What does it do? useful in AGI? Re: [agi] US PATENT ISSUED for the TEN ETHICAL LAWS OF ROBOTICS
2008/7/22 Mike Archbold [EMAIL PROTECTED]: It looks to me to be borrowed from Aristotle's ethics. Back in my college days, I was trying to explain my project and the professor kept interrupting me to ask: What does it do? Tell me what it does. I don't understand what your system does. What he wanted was input-function-output. He didn't care about my fancy data structure or architecture goals, he just wanted to know what it DID. I have come across this a lot. And while it is a very useful heuristic for sniffing out bad ideas that don't do anything I also think it is harmful to certain other endeavours. Imagine this hypothetical conversation between Turing and someone else (please ignore all historical inaccuracies). Sceptic: Hey Turing, how is it going. Hmm, what are you working on at the moment? Turing: A general purpose computing machine. Sceptic: I'm not really sure what you mean by computing. Can you give me an example of something it does? Turing: Well you can use it calculate differential equations Sceptic: So it is a calculator, we already have machines that can do that. Turing: Well it can also be a chess player. Sceptic: Wait, what? How can something be a chess player and a calculator? Turing: Well it isn't both at the same time, but you can reconfigure it to do one then the other. Sceptic: If you can reconfigure something, that means it doesn't intrinsically do one or the other. So what does the machine do itself? Turing: Well, err, nothing. I think the quest for general intelligence (if we are to keep any meaning in the word general), will have be hindered by trying to pin down what candidate systems do, in the same way general computing would be. I think the requisite question in AGI to fill the gap formed by not allowing this question, is, How does it change? Will --- 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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: What does it do? useful in AGI? Re: [agi] US PATENT ISSUED for the TEN ETHICAL LAWS OF ROBOTICS
Will: Mike Archbold [EMAIL PROTECTED]: It looks to me to be borrowed from Aristotle's ethics. Back in my college days, I was trying to explain my project and the professor kept interrupting me to ask: What does it do? Tell me what it does. I don't understand what your system does. What he wanted was input-function-output. He didn't care about my fancy data structure or architecture goals, he just wanted to know what it DID. I have come across this a lot. And while it is a very useful heuristic for sniffing out bad ideas that don't do anything I also think it is harmful to certain other endeavours. Imagine this hypothetical conversation between Turing and someone else (please ignore all historical inaccuracies). Sceptic: Hey Turing, how is it going. Hmm, what are you working on at the moment? Turing: A general purpose computing machine. Sceptic: I'm not really sure what you mean by computing. Can you give me an example of something it does? Turing: Well you can use it calculate differential equations Sceptic: So it is a calculator, we already have machines that can do that. Turing: Well it can also be a chess player. Sceptic: Wait, what? How can something be a chess player and a calculator? Turing: Well it isn't both at the same time, but you can reconfigure it to do one then the other. Sceptic: If you can reconfigure something, that means it doesn't intrinsically do one or the other. So what does the machine do itself? Turing: Well, err, nothing. I think the quest for general intelligence (if we are to keep any meaning in the word general), will have be hindered by trying to pin down what candidate systems do, in the same way general computing would be. I think the requisite question in AGI to fill the gap formed by not allowing this question, is, How does it change? Will, You're actually almost answering the [correct and proper] question: what does it do? But you basically end up as with that sub problem, evading it. What a General Intelligence does is basically simple. It generalizes creatively - it connects different domains - it learns skills and ideas in one domain, and then uses them to learn skills and ideas in other domains. It learns how to play checkers, and then chess, and then war games, and then geometry. A computer is in principle a general intelligence - a machine that can do all these things - like the brain. But in practice it has to be programmed separately for each specialised skill and can only learn within a specialised domain. It has so far been unable to be truly general purpose - and think and learn across domains.. The core problem - what a general intelligence must DO therefore - is to generalize creatively - to connect different domains - chalk and cheese, storms and teacups, chess pieces and horses and tanks . [I presume that is what you are getting at with: How does it change?] That's your sub problem - the sub can't move. All the standard domain checks for non-movement - battery failure, loose wire etc. - show nothing. The sub, if it's an AGI, must find the altogether new kind of reason in a new domain, that is preventing it moving. (Perhaps it was some mistyped but reasonable, or otherwise ambiguous, command. Perhaps it's some peculiar kind of external suction..). What makes creative generalization so difficult (and 'creative') is that no domain follows rationally (i.e. logico-mathematically or strictly linguistically) from another. You cannot deduce chalk from cheese, or chess from checkers. And you cannot in fact deduce almost any branch of rational systems themselves from any other - Riemannian geometry, for example, does not follow logically or geometrically or statistically or via Bayes from Euclidean, any more than topology or fractals. The FIRST thing AGI'ers should be discussing is how they propose to solve the what-does-it-do problem of creative generalization - or, at any rate, what are their thoughts and ideas so far. You think they're being wise by universally avoiding this problem - *the* problem. I think they're just chicken. --- 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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: What does it do? useful in AGI? Re: [agi] US PATENT ISSUED for the TEN ETHICAL LAWS OF ROBOTICS
2008/7/22 Mike Archbold [EMAIL PROTECTED]: It looks to me to be borrowed from Aristotle's ethics. Back in my college days, I was trying to explain my project and the professor kept interrupting me to ask: What does it do? Tell me what it does. I don't understand what your system does. What he wanted was input-function-output. He didn't care about my fancy data structure or architecture goals, he just wanted to know what it DID. I have come across this a lot. And while it is a very useful heuristic for sniffing out bad ideas that don't do anything I also think it is harmful to certain other endeavours. Imagine this hypothetical conversation between Turing and someone else (please ignore all historical inaccuracies). Sceptic: Hey Turing, how is it going. Hmm, what are you working on at the moment? Turing: A general purpose computing machine. Sceptic: I'm not really sure what you mean by computing. Can you give me an example of something it does? Turing: Well you can use it calculate differential equations Sceptic: So it is a calculator, we already have machines that can do that. Turing: Well it can also be a chess player. Sceptic: Wait, what? How can something be a chess player and a calculator? Turing: Well it isn't both at the same time, but you can reconfigure it to do one then the other. Sceptic: If you can reconfigure something, that means it doesn't intrinsically do one or the other. So what does the machine do itself? Turing: Well, err, nothing. I think the quest for general intelligence (if we are to keep any meaning in the word general), will have be hindered by trying to pin down what candidate systems do, in the same way general computing would be. I think the requisite question in AGI to fill the gap formed by not allowing this question, is, How does it change? Will Will, I see what you mean that trying to pin down input-function-output too early in the AGI game would be a hinderance, since by the general nature it kind of assumes these in an ideal way, but it seems to me that if the poster is at the patent stage he should have this specified, otherwise it sounds like patenting an idea that needs a lot more work to me. Mike Archbold --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
