Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
J. Andrew Rogers wrote: On Apr 6, 2008, at 9:38 AM, Ben Goertzel wrote: That's surely part of it ... but investors have put big $$ into much LESS mature projects in areas such as nanotech and quantum computing. This is because nanotech and quantum computing can be readily and easily packaged as straightforward physical machinery technology, which a lot of people can readily conceptualize even if they do not actually understand it. AGI too will be on physical machinery. I dare think I am smarter than the average bear but quantum computing makes my head hurt. From what I have read about the field I doubt we are much closer to workable general quantum computing than we are to AGI. AGI makes a lot more conceptual and somewhat detailed sense to me. Nanotech itself has difficulty getting many takers for acheiving full molecular nanotech. Sometimes I have the paranoid idea that the difference is that things that are too disruptive have a MUCH harder time getting funding. AGI is not a physical touchable technology in the same sense (or even software sense), which is further aggravated by the many irrational memes of woo-ness that surround the idea of consciousness, intelligence, spirituality that the vast majority of investors uncritically subscribe to. As investors generally seem a hard-headed lot about investment dollars I would be surprised if this is a large factor. I do think there is a yuk-factor or a xenophobia of the utterly unknown at work when considering funding of highly disruptive utterly game-changing technology. I have been in conferences of futurists no less where over 70% of the audience raises their hand that they would likely not avail themselves of immortality if it was immediately available!The conservative preservation of the known goes a lot deeper than we credit. - samantha --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=101816851-9a120b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Samantha Atkins wrote:I have been in conferences of futurists no less where over 70% of the audience raises their hand that they would likely not avail themselves of immortality if it was immediately available!The conservative preservation of the known goes a lot deeper than we credit.That's quite a percentage. I wonder what the number would be for the public at large. Did anyone ask this group of futurists what their major objection to immortality is? Religious reasons? Eric B. Ramsay singularity | Archives | Modify Your Subscription
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 10:27 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, Just my personal opinion...but it appears that the exponential technology growth chart, which is used in many of the briefings, does not include AI/AGI. It is processing centric. When you include AI/AGI the exponential technology curve flattens out in the coming years (5-7) and becomes part of a normal S curve of development. While computer power and processing will increase exponentially (as nanotechnology grows) the area of AI will need more time to develop. I would be interested in your thoughts. I think this is because progress toward general AI has been difficult to quantify in the past, and looks to remain difficult to quantify into the future... I am uncertain as to the extent to which this problem can be worked around, though. Let me introduce an analogy problem Understanding the operation of the brain better and better is to scanning the brain with higher and higher spatiotemporal accuracy, as Creating more and more powerful AGI is to what? ;-) The point is that understanding the brain is also a nebulous and hard-to-quantify goal, but we make charts for it by treating brain scan accuracy as a more easily quantifiable proxy variable. What's a comparable proxy variable for AGI? Suggestions welcome! Being able to abstract and then implement only those components and mechanisms relevant to intelligence from all the data these better brain scans provide? If intelligence can be abstracted into layers (analogous to network layers), establishing a set of performance indicators at each layer and then increasing the values corresponding to these indicators might probably provide a better measure of AGI's progress. Using that model, increments of progress might then be much easier to identify, verify and communicate even for the smallest increments. Slawek --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Brain-scan accuracy is a very crude proxy for understanding of brain function; yet a much better proxy than anything existing for the case of AGI... On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 11:37 PM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben Goertzel wrote: Hi, Just my personal opinion...but it appears that the exponential technology growth chart, which is used in many of the briefings, does not include AI/AGI. It is processing centric. When you include AI/AGI the exponential technology curve flattens out in the coming years (5-7) and becomes part of a normal S curve of development. While computer power and processing will increase exponentially (as nanotechnology grows) the area of AI will need more time to develop. I would be interested in your thoughts. I think this is because progress toward general AI has been difficult to quantify in the past, and looks to remain difficult to quantify into the future... I am uncertain as to the extent to which this problem can be worked around, though. Let me introduce an analogy problem Understanding the operation of the brain better and better is to scanning the brain with higher and higher spatiotemporal accuracy, as Creating more and more powerful AGI is to what? ;-) The point is that understanding the brain is also a nebulous and hard-to-quantify goal, but we make charts for it by treating brain scan accuracy as a more easily quantifiable proxy variable. What's a comparable proxy variable for AGI? Suggestions welcome! Sadly, the analogy is a wee bit broken. Brain scan accuracy as a measure of progress in understanding the operation of the brain is a measure that some cognitive neuroscientists may subscribe to, but the majority of cognitive scientists outside of that area consider this to be a completely spurious idea. Doug Hofstadter said this eloquently in I Am A Strange Loop: getting a complete atom-scan in the vicinity of a windmill doesn't mean that you are making progress toward understanding why the windmill goes around. It just gives you a data analysis problem that will keep you busy until everyone in the Hot Place is eating ice cream. Richard Loosemore --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms. -- Henry Miller --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
MI wrote: ... Being able to abstract and then implement only those components and mechanisms relevant to intelligence from all the data these better brain scans provide? If intelligence can be abstracted into layers (analogous to network layers), establishing a set of performance indicators at each layer and then increasing the values corresponding to these indicators might probably provide a better measure of AGI's progress. Using that model, increments of progress might then be much easier to identify, verify and communicate even for the smallest increments. Slawek Abstracting away the non-central-to-AI parts of the brain isn't necessary. Try it this way (a possible, if not plausible path to AI). 1) Artificial knee/hip joints 2) Artificial corneas 3) Artificial retinas 4) Artificial cochlea 5) Artificial vertebrae 6) Nerve welds to rejoin severed spinal nerves 7) Artificial nerves 8) Artificial nerve welds to repair severed optic/aural nerves 9) Artificial visual or audio cortex 10) Repair of stroke damaged nerves 11) Replacement of damaged portions of the brain with artificial replacements (Hippocampus, etc.) 12) Repair of damaged brains in infants (birth defects) 13) continue on with gradually more significant replacements...at some point you'll hit an AGI. P.S.: I think this is a workable approach, but one that will materialize too slowly to dominate. Still, we're already working on steps 2, 3, 4, 5. Possibly also 6. --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Ben Goertzel wrote: Much of this discussion is very abstract, which is I guess how you think about these issues when you don't have a specific AGI design in mind. My view is a little different. If the Novamente design is basically correct, there's no way it can possibly take thousands or hundreds of programmers to implement it. The most I can imagine throwing at it would be a couple dozen, and I think 10-20 is the right number. So if the Novamente design is basically correct, it's would take a team of 10-20 programmers a period of 3-10 years to get to human-level AGI. So you are talking on the order of $9M - $30M. Sadly, we do not have 10-20 dedicated programmers working on Novamente (or associated OpenCog) AGI right now, but rather fractions of various peoples' time (as Novamente LLC is working mainly on various commercial projects that pay our salaries). So my point is not to make a projection regarding our progress (that depends too much on funding levels), just to address this issue of ideal team size that has come up yet again... You know, I am getting pretty tired of hearing this poor mouth crap. This is not that huge a sum to raise or get financed. Hell, there are some very futuristic rich geeks who could finance this single-handed and would not really care that much whether they could somehow monetize the result. I don't believe for a minute that there is no way to do this.So exactly why are you singing this sad song year after year? Even if my timing estimates are optimistic and it were to take 15 years, even so, a team of thousands isn't gonna help things any. If I had a billion dollars and the passion to use it to advance AGI, I would throw amounts between $1M and $50M at various specific projects, I wouldn't try to make one monolithic project. From what you said above $50M will do the entire job. If that is all that is standing between us and AGI then surely we can get on with it in all haste. If it is a great deal more than this relatively small amount of money then lets move on to talk about that instead of whining about lack of coin. - samantha --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Samantha:From what you said above $50M will do the entire job. If that is all that is standing between us and AGI then surely we can get on with it in all haste. Oh for gawdsake, this is such a tedious discussion. I would suggest the following is a reasonable *framework* for any discussions - although it is also a framework to end discussions for the moment. 1) Given our general ignorance, everyone is, strictly, entitled to their opinions about the future of AGI. Ben is entitled to his view that it will only take $50M or thereabouts. BUT 2) Not a SINGLE problem of AGI has been solved yet. Not a damn one. Is anyone arguing different? And until you've solved one, you can hardly make *reasonable* predictions about how long it will take to solve the rest - predictions that anyone, including yourself should take seriously- especially if you've got any sense, any awareness of AI's long, ridiculous and incorrigible record of crazy predictions here, (and that's by Minsky's Simon's as well as lesser lights) - by people also making predictions without having solved any of AGI's problems. All investors beware. Massive health wealth warnings. MEANWHILE 3)Others - and I'm not the only one here - take a view more like: the human brain/body is the most awesomely complex machine in the known universe, the product of billions of years of evolution. To emulate it, or parallel its powers, is going to take more like many not just trillions but zillions of dollars - many times global output, many, many Microsoft's. Now right now that's a reasonable POV too. But until you've solved one, just a measly one of AGI's problems, there's not a lot of point in further discussion, is there? Nobody's really gaining from it, are they? It's just masturbation, isn't it? --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Mike Tintner wrote: Samantha:From what you said above $50M will do the entire job. If that is all that is standing between us and AGI then surely we can get on with it in all haste. Oh for gawdsake, this is such a tedious discussion. I would suggest the following is a reasonable *framework* for any discussions - although it is also a framework to end discussions for the moment. 1) Given our general ignorance, everyone is, strictly, entitled to their opinions about the future of AGI. Ben is entitled to his view that it will only take $50M or thereabouts. BUT 2) Not a SINGLE problem of AGI has been solved yet. Not a damn one. Is anyone arguing different? And until you've solved one, you can hardly make *reasonable* predictions about how long it will take to solve the rest - predictions that anyone, including yourself should take seriously- especially if you've got any sense, any awareness of AI's long, ridiculous and incorrigible record of crazy predictions here, (and that's by Minsky's Simon's as well as lesser lights) - by people also making predictions without having solved any of AGI's problems. All investors beware. Massive health wealth warnings. MEANWHILE 3)Others - and I'm not the only one here - take a view more like: the human brain/body is the most awesomely complex machine in the known universe, the product of billions of years of evolution. To emulate it, or parallel its powers, is going to take more like many not just trillions but zillions of dollars - many times global output, many, many Microsoft's. Now right now that's a reasonable POV too. But until you've solved one, just a measly one of AGI's problems, there's not a lot of point in further discussion, is there? Nobody's really gaining from it, are they? It's just masturbation, isn't it? Mike, Your comments are irresponsible. Many problems of AGI have been solved. If you disagree with that, specify exactly what you mean by a problem of AGI, and let us list them. I have discovered the complex systems problem: this is a major breakthrough. You cannot understand it, or why it is a major breakthrough, but that makes no odds. Everything you say in this post is based on your own ignorance of what AGI actually is. What you are really saying is Nobody has been able to make me understand what AGI has achieved, so AGI is useless. Sorry, but your posts are sounding more and more like incoherent rants. Richard Loosemore --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Mike: I am a novice to this AGI business and so I am not being cute with the following question: What, in your opinion, would be the first AGI problem to tackle. Perhaps theses various problems can't be priority ordered but nontheless, which problem stands out for you?. Thanks. Eric B. Ramsay Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Samantha:From what you said above $50M will do the entire job. If that is all that is standing between us and AGI then surely we can get on with it in all haste. Oh for gawdsake, this is such a tedious discussion. I would suggest the following is a reasonable *framework* for any discussions - although it is also a framework to end discussions for the moment. 1) Given our general ignorance, everyone is, strictly, entitled to their opinions about the future of AGI. Ben is entitled to his view that it will only take $50M or thereabouts. BUT 2) Not a SINGLE problem of AGI has been solved yet. Not a damn one. Is anyone arguing different? And until you've solved one, you can hardly make *reasonable* predictions about how long it will take to solve the rest - predictions that anyone, including yourself should take seriously- especially if you've got any sense, any awareness of AI's long, ridiculous and incorrigible record of crazy predictions here, (and that's by Minsky's Simon's as well as lesser lights) - by people also making predictions without having solved any of AGI's problems. All investors beware. Massive health wealth warnings. MEANWHILE 3)Others - and I'm not the only one here - take a view more like: the human brain/body is the most awesomely complex machine in the known universe, the product of billions of years of evolution. To emulate it, or parallel its powers, is going to take more like many not just trillions but zillions of dollars - many times global output, many, many Microsoft's. Now right now that's a reasonable POV too. But until you've solved one, just a measly one of AGI's problems, there's not a lot of point in further discussion, is there? Nobody's really gaining from it, are they? It's just masturbation, isn't it? --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Mike, Your comments are irresponsible. Many problems of AGI have been solved. If you disagree with that, specify exactly what you mean by a problem of AGI, and let us list them. 1.General Problem Solving and Learning (independently learning/solving problem in, a new domain) 2.Conceptualisation [Invariant Representation] - forming concept of Madonna which can embrace rich variety of different faces/photos of her 3.Visual Object Recognition 4.Aural Object Recognition [dunno proper term here - being able to recognize same melody played in any form] 5.Analogy 6.Metaphor 7.Creativity 8.Narrative Visualisation - being able to imagine and create a visual scenario ( a movie) [just made this problem up - but it's a good one] [By all means let's identify some more unsolved problems BTW..] I think Ben I more or less agreed that if he had really solved 1) - if his pet could really independently learn to play hide-and-seek after having been taught to fetch, it would constitute a major breakthrough, worthy of announcement to the world. And you can be sure it would be provoking a great deal of discussion. As for your discoveries,fine, have all the self-confidence you want, but they have had neither public recognition nor, as I understand, publication or identification. Nor do you have a working machine. And if you're going to claim anyone in AI, like Hofstadter, has solved 5 or 6...puh-lease. I don't think any reasonable person in AI or AGI will claim any of these have been solved. They may want to claim their method has promise, but not that it has actually solved any of them. Which of the above, or any problem of AGI, period, do you claim to have been solved? --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Samantha, You know, I am getting pretty tired of hearing this poor mouth crap. This is not that huge a sum to raise or get financed. Hell, there are some very futuristic rich geeks who could finance this single-handed and would not really care that much whether they could somehow monetize the result. I don't believe for a minute that there is no way to do this.So exactly why are you singing this sad song year after year? ... From what you said above $50M will do the entire job. If that is all that is standing between us and AGI then surely we can get on with it in all haste. If it is a great deal more than this relatively small amount of money then lets move on to talk about that instead of whining about lack of coin. This is what I thought in 2001, and what Bruce Klein thought when he started working with me in 2005. In brief, what we thought is something like: OK, so ... On the one hand, we have an AGI design that seems to its sane PhD-scientist creator to have serious potential of leading to human-level AGI. We have a team of professional AI scientists and software engineers who are a) knowledgeable about it, b) eager to work on it, c) in agreement that it has a strong chance of leading to human-level AGI, although with varying opinions on whether the timeline is, say, 7, 10, 15 or 20 years. Furthermore, the individuals involved are at least thoughtful about issues of AGI ethics and the social implications of their work. Carefully-detailed arguments as to why it is believed the AGI design will work exist, but, these are complex, and furthermore do not comprise any sort of irrefutable proof. On the other hand, we have a number of wealthy transhumanists who would love to see a beneficial human-level AGI come about, and who could donate or invest some $$ to this cause without serious risk to their own financial stability should the AGI effort fail. Not only that, but there are a couple related factors a) early non-AGI versions of some of the components of said AGI design are already being used to help make biological discoveries of relevant to life extension (as documented in refereed publications) b) very clear plans exist, including discussions with many specific potential customers, regarding how to make $$ from incremental products along the way to the human-level AGI, if this is the pathway desired So, we talked to a load of wealthy futurists and the upshot is that it's really really hard to get these folks to believe you have a chance at achieving human-level AGI. These guys don't have the background to spend 6 months carefully studying the technical documentation, so they make a gut decision, which is always (so far) that gee, you're a really smart guy, and your team is great, and you're doing cool stuff, but technology just isn't there yet. Novamente has gotten small (but much valued) investments from some visionary folks, and SIAI has had the vision to hire 1.6 folks to work on OpenCog, which is an open-source sister project of the Novamente Cogntion Engine project. I could speculate about the reasons behind this situation, but the reason is NOT that I suck at raising money ... I have been involved in fundraising for commercial software projects before and have been successful at it. I believe that in 10-15 years from now, one will be able to approach the exact same people with the same sort of project, and get greeted with enthusiasm rather than friendly dismissal. Going against prevailing culture is really hard, even if you're dealing with people who **think** they're seeing beyond the typical preconceptions of their culture. Slowly though the idea that AGI is possible and feasible is wending its way into the collective mind. I stress, though, that if one had some kind of convincing, compelling **proof** of being on the correct path to AGI, it would likely be possible to raise $$ for one's project. This proof could be in several possible forms, e.g. a) a mathematical proof, which was accepted by a substantial majority of AI academics b) a working software program that demonstrated human-child-like functionality c) a working robot that demonstrated full dog-like functionality Also, if one had good enough personal connections with the right sort of wealthy folks, one could raise the $$ -- based on their personal trust in you rather than their trust in your ideas. Or of course, being rich and funding your work yourself is always an option (cf Jeff Hawkins) This gets back to a milder version of an issue Richard Loosemore is always raising; the complex systems problem. My approach to AGI is complex systems based, which means that the components are NOT going to demonstrate any general intelligence -- the GI is intended to come about as a holistic, whole-system phenomenon. But not in any kind of mysterious way: we have a detailed, specific theory of why this will occur, in terms of the particular interactions between the components. But what
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
I don't think any reasonable person in AI or AGI will claim any of these have been solved. They may want to claim their method has promise, but not that it has actually solved any of them. Yes -- it is true, we have not created a human-level AGI yet. No serious researcher disagrees. So why is it worth repeating the point? Similarly, up till the moment when the first astronauts walked on the moon, you could have run around yelping that no one has solved the problem of how to make a person walk on the moon, all they've done is propose methods that seem to have promise. It's true -- theories and ideas can always be wrong, and empirical proof adds a whole new level of understanding. (Though, empirical proofs don't exist in a theoretical vacuum, they do require theoretical interpretation. For instance physicists don't agree on which supposed top quark events really were top quarks ... and some nuts still don't believe people walked on the moon, just as even after human-level AGI is achieved some nuts still won't believe it...) Nevertheless, with something as complex as AGI you gotta build stuff based on a theory. And not everyone is going to believe the theory until the proof is there. And so it goes... -- Ben G --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Ben Goertzel: Yes -- it is true, we have not created a human-level AGI yet. No serious researcher disagrees. So why is it worth repeating the point? Long ago I put Tintner in my killfile -- he's the only one there, and it's regrettable but it was either that or start taking blood pressure medicine... so *plonk*. It's not necessarily that I disagree with most of his (usually rather obvious) points or think his own ideas (about image schemas or whatever) are worse than other stuff floating around, but his toxic personality makes the benefit not worth the cost. Now I only have to suffer the collateral damage in responses. However, I went to the archives to fetch this message. I do think it would be nice to have tests or problems that one could point to as partial progress... but it's really hard. Any such things have to be fairly rigorously specified (otherwise we'll argue all day about whether they are solved or not -- see Tintner's Creativity problem as an obvious example), and they need to not be AGI complete themselves, which is really hard. For example, Tintner's Narrative Visualization task strikes me as needing all the machinery and a very large knowledge base so by the time a system could do a decent job of this in a general context it would already have demonstrably solved the whole thing. The other common criticism of tests is that they can often be solved by Narrow-AI means (say, current face recognizers which are often better at this task than humans). I don't necessarily think this is a disqualification though... if the solution is provided in the context of a particular architecture with a plausible argument for how the system could have produced the specifics itself, that seems like some sort of progress. I sometimes wonder if a decent measurement of AGI progress might be to measure the ease with which the system can be adapted by its builders to solve narrow AI problems -- sort of a cognitive enhancement measurement. Such an approach makes a decent programming language and development environment be a tangible early step toward AGI but maybe that's not all bad. At any rate, if there were some clearly-specified tests that are not AGI-complete and yet not easily attackable with straightforward software engineering or Narrow AI techniques, that would be a huge boost in my opinion to this field. I can't think of any though, and they might not exist. If it is in fact impossible to find such tasks, what does that say about AGI as an endeavor? --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Mike Tintner wrote: Mike, Your comments are irresponsible. Many problems of AGI have been solved. If you disagree with that, specify exactly what you mean by a problem of AGI, and let us list them. 1.General Problem Solving and Learning (independently learning/solving problem in, a new domain) 2.Conceptualisation [Invariant Representation] - forming concept of Madonna which can embrace rich variety of different faces/photos of her 3.Visual Object Recognition 4.Aural Object Recognition [dunno proper term here - being able to recognize same melody played in any form] 5.Analogy 6.Metaphor 7.Creativity 8.Narrative Visualisation - being able to imagine and create a visual scenario ( a movie) [just made this problem up - but it's a good one] In your ignorance, you named a set of targets, not a set of problems. If you want to see these fully functioning, you will see them in the last year of a 10-year AGI project but if we listed to you, the first nine years of that project would be condemned as a complete waste of time. If, on the other hand, you want to see an *in* *principle* solution (an outline of how these can all be implemented), then these in principle solutions are all in existence. It is just that you do not know them, and when we go to the trouble of pointing them out to you (or explaining them to you), you do not understand them for what they are. [By all means let's identify some more unsolved problems BTW..] I think Ben I more or less agreed that if he had really solved 1) - if his pet could really independently learn to play hide-and-seek after having been taught to fetch, it would constitute a major breakthrough, worthy of announcement to the world. And you can be sure it would be provoking a great deal of discussion. As for your discoveries,fine, have all the self-confidence you want, but they have had neither public recognition nor, as I understand, publication Okay, stop rght there. This is a perfect example of the nonsense you utter on this list: you know that I have published a paper on the complex systems problem because you told me recently that you have read the paper. But even though you have read this published paper, all you can do when faced with the real achievement that it contains is to say that (a) you don't understand it, and (b) this published paper that you have already read has not been published! Are there no depths to which you will not stoop? Richard Loosemore --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Derek Zahn wrote: Ben Goertzel: Yes -- it is true, we have not created a human-level AGI yet. No serious researcher disagrees. So why is it worth repeating the point? Long ago I put Tintner in my killfile -- he's the only one there, and it's regrettable but it was either that or start taking blood pressure medicine... so *plonk*. It's not necessarily that I disagree with most of his (usually rather obvious) points or think his own ideas (about image schemas or whatever) are worse than other stuff floating around, but his toxic personality makes the benefit not worth the cost. Now I only have to suffer the collateral damage in responses. Yes, he was in my killfile as well for a long time, then I decided to give him a second chance. Now I am regretting it, so back he goes ... *plonk*. Mike: the only reason I am now ignoring you is that you persistently refuse to educate yourself about the topics discussed on this list, and instead you just spout your amateur opinions as if they were fact. Your inability to distinguish real science from your amateur opinion is why, finally, I have had enough. I apologize to the list for engaging him. I should have just ignored his ravings. However, I went to the archives to fetch this message. I do think it would be nice to have tests or problems that one could point to as partial progress... but it's really hard. Any such things have to be fairly rigorously specified (otherwise we'll argue all day about whether they are solved or not -- see Tintner's Creativity problem as an obvious example), and they need to not be AGI complete themselves, which is really hard. For example, Tintner's Narrative Visualization task strikes me as needing all the machinery and a very large knowledge base so by the time a system could do a decent job of this in a general context it would already have demonstrably solved the whole thing. It looks like you, Ben and I have now all said exactly the same thing, so we have a strong consensus on this. The other common criticism of tests is that they can often be solved by Narrow-AI means (say, current face recognizers which are often better at this task than humans). I don't necessarily think this is a disqualification though... if the solution is provided in the context of a particular architecture with a plausible argument for how the system could have produced the specifics itself, that seems like some sort of progress. I sometimes wonder if a decent measurement of AGI progress might be to measure the ease with which the system can be adapted by its builders to solve narrow AI problems -- sort of a cognitive enhancement measurement. Such an approach makes a decent programming language and development environment be a tangible early step toward AGI but maybe that's not all bad. At any rate, if there were some clearly-specified tests that are not AGI-complete and yet not easily attackable with straightforward software engineering or Narrow AI techniques, that would be a huge boost in my opinion to this field. I can't think of any though, and they might not exist. If it is in fact impossible to find such tasks, what does that say about AGI as an endeavor? My own feeling about this is that when a set of ideas start to gel into one coherent approach to the subject, with a description of those ideas being assembled as a book-length manuscript, and when you read those ideas and they *feel* like progress, you will know that substantial progress is happening. Until then, the only people who might get an advanced feeling that such a work is on the way are the people on the front lines, you see all the pieces coming together just before they are assembled for public consumption. Whether or not someone could write down tests of progress ahead of that point, I do not know. Richard Loosemore --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Ben:So why is it worth repeating the point?Similarly, up till the moment when the first astronauts walked on the moon, you could have run around yelping that no one has solved the problem of how to make a person walk on the moon, all they've done is propose methods that seem to have promise. I repeated the details because I was challenged. (And unlike Richard, I do answer challenges). The original point - a valid one, I think - is until you've solved one AGI problem, you can't make any reasonable prediction as to WHEN the rest will be solved and how much it will cost in resources. And it's not worth much discussion. AGI is different from moonwalking - that WAS successfully predicted by JFK because they did indeed have technology reasonably likely to bring it about. I would compare AGI predictions with predicting when we will have a mind-reading machine, (except that personally, I think AGI is much harder). Yes, you can have a bit of interesting discussion about that to begin with, but then the subject, i.e. making predictions, exhausts itself, because there are too many unknowns. Ditto here. No? --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Mike Tintner wrote: Samantha:From what you said above $50M will do the entire job. If that is all that is standing between us and AGI then surely we can get on with it in all haste. Oh for gawdsake, this is such a tedious discussion. I would suggest the following is a reasonable *framework* for any discussions - although it is also a framework to end discussions for the moment. Sigh. I *was* somewhat tedious in that I am getting more impatient year by year especially as I see more friends succumb to maladies that AGI or even more IA could solve and watch the world spin closer to chaos. However I do not believe you have any business proposing any framework or definitive solution as you do not have the knowledge or chops to do so. - samantha --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Hi Mike Your 1 consists of two separate challenges: (1) reasoning (2) learning IMHO your 3 to 6 can be classified under (3) pattern recognition. I think perhaps even your 2 may flow out of pattern recognition. Of course, the real challenge is to find an algorithmic way (or architecture) to do the above without bumping into exponential explosion.e. move the problem out of the NP-complete arena. (Else an AGI will never exceed human intelligence by a real margin.) =Jean-Paul Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Your comments are irresponsible. Many problems of AGI have been solved. If you disagree with that, specify exactly what you mean by a problem of AGI, and let us list them. 1.General Problem Solving and Learning (independently learning/solving problem in, a new domain) 2.Conceptualisation [Invariant Representation] - forming concept of Madonna which can embrace rich variety of different faces/photos of her 3.Visual Object Recognition 4.Aural Object Recognition [dunno proper term here - being able to recognize same melody played in any form] 5.Analogy 6.Metaphor 7.Creativity 8.Narrative Visualisation - being able to imagine and create a visual scenario ( a movie) [just made this problem up - but it's a good one] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Jean-Paul, More or less yes to your points. (I was only tossing off something quickly). Actually I think there's a common core to 2)-7) and will be setting out something about that soon. But I don't think it's recognizing patterns - on the contrary, the common problem is partly that there ISN'T a pattern to be recognized. If you have to understand the metaphor, the dancing towers, there's no common pattern between human dancers and the skyscrapers referred to. I also think that while there's a common core, each problem has its own complications. Maybe Hawkins is right that all the senses process inputs in basically the same hierarchical fashion - and any mechanical AGI's senses will have to do the same - but if you think about it, the senses evolved gradually, so there must be different reasons for that. (And I would add another unsolved ( unrecognized) problem for AGI: 9)Common Sense Processing - being able to process an event in multiple sensory modalities, and switch between them to solve problems - for example, to be able to touch an object blindfolded, and then draw its outlines visually. ) Jean-Paul: Your 1 consists of two separate challenges: (1) reasoning (2) learning IMHO your 3 to 6 can be classified under (3) pattern recognition. I think perhaps even your 2 may flow out of pattern recognition. Of course, the real challenge is to find an algorithmic way (or architecture) to do the above without bumping into exponential explosion.e. move the problem out of the NP-complete arena. (Else an AGI will never exceed human intelligence by a real margin.) Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Your comments are irresponsible. Many problems of AGI have been solved. If you disagree with that, specify exactly what you mean by a problem of AGI, and let us list them. 1.General Problem Solving and Learning (independently learning/solving problem in, a new domain) 2.Conceptualisation [Invariant Representation] - forming concept of Madonna which can embrace rich variety of different faces/photos of her 3.Visual Object Recognition 4.Aural Object Recognition [dunno proper term here - being able to recognize same melody played in any form] 5.Analogy 6.Metaphor 7.Creativity 8.Narrative Visualisation - being able to imagine and create a visual scenario ( a movie) [just made this problem up - but it's a good one] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Testing AGI (was RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
--- Derek Zahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At any rate, if there were some clearly-specified tests that are not AGI-complete and yet not easily attackable with straightforward software engineering or Narrow AI techniques, that would be a huge boost in my opinion to this field. I can't think of any though, and they might not exist. If it is in fact impossible to find such tasks, what does that say about AGI as an endeavor? Text compression is one such test, as I argue in http://cs.fit.edu/~mmahoney/compression/rationale.html The test is only for language modeling. Theoretically it could be extended to vision or audio processing. For example, to maximally compress video the compressor must understand the physics of the scene (e.g. objects fall down), which can be arbitrarily complex (e.g. a video of people engaging in conversation about Newton's law of gravity). Likewise, maximally compressing music is equivalent to generating or recognizing music that people like. The problem is that the information content of video and audio is dominated by incompressible noise that is nontrivial to remove -- noise being any part of the signal that people fail to perceive. Deciding which parts of the signal are noise is itself AI-hard, so it requires a lossy compression test with human judges making subjective decisions about quality. This is not a big problem for text because the noise level (different ways of expressing the same meaning) is small, or at least does not overwhelm the signal. Long term memory has an information rate of a few bits per second, so any signal you compress should not be many orders of magnitude higher. A problem with text compression is the lack of adequate hardware. There is a 3 way tradeoff between compression ratio, memory, and speed. The top compressor in http://cs.fit.edu/~mmahoney/compression/text.html uses 4.6 GB of memory. Many of the best algorithms could be drastically improved if only they ran on a supercomputer with 100 GB or more. The result is that most compression gains come from speed and memory optimization rather than using more intelligent models. The best compressors use crude models of semantics and grammar. They preprocess the text by token substitution from a dictionary that groups words by topic and grammatical role, then predict the token stream using mixtures of fixed-offset context models. It is roughly equivalent to the ungrounded language model of a 2 or 3 year old child at best. An alternative would be to reduce the size of the test set to reduce computational requirements, as the Hutter prize did. http://prize.hutter1.net/ I did not because I believe the proper way to test an adult level language model is to train it on the same amount of language that an average adult is exposed to, about 1 GB. I would be surprised if a 100 MB test progressed past the level of a 3 year old child. I believe the data set is too small to train a model to learn arithmetic, logic, or high level reasoning. Including these capabilities would not improve compression. Tests on small data sets could be used to gauge early progress. But ultimately, I think you are going to need hardware that supports AGI to test it. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Ben, Good Afternoon. I am a rather new addition to the AGI mailing list and just read your response concerning the future of AGI. I agree with you. The funding is there. The belief that AGI is right around the corner is not. From the people I talk withthey have read Kurzweil and understand the rate of growth of technology (the curve). They also understand that the exponential growth in Kurzweil's graphs represents processing power and this dynamic will substantively increase as nanotechnology moves from MEM to a smaller and smaller (atomic possibly) operating environment. What is difficult for people/investors to gauge is AI/AGI. Businesses and/or government organizations (not including DARPA) need a strategic plan for large investments into future technologies. They understand risk but weigh it against current requirements and long term gain. There are people/organizations ready to invest if a strong rational analysis on the timeline is developed and presented in language that they understand. The latter comment is key. Senior leaders (business, government and just very wealthy investors) are acutely aware of the hype cycle that occurs with all new technologies. I have found that overselling is much worse than underselling. In my previous position I served as a Deputy Chief of a Trends and Forecasting Center for the government. My charter was to provide strategic assessments to corporate leadership for investment purposes. Those investments could include people, funding or priorities of effort. So, I am well versed in the interface between developers, customers, senior leaders and financial backers. Just my personal opinion...but it appears that the exponential technology growth chart, which is used in many of the briefings, does not include AI/AGI. It is processing centric. When you include AI/AGI the exponential technology curve flattens out in the coming years (5-7) and becomes part of a normal S curve of development. While computer power and processing will increase exponentially (as nanotechnology grows) the area of AI will need more time to develop. I would be interested in your thoughts. Regards, Ben I am moving to a new position this summer and will be a visiting professor in academia for two years. --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Hi, Just my personal opinion...but it appears that the exponential technology growth chart, which is used in many of the briefings, does not include AI/AGI. It is processing centric. When you include AI/AGI the exponential technology curve flattens out in the coming years (5-7) and becomes part of a normal S curve of development. While computer power and processing will increase exponentially (as nanotechnology grows) the area of AI will need more time to develop. I would be interested in your thoughts. I think this is because progress toward general AI has been difficult to quantify in the past, and looks to remain difficult to quantify into the future... I am uncertain as to the extent to which this problem can be worked around, though. Let me introduce an analogy problem Understanding the operation of the brain better and better is to scanning the brain with higher and higher spatiotemporal accuracy, as Creating more and more powerful AGI is to what? ;-) The point is that understanding the brain is also a nebulous and hard-to-quantify goal, but we make charts for it by treating brain scan accuracy as a more easily quantifiable proxy variable. What's a comparable proxy variable for AGI? Suggestions welcome! -- Ben Ben --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
From: Matt Mahoney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There is no way to know if we are living in a nested simulation, or even in a single simulation. However there is a mathematical model: enumerate all Turing machines to find one that simulates a universe with intelligent life. What if that nest of simulations loop around somehow? What was that idea where there is this new advanced microscope that can see smaller than ever before and you look into it and see an image of yourself looking into it... The simulations can't loop because the simulator needs at least as much memory as the machine being simulated. You're making assumptions when you say that. Outside of a particular simulation we don't know the rules. If this universe is simulated the simulator's reality could be so drastically and unimaginably different from the laws in this universe. Also there could be data busses between simulations and the simulations could intersect or, a simulation may break the constraints of its contained simulation somehow and tunnel out. John --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
--- John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Matt Mahoney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] The simulations can't loop because the simulator needs at least as much memory as the machine being simulated. You're making assumptions when you say that. Outside of a particular simulation we don't know the rules. If this universe is simulated the simulator's reality could be so drastically and unimaginably different from the laws in this universe. Also there could be data busses between simulations and the simulations could intersect or, a simulation may break the constraints of its contained simulation somehow and tunnel out. I am assuming finite memory. For the universe we observe, the Bekenstein bound of the Hubble radius is 2pi^2 T^2 c^5/hG = 2.91 x 10^122 bits. (T = age of the universe = 13.7 billion years, c = speed of light, h = Planck's constant, G = gravitational constant). There is not enough material in the universe to build a larger memory. However, a universe up the hierarchy might be simulated by a Turing machine with infinite memory or by a more powerful machine such as one with real-valued registers. In that case the restriction does not apply. For example, a real-valued function can contain nested copies of itself infinitely deep. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
--- Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How do you resolve disagreements? This is a problem for all large databases and multiuser AI systems. In my design, messages are identified by source (not necessarily a person) and a timestamp. The network economy rewards those sources that provide the most useful (correct) information. There is an incentive to produce reputation managers which rank other sources and forward messages from highly ranked sources, because those managers themselves become highly ranked. Google handles this problem by using its PageRank algorithm, although I believe that better (not perfect) solutions are possible in a distributed, competitive environment. I believe that these solutions will be deployed early and be the subject of intense research because it is such a large problem. The network I described is vulnerable to spammers and hackers deliberately injecting false or forged information. The protocol can only do so much. I designed it to minimize these risks. Thus, there is no procedure to delete or alter messages once they are posted. Message recipients are responsible for verifying the identity and timestamps of senders and for filtering spam and malicious messages at risk of having their own reputations lowered if they fail. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
--- Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Of course what I imagine emerging from the Internet bears little resemblance to Novamente. It is simply too big to invest in directly, but it will present many opportunities. But the emergence of superhuman AGI's like a Novamente may eventually become, will both dramatically alter the nature of, and dramatically reduce the cost of, global brains such as you envision... Yes, like the difference between writing a web browser and defining the HTTP protocol, each costing a tiny fraction of the value of the Internet but with a huge impact on its outcome. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
This is part of the idea underlying OpenCog (opencog.org), though it's being done in a nonprofit vein rather than commercially... On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 1:55 AM, John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just a thought, maybe there are some commonalities across AGI designs where components could be built at a lower cost. An investor invests in the company that builds component x that is used by multiple AGI projects. Then you have your little AGI ecosystem of companies all competing yet cooperating. After all, we need to get the Singularity going ASAP so that we can upload before inevitable biologic death? I prefer not to become nano-dust I'd rather keep this show a rockin' capiche? So it's like this - need standards. Somebody go bust out an RFC. Or is there work done on this already like is there a CogML? I don't know if the Semantic Web is going to cut the mustard... and the name Semantic Web just doesn't have that ring to it. Kinda reminds me of the MBone - names really do matter. Then who's the numnutz that came up with Web 3 dot oh geezss! John -Original Message- From: Matt Mahoney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 7:07 PM To: singularity@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI Perhaps the difficulty in finding investors in AGI is that among people most familiar with the technology (the people on this list and the AGI list), everyone has a different idea on how to solve the problem. Why would I invest in someone else's idea when clearly my idea is better? -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms. -- Henry Miller --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI
John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you look at the state of internet based intelligence now, all the data and its structure, the potential for chain reaction or a sort of structural vacuum exists and it is accumulating a potential at an increasing rate. IMO... So you see the arrival of a Tipping Point as per Malcolm Gladwell. Whether I physically benefit from the arrival of the Singularity or not, I just want to see the damn thing. I would invest some modest sums in AGI if we could get a huge collection plate going around (these collection plate amounts add up!). Eric B. Ramsay --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Tipping Point may not be the right word for it. I see it as sort of an unraveling and then a remolding. Much of the internet is still coming out of resource compression. It has to stretch out and reoptimize like seeking a lower energy expenditure structure for higher complexity traffic, but the lower energy structure has more inherent intelligence. Kind of. it's like it needs to jump into another efficiency plateau and there is an increasing daily pressure for this to happen. And once it's reconfigured more of it will flow into other plateaus or, I see them as harmonic sweet spots.. blah blah. But a wise and savvy investor who has vision, remember much of investing is hit or miss but a few investors know how to nail the bull's-eye more often than their less informed counterparts, that wise investor can sense these things. They know that something's going on and realize that now is the time to take action, getting in early and gaining a foothold *wink*. John From: Eric B. Ramsay [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 8:03 AM To: singularity@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you look at the state of internet based intelligence now, all the data and its structure, the potential for chain reaction or a sort of structural vacuum exists and it is accumulating a potential at an increasing rate. IMO... So you see the arrival of a Tipping Point as per Malcolm Gladwell. Whether I physically benefit from the arrival of the Singularity or not, I just want to see the damn thing. I would invest some modest sums in AGI if we could get a huge collection plate going around (these collection plate amounts add up!). Eric B. Ramsay _ singularity | http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now Archives http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ | http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Modify Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
--- Eric B. Ramsay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you look at the state of internet based intelligence now, all the data and its structure, the potential for chain reaction or a sort of structural vacuum exists and it is accumulating a potential at an increasing rate. IMO... So you see the arrival of a Tipping Point as per Malcolm Gladwell. Whether I physically benefit from the arrival of the Singularity or not, I just want to see the damn thing. I would invest some modest sums in AGI if we could get a huge collection plate going around (these collection plate amounts add up!). You won't see a singularity. As I explain in http://www.mattmahoney.net/singularity.html an intelligent agent (you) is not capable of recognizing agents of significantly greater intelligence. We don't know whether a singularity has already occurred and the world we observe is the result. It is consistent with the possibility, e.g. it is finite, Turing computable, and obeys Occam's Razor (AIXI). As for AGI research, I believe the most viable path is a distributed architecture that uses the billions of human brains and computers already on the Internet. What is needed is an infrastructure that routes information to the right experts and an economy that rewards intelligence and friendliness. I described one such architecture in http://www.mattmahoney.net/agi.html It differs significantly from the usual approach of trying to replicate a human mind. I don't believe that one person or a small group can solve the AGI problem faster than the billions of people on the Internet are already doing. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
Matt Mahoney writes: As for AGI research, I believe the most viable path is a distributed architecture that uses the billions of human brains and computers already on the Internet. What is needed is an infrastructure that routes information to the right experts and an economy that rewards intelligence and friendliness. I described one such architecture in http://www.mattmahoney.net/agi.html It differs significantly from the usual approach of trying to replicate a human mind. I don't believe that one person or a small group can solve the AGI problem faster than the billions of people on the Internet are already doing. I'm not sure I understand this. Although a system that can respond well to commands of the following form: Show me an existing document that best answers the question 'X' is certainly useful, it is hardly 'general' in any sense we usually mean. I would think a 'general' intelligence should be able to take a shot at answering: Why are so many streets named after trees? or If the New York Giants played cricket against the New York Yankees, who would probably win? or Here are the results of some diagnostic tests. How likely is it that the patient has cancer? What test should we do next? or Design me a stable helicopter with the rotors on the bottom instead of the top Super-google is nifty, but I don't see how it is AGI. --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
From: Matt Mahoney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] You won't see a singularity. As I explain in http://www.mattmahoney.net/singularity.html an intelligent agent (you) is not capable of recognizing agents of significantly greater intelligence. We don't know whether a singularity has already occurred and the world we observe is the result. It is consistent with the possibility, e.g. it is finite, Turing computable, and obeys Occam's Razor (AIXI). You should be able to see it coming. That's how people like Kurzweil make their estimations based on technological rates of change. When it gets really close though then you can only imagine how it will unfold. If a singularity has already occurred how do you know how many there have been? Has somebody worked out the math on this? And if this universe is a simulation is that simulation running within another simulation? Is there a simulation forefront or is it just one simulation within another ad infinitum? Simulation raises too many questions. Seems like simulation and singularity would be easier to keep separate, except for uploading. But then the whole concept of uploading is just ...too.. confusing... unless our minds are complex systems like Richard Loosemore proposes and uploading would only be a sort of echo of the original. John --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
--- Derek Zahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Mahoney writes: As for AGI research, I believe the most viable path is a distributed architecture that uses the billions of human brains and computers already on the Internet. What is needed is an infrastructure that routes information to the right experts and an economy that rewards intelligence and friendliness. I described one such architecture in http://www.mattmahoney.net/agi.html It differs significantly from the usual approach of trying to replicate a human mind. I don't believe that one person or a small group can solve the AGI problem faster than the billions of people on the Internet are already doing. I'm not sure I understand this. Although a system that can respond well to commands of the following form: Show me an existing document that best answers the question 'X' is certainly useful, it is hardly 'general' in any sense we usually mean. I would think a 'general' intelligence should be able to take a shot at answering: Why are so many streets named after trees? or If the New York Giants played cricket against the New York Yankees, who would probably win? or Here are the results of some diagnostic tests. How likely is it that the patient has cancer? What test should we do next? or Design me a stable helicopter with the rotors on the bottom instead of the top Super-google is nifty, but I don't see how it is AGI. Because a super-google will answer these questions by routing them to experts on these topics that will use natural language in their narrow domains of expertise. All of this can be done with existing technology and a lot of hard work. The work will be done because there is an incentive to do it and because the AGI (in the system, not its components) is so valuable. AGI will be an extension of the Internet that nobody planned, nobody built, and nobody owns. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
Matt Mahoney writes: Super-google is nifty, but I don't see how it is AGI. Because a super-google will answer these questions by routing them to experts on these topics that will use natural language in their narrow domains of expertise. All of this can be done with existing technology and a lot of hard work. Ok. I have some doubts personally that lots of narrow intelligences add up to general intelligence, but it seems as reasonable as other ideas out there. I'd certainly pay to use it... with the explosion of documents on the web Google-as-it-exists gets worse and worse at giving me results that make me happy. I've even (gasp) started trying other search sites. Ask.com is pretty good, often better than google. --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
There is no way to know if we are living in a nested simulation, or even in a single simulation. However there is a mathematical model: enumerate all Turing machines to find one that simulates a universe with intelligent life. What if that nest of simulations loop around somehow? What was that idea where there is this new advanced microscope that can see smaller than ever before and you look into it and see an image of yourself looking into it... John --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
Matt : a super-google will answer these questions by routing them to experts on these topics that will use natural language in their narrow domains of expertise. And Santa will answer every child's request, and we'll all live happily ever after. Amen. Which are these areas of science, technology, arts, or indeed any area of human activity, period, where the experts all agree and are NOT in deep conflict? And if that's too hard a question, which are the areas of AI or AGI, where the experts all agree and are not in deep conflict? --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
Matt : a super-google will answer these questions by routing them to experts on these topics that will use natural language in their narrow domains of expertise. Another interesting question here is: on how many occasions are the majority of experts in any given field, wrong? I don't begin to know how to start assessing that. But there's a basic truth - which is that they are often wrong and in crucial areas - like politics, economics, investment, medicine etc etc. You guys don't seem to have understood one of the basic functions of Google, which is precisely to enable you to get a 2nd, 3rd etc opinion - and NOT have to rely on the experts! --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
--- John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There is no way to know if we are living in a nested simulation, or even in a single simulation. However there is a mathematical model: enumerate all Turing machines to find one that simulates a universe with intelligent life. What if that nest of simulations loop around somehow? What was that idea where there is this new advanced microscope that can see smaller than ever before and you look into it and see an image of yourself looking into it... The simulations can't loop because the simulator needs at least as much memory as the machine being simulated. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
--- Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt : a super-google will answer these questions by routing them to experts on these topics that will use natural language in their narrow domains of expertise. And Santa will answer every child's request, and we'll all live happily ever after. Amen. If you have a legitimate criticism of the technology or its funding plan, I would like to hear it. I understand there will be doubts about a system I expect to cost over $1 quadrillion and take 30 years to build. The protocol specifies natural language. This is not a hard problem in narrow domains. It dates back to the 1960's. Even in broad domains, most of the meaning of a message is independent of word order. Google works on this principle. But this is beside the point. The critical part of the design is an incentive for peers to provide useful services in exchange for resources. Peers that appear most intelligent and useful (and least annoying) are most likely to have their messages accepted and forwarded by other peers. People will develop domain experts and routers and put them on the net because they can make money through highly targeted advertising. Google would be a peer on the network with a high reputation. But Google controls only 0.1% of the computing power on the Internet. It will have to compete with a system that allows updates to be searched instantly, where queries are persistent, and where a query or message can initiate conversations with other people in real time. Which are these areas of science, technology, arts, or indeed any area of human activity, period, where the experts all agree and are NOT in deep conflict? And if that's too hard a question, which are the areas of AI or AGI, where the experts all agree and are not in deep conflict? I don't expect the experts to agree. It is better that they don't. There are hard problem remaining to be solved in language modeling, vision, and robotics. We need to try many approaches with powerful hardware. The network will decide who the winners are. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
If I understand what I have read in this thread so far, there is Ben on the one hand suggesting $10 mil. with 10-30 people in 3 to 10 years and on the other there is Matt saying $1quadrillion, using a billion brains in 30 years. I don't believe I have ever seen such a divergence of opinion before on what is required for a technological breakthrough (unless people are not being serious and I am being naive). I suppose this sort of non-consensus on such a scale could be part of investor reticence. Eric B. Ramsay Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- Mike Tintner wrote: Matt : a super-google will answer these questions by routing them to experts on these topics that will use natural language in their narrow domains of expertise. And Santa will answer every child's request, and we'll all live happily ever after. Amen. If you have a legitimate criticism of the technology or its funding plan, I would like to hear it. I understand there will be doubts about a system I expect to cost over $1 quadrillion and take 30 years to build. The protocol specifies natural language. This is not a hard problem in narrow domains. It dates back to the 1960's. Even in broad domains, most of the meaning of a message is independent of word order. Google works on this principle. But this is beside the point. The critical part of the design is an incentive for peers to provide useful services in exchange for resources. Peers that appear most intelligent and useful (and least annoying) are most likely to have their messages accepted and forwarded by other peers. People will develop domain experts and routers and put them on the net because they can make money through highly targeted advertising. Google would be a peer on the network with a high reputation. But Google controls only 0.1% of the computing power on the Internet. It will have to compete with a system that allows updates to be searched instantly, where queries are persistent, and where a query or message can initiate conversations with other people in real time. Which are these areas of science, technology, arts, or indeed any area of human activity, period, where the experts all agree and are NOT in deep conflict? And if that's too hard a question, which are the areas of AI or AGI, where the experts all agree and are not in deep conflict? I don't expect the experts to agree. It is better that they don't. There are hard problem remaining to be solved in language modeling, vision, and robotics. We need to try many approaches with powerful hardware. The network will decide who the winners are. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
Well, Matt and I are talking about building totally different kinds of systems... I believe the system he wants to build would cost a huge amount ... but I don't think it's the most interesting sorta thing to build ... A decent analogue would be spaceships. All sorts of designs exist, some orders of magnitude more complex and expensive than others. It's more practical to build the cheaper ones, esp. when they're also more powerful ;-p ben On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 10:56 PM, Eric B. Ramsay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If I understand what I have read in this thread so far, there is Ben on the one hand suggesting $10 mil. with 10-30 people in 3 to 10 years and on the other there is Matt saying $1quadrillion, using a billion brains in 30 years. I don't believe I have ever seen such a divergence of opinion before on what is required for a technological breakthrough (unless people are not being serious and I am being naive). I suppose this sort of non-consensus on such a scale could be part of investor reticence. Eric B. Ramsay Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- Mike Tintner wrote: Matt : a super-google will answer these questions by routing them to experts on these topics that will use natural language in their narrow domains of expertise. And Santa will answer every child's request, and we'll all live happily ever after. Amen. If you have a legitimate criticism of the technology or its funding plan, I would like to hear it. I understand there will be doubts about a system I expect to cost over $1 quadrillion and take 30 years to build. The protocol specifies natural language. This is not a hard problem in narrow domains. It dates back to the 1960's. Even in broad domains, most of the meaning of a message is independent of word order. Google works on this principle. But this is beside the point. The critical part of the design is an incentive for peers to provide useful services in exchange for resources. Peers that appear most intelligent and useful (and least annoying) are most likely to have their messages accepted and forwarded by other peers. People will develop domain experts and routers and put them on the net because they can make money through highly targeted advertising. Google would be a peer on the network with a high reputation. But Google controls only 0.1% of the computing power on the Internet. It will have to compete with a system that allows updates to be searched instantly, where queries are persistent, and where a query or message can initiate conversations with other people in real time. Which are these areas of science, technology, arts, or indeed any area of human activity, period, where the experts all agree and are NOT in deep conflict? And if that's too hard a question, which are the areas of AI or AGI, where the experts all agree and are not in deep conflict? I don't expect the experts to agree. It is better that they don't. There are hard problem remaining to be solved in language modeling, vision, and robotics. We need to try many approaches with powerful hardware. The network will decide who the winners are. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com singularity | Archives | Modify Your Subscription -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms. -- Henry Miller --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
--- Eric B. Ramsay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If I understand what I have read in this thread so far, there is Ben on the one hand suggesting $10 mil. with 10-30 people in 3 to 10 years and on the other there is Matt saying $1quadrillion, using a billion brains in 30 years. I don't believe I have ever seen such a divergence of opinion before on what is required for a technological breakthrough (unless people are not being serious and I am being naive). I suppose this sort of non-consensus on such a scale could be part of investor reticence. I am serious about the $1 quadrillion price tag, which is the low end of my estimate. The value of the Internet is now in the tens of trillions and doubling every few years. The value of AGI will be a very large fraction of the world economy, currently US $66 trillion per year and growing at 5% per year. Of course what I imagine emerging from the Internet bears little resemblance to Novamente. It is simply too big to invest in directly, but it will present many opportunities. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
Of course what I imagine emerging from the Internet bears little resemblance to Novamente. It is simply too big to invest in directly, but it will present many opportunities. But the emergence of superhuman AGI's like a Novamente may eventually become, will both dramatically alter the nature of, and dramatically reduce the cost of, global brains such as you envision... ben g --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
Sure, but Matt is also suggesting that his path is the most viable and so from the point of view of an investor, he/she is faced with very divergent opinions on the type of resources needed to get to the AGI expeditiously. It's far easier to understand wide price swings in a spaceship to get from here to Mars (or wherever) depending on how extravagantly you want to travel but if you define the problem as just get there, I am confident the costs will not be different by a factor of 100 million. Eric B. Ramsay Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, Matt and I are talking about building totally different kinds of systems... I believe the system he wants to build would cost a huge amount ... but I don't think it's the most interesting sorta thing to build ... A decent analogue would be spaceships. All sorts of designs exist, some orders of magnitude more complex and expensive than others. It's more practical to build the cheaper ones, esp. when they're also more powerful ;-p ben On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 10:56 PM, Eric B. Ramsay wrote: If I understand what I have read in this thread so far, there is Ben on the one hand suggesting $10 mil. with 10-30 people in 3 to 10 years and on the other there is Matt saying $1quadrillion, using a billion brains in 30 years. I don't believe I have ever seen such a divergence of opinion before on what is required for a technological breakthrough (unless people are not being serious and I am being naive). I suppose this sort of non-consensus on such a scale could be part of investor reticence. Eric B. Ramsay Matt Mahoney wrote: --- Mike Tintner wrote: Matt : a super-google will answer these questions by routing them to experts on these topics that will use natural language in their narrow domains of expertise. And Santa will answer every child's request, and we'll all live happily ever after. Amen. If you have a legitimate criticism of the technology or its funding plan, I would like to hear it. I understand there will be doubts about a system I expect to cost over $1 quadrillion and take 30 years to build. The protocol specifies natural language. This is not a hard problem in narrow domains. It dates back to the 1960's. Even in broad domains, most of the meaning of a message is independent of word order. Google works on this principle. But this is beside the point. The critical part of the design is an incentive for peers to provide useful services in exchange for resources. Peers that appear most intelligent and useful (and least annoying) are most likely to have their messages accepted and forwarded by other peers. People will develop domain experts and routers and put them on the net because they can make money through highly targeted advertising. Google would be a peer on the network with a high reputation. But Google controls only 0.1% of the computing power on the Internet. It will have to compete with a system that allows updates to be searched instantly, where queries are persistent, and where a query or message can initiate conversations with other people in real time. Which are these areas of science, technology, arts, or indeed any area of human activity, period, where the experts all agree and are NOT in deep conflict? And if that's too hard a question, which are the areas of AI or AGI, where the experts all agree and are not in deep conflict? I don't expect the experts to agree. It is better that they don't. There are hard problem remaining to be solved in language modeling, vision, and robotics. We need to try many approaches with powerful hardware. The network will decide who the winners are. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com singularity | Archives | Modify Your Subscription -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms. -- Henry Miller --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI)
As described in my Texai roadmap, it might be possible to achieve AGI using primarily volunteer, no-cost human labor. A precondition is a human/computer interface that can intelligently acquire knowledge and skills, and is compelling enough for early adopters to use it. If the profit motive is removed (e.g. open source / open content) then on one hand volunteerism is encouraged, and on the other hand barriers to widespread utilitization are reduced (e.g. like Wikipedia). For me the tipping point will be the demonstration of an English dialog system that intelligent seeks to acquire more knowledge and skills, and is freely deployable in a distributed fashion to a multitude of peer-users as a virtual applicance. I believe, without any supporting evidence beyond my own limited experience in our field, that only a small kernel of hand-written code is required to set this off. What that code might be is the question! For WIkipedia, it is MediaWiki. -Steve Stephen L. Reed Artificial Intelligence Researcher http://texai.org/blog http://texai.org 3008 Oak Crest Ave. Austin, Texas, USA 78704 512.791.7860 - Original Message From: Eric B. Ramsay [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: singularity@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, April 8, 2008 9:56:58 PM Subject: Re: Promoting AGI (RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI) If I understand what I have read in this thread so far, there is Ben on the one hand suggesting $10 mil. with 10-30 people in 3 to 10 years and on the other there is Matt saying $1quadrillion, using a billion brains in 30 years. I don't believe I have ever seen such a divergence of opinion before on what is required for a technological breakthrough (unless people are not being serious and I am being naive). I suppose this sort of non-consensus on such a scale could be part of investor reticence. Eric B. Ramsay __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
J.A.R. Like I stated at the beginning, *most* models are at least theoretically valid. 1. VALID MODELS/IDEAS. I am not aware of ONE model that has one valid or even interesting idea about how to produce general intelligence - how to get an agent to independently learn, or solve problems in, a new domain - to cross domains. Which ones which ideas are you thinking of? 1a. I am only aware of ONE thinker/systembuilder who has even ADDRESSED the problem in any shape or form directly - IMO poorly - Baum in a recent paper, in wh. he defines general intelligence practically as moving independently from one level of a computer game to another. But at least he made an attempt to address the problem. (The recent Swedish ACS robotic effort talks about the problem, but the robot only appears to tackle one task, rather than moving on from one to another). Are you aware of any others? 2. FLEDGED INVENTORS/ INNOVATORS Are there any people in this discussion/group who have any proven record of inventing or innovating - e.g. creating a marketed new kind of program? Clearly there are many with an extensive professional background, but that's different. IMO while these groups are v. constructive, helpful friendly, they strikingly lack a true CREATIVE culture. Witness the number of people who insist that no great/revolutionary, creative ideas are needed for AGI. (In fact, I can't think of any AGI leader who doesn't take this position). You guys want to be Frankenstein's - to create life - one of the greatest creative challenges of all time - a task that IMO requires at least a few Da Vinci's/Turing's an army of Michelangelo's/Edison's, - but according to you guys doesn't even require one big idea! (Does Steve Grand BTW take this position?) That truly makes me weep want to start pounding my head on the table. But it might explain why would-be investors aren't excited? I would strongly urge people to associate more with - and/or seek the opinions here of - fledged creatives like Hawkins. --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
J. Andrew Rogers wrote: On Apr 6, 2008, at 6:55 PM, Ben Goertzel wrote: I wonder why some people think there is one true path to AGI ... I strongly suspect there are many... Like I stated at the beginning, *most* models are at least theoretically valid. Of course, tractable engineering of said models is another issue. :-) Engineering tractability in the context of computer science and software engineering is almost purely an applied mathematics effort to the extent there is any theory to it, and science has a very limited capacity to inform it. If someone could describe, specifically, how to science is going to inform this process given the existing body of theoretical work, I would have no problem with the notion. My objections were pragmatic. Now hold on just a minute. Yesterday you directed the following accusation at me: [Your assertion] Artificial Intelligence research does not have a credible science behind it ... [leads] me to believe that you either are ignorant of relevant literature (possible) or you do not understand all the relevant literature and simply assume it is not important. You *vilified* the claim that I made, and implied that I could only say such a thing out of ignorance, so I challenged you to explain what exactly was the science behind artificial intelligence. But instead of backing up your remarks, you make no response at all to the challenge, and then, in the comments to Ben above, you hint that you *agree* that there is no science behind AI (... science has a very limited capacity to inform it), it is just that you think there should not be, or does not need to be, any science behind it. So let me summarize: 1) I make a particular claim. 2) You state that I can only say such a thing if I am ignorant. 3) You refuse to provide any arguments against the claim. 4) You then tacitly agree with the original claim. Oh, and by the way, a small point of logic. If someone makes a claim that There is no science behind artificial intelligence, this is a claim about the *nonexistence* of something, so you cannot demand that the person produce evidence to support the nonexistence claim. The onus is entirely on you to provide evidence that there is a science behind AI, if you believe that there is, not on me to demonstrate that there is none. Richard Loosemore --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re : [singularity] Vista/AGI
bonjour à tous question:is there a science behind AGI? my feeling and thinking are self-organisation,holism,contextual-syntatic-semantic and finally base on topos response:our univers(multi,...) is meta-meta-meta-mathematical cordialement votre bruno - Message d'origine De : Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] À : singularity@v2.listbox.com Envoyé le : Lundi, 7 Avril 2008, 16h26mn 01s Objet : Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI J. Andrew Rogers wrote: On Apr 6, 2008, at 6:55 PM, Ben Goertzel wrote: I wonder why some people think there is one true path to AGI ... I strongly suspect there are many... Like I stated at the beginning, *most* models are at least theoretically valid. Of course, tractable engineering of said models is another issue. :-) Engineering tractability in the context of computer science and software engineering is almost purely an applied mathematics effort to the extent there is any theory to it, and science has a very limited capacity to inform it. If someone could describe, specifically, how to science is going to inform this process given the existing body of theoretical work, I would have no problem with the notion. My objections were pragmatic. Now hold on just a minute. Yesterday you directed the following accusation at me: [Your assertion] Artificial Intelligence research does not have a credible science behind it ... [leads] me to believe that you either are ignorant of relevant literature (possible) or you do not understand all the relevant literature and simply assume it is not important. You *vilified* the claim that I made, and implied that I could only say such a thing out of ignorance, so I challenged you to explain what exactly was the science behind artificial intelligence. But instead of backing up your remarks, you make no response at all to the challenge, and then, in the comments to Ben above, you hint that you *agree* that there is no science behind AI (... science has a very limited capacity to inform it), it is just that you think there should not be, or does not need to be, any science behind it. So let me summarize: 1) I make a particular claim. 2) You state that I can only say such a thing if I am ignorant. 3) You refuse to provide any arguments against the claim. 4) You then tacitly agree with the original claim. Oh, and by the way, a small point of logic. If someone makes a claim that There is no science behind artificial intelligence, this is a claim about the *nonexistence* of something, so you cannot demand that the person produce evidence to support the nonexistence claim. The onus is entirely on you to provide evidence that there is a science behind AI, if you believe that there is, not on me to demonstrate that there is none. Richard Loosemore --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com _ Envoyez avec Yahoo! Mail. Une boite mail plus intelligente http://mail.yahoo.fr --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Just a thought, maybe there are some commonalities across AGI designs where components could be built at a lower cost. An investor invests in the company that builds component x that is used by multiple AGI projects. Then you have your little AGI ecosystem of companies all competing yet cooperating. After all, we need to get the Singularity going ASAP so that we can upload before inevitable biologic death? I prefer not to become nano-dust I'd rather keep this show a rockin' capiche? So it's like this - need standards. Somebody go bust out an RFC. Or is there work done on this already like is there a CogML? I don't know if the Semantic Web is going to cut the mustard... and the name Semantic Web just doesn't have that ring to it. Kinda reminds me of the MBone - names really do matter. Then who's the numnutz that came up with Web 3 dot oh geezss! John -Original Message- From: Matt Mahoney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 7:07 PM To: singularity@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI Perhaps the difficulty in finding investors in AGI is that among people most familiar with the technology (the people on this list and the AGI list), everyone has a different idea on how to solve the problem. Why would I invest in someone else's idea when clearly my idea is better? -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Arguably many of the problems of Vista including its legendary slippages were the direct result of having thousands of merely human programmers involved. That complex monkey interaction is enough to kill almost anything interesting. shudder - samantha Panu Horsmalahti wrote: Just because it takes thousands of programmers to create something as complex as Vista, does *not* mean that thousands of programmers are required to build an AGI, since one property of AGI is/can be that it will learn most of its complexity using algorithms programmed into it. *singularity* | Archives http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ | Modify http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Your Subscription [Powered by Listbox] http://www.listbox.com --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Much of this discussion is very abstract, which is I guess how you think about these issues when you don't have a specific AGI design in mind. My view is a little different. If the Novamente design is basically correct, there's no way it can possibly take thousands or hundreds of programmers to implement it. The most I can imagine throwing at it would be a couple dozen, and I think 10-20 is the right number. So if the Novamente design is basically correct, it's would take a team of 10-20 programmers a period of 3-10 years to get to human-level AGI. Sadly, we do not have 10-20 dedicated programmers working on Novamente (or associated OpenCog) AGI right now, but rather fractions of various peoples' time (as Novamente LLC is working mainly on various commercial projects that pay our salaries). So my point is not to make a projection regarding our progress (that depends too much on funding levels), just to address this issue of ideal team size that has come up yet again... Even if my timing estimates are optimistic and it were to take 15 years, even so, a team of thousands isn't gonna help things any. If I had a billion dollars and the passion to use it to advance AGI, I would throw amounts between $1M and $50M at various specific projects, I wouldn't try to make one monolithic project. This is based on my bias that AGI is best approached, at the current time, by focusing on software not specialized hardware. One of the things I like about AGI is that a single individual or a small team CAN just do it without need for massive capital investment in physical infrastructure. It's tempting to get into specialized hardware for AGI, and we may want to at some point, but I think it makes sense to defer that until we have a very clear idea of exactly what AGI design needs the hardware and strong prototype results of some sort indicating why this AGI design will work on this hardware. My suspicion is that we can get to human-level AGI without any special hardware, though special hardware will certainly be able to accelerate things after that. -- Ben G On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 7:22 AM, Samantha Atkins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Arguably many of the problems of Vista including its legendary slippages were the direct result of having thousands of merely human programmers involved. That complex monkey interaction is enough to kill almost anything interesting. shudder - samantha Panu Horsmalahti wrote: Just because it takes thousands of programmers to create something as complex as Vista, does *not* mean that thousands of programmers are required to build an AGI, since one property of AGI is/can be that it will learn most of its complexity using algorithms programmed into it. *singularity* | Archives http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ | Modify http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Your Subscription [Powered by Listbox] http://www.listbox.com --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms. -- Henry Miller --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
If the concept behind Novamente is truly compelling enough, it should be no problem to make a successful pitch. Eric B. Ramsay Gee ... you mean, I could pitch the idea of funding Novamente to people with money?? I never thought of that!! Thanks for the advice ;-pp Evidently, the concept behind Novamente is not truly compelling enough to the casual observer, as we have failed to attract big-bucks backers so far... Many folks we've talked to are interested in what we're doing but it seems we'll have to get further toward the end goal in order to overcome their AGI skepticism... Part of the issue is that the concepts underlying NM are both complex and subtle, not lending themselves all that well to elevator pitch treatment ... or even PPT summary treatment (though there are summaries in both PPT and conference-paper form). If you think that's a mark against NM, consider this: What's your elevator-pitch description of how the human brain works? How about the human body? Businesspeople favor the simplistic, yet the engineering of complex cognitive systems doesn't match well with this bias Please note that many successful inventors in history have had huge trouble getting financial backing, although in hindsight we find their ideas truly compelling. (And, many failed inventors with terrible ideas have also had huge trouble getting financial backing...) -- Ben G --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Eric B. Ramsay wrote: If the Novamente design is able to produce an AGI with only 10-20 programmers in 3 to 10 years at a cost of under $10 million, then this represents such a paltry expense to some companies (Google for example) that it would seem to me that the thing to do is share the design with them and go for it (Google could RD this with no impact to their shareholders even if it fails). The potential of an AGI is so enormous that the cost (risk)/benefit ratio swamps anything Google (or others) could possibly be working on. If the concept behind Novamente is truly compelling enough it should be no problem to make a successful pitch. Eric B. Ramsay [WARNING! Controversial comments.] When you say If the concept behind Novamente is truly compelling enough, this is the point at which your suggestion hits a brick wall. What could be compelling about a project? (Novamente or any other). Artificial Intelligence is not a field that rests on a firm theoretical basis, because there is no science that says this design should produce an intelligent machine because intelligence is KNOWN to be x and y and z, and this design unambiguously will produce something that satisfies x and y and z. Every single AGI design in existence is a Suck It And See design. We will know if the design is correct if it is built and it works. Before that, the best that any outside investor can do is use their gut instinct to decide whether they think that it will work. Now, my own argument to investors is that the only situation in which we can do better than say My gut instinct says that my design will work is when we do actually base our work on a foundation that gives objective reasons for believing in it. And the only situation that I know of that allows that kind of objective measure is by taking the design of a known intelligent system (the human cognitive system) and staying as close to it as possible. That is precisely what I am trying to do, and I know of no other project that is trying to do that (including the neural emulation projects like Blue Brain, which are not pitched at the cognitive level and therefore have many handicaps). I have other, much more compelling reasons for staying close to human cognition (namely the complex systems problem and the problem of guaranteeing friendliness), but this objective-validation factor is one of the most important. My pleas that more people do what I am doing fall on deaf ears, unfortunately, because the AI community is heavily biassed against the messy empiricism of psychology. Interesting situation: the personal psychology of AI researchers may be what is keeping the field in Dead Stop mode. Richard Loosemore --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On Apr 6, 2008, at 8:38 AM, Eric B. Ramsay wrote: If the Novamente design is able to produce an AGI with only 10-20 programmers in 3 to 10 years at a cost of under $10 million, then this represents such a paltry expense to some companies (Google for example) that it would seem to me that the thing to do is share the design with them and go for it (Google could RD this with no impact to their shareholders even if it fails). The potential of an AGI is so enormous that the cost (risk)/benefit ratio swamps anything Google (or others) could possibly be working on. You just used the Pascal's Wager fallacy in the context of AGI, congratulations. The cost of investing in AGI is well above zero, investment resources are most assuredly finite, and the risk of investing in a failure is extremely high -- and many billions of dollars have already been invested despite this. Or to look at it another way, you are also using a variant of the infamous (and also fallacious) 5% market share argument. If the concept behind Novamente is truly compelling enough, it should be no problem to make a successful pitch. The above statement leads me to believe you have little experience with funding speculative technology ventures of the scale being discussed here. The dynamic is considerably, and rightly, more complicated than this. A truly compelling concept and a dollar will buy you a cup of coffee. J. Andrew Rogers --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 12:21 PM, Eric B. Ramsay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben: I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that AGI today in 2008 is in the air again after 50 years. Yes You are not trying to present a completely novel and unheard of idea and with today's crowd of sophisticated angel investors I am surprised that no one bites given the modest sums involved. BTW I was not trying to give needless advice, just finishing my thoughts. I already took it as a given that you look for funding. I am trying to understand why no one bites. It's not as if there are a hundred different AGI efforts out there to choose from. I don't fully understand it myself, but it's a fact. To be clear: I understand why VC's and big companies don't want to fund NM. VC's are in a different sort of business ... and big companies are either focused on the short term, or else have their own research groups who don't want a bunch of upstart outsiders to get their research $$ ... But what vexes me a bit is that none of the many wealthy futurists out there have been interested in funding NM extensively, either on an angel investment basis, or on a pure nonprofit donation basis (and we have considered doing NM as a nonprofit before, though right now that's not our focus as the virtual-pets biz opp seems so grand...) I know personally (and have met with) a number of folks who -- could invest a couple million $$ in NM without it impacting their lives at all -- are deeply into the Singularity and AGI and related concepts -- appear to personally like and respect me and other in the NM team But, after spending about 1.5 years courting these sorts of folks, Bruce and I largely gave up and decided to focus on other avenues. I have some psychocultural theories as to why things are this way, but nothing too solid... I am surprised that the reason may only be that the project isn't far enough along (too immature) given the historical precedents of what investors have ponied up money for before. That's surely part of it ... but investors have put big $$ into much LESS mature projects in areas such as nanotech and quantum computing. AGI arouses an irrational amount of skepticism, compared to these other futurist technologies, it seems to me. I suppose this partly is because there have been more false starts toward AI in the past. -- Ben --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On Apr 6, 2008, at 8:46 AM, Ben Goertzel wrote: Part of the issue is that the concepts underlying NM are both complex and subtle, not lending themselves all that well to elevator pitch treatment ... or even PPT summary treatment (though there are summaries in both PPT and conference-paper form). If you think that's a mark against NM, consider this: What's your elevator-pitch description of how the human brain works? How about the human body? Businesspeople favor the simplistic, yet the engineering of complex cognitive systems doesn't match well with this bias Yes, and this happens far more often than just with AGI. Many venture concepts, particularly speculative technology ventures, are extremely difficult to package into an elevator pitch because the minimum amount of material required for even the above average investor exceeds the bandwidth of an elevator pitch or slide deck. In my experience, this is best framed as a problem of education. More education of the investor required before the pitch indicates an exponential drop-off in the probability of being funded. One of the reasons this is true is that not only does the person you are dealing with need to be educated, they have to be able to successfully educate *their* associates before investment is an option as a practical matter. If the education required is complex and nuanced, this second stage will almost certainly be a failure. Ben already knows this, but I will elaborate for the peanut gallery unfamiliar with venture finance. The trick to dealing with this problem is to repackage the venture concept solely for the purpose of minimizing the amount of education required to raise money, which in the case of AGI means that you are selling a graspable product far removed from AGI per se. The danger of this is that you end up going down a road where there is no AGI left in the venture. Investors need to be able to wrap their heads around the venture (any venture), which given their limited resources means that the person with the idea needs to frame the desired result in terms that require the very minimum of education on the part of the investor to be compelling. People invest in products, not ideas, and the products must be concrete and obvious. For something like AGI, packaging the technology into a fundable venture is an extraordinarily difficult task. I would go as far as to say that funding speculative technology ventures is largely a problem of eliminating the apparent amount of education required so that it no longer appears particularly speculative but instead obvious when no concrete example exists. Successfully doing this is far, far more difficult than I suspect most people who have not tried believe. J. Andrew Rogers --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On Apr 6, 2008, at 9:38 AM, Ben Goertzel wrote: That's surely part of it ... but investors have put big $$ into much LESS mature projects in areas such as nanotech and quantum computing. This is because nanotech and quantum computing can be readily and easily packaged as straightforward physical machinery technology, which a lot of people can readily conceptualize even if they do not actually understand it. AGI is not a physical touchable technology in the same sense (or even software sense), which is further aggravated by the many irrational memes of woo-ness that surround the idea of consciousness, intelligence, spirituality that the vast majority of investors uncritically subscribe to. Indeed, many view the poor track record of AI as validation of their nutty beliefs. There have been some technically ridiculous AI projects that got substantial funding because they appealed to the biases of the investors. If AGI was merely a function of hardware design, I suspect it would be much easier to sell because many investors would much more easily delude themselves into thinking they understand it, or at least conceptualize it in a way that comports with reality. Over the years I have slowly come to believe that the long track record of failure in AI is a minor contributor to the relative dearth of funding for bold AI ventures -- the problem has never been a lack of people willing to take a risk per se. J. Andrew Rogers --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On Apr 6, 2008, at 8:55 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: What could be compelling about a project? (Novamente or any other). Artificial Intelligence is not a field that rests on a firm theoretical basis, because there is no science that says this design should produce an intelligent machine because intelligence is KNOWN to be x and y and z, and this design unambiguously will produce something that satisfies x and y and z. Every single AGI design in existence is a Suck It And See design. We will know if the design is correct if it is built and it works. Before that, the best that any outside investor can do is use their gut instinct to decide whether they think that it will work. Even if every single AGI design in existence is fundamentally broken (and I would argue that a fair amount of AGI design is theoretically correct and merely unavoidably intractable), this is a false characterization. And at a minimum, it should be no mathematics rather than no science. Mathematical proof of validity of a new technology is largely superfluous with respect to whether or not a venture gets funded. Investors are not mathematicians, at least not in the sense that mathematical certainty of the correctness of the model would be compelling. If they trust the person enough to invest in them, they will generally trust that the esoteric mathematics behind the venture are correct as well. No one tries to actually understand the mathematics even if though they will give them a cursory glance -- that is your job. Having had to sell breakthroughs in theoretical computer science before (unrelated to AGI), I would make the observation that investors in speculative technology do not really put much weight on what you know about the technology. After all, who are they going to ask if you are the presumptive leading authority in that field? They will verify that the current limitations you claim to be addressing exist and will want concise qualitative answers as to how these are being addressed that comport with their model of reality, but no one is going to dig through the mathematics and derive the result for themselves. Or at least, I am not familiar with cases that worked differently than this. The real problem is that most AGI designers cannot answer these basic questions in a satisfactory manner, which may or may not reflect what they know. J. Andrew Rogers --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
J. Andrew Rogers wrote: On Apr 6, 2008, at 8:55 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: What could be compelling about a project? (Novamente or any other). Artificial Intelligence is not a field that rests on a firm theoretical basis, because there is no science that says this design should produce an intelligent machine because intelligence is KNOWN to be x and y and z, and this design unambiguously will produce something that satisfies x and y and z. Every single AGI design in existence is a Suck It And See design. We will know if the design is correct if it is built and it works. Before that, the best that any outside investor can do is use their gut instinct to decide whether they think that it will work. Even if every single AGI design in existence is fundamentally broken (and I would argue that a fair amount of AGI design is theoretically correct and merely unavoidably intractable), this is a false characterization. And at a minimum, it should be no mathematics rather than no science. Mathematical proof of validity of a new technology is largely superfluous with respect to whether or not a venture gets funded. Investors are not mathematicians, at least not in the sense that mathematical certainty of the correctness of the model would be compelling. If they trust the person enough to invest in them, they will generally trust that the esoteric mathematics behind the venture are correct as well. No one tries to actually understand the mathematics even if though they will give them a cursory glance -- that is your job. Having had to sell breakthroughs in theoretical computer science before (unrelated to AGI), I would make the observation that investors in speculative technology do not really put much weight on what you know about the technology. After all, who are they going to ask if you are the presumptive leading authority in that field? They will verify that the current limitations you claim to be addressing exist and will want concise qualitative answers as to how these are being addressed that comport with their model of reality, but no one is going to dig through the mathematics and derive the result for themselves. Or at least, I am not familiar with cases that worked differently than this. The real problem is that most AGI designers cannot answer these basic questions in a satisfactory manner, which may or may not reflect what they know. You are addressing (interesting and valid) issues that lie well above the level at which I was making my argument, so unfortnately they miss the point. I was arguing that whenever a project claims to be doing engineering there is always a background reference that is some kind of science or mathematics or prescription that justifies what the project is trying to achieve: 1) Want to build a system to manage the baggage handling in a large airport? Background prescription = a set of requirements that the flow of baggage should satisfy. 2) Want to build an aircraft wing? Background science = the physics of air flow first, along with specific criteria that must be satisfied. 3) Want to send people on an optimal trip around a set of cities? Background mathematics = a precise statement of the travelling salesman problem. No matter how many other cases you care to list, there is always some credible science or mathematics or common sense prescription lying at the back of the engineering project. Here, for contrast, is an example of an engineering project behind which there was NO credible science or mathematics or prescription: 4*) Find an alchemical process that will lead to the philosophers' stone. Alchemists knew what they wanted - kind of - but there was no credible science behind what they did. They were just hacking. Artificial Intelligence research does not have a credible science behind it. There is no clear definition of what intelligence is, there is only the living example of the human mind that tells us that some things are intelligent. This is not about mathematical proof, it is about having a credible, accepted framework that allows us to say that we have already come to an agreement that intelligence is X, and so, starting from that position we are able to do some engineering to build a system that satisfies the criteria inherent in X, so we can build an intellgence. Instead what we have are AI researchers who have gut instincts about what intelligence is, and from that gut instinct they proceed to hack. They are, in short, alchemists. And in case you are tempted to do what (e.g.) Russell and Norvig do in their textbook, and claim that the Rational Agents framework plus logical reasoning is the scientific framework on which an idealized intelligent system can be designed, I should point out that this concept is completely rejected by most cognitive psychologists: they point out that the intelligence to be found in the only example of an intelligent
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On Apr 6, 2008, at 11:58 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: Artificial Intelligence research does not have a credible science behind it. There is no clear definition of what intelligence is, there is only the living example of the human mind that tells us that some things are intelligent. The fact that the vast majority of AGI theory is pulled out of /dev/ ass notwithstanding, your above characterization would appear to reflect your limitations which you have chosen to project onto the broader field of AGI research. Just because most AI researchers are misguided fools and you do not fully understand all the relevant theory does not imply that this is a universal (even if it were). This is not about mathematical proof, it is about having a credible, accepted framework that allows us to say that we have already come to an agreement that intelligence is X, and so, starting from that position we are able to do some engineering to build a system that satisfies the criteria inherent in X, so we can build an intellgence. I do not need anyone's agreement to prove that system Y will have property X, nor do I have to accommodate pet theories to do so. AGI is mathematics, not science. Plenty of people can agree on what X is and are satisfied with the rigor of whatever derivations were required. There are even multiple X out there depending on the criteria you are looking to satisfy -- the label of AI is immaterial. What seems to have escaped you is that there is nothing about an agreement on X that prescribes a real-world engineering design. We have many examples of tightly defined Xs in theory that took many decades of RD to reduce to practice or which in some cases have never been reduced to real-world practice even though we can very strictly characterize them in the mathematical abstract. There are many AI researchers who could be accurately described as having no rigorous framework or foundation for their implementation work, but conflating this group with those stuck solving the implementation theory problems of a well-specified X is a category error. There are two unrelated difficult problems in AGI: choosing a rigorous X with satisfactory theoretical properties and designing a real-world system implementation that expresses X with satisfactory properties. There was a time when most credible AGI research was stuck working on the former, but today an argument could be made that most credible AGI research is stuck working on the latter. I would question the credibility of opinions offered by people who cannot discern the difference. And in case you are tempted to do what (e.g.) Russell and Norvig do in their textbook... I'm not interested in lame classical AI, so this is essentially a strawman. To the extent I am personally in a theory camp, I have been in the broader algorithmic information theory camp since before it was on anyone's radar. It is not that these investors understand the abstract ideas I just described, it is that they have a gut feel for the rate of progress and the signs of progress and the type of talk that they should be encountering if AGI had mature science behind it. Instead, what they get is a feeling from AGI researchers that each one is doing the following: 1) Resorting to a bottom line that amounts to I have a really good personal feeling that my project really will get there, and 2) Examples of progress that look like an attempt to dress a doughnut up as a wedding cake. Sure, but what does this have to do with the topic at hand? The problem is that investors lack any ability to discern a doughnut from a wedding cake. J. Andrew Rogers --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 4:42 PM, Derek Zahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As to why sympathetic rich people are apparently not willing to toss this consideration aside, it doesn't make much sense to me unless they simply don't think specific approaches are feasible -- although there's also a disconnect between sympathies and checkbooks, which is why we have cliche phrases like put your money where your mouth is and talk is cheap. Sympathetic rich people often want to keep their money for the same reasons that sympathetic poor people want to keep their money, and sympathetic G7 middle-class people (who are rich compared with the median person in the world, and are filthy rich compared with the average person who's lived throughout history) want to keep their money. There's almost always someone richer and more successful than you who you can use as an excuse to shirk, if you're the shirking type. As to why many people prefer saving whales to fighting malaria, and fighting malaria to building an FAI, well, that's more complicated, and any answer I give would be long and would almost certainly be wrong in some minor detail. -Rolf --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
J. Andrew Rogers wrote: On Apr 6, 2008, at 11:58 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: Artificial Intelligence research does not have a credible science behind it. There is no clear definition of what intelligence is, there is only the living example of the human mind that tells us that some things are intelligent. The fact that the vast majority of AGI theory is pulled out of /dev/ass notwithstanding, your above characterization would appear to reflect your limitations which you have chosen to project onto the broader field of AGI research. Just because most AI researchers are misguided fools and you do not fully understand all the relevant theory does not imply that this is a universal (even if it were). Ad hominem. Shameful. This is not about mathematical proof, it is about having a credible, accepted framework that allows us to say that we have already come to an agreement that intelligence is X, and so, starting from that position we are able to do some engineering to build a system that satisfies the criteria inherent in X, so we can build an intellgence. I do not need anyone's agreement to prove that system Y will have property X, nor do I have to accommodate pet theories to do so. AGI is mathematics, not science. AGI *is* mathematics? Oh dear. I'm sorry, but if you can make a statement such as this, and if you are already starting to reply to points of debate by resorting to ad hominems, then it would be a waste of my time to engage. I will just note that if this point of view is at all widespread - if there really are large numbers of people who agree that AGI is mathematics, not science - then this is a perfect illustration of just why no progress is being made in the field. Richard Loosemore Plenty of people can agree on what X is and are satisfied with the rigor of whatever derivations were required. There are even multiple X out there depending on the criteria you are looking to satisfy -- the label of AI is immaterial. What seems to have escaped you is that there is nothing about an agreement on X that prescribes a real-world engineering design. We have many examples of tightly defined Xs in theory that took many decades of RD to reduce to practice or which in some cases have never been reduced to real-world practice even though we can very strictly characterize them in the mathematical abstract. There are many AI researchers who could be accurately described as having no rigorous framework or foundation for their implementation work, but conflating this group with those stuck solving the implementation theory problems of a well-specified X is a category error. There are two unrelated difficult problems in AGI: choosing a rigorous X with satisfactory theoretical properties and designing a real-world system implementation that expresses X with satisfactory properties. There was a time when most credible AGI research was stuck working on the former, but today an argument could be made that most credible AGI research is stuck working on the latter. I would question the credibility of opinions offered by people who cannot discern the difference. And in case you are tempted to do what (e.g.) Russell and Norvig do in their textbook... I'm not interested in lame classical AI, so this is essentially a strawman. To the extent I am personally in a theory camp, I have been in the broader algorithmic information theory camp since before it was on anyone's radar. It is not that these investors understand the abstract ideas I just described, it is that they have a gut feel for the rate of progress and the signs of progress and the type of talk that they should be encountering if AGI had mature science behind it. Instead, what they get is a feeling from AGI researchers that each one is doing the following: 1) Resorting to a bottom line that amounts to I have a really good personal feeling that my project really will get there, and 2) Examples of progress that look like an attempt to dress a doughnut up as a wedding cake. Sure, but what does this have to do with the topic at hand? The problem is that investors lack any ability to discern a doughnut from a wedding cake. J. Andrew Rogers --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 4:42 PM, Derek Zahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would think an investor would want a believable specific answer to the following question: When and how will I get my money back? It can be uncertain (risk is part of the game), but you can't just wave your hands around on that point. This is not the problem ... regarding Novamente, we have an extremely specific business plan and details regarding how we would provide return on investment. The problem is that investors are generally pretty unwilling to eat perceived technology risk. Exceptions arise all the time, and AGI has not yet been one. It is an illusion that VC or angel investors are fond of risk ... actually they are quite risk-averse in nearly all cases... -- Ben G --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On Apr 6, 2008, at 4:46 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: J. Andrew Rogers wrote: The fact that the vast majority of AGI theory is pulled out of /dev/ ass notwithstanding, your above characterization would appear to reflect your limitations which you have chosen to project onto the broader field of AGI research. Just because most AI researchers are misguided fools and you do not fully understand all the relevant theory does not imply that this is a universal (even if it were). Ad hominem. Shameful. Ad hominem? Well, of sorts I suppose, but in this case it is the substance of the argument so it is a reasonable device. I think I have met more AI cranks with hare-brained pet obsessions with respect to the topic or academics that are beating a horse that died thirty years ago than AI researchers that are actually keeping current with the subject matter. Pointing out the embarrassing foolishness of the vast number of those that claim to be AI researchers and how it colors the credibility of the entire field is germane to the discussion. As for you specifically, assertions like Artificial Intelligence research does not have a credible science behind it in the absence of substantive support (now or in the past) can only lead me to believe that you either are ignorant of relevant literature (possible) or you do not understand all the relevant literature and simply assume it is not important. As far as I have ever been able to tell, theoretical psychology re-heats a very old idea while essentially ignoring or dismissing out of hand more recent literature that could provide considerable context when (re-)evaluating the notion. This is a fine example of part of the problem we are talking about. AGI *is* mathematics? Yes, applied mathematics. Is there some other kind of non- computational AI? The mathematical nature of the problem does not disappear when you wrap it in fuzzy abstractions it just gets, well, fuzzy. At best the science can inform your mathematical model, but in this case the relevant mathematics is ahead of the science for most purposes and the relevant science is largely working out the specific badly implemented wetware mapping to said mathematics. I'm sorry, but if you can make a statement such as this, and if you are already starting to reply to points of debate by resorting to ad hominems, then it would be a waste of my time to engage. Probably a waste of my time as well if you think this is primarily a science problem in the absence of a discernible reason to characterize it as such. I will just note that if this point of view is at all widespread - if there really are large numbers of people who agree that AGI is mathematics, not science - then this is a perfect illustration of just why no progress is being made in the field. Assertions do not manufacture fact. J. Andrew Rogers --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Funny dispute ... is AGI about mathematics or science I would guess there are some approaches to AGI that are only minimally mathematical in their design concepts (though of course math could be used to explain their behavior) Then there are some approaches, like Novamente, that mix mathematics with less rigorous ideas in an integrative design... And then there are more purely mathematical approaches -- I haven't seen any that are well enough fleshed and constitute pragmatic AGI designs... but I can't deny the possibility I wonder why some people think there is one true path to AGI ... I strongly suspect there are many... -- Ben On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 9:16 PM, J. Andrew Rogers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Apr 6, 2008, at 4:46 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: J. Andrew Rogers wrote: The fact that the vast majority of AGI theory is pulled out of /dev/ass notwithstanding, your above characterization would appear to reflect your limitations which you have chosen to project onto the broader field of AGI research. Just because most AI researchers are misguided fools and you do not fully understand all the relevant theory does not imply that this is a universal (even if it were). Ad hominem. Shameful. Ad hominem? Well, of sorts I suppose, but in this case it is the substance of the argument so it is a reasonable device. I think I have met more AI cranks with hare-brained pet obsessions with respect to the topic or academics that are beating a horse that died thirty years ago than AI researchers that are actually keeping current with the subject matter. Pointing out the embarrassing foolishness of the vast number of those that claim to be AI researchers and how it colors the credibility of the entire field is germane to the discussion. As for you specifically, assertions like Artificial Intelligence research does not have a credible science behind it in the absence of substantive support (now or in the past) can only lead me to believe that you either are ignorant of relevant literature (possible) or you do not understand all the relevant literature and simply assume it is not important. As far as I have ever been able to tell, theoretical psychology re-heats a very old idea while essentially ignoring or dismissing out of hand more recent literature that could provide considerable context when (re-)evaluating the notion. This is a fine example of part of the problem we are talking about. AGI *is* mathematics? Yes, applied mathematics. Is there some other kind of non-computational AI? The mathematical nature of the problem does not disappear when you wrap it in fuzzy abstractions it just gets, well, fuzzy. At best the science can inform your mathematical model, but in this case the relevant mathematics is ahead of the science for most purposes and the relevant science is largely working out the specific badly implemented wetware mapping to said mathematics. I'm sorry, but if you can make a statement such as this, and if you are already starting to reply to points of debate by resorting to ad hominems, then it would be a waste of my time to engage. Probably a waste of my time as well if you think this is primarily a science problem in the absence of a discernible reason to characterize it as such. I will just note that if this point of view is at all widespread - if there really are large numbers of people who agree that AGI is mathematics, not science - then this is a perfect illustration of just why no progress is being made in the field. Assertions do not manufacture fact. J. Andrew Rogers --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms. -- Henry Miller --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Ben Goertzel wrote: Funny dispute ... is AGI about mathematics or science I would guess there are some approaches to AGI that are only minimally mathematical in their design concepts (though of course math could be used to explain their behavior) Then there are some approaches, like Novamente, that mix mathematics with less rigorous ideas in an integrative design... And then there are more purely mathematical approaches -- I haven't seen any that are well enough fleshed and constitute pragmatic AGI designs... but I can't deny the possibility I wonder why some people think there is one true path to AGI ... I strongly suspect there are many... Actually, the discussion had nothing to do with the rather bizarre interpretation you put on it above. Richard Loosemore --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On Apr 6, 2008, at 5:26 PM, Ben Goertzel wrote: The problem is that investors are generally pretty unwilling to eat perceived technology risk. Exceptions arise all the time, and AGI has not yet been one. There have been exceptions, just ill-advised ones. :-) But yes, most investors are actually looking for a Killer Demo(tm) or unimpeachable credibility, the latter not to be construed as referring to anyone with an academic AI background in this particular case. Absent a Killer Demo, my observation is that people with unimpeachable credibility in this case and the genuine technical ability to plausibly produce results are essentially sets that very rarely intersect for these purposes. No one on the investment side is really looking for an AI academic of any type per se when they consider investing in these kinds of things, but there are few others in the field (discounting cranks). For better or worse, you need to be a J. Hawkins or similar. Such is the world we live in. Cheers, J. Andrew Rogers --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On Apr 6, 2008, at 6:55 PM, Ben Goertzel wrote: I wonder why some people think there is one true path to AGI ... I strongly suspect there are many... Like I stated at the beginning, *most* models are at least theoretically valid. Of course, tractable engineering of said models is another issue. :-) Engineering tractability in the context of computer science and software engineering is almost purely an applied mathematics effort to the extent there is any theory to it, and science has a very limited capacity to inform it. If someone could describe, specifically, how to science is going to inform this process given the existing body of theoretical work, I would have no problem with the notion. My objections were pragmatic. Cheers, J. Andrew Rogers --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI
The payoff on AGI justifies investment. The problem is that the probability of success is in question. But spinoff technologies developed along the way could have value. I think though that particular proof of concepts may not need more than a few people. Putting it all together would require more than a few. Then the resources needed to make it interact with various systems in the world would make the number of people needed grow exponentially. John From: Eric B. Ramsay [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2008 10:14 AM To: singularity@v2.listbox.com Subject: [singularity] Vista/AGI It took Microsoft over 1000 engineers, $6 Billion and several years to make Vista. Will building an AGI be any less formidable? If the AGI effort is comparable, how can the relatively small efforts of Ben (comparatively speaking) and others possibly succeed? If the effort to build an AGI is not comparable, why not? Perhaps a consortium (non-governmental) should be created specifically for the building of an AGI. Ben talks about a Manhattan style project. A consortium could pool all resources currently available (people and hardware), actively seek private funds on a continuing basis and give coherence to the effort. Eric B. Ramsay _ singularity | http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now Archives http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ | http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Modify Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 4:48 PM, John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think though that particular proof of concepts may not need more than a few people. Putting it all together would require more than a few. Then the resources needed to make it interact with various systems in the world would make the number of people needed grow exponentially. Then what's the point? We have this problem with existing software already, and it's precisely the magic bullet of AGI that should allow free lunch of automatic interfacing with real-world issues... -- Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [singularity] Vista/AGI
From: Vladimir Nesov [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 4:48 PM, John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think though that particular proof of concepts may not need more than a few people. Putting it all together would require more than a few. Then the resources needed to make it interact with various systems in the world would make the number of people needed grow exponentially. Then what's the point? We have this problem with existing software already, and it's precisely the magic bullet of AGI that should allow free lunch of automatic interfacing with real-world issues... The assumed value of AGI is blanketed magic bullets. They'll be quite a bit of automatic interfacing. There will be quite a bit of prevented and controlled automatic interfacing. But in the beginning, think about it, it's not instantaneous super-intelligence. John --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 4:14 PM, Eric B. Ramsay wrote: It took Microsoft over 1000 engineers, $6 Billion and several years to make Vista. Will building an AGI be any less formidable? If the AGI effort is comparable, how can the relatively small efforts of Ben (comparatively speaking) and others possibly succeed? If the effort to build an AGI is not comparable, why not? Perhaps a consortium (non-governmental) should be created specifically for the building of an AGI. Ben talks about a Manhattan style project. A consortium could pool all resources currently available (people and hardware), actively seek private funds on a continuing basis and give coherence to the effort. Oohh! Flamebait, yummy! The building of Vista was a total shambles and produced a worse OS than XP. The initial project was scrapped and bits that mostly worked were flung together to get something out the door, so the mugs (sorry, customers) could continue pouring money into Microsoft. Don't use that as a basis for estimates of any kind. BillK --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=96140713-a54b2b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On 3/16/08, Eric B. Ramsay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It took Microsoft over 1000 engineers, $6 Billion and several years to make Vista. Will building an AGI be any less formidable? If the AGI effort is comparable, how can the relatively small efforts of Ben (comparatively speaking) and others possibly succeed? If the effort to build an AGI is not comparable, why not? Perhaps a consortium (non-governmental) should be created specifically for the building of an AGI. Ben talks about a Manhattan style project. A consortium could pool all resources currently available (people and hardware), actively seek private funds on a continuing basis and give coherence to the effort. Eric B. Ramsay -- *singularity* | Archiveshttp://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ | Modifyhttp://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com Big companies are really, really lousy at writing software, in terms of useful software produced/resources expended. That's why startups can make so much money, even when they start off as two guys in a garage. -- - Tom http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/tom --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=96140713-a54b2b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On 3/16/08, Eric B. Ramsay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Two guys in a garage would never have built the bomb. The question is whether or not the two efforts are indeed comparable. Eric B. Ramsay You're right that software engineering is more amenable to startups than other kinds of work, but AGI *is* mostly software engineering (and math). -- - Tom http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/tom --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=96140713-a54b2b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Just because it takes thousands of programmers to create something as complex as Vista, does *not* mean that thousands of programmers are required to build an AGI, since one property of AGI is/can be that it will learn most of its complexity using algorithms programmed into it. --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=96140713-a54b2b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
On Mar 16, 2008, at 9:14 AM, Eric B. Ramsay wrote: It took Microsoft over 1000 engineers, $6 Billion and several years to make Vista. Will building an AGI be any less formidable? If the AGI effort is comparable, how can the relatively small efforts of Ben (comparatively speaking) and others possibly succeed? If the effort to build an AGI is not comparable, why not? Yeah, what kind of fool would believe something as complex and interesting as a tree could grow from an insignificant and unremarkable looking seed. There is no evidence that AGI is a complex problem per se. Few people would define the developments task as hiring hundreds of engineers to do things like write device drivers and apps for defective Chinese silicon so that little Billy's stuffed purple dinosaur with a USB cable coming out its ass can dance along with Hannah Montana music videos being streamed from YouTube with built-in DRM as a heroic last ditch effort to contain the spread of that insipid music while your email-client-and-dishwashing-machine forwards your porn collection to everyone in your address book in the background because a Russian hacker^H^H^H^H^H^H programmer might find that funny^H^H^H^H^H useful. All very necessary if you are building a Microsoft operating system product, but superfluous to the development of AGI or even operating systems generally. A lot of functional operating systems have been developed by a single individuals, and most have traditionally been written by small teams. J. Andrew Rogers --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=96140713-a54b2b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Lol. Calm down fella. You are going to give yourself a stroke. Eric B. Ramsay J. Andrew Rogers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Few people would define the developments task as hiring hundreds of engineers to do things like write device drivers and apps for defective Chinese silicon so that little Billy's stuffed purple dinosaur with a USB cable coming out its ass can dance along with Hannah Montana music videos being streamed from YouTube with built-in DRM as a heroic last ditch effort to contain the spread of that insipid music while your email-client-and-dishwashing-machine forwards your porn collection to everyone in your address book in the background because a Russian hacker^H^H^H^H^H^H programmer might find that funny^H^H^H^H^H use --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
Hi Matt, Great topic here. Remember, the Manhattan Project didn't come about until everyone believed a global catastrophe was afoot. That kind of mentality seems to help bring people together to make amazing stuff, in that case explosive stuff. As narrow AI and robotics become more ubiquitous, the pressure to form an AGI Manhattan Project will increase. Simple technologies like narrow AI (software) and robotics are weeding out labor, reforming the economic playing field (however slowly) into a laborless society. The signs of this are slight, but striking. It seems that only those in the hypertechnology/Singularity field see where its going economically, however scantily. Some examples: Major unemployment in management positions second to industrial loss, the failure of the debt market, increased hoarding of the rich, and price inflation that began to catapult in the mid 1970s, progressing to this day. Continued automation of service and expert systems fused with robotics will break the old economic dinosaur sooner or later. Like AGI research, heterodox economic research isn't profitable, which will remain so until the glass underneath us thins and shatters. I see one of two likely pathways approaching before Manhattan Project activity ensues, (1) a great economic collapse or (2) the formation of a new friendly opposition that acts to even things using big stick political means. Either of these movements will require capable AGI. Microsoft could use a Human Waste Management department to go with the infinitude of other departments it currently has, not to mention a Human Waste Management department for the Human Waste Management department. Perhaps that would be too costly? It would be wise for the AGI collective to write an AGI Roadmap to present to the public once working or theoretical architectures are firmly in place. That would help promote AGI and potentially save forming an AGI Manhattan Project. Nathan --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [singularity] Vista/AGI
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You have to be careful with the phrase 'Manhattan-style project'. You are right. On previous occasions when this subject has come up I, at least, have referred to the idea as an Apollo Project, not a Manhattan Project. Richard Loosemore That was a military project with military aims, and a 'benevolent' dictator mgmt structure. No input for researchers concerning things like applicability of the project output, delivery systems, timeframes, social issues, nothing. Compartmentalization, not open overview, would be the general tenor. Similarly, with a consortium, you have the necessary economic incentive struggles and tensions. Only real chance would be the lone wolf, in my opinion, more like what you might call the Tesla-model. Not that I really think AGI is something possible or desirable. ~Robert S. -- Original message from Eric B. Ramsay [EMAIL PROTECTED]: -- It took Microsoft over 1000 engineers, $6 Billion and several years to make Vista. Will building an AGI be any less formidable? If the AGI effort is comparable, how can the relatively small efforts of Ben (comparatively speaking) and others possibly succeed? If the effort to build an AGI is not comparable, why not? Perhaps a consortium (non-governmental) should be created specifically for the building of an AGI. Ben talks about a Manhattan style project. A consortium could pool all resources currently available (people and hardware), actively seek private funds on a continuing basis and give coherence to the effort. Eric B. Ramsay singularity | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
