Re: [agi] AGI Preschool: sketch of an evaluation framework for early stage AGI systems aimed at human-level, roughly humanlike AGI
On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 8:01 AM, Derek Zahn derekz...@msn.com wrote: Ben: Right. My intuition is that we don't need to simulate the dynamics of fluids, powders and the like in our virtual world to make it adequate for teaching AGIs humanlike, human-level AGI. But this could be wrong. I suppose it depends on what kids actually learn when making cakes, skipping rocks, and making a mess with play-dough. Some might say that if they get conservation of mass and newton's law then they skipped all the useless stuff! OK, but those some probably don't include any preschool teachers or educational theorists. That hypothesis is completely at odds with my own intuition from having raised 3 kids and spent probably hundreds of hours helping out in daycare centers, preschools, kindergartens, etc. Apart from naive physics, which is rather well-demonstrated not to be derived in the human mind/brain from basic physical principles, there is a lot of learning about planning, scheduling, building, cooperating ... basically, all the stuff mentioned in our AGI Preschool paper. Yes, you can just take a robo-Cyc type approach and try to abstract, on your own, what is learned from preschool activities and code it into the AI: code in Newton's laws, axiomatic naive physics, planning algorithms, etc. My strong prediction is you'll get a brittle AI system that can at best be tuned into adequate functionality in some rather narrow contexts. But in the case where we are trying to roughly follow stages of human development with goals of producing human-like linguistic and reasoning capabilities, I very much fear that any significant simplification of the universe will provide an insufficient basis for the large sensory concept set underlying language and analogical reasoning (both gross and fine). Literally, I think you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But, as you say, this could be wrong. Sure... that can't be disproven right now, of course. We plan to expand the paper into a journal paper where we argue against this obvious objection more carefully -- basically arguing why the virtual-world setting provides enough detail to support the learning of the critical cognitive subcomponents of human intelligence. But, as with anything in AGI, even the best-reasoned paper can't convince a skeptic. It's really the only critique I have of the AGI preschool idea, which I do like because we can all relate to it very easily. At any rate, if it turns out to be a valid criticism the symptom will be that an insufficiently rich set of concepts will develop to support the range of capabilities needed and at that point the simulations can be adjusted to be more complete and realistic and provide more human sensory modalities. I guess it will be disappointing if building an adequate virtual world turns out to be as difficult and expensive as building high quality robots -- but at least it's easier to clean up after cake-baking. Well, it's completely obvious to me, based on my knowledge of virtual worlds and robotics, that building a high quality virtual world is orders of magnitude easier than making a workable humanoid robot. *So* much $$ has been spent on humanoid robotics before, by large, rich and competent companies, and they still suck.It's just a very hard problem, with a lot of very hard subproblems, and it will take a while to get worked through. On the other hand, making a virtual world such as I envision, is more than a spare-time project, but not more than the project of making a single high-quality video game. It's something that any one of these big Japanese companies could do with a tiny fraction of their robotics budgets. The issue is a lack of perceived cool value and a lack of motivation. Ben --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] AGI Preschool: sketch of an evaluation framework for early stage AGI systems aimed at human-level, roughly humanlike AGI
It's an interesting idea, but I suspect it too will rapidly break down. Which activities can be known about in a rich, better-than-blind-Cyc way *without* a knowledge of objects and object manipulation? How can an agent know about reading a book,for example, if it can't pick up and manipulate a book? How can it know about adding and subtracting, if it can't literally put objects on top of each other, and remove them? We humans build up our knowledge of the world objects/physics up from infancy. Science also insists that all formal scientific knowledge of the world - all scientific disciplines - must be ultimately physics/objects-based. Is there really an alternative? And just to be clear: in the AGI Preschool world I envision, picking up and manipulating and stacking objects, and so forth, *would* be possible. This much is not hard to achieve using current robot-simulator tech. ben --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] AGI Preschool: sketch of an evaluation framework for early stage AGI systems aimed at human-level, roughly humanlike AGI
I agree, but the good news is that game dev advances fast. So, my plan with the AGI Preschool would be to build it in an open platform such as OpenSim, and then swap in better and better physics engines as they become available. Some current robot simulators use ODE and this seems to be good enough to handle a lot of useful robot-object and object-object interactions, though I agree it's limited. Still, making a dramatically better physics engine -- while a bunch harder than making a nice AGI preschool using current virtual worlds and physics engines -- is still a way, way easier problem than making a highly functional (in terms of sensors and actuators) humanoid robot. Also, the advantages of working in a virtual rather than physical world should not be overlooked. The ability to run tests over and over again, to freely vary parameters and so forth, is pretty nice ... also the ability to run 1000s of tests in parallel without paying humongous bucks for a fleet of robots... ben On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 8:43 AM, Derek Zahn derekz...@msn.com wrote: Oh, and because I am interested in the potential of high-fidelity physical simulation as a basis for AI research, I did spend some time recently looking into options. Unfortunately the results, from my perspective, were disappointing. The common open-source physics libraries like ODE, Newton, and so on, have marginal feature sets and frankly cannot scale very well performance-wise. Once I even did a little application whose purpose was to see whether a human being could learn to control an ankle joint to compensate for an impulse event and stabilize a simple body model (that is, to make it not fall over) by applying torques to the ankle. I was curious to see (through introspection) how humans learn to act as process controllers. http://happyrobots.com/anklegame.zip for anybody bored enough to care. It wasn't a very good test of the question so I didn't really get a satisfactory answer. I did discover, though, that a game built around more appealing cases of the player learning to control physics-inspired processes could be quite absorbing. Beyond that, the most promising avenue seems to be physics libraries tied to graphics hardware being worked on by the hardware companies to help sell their stream processors. The best example is Nvidia, who bought PhysX and ported it to their latest cards, giving a huge performance boost. Intel has bought Havok and I can only imagine that they are planning on using that as the interface to some Larrabee-based physics engine. I'm sure that ATI is working on something similar for their newer (very impressive) stream processing cards. At this stage, though, despite some interesting features and leaping performance, it is still not possible to do things like get realistic sensor maps for a simulated soft hand/arm, and complex object modifications like bending and breaking are barely dreamed of in those frameworks. Complex multi-body interactions (like realistic behavior when dropping or otherwise playing with a ring of keys or realistic baby toys) have a long ways to go. Basically, I fear those of us who are interested in this are just waiting to ride the game development coattails and it will be a few years at least until performance that even begins to interest me will be available. Just my opinions on the situation. -- *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI b...@goertzel.org I intend to live forever, or die trying. -- Groucho Marx --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] AGI Preschool: sketch of an evaluation framework for early stage AGI systems aimed at human-level, roughly humanlike AGI
Some might say that if they get conservation of mass and newton's law then they skipped all the useless stuff! OK, but those some probably don't include any preschool teachers or educational theorists. That hypothesis is completely at odds with my own intuition from having raised 3 kids and spent probably hundreds of hours helping out in daycare centers, preschools, kindergartens, etc. Sorry, that was just kind of a joke. Probably nobody actually has the opinion I was lampooning though I do see similar things said sometimes, as if inferring minimum-description-length root level reductionisms is a realistic approach to learning to deal with the world. It might even be true, but the humor was supposed to be to juxtapose that idea with the AGI preschool. --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] AGI Preschool: sketch of an evaluation framework for early stage AGI systems aimed at human-level, roughly humanlike AGI
2008/12/20 Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org: Well, it's completely obvious to me, based on my knowledge of virtual worlds and robotics, that building a high quality virtual world is orders of magnitude easier than making a workable humanoid robot. I guess that depends on what you mean by high quality and workable. Why does a robot have to be humanoid, BTW? I'd like a robot that can make me a cup of tea, I don't particularly care if it looks humanoid (in fact I suspect many humans would have less emotional resistance to a robot that didn't look humanoid, since it's more obviously a machine). On the other hand, making a virtual world such as I envision, is more than a spare-time project, but not more than the project of making a single high-quality video game. GTA IV cost $5 million, so we're not talking about peanuts here. -- Philip Hunt, cabala...@googlemail.com Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] AGI Preschool: sketch of an evaluation framework for early stage AGI systems aimed at human-level, roughly humanlike AGI
Ben: Right. My intuition is that we don't need to simulate the dynamics of fluids, powders and the like in our virtual world to make it adequate for teaching AGIs humanlike, human-level AGI. But this could be wrong.I suppose it depends on what kids actually learn when making cakes, skipping rocks, and making a mess with play-dough. Some might say that if they get conservation of mass and newton's law then they skipped all the useless stuff! I think I agree with the plausibility of something you have said many times: that there may be many paths to AGI that are not similar at all to human development -- abstract paths to modelling the universe, teasing meaning from sheer statistics of the chinese/chinese dictionary of the raw html internet, who knows what. But in the case where we are trying to roughly follow stages of human development with goals of producing human-like linguistic and reasoning capabilities, I very much fear that any significant simplification of the universe will provide an insufficient basis for the large sensory concept set underlying language and analogical reasoning (both gross and fine). Literally, I think you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But, as you say, this could be wrong. It's really the only critique I have of the AGI preschool idea, which I do like because we can all relate to it very easily. At any rate, if it turns out to be a valid criticism the symptom will be that an insufficiently rich set of concepts will develop to support the range of capabilities needed and at that point the simulations can be adjusted to be more complete and realistic and provide more human sensory modalities. I guess it will be disappointing if building an adequate virtual world turns out to be as difficult and expensive as building high quality robots -- but at least it's easier to clean up after cake-baking. --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] AGI Preschool: sketch of an evaluation framework for early stage AGI systems aimed at human-level, roughly humanlike AGI
On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 10:44 AM, Philip Hunt cabala...@googlemail.comwrote: 2008/12/20 Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org: Well, it's completely obvious to me, based on my knowledge of virtual worlds and robotics, that building a high quality virtual world is orders of magnitude easier than making a workable humanoid robot. I guess that depends on what you mean by high quality and workable. Why does a robot have to be humanoid, BTW? I'd like a robot that can make me a cup of tea, I don't particularly care if it looks humanoid (in fact I suspect many humans would have less emotional resistance to a robot that didn't look humanoid, since it's more obviously a machine). It doesn't have to be humanoid ... but apart from rolling instead of walking, I don't see any really significant simplifications obtainable from making it non-humanoid. Grasping and manipulating general objects with robot manipulators is very much an unsolved research problem. So is object recognition in realistic conditions. So, to make an AGI robot preschool, one has to solve these hard research problems first. That is a viable way to go if one's not in a hurry -- but anyway in the robotics context any talk of preschools is drastically premature... On the other hand, making a virtual world such as I envision, is more than a spare-time project, but not more than the project of making a single high-quality video game. GTA IV cost $5 million, so we're not talking about peanuts here. Right, but that is way cheaper than making a high-quality humanoid robot Actually, $$ aside, we don't even **know how** to make a decent humanoid robot. Or, a decently functional mobile robot **of any kind** Whereas making a software based AGI Preschool of the type I described is clearly feasible using current technology, w/o any research breakthroughs And I'm sure it could be done for $300K not $5M using OSS and non-US outsourced labor... ben g --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] AGI Preschool: sketch of an evaluation framework for early stage AGI systems aimed at human-level, roughly humanlike AGI
Oh, and because I am interested in the potential of high-fidelity physical simulation as a basis for AI research, I did spend some time recently looking into options. Unfortunately the results, from my perspective, were disappointing. The common open-source physics libraries like ODE, Newton, and so on, have marginal feature sets and frankly cannot scale very well performance-wise. Once I even did a little application whose purpose was to see whether a human being could learn to control an ankle joint to compensate for an impulse event and stabilize a simple body model (that is, to make it not fall over) by applying torques to the ankle. I was curious to see (through introspection) how humans learn to act as process controllers. http://happyrobots.com/anklegame.zip for anybody bored enough to care. It wasn't a very good test of the question so I didn't really get a satisfactory answer. I did discover, though, that a game built around more appealing cases of the player learning to control physics-inspired processes could be quite absorbing. Beyond that, the most promising avenue seems to be physics libraries tied to graphics hardware being worked on by the hardware companies to help sell their stream processors. The best example is Nvidia, who bought PhysX and ported it to their latest cards, giving a huge performance boost. Intel has bought Havok and I can only imagine that they are planning on using that as the interface to some Larrabee-based physics engine. I'm sure that ATI is working on something similar for their newer (very impressive) stream processing cards. At this stage, though, despite some interesting features and leaping performance, it is still not possible to do things like get realistic sensor maps for a simulated soft hand/arm, and complex object modifications like bending and breaking are barely dreamed of in those frameworks. Complex multi-body interactions (like realistic behavior when dropping or otherwise playing with a ring of keys or realistic baby toys) have a long ways to go. Basically, I fear those of us who are interested in this are just waiting to ride the game development coattails and it will be a few years at least until performance that even begins to interest me will be available. Just my opinions on the situation. --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] AGI Preschool: sketch of an evaluation framework for early stage AGI systems aimed at human-level, roughly humanlike AGI
Bob: Even with crude or no real simulation ability in an environment such as Second Life, using some simple symbology to stand for puck up screwdriver you can still try to tackle problems such as autobiographical memory - how does the agent create a coherent story out of a series of activities, and how can it use that story in future to improve its skills or communication effectiveness. It's an interesting idea, but I suspect it too will rapidly break down. Which activities can be known about in a rich, better-than-blind-Cyc way *without* a knowledge of objects and object manipulation? How can an agent know about reading a book,for example, if it can't pick up and manipulate a book? How can it know about adding and subtracting, if it can't literally put objects on top of each other, and remove them? We humans build up our knowledge of the world objects/physics up from infancy. Science also insists that all formal scientific knowledge of the world - all scientific disciplines - must be ultimately physics/objects-based. Is there really an alternative? --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] Creativity and Rationality (was: Re: Should I get a PhD?)
From: Mike Tintner [mailto:tint...@blueyonder.co.uk] Sound silly? Arguably the most essential requirement for a true human- level GI is to be able to consider any object whatsoever as a thing. It's a cognitively awesome feat . It means we can conceive of literally any thing as a thing - and so bring together, associate and compare immensely diverse objects such as, say, an amoeba, a bus, a car, a squid, a poem, a skyscraper, a box, a pencil, a fir tree, the number 1... Our thingy capacity makes us supremely adaptive. It means I can set you a creative problem like go and get me some *thing* to block this doorway [or hole] and you can indeed go and get any of a vastly diverse range of appropriate objects. How are we able to conceive of all these forms as things? Not by any rational means, I suggest, but by the imaginative means of drawing them all mentally or actually as similar adjustable gloops or blobs. Arnheim provides brilliant evidence for this: a young child in his drawings uses circular shapes to represent almost any object at all: a human figure, a house, a car, a book, and even the teeth of a saw, as can be seen in Fig x, a drawing by a five year old. It would be a mistake to say that the child neglects or misrepresents the shape of these objects. Only to adult eyes is he picturing them as round. Actually, intended roundness does not exist before other shapes, such as straightness or angularity are available to the child. At the stage when he begins to draw circles, shape is not yet differentiated. The circle does not stand for roundness but for the more general quality of thingness - that is, for the compactness of a solid object as distinguished from the nondescript ground. [Art and Visual Perception] Even for things and objects the mathematics is inherent. There is plurality, partitioning, grouping, attributes.. interrelatedness. Is a wisp of smoke a thing, or a wave on the ocean, or a sound echoing through the mountains. Is everything one big thing? Perhaps creativity involves zeroing out from the precise definition of things in order to make their interrelatedness less restricting. Can't find a solution to those complex problems when you are stuck in all the details, you can't' rationalize your way out of the rules as there may be a non-local solution or connection that needs to be made. The young child is continuously exercising creativity as things are blobs or circles and creativity combined with trial and error rationalizes things into domains and rules... John --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] AGI Preschool: sketch of an evaluation framework for early stage AGI systems aimed at human-level, roughly humanlike AGI
2008/12/20 Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org: It doesn't have to be humanoid ... but apart from rolling instead of walking, I don't see any really significant simplifications obtainable from making it non-humanoid. I can think of several. For example, you could give it lidar to measure distances with -- this could then be used as input to its vision system making it easier for the robot to tell which objects are near or far. Instead of binocular vision, it could have 2 video cameras. It could have multiple ears, which would help it tell where a sound is coming from. The the best of my knowledge, no robot that's ever been used for anything practical has ever been humanoid. Grasping and manipulating general objects with robot manipulators is very much an unsolved research problem. So is object recognition in realistic conditions. What sort of visual input do you plan to have in your virtual environment? So, to make an AGI robot preschool, one has to solve these hard research problems first. That is a viable way to go if one's not in a hurry -- but anyway in the robotics context any talk of preschools is drastically premature... On the other hand, making a virtual world such as I envision, is more than a spare-time project, but not more than the project of making a single high-quality video game. GTA IV cost $5 million, so we're not talking about peanuts here. Right, but that is way cheaper than making a high-quality humanoid robot Is it? I suspect one with tracks, two robotic arms, various sensors for light and sound, etc, could be made for less than $10,000 -- this would be something that could move around and manipulate a blocks world. My understanding is that all, or nearly all, the difficulty comes in programming it. Which is where AI comes in. Actually, $$ aside, we don't even **know how** to make a decent humanoid robot. Or, a decently functional mobile robot **of any kind** Is that because of hardware or software issues? -- Philip Hunt, cabala...@googlemail.com Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] AGI Preschool: sketch of an evaluation framework for early stage AGI systems aimed at human-level, roughly humanlike AGI
2008/12/20 Derek Zahn derekz...@msn.com: Ben: Right. My intuition is that we don't need to simulate the dynamics of fluids, powders and the like in our virtual world to make it adequate for teaching AGIs humanlike, human-level AGI. But this could be wrong. I suppose it depends on what kids actually learn when making cakes, skipping rocks, and making a mess with play-dough. I think that the important cognitive abilities involved are at a simpler level than that. Consider an object, such as a sock or a book or a cat. These objects can all be recognised by young children, even though the visual input coming from trhem chasnges from what angle they're viewed at. More fundamentally, all these objects can change shape, yet humans can still effortlessly recognise them to be the same thing. And this ability doesn't stop with humans -- most (if not all) mammalian species can do it. Until an AI can do this, there's no point in trying to get it to play at making cakes, etc. -- Philip Hunt, cabala...@googlemail.com Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] AGI Preschool: sketch of an evaluation framework for early stage AGI systems aimed at human-level, roughly humanlike AGI
Well, there is massively more $$ going into robotics dev than into AGI dev, and no one seems remotely near to solving the hard problems Which is not to say it's a bad area of research, just that it's a whole other huge confusing RD can of worms So I still say, the choices are -- virtual embodiment, as I advocate -- delay working on AGI for a decade or so, and work on robotics now instead (where by robotics I include software work on low-level sensing and actuator control) Either choice makes sense but I prefer the former as I think it can get us to the end goal faster. About the adequacy of current robot hardware -- I'll tell you more in 9 months or so ... a project I'm collaborating on is going to be using AI (including OpenCog) to control a Nao humanoid robot. We'll have 3 of them, they cost about US$14K each or so. The project is in China but I'll be there in June-July to play with the Naos and otherwise collaborate on the project. My impression is that with a Nao right now, camera-eye sensing is fine so long as lighting conditions are good ... audition is OK in the absence of masses of background noise ... walking is very awkward and grasping is possible but limited The extent to which the limitations of current robots are hardware vs software based is rather subtle, actually. In the case of vision and audition, it seems clear that the bottleneck is software. But, with actuation, I'm not so sure. The almost total absence of touch and kinesthetics in current robots is a huge impediment, and puts them at a huge disadvantage relative to humans. Things like walking and grasping as humans do them rely extremely heavily on both of these senses, so in trying to deal with this stuff without these senses (in any serious form), current robots face a hard and odd problem... ben On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 11:42 AM, Philip Hunt cabala...@googlemail.comwrote: 2008/12/20 Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org: It doesn't have to be humanoid ... but apart from rolling instead of walking, I don't see any really significant simplifications obtainable from making it non-humanoid. I can think of several. For example, you could give it lidar to measure distances with -- this could then be used as input to its vision system making it easier for the robot to tell which objects are near or far. Instead of binocular vision, it could have 2 video cameras. It could have multiple ears, which would help it tell where a sound is coming from. The the best of my knowledge, no robot that's ever been used for anything practical has ever been humanoid. Grasping and manipulating general objects with robot manipulators is very much an unsolved research problem. So is object recognition in realistic conditions. What sort of visual input do you plan to have in your virtual environment? So, to make an AGI robot preschool, one has to solve these hard research problems first. That is a viable way to go if one's not in a hurry -- but anyway in the robotics context any talk of preschools is drastically premature... On the other hand, making a virtual world such as I envision, is more than a spare-time project, but not more than the project of making a single high-quality video game. GTA IV cost $5 million, so we're not talking about peanuts here. Right, but that is way cheaper than making a high-quality humanoid robot Is it? I suspect one with tracks, two robotic arms, various sensors for light and sound, etc, could be made for less than $10,000 -- this would be something that could move around and manipulate a blocks world. My understanding is that all, or nearly all, the difficulty comes in programming it. Which is where AI comes in. Actually, $$ aside, we don't even **know how** to make a decent humanoid robot. Or, a decently functional mobile robot **of any kind** Is that because of hardware or software issues? -- Philip Hunt, cabala...@googlemail.com Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI b...@goertzel.org I intend to live forever, or die trying. -- Groucho Marx --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Robots with a sense of touch [WAS Re: [agi] AGI Preschool....]
Philip Hunt wrote: 2008/12/20 Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org: Well, there is massively more $$ going into robotics dev than into AGI dev, and no one seems remotely near to solving the hard problems Which is not to say it's a bad area of research, just that it's a whole other huge confusing RD can of worms So I still say, the choices are -- virtual embodiment, as I advocate -- delay working on AGI for a decade or so, and work on robotics now instead (where by robotics I include software work on low-level sensing and actuator control) Either choice makes sense but I prefer the former as I think it can get us to the end goal faster. That makes sense But, with actuation, I'm not so sure. The almost total absence of touch and kinesthetics in current robots is a huge impediment, and puts them at a huge disadvantage relative to humans. Good point. I wonder how easy it would be to provide a robot with a sensor that gives a sense of touch? maybe something the thickness of a sheet of paper, with horizontal and vertical wires criss-crossing it, and the wires not electrically connected would work, if there was a difference in capacitance when the wires where further apart or closer together. How about: http://www.geekologie.com/2006/06/nanoparticles_give_robots_prec.php or http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=163701010 Richard Loosemore --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] AGI Preschool: sketch of an evaluation framework for early stage AGI systems aimed at human-level, roughly humanlike AGI
Consider an object, such as a sock or a book or a cat. These objects can all be recognised by young children, even though the visual input coming from trhem chasnges from what angle they're viewed at. More fundamentally, all these objects can change shape, yet humans can still effortlessly recognise them to be the same thing. And this ability doesn't stop with humans -- most (if not all) mammalian species can do it. Until an AI can do this, there's no point in trying to get it to play at making cakes, etc. Well, it seems to me that current virtual worlds are just fine for exploring this kind of vision processing However, I have long been perplexed at the obsession with so many AI folks with vision processing. I mean: yeah, it's important to human intelligence, and some aspects of human cognition are related to human visual perception But, it's not obvious to me why so many folks think vision is so critical to AI, whereas other aspects of human body function are not. For instance, the yogic tradition and related Eastern ideas would suggest that *breathing* and *kinesthesia* are the critical aspects of mind. Together with touch, kinesthesia is what lets a mind establish a sense of self, and of the relation between self and world. In that sense kinesthesia and touch are vastly more fundamental to mind than vision. It seems to me that a mind without vision could still be a basically humanlike mind. Yet, a mind without touch and kinesthesia could not, it would seem, because it would lack a humanlike sense of its own self as a complex dynamic system embedded in a world. Why then is there constant talk about vision processing and so little talk about kinesthetic and tactile processing? Personally I don't think one needs to get into any of this sensorimotor stuff too deeply to make a thinking machine. But, if you ARE going to argue that sensorimotor aspects are critcial to humanlike AI because they're critical to human intelligence, why harp on vision to the exclusion of other things that seem clearly far more fundamental?? Is the reason just that AI researchers spend all day staring at screens and ignoring their physical bodies and surroundings?? ;-) ben g --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] AGI Preschool: sketch of an evaluation framework for early stage AGI systems aimed at human-level, roughly humanlike AGI
2008/12/20 Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org: However, I have long been perplexed at the obsession with so many AI folks with vision processing. I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with it. On its own vision processing does nothing, the same as all other input processing -- its only when a brain/AI used that processing to create output that it is actually doing any work. Theimportnat thing about vision, IMO, is not vision itself, but the way that vision interfaces with a mind's model of the world. And vision isn't really that different in principle from the other sensory modalities that a human or animal has -- they are all inputs, that go to building a model of the world, through which the organism makes decisions. But, it's not obvious to me why so many folks think vision is so critical to AI, whereas other aspects of human body function are not. I don't think any human body functions are critical to AI. IMO it's a perfectly valid approach to AI to build programs that deal with digital symbolic information -- e.g. programs like copycat or eurisko. For instance, the yogic tradition and related Eastern ideas would suggest that *breathing* and *kinesthesia* are the critical aspects of mind. Together with touch, kinesthesia is what lets a mind establish a sense of self, and of the relation between self and world. Kinesthesia/touch/movement are clearly important sensory modalities in mammals, given that they are utterly fundamental to moving around in the world. Breathing less so -- I mean you can do it if you're unconscious or brain dead. Why then is there constant talk about vision processing and so little talk about kinesthetic and tactile processing? Possibly because people are less conscious of it than vision. Personally I don't think one needs to get into any of this sensorimotor stuff too deeply to make a thinking machine. Me neither. But if the thinking machine is to be able to solve certain problems (when connected to a robot body, of course) it will have to have sophisticated systems to handle touch, movement and vision. By certain problems I mean things like making a cup of tea, or a cat climbing a tree, or a human running over uneven ground. But, if you ARE going to argue that sensorimotor aspects are critcial to humanlike AI because they're critical to human intelligence, why harp on vision to the exclusion of other things that seem clearly far more fundamental?? Say I asked you to imagine a cup. (Go on, do it now). Now, when you imagined the cup, did you imagine what it looks like, or what it feels like to the touch. For me, it was the former. So I don't think touch is clearly more fundamental, in terms of how it interacts with our internal model of the world, than vision is. Is the reason just that AI researchers spend all day staring at screens and ignoring their physical bodies and surroundings?? ;-) :-) -- Philip Hunt, cabala...@googlemail.com Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Building a machine that can learn from experience
Ben Goertzel wrote: Hi, Because some folks find that they are not subjectively sufficient to explain everything they subjectively experience... That would be more convincing if such people were to show evidence that they understand what algorithmic processes are and can do. I'm almost tempted to class such verbalizations as meaningless noise, but that's probably too strong a reaction. Push comes to shove, I'd have to say I'm one of those people. But you aren't one who asserts that that *IS* the right answer. Big difference. (For that matter, I have a suspicion that there are non-algorithmic aspects to consciousness. But I also suspect that they are implementation details.) ... ben g *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modify https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Your Subscription [Powered by Listbox] http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
