RE: Funding AI
Tim May wrote: Except I'll add that I don't agree physics is stumped by most complex systems. Physics doesn't try to explain messy and grungy situations, nor should it. Turbulence is a special case, and I expect progress will be made, especially using math (which is why Navier-Stokes issues are on the same list with other math problems for the prize money). I guess this comes down to the semantics of the word physics. If you want to define physics to exclude all complex systems besides turbulent fluids, that's your right. But I don't like your definition, personally. What about protein folding? What about potential quantum effects in water macromolecules in the brain? What about bioelectromagnetic fields, as studied by Russian researchers extensively over the last 50 years? Etc. etc. etc. I feel like you're taking a whole lot of things that contemporary physics can't deal with because of its conceptual shortcomings, and classifying them as not physics, in order to make physics look more successful than it is. Of course, physics has been dramatically successful in some areas, but let's not overlook its weaknesses. Quantum gravity is not the only area it's tried and failed to touch. And I have a suspicion that the same mathematical/conceptual breakthrough that allows complex systems to be rigorously studied, will also help with the quantum gravity problem. This suspicion is in line with the intuition of plenty of smart physicists, including John Wheeler with his whole It From Bit concept (which portrays physical law itself as the result of complex self-organization). Funding is the key issue. Someday I'll write a thing for this list about successes vs. failures in terms of auto-funding each successive stage of a complex technological path. In a nutshell, the electronics/computer industry was essentially self-funding for the past 50 years, with the products of 1962, for example, paying for the work that led to the 1965 products. Same thing with aviation. ... It is unlikely that the path to AI will be successful if there are not numerous intermediate successes and ways to make a _lot_ of money. My tip to all AI workers is to look for those things. (This is more than just banal advice about try to make money, I am hoping. I have seen too many tech enthusiasts clamoring for moon shots to fund what they think is needed...)) The AGI may come from the distant great-great grandchild of financial AI systems. I've worked on financial AI systems myself. It's hard to argue with a statement as loose as distant great-great grandchild ... but I think financial AI is not on the shortest path to AGI right now. I agree that it's important for incremental progress toward AGI to be financially viable, and in fact my own current work involves building toward real AGI, partly via building bioinformatics applications (which ARE financially viable in the short run). However, I also would point out that AGI research is different from many other kinds of research, in that the primary research tools are very inexpensively available. All you need are computers. yeah, you may need a shitload of RAM, but it's a very different situation from other sciences: you don't need a cyclotron, a chip fabrication plant, a microarrayer, a PCR machine, etc. etc. There is real potential for real progress to be made on a shoestring. Funding is valuable, but less critical than in a lot of other areas. Fundamental physics has the same inexpensiveness, to an extent -- a theoretical breakthrough could be made by a guy sitting alone in his attic unfunded. But to verify the currently fashionable theories requires insanely expensive equipment, which is a real obstacle to progress -- a type of obstacle that's not nearly so severe in AI right now. ben
Funding AI
A slight sidetrack from pure Everything topics... On Saturday, November 30, 2002, at 06:44 PM, Ben Goertzel wrote: (stuff about physics which we are partly in agreement about, mostly not in agreement about...no point in arguing it further right now) Well, that depends perhaps on what you mean by new physics, I think. Right now our physics is basically stumped by most complex systems. We resort to -- computer simulations -- crude phenomenological models Except I'll add that I don't agree physics is stumped by most complex systems. Physics doesn't try to explain messy and grungy situations, nor should it. Turbulence is a special case, and I expect progress will be made, especially using math (which is why Navier-Stokes issues are on the same list with other math problems for the prize money). ... (For example, some friends of mine are doing interesting work on using systems of several million machine agents to data mine large amounts of financial data. It seems likely that this kind of work on machine learning, pattern extraction, support vector machines, and a plethora of other AI tools will have major effects on the world of economics and forecasting. And on creating financial derivatives (synthetics) which are alien to human thinkers/investors.) Yeah, financial forecasting with AI does not require Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) in any sense, it is a classic domain-specific narrow-AI application. Whereas, coming up with new physics will require a significant degree of general intelligence, I believe. In this sense, physics theorizing is certainly a much harder problem than financial prediction-- it's hard to argue with that!! I tend not to even consider that kind of narrow-AI work AI -- I just think of it as computer science. But I have to remind myself periodically that the mainstream of academia does consider this AI, and considers AGI work to be a foolish and faraway dream... Funding is the key issue. Someday I'll write a thing for this list about successes vs. failures in terms of auto-funding each successive stage of a complex technological path. In a nutshell, the electronics/computer industry was essentially self-funding for the past 50 years, with the products of 1962, for example, paying for the work that led to the 1965 products. Same thing with aviation. By contrast, space development and controlled fusion have not been. We know that there exists a reasonable combination of ignition temperature-containment time--cost that lies several orders of magnitude away in Temp-time-power-cost space, but getting there is like crossing the Gobi desert without any watering holes or fuel stops on the way. The difference between island colonization models, akin to colonizing the fertile U.S. heartland (automobiles, aviation, electronics, etc.), versus desert travel models, akin to funding the first commercial fusion reactor or building the first space colony, is crucial. It is unlikely that the path to AI will be successful if there are not numerous intermediate successes and ways to make a _lot_ of money. My tip to all AI workers is to look for those things. (This is more than just banal advice about try to make money, I am hoping. I have seen too many tech enthusiasts clamoring for moon shots to fund what they think is needed...)) The AGI may come from the distant great-great grandchild of financial AI systems. --Tim May Dogs can't conceive of a group of cats without an alpha cat. --David Honig, on the Cypherpunks list, 2001-11
