relevant to the distinctions between the everyday world, simulated everyday worlds, and other portions of the physical world. http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2008/12/subtle-structure-of-physical-world.html -- Ben On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 8:28 AM, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: David, Good point... I'll revise the essay to account for it... The truth is, we just don't know -- but in taking the virtual world approach to AGI, we're very much **hoping** that a subset of human everyday physical reality is good enough. .. ben On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 6:46 AM, David Hart dh...@cogical.com wrote: On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: I wrote down my thoughts on this in a little more detail here (with some pastings from these emails plus some new info): http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2008/12/subtle-structure-of-physical-world.html I really liked this essay. I'm curious about the clarity of terms 'real world' and 'physical world' in some places. It seems that, to make its point, the essay requires 'real world' and 'physical world' mean only 'practical' or 'familiar physical reality', depending on context. Whereas, if 'real world' is reserved for a very broad definition of realities including physical realities (including classical, quantum mechanical and relativistic time and distance scales), peculiar human cultural realities, and other definable realities, it will be easier in follow-up essays to discuss AGI systems that can natively think simultaneously about any multitude of interrelated realities (a trick that humans are really bad at). I hope this makes sense... -dave -- *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI b...@goertzel.org I intend to live forever, or die trying. -- Groucho Marx -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI b...@goertzel.org I intend to live forever, or die trying. -- Groucho Marx --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Real-world vs. universal prior (was Re: [agi] Universal intelligence test benchmark)
Ben: in taking the virtual world approach to AGI, we're very much **hoping** that a subset of human everyday physical reality is good enough. .. Ben, Which subset(s)? The idea that you can virtually recreate any part or processes of reality seems horribly flawed - and unexamined. Take the development of intelligence. You seem (from recent exchanges) to accept that there is very roughly some natural order to the development of intelligence. So for example, you can't learn about planets universes, if you haven't first learned about simple objects like stones and balls - nor about politics, governments and international relations if you haven't first learned about language, speech/conversation, emotions, other minds much more. Now we - science - have some ideas about this natural order - about how we have to develop from understanding simple to complex things. But overall our picture is pathetic and hugely gapped. For science to produce an extensive picture of development here would - at a guess - take at least hundreds of thousands, if not millions of scientists, and many thousands (or millions) of discoveries, and many changes of competing paradigms. What are the chances then of an individual like you, or team of individuals, being able to design a coherent, practical order of intellectual development for an artificial, virtual agent straight off in a few years ? The same applies to any part of reality. We - science - may have a detailed picture of how some pieces of objects, like stones and water, work. But again our overall ability to model how all those particles, atoms and molecules interrelate in any given object, and how the object as a whole behaves, is still very limited. We still have all kinds of gaps in our picture of water. Scientific models are always far from the real thing. Again, to come anywhere near completing those models will take new armies of scientists. What are the chances then of a few individuals being able to correctly model the behaviour of any objects in the real world on a flat screen? IOW the short cut you hope for is probably the longest way round you could possibly choose. Robotics - forgetting altogether about formally modelling the world - and just interacting with it directly, is actually shorter by far. So I doubt whether you have ever seriously examined how you would recreate a *particular* subset of reality.in any detail - as simple even, say, as a ball - as opposed to the general idea. Have you? [Nb We're talking here about composite models of objects - so it's easy enough to create a reasonable picture of a ball bouncing on a hard surface, but what happens when your agent sits on it, or rubs it on his shirt, or bounces it on water, or sand, or throws it at another ball in mid-air, or (as we've partly discussed) plays with it like an infant ?] --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Real-world vs. universal prior (was Re: [agi] Universal intelligence test benchmark)
The question is how much detail about the world needs to be captured in a simulation in order to support humanlike cognitive development. As a single example, Piagetan conservation of volume experiments are often done with water, which would suggest you need to have fluid dynamics in your simulation to support that kind of experiment. But you don't necessarily, because you can do those same experiments with fairly large beads, via using Newtonian mechanics to simulate the rolling-around of the beads. So it's not clear whether fluidics is needed in the sim world to enable humanlike cognitive development, versus whether beads rolling around is good enough (at the moment I suspect the latter) As I'm planning to write a paper on this stuff, I don't want to diver time to writing a long email about it. As for which subset of a physical reality: my specific idea is to simulate a real-world preschool, with enough fidelity that AIs can carry out the same learning tasks that human kids carry out in a real preschool. On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 9:56 AM, Mike Tintner tint...@blueyonder.co.ukwrote: Ben: in taking the virtual world approach to AGI, we're very much **hoping** that a subset of human everyday physical reality is good enough. .. Ben, Which subset(s)? The idea that you can virtually recreate any part or processes of reality seems horribly flawed - and unexamined. Take the development of intelligence. You seem (from recent exchanges) to accept that there is very roughly some natural order to the development of intelligence. So for example, you can't learn about planets universes, if you haven't first learned about simple objects like stones and balls - nor about politics, governments and international relations if you haven't first learned about language, speech/conversation, emotions, other minds much more. Now we - science - have some ideas about this natural order - about how we have to develop from understanding simple to complex things. But overall our picture is pathetic and hugely gapped. For science to produce an extensive picture of development here would - at a guess - take at least hundreds of thousands, if not millions of scientists, and many thousands (or millions) of discoveries, and many changes of competing paradigms. What are the chances then of an individual like you, or team of individuals, being able to design a coherent, practical order of intellectual development for an artificial, virtual agent straight off in a few years ? The same applies to any part of reality. We - science - may have a detailed picture of how some pieces of objects, like stones and water, work. But again our overall ability to model how all those particles, atoms and molecules interrelate in any given object, and how the object as a whole behaves, is still very limited. We still have all kinds of gaps in our picture of water. Scientific models are always far from the real thing. Again, to come anywhere near completing those models will take new armies of scientists. What are the chances then of a few individuals being able to correctly model the behaviour of any objects in the real world on a flat screen? IOW the short cut you hope for is probably the longest way round you could possibly choose. Robotics - forgetting altogether about formally modelling the world - and just interacting with it directly, is actually shorter by far. So I doubt whether you have ever seriously examined how you would recreate a *particular* subset of reality.in any detail - as simple even, say, as a ball - as opposed to the general idea. Have you? [Nb We're talking here about composite models of objects - so it's easy enough to create a reasonable picture of a ball bouncing on a hard surface, but what happens when your agent sits on it, or rubs it on his shirt, or bounces it on water, or sand, or throws it at another ball in mid-air, or (as we've partly discussed) plays with it like an infant ?] -- *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI b...@goertzel.org I intend to live forever, or die trying. -- Groucho Marx --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Real-world vs. universal prior (was Re: [agi] Universal intelligence test benchmark)
'On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 1:02 AM, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: See mildly revised version, where I replaced real world with everyday world (and defined the latter term explicitly), and added a final section relevant to the distinctions between the everyday world, simulated everyday worlds, and other portions of the physical world. I think that's much more clear, and the additions help to frame the meaning of 'everyday world'. Another important open question, that's really a generalization of 'how much detail does the virtual world need to have?', is can we create practical progressions of simulations of the everyday world, such that the first (and more crude) simulations are very useful to early attempts at teaching proto-AGIs, and the development of progressively more sophisticated simulations roughly tracks the development of progress in AGI design and development. I also see the kernel of a formally defined science of discovery of the general properties of everyday intelligence; if presented in ways that cognitive scientists appreciate, it could really catch on! -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Real-world vs. universal prior (was Re: [agi] Universal intelligence test benchmark)
Suppose I take the universal prior and condition it on some real-world training data. For example, if you're interested in real-world vision, take 1000 frames of real video, and then the proposed probability distribution is the portion of the universal prior that explains the real video. (I can mathematically define this if there is interest, but I'm guessing the other people here can too, so maybe we can skip that. Speak up if I'm being too unclear.) Do you think the result is different in an important way from the real-world probability distribution you're looking for? -- Tim Freeman http://www.fungible.com t...@fungible.com No, I think that in principle that's the right approach ... but that simple, artificial exercises like conditioning data on photos don't come close to capturing the richness of statistical structure in the physical universe ... or in the subsets of the physical universe that humans typically deal with... ben --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
