Re: [agi] Natural versus formal AI interface languages
Matt, I totally agree with you on Cyc and LISP. To go further, I think Cyc is a dead end because of the assumption that intelligence is dependent on a vast store of knowledge, basically represented in a semantic net. Intelligence should start with the learning of simple patterns in images and some kind of language that can refer to them and their observed behavior. And this involves the training you are talking about. But you don't quite understand the difference between a natural-like formal language and something like LISP. I'm talking about a language that has formal syntax but most importantly has the full expressive power of a natural language (minus the idioms and aesthetic elements like poetry). Now the training of such a system is the problem, and that's the problem that we're all working on. I am just about finished with the parsing of my language, Jinnteera (in ANSI/ISO C++). I have bitmaps coming in from clients to the intelligence engine and some image processing. The next step is the semantic processing of the parse tree of incoming statements. This system, in no way, has any intelligence yet, but it provides the initial framework for experimentation and the developement of AI, using any internal intelligence algorithms of choice. It's basically an AI shell at the moment, and after some more development and polishing, I'm willing to share it with anyone whose interested. - Original Message - From: Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 9:03 PM Subject: Re: [agi] Natural versus formal AI interface languages Artificial languages that remove ambiguity like Lojban do not bring us any closer to solving the AI problem. It is straightforward to convert between artificial languages and structured knowledge (e.g first order logic), but it is still a hard (AI complete) problem to convert between natural and artificial languages. If you could translate English - Lojban - English, then you could just as well translate, e.g. English - Lojban - Russian. Without a natural language model, you have no access to the vast knowledge base of the Internet, or most of the human race. I know people can learn Lojban, just like they can learn Cycl or LISP. Lets not repeat these mistakes. This is not training, it is programming a knowledge base. This is narrow AI. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED] - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] Natural versus formal AI interface languages
John Scanlon wrote: Ben, I did read your stuff on Lojban++, and it's the sort of language I'm talking about. This kind of language lets the computer and the user meet halfway. The computer can parse the language like any other computer language, but the terms and constructions are designed for talking about objects and events in the real world -- rather than for compilation into procedural machine code. Which brings up a question -- is it better to use a language based on term or predicate logic, or one that imitates (is isomorphic to) natural languages? A formal language imitating a natural language would have the same kinds of structures that almost all natural languages have: nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, etc. There must be a reason natural languages almost always follow the pattern of something carrying out some action, in some way, and if transitive, to or on something else. On the other hand, a logical language allows direct translation into formal logic, which can be used to derive all sorts of implications (not sure of the terminology here) mechanically. The problem here is that when people use a language to communicate with each other they fall into the habit of using human, rather than formal, parsings. This works between people, but would play hob with a computer's understanding (if it even had reasonable referrents for most of the terms under discussion). Also, notice one major difference between ALL human languages and computer languages: Human languages rarely use many local variables, computer languages do. Even the words that appear to be local variables in human languages are generally references, rather than variables. This is (partially) because computer languages are designed to describe processes, and human languages are quasi-serial communication protocols. Notice that thoughts are not serial, and generally not translatable into words without extreme loss of meaning. Human languages presume sufficient understanding at the other end of the communication channel to reconstruct a model of what the original thought might have been. So. Lojban++ might be a good language for humans to communicate to an AI with, but it would be a lousy language in which to implement that same AI. But even for this purpose the language needs a verifier to insure that the correct forms are being followed. Ideally such a verifier would paraphrase the statement that it was parsing and emit back to the sender either an error message, or the paraphrased sentence. Then the sender would check that the received sentence matched in meaning the sentence that was sent. (N.B.: The verifier only checks the formal properties of the language to ensure that they are followed. It had no understanding, so it can't check the meaning.) - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] Natural versus formal AI interface languages
John,One of the major obstacles to real AI is the belief thatknowledge ofa natural language is necessary for intelligence.I agree. And it's IMO nearly impossible for AGI to learn/understand NL when its only info source is NL. We get some extra [meta] data from our senses when learning NL (which NL itself wasn't designed to cover) and that extra info is often critical for plugging new concepts to our mental-model-of-the-world with all the important (ATM available) links to other concepts. BTW note that the ancient list of 5 senses (reportedly by Aristotle) is pretty obsolete. We just have a lot more than 5 and all of them help us to really understand NL-labeled and NL-not-covered concepts. So, practically, you IMO either need a bunch of (appropriately processed) human like senses (=LOTS of work for developers) OR (if it's [mostly] text I/O based AI) certain degree of formalization (higher than NL) for the input to get the meta data needed for decent understanding. The first alternative IMO requires resources most of us don't have so I go with the second option. Such systems need to learn a lot using some kind of formalized input = too much system-teaching for the dev team and I don't think a typical user would be eager to learn Lojban-like languages (which I see some issues with when it comes to meaning digging anyway) so I think an extra step is needed to really get the computer and the user to meet user-acceptable way (not exactly the halfway). As some of the above implies, languages get clumsy when describing certain types concepts. That's why in my wannabe AGI (which is still more on paper than in a version control system), I'm trying to design a user-AI interface that has a couple of specialized (but easy to use) editors in addition to its language itself.BTW a fellow coder just asked me Can I borrow your eyes?. Obviously, NL is a mess. Sure, AGI should be able to learn it but 1) to learn it well, it requires already having a significant well structured KB and 2) there is a LOT of very important problem solving that does not require being fluent in any NL. Matt,I guess the AI problem is solved, then. I can already communicate with my computer using formal, unambiguous languages. It already does a lot of things better than most humans, like arithmetic, chess, memorizing long lists and recalling them perfectly... AI is, AGI isn't. You are talking about domain specific systems that are unable to build mental models useful for general problem solving.Sorry I did not have a chance to read all the related posts so far.. I'll definitely get back to it later. This stuff is IMO really important for AGI. Sincerely,Jiri JelinekOn 10/31/06, John Scanlon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One of the major obstacles to real AI is the belief thatknowledge ofa natural language is necessary for intelligence. Ahuman-level intelligent system should be expected to have the ability to learn a natural language, but it is not necessary. It is better to start with a formal language, with unambiguous formal syntax,as the primary interface between human beings and AI systems. This type of language could be called a para-natural formallanguage. It eliminatesall of the syntactical ambiguity that makes competent use of a natural language so difficult to implement in an AI system. Such a language would also be a member of the class fifth generation computer language. This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED] This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] Natural versus formal AI interface languages
On 11/1/06, Charles D Hixson wrote: So. Lojban++ might be a good language for humans to communicate to an AI with, but it would be a lousy language in which to implement that same AI. But even for this purpose the language needs a verifier to insure that the correct forms are being followed. Ideally such a verifier would paraphrase the statement that it was parsing and emit back to the sender either an error message, or the paraphrased sentence. Then the sender would check that the received sentence matched in meaning the sentence that was sent. (N.B.: The verifier only checks the formal properties of the language to ensure that they are followed. It had no understanding, so it can't check the meaning.) This discussion reminds me of a story about the United Nations assembly meetings. Normally when a representative is speaking, all the translation staff are jabbering away in tandem with the speaker. But when the German representative starts speaking they all fall silent and sit staring at him. The reason is that they are waiting for the verb to come along. :) Billk - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] Natural versus formal AI interface languages
The AGI really does need to be able to read and write english or another natural language to be decently useful, people are just NOT goign to learn or be impressed with a machine that spurts out something incoherent (which they already can do)It is suprising how little actuall semantic ambiguity there is in well written language such as news articles and such. Especially when you take into account the statistical information of english. It may occur, but not often.The telescope/man example is the most ambigous, but even the other example:"He hit the boy with the bat"You can statistically show that "hitting with a bat" is statistically high, and assume it was the tool used.If not, and even so, the AI should model both scenarios as possible.Most of these ambiguities are removed though, with the additional context sentences around them, or people should just be trained to avoid these ambiguities in writing, but not another language indeed.Even without the ambiguity of the texts discussed here, there is no easy formula for mapping english or other sentences directly into any sort of database, using FOL or any others.This is something I am working on and am interested in currently.I am currently seeing how many simple statements can be pulled from the current news articles into an AI information center.JamesMatt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Artificial languages that remove ambiguity like Lojban do not bring us any closer to solving the AI problem. It is straightforward to convert between artificial languages and structured knowledge (e.g first order logic), but it is still a hard (AI complete) problem to convert between natural and artificial languages. If you could translate English - Lojban - English, then you could just as well translate, e.g. English - Lojban - Russian. Without a natural language model, you have no access to the vast knowledge base of the Internet, or most of the human race. I know people can learn Lojban, just like they can learn Cycl or LISP. Lets not repeat these mistakes. This is not training, it is programming a knowledge base. This is narrow AI. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]-This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/emailTo unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]Thank YouJames Ratcliffhttp://falazar.com Cheap Talk? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates. This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] Natural versus formal AI interface languages
Forgot to add there is a large amount of syntactic and Word sense disambiguity, but there are some programs out there that handle that to a remarkable extent as well, and I believe can be improved upon.And for many tasks, I dont see any reason not to have some back and forth feedback in the loop for the AI.The "Smartest" response to the "I saw the man with the telescope." sentence to me would be simply:AI: "Did you have the telescope or did the man?"or "Was the man holding the telescope?"James RatcliffJames Ratcliff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The AGI really does need to be able to read and write english or another natural language to be decently useful, people are just NOT goign to learn or be impressed with a machine that spurts out something incoherent (which they already can do)It is suprising how little actuall semantic ambiguity there is in well written language such as news articles and such. Especially when you take into account the statistical information of english. It may occur, but not often.The telescope/man example is the most ambigous, but even the other example:"He hit the boy with the bat"You can statistically show that "hitting with a bat" is statistically high, and assume it was the tool used.If not, and even so, the AI should model both scenarios as possible.Most of these ambiguities are removed though, with the additional context sentences around them, or people should just be trained to avoid these ambiguities in writing, but not another language indeed.Even without the ambiguity of the texts discussed here, there is no easy formula for mapping english or other sentences directly into any sort of database, using FOL or any others.This is something I am working on and am interested in currently.I am currently seeing how many simple statements can be pulled from the current news articles into an AI information center.JamesMatt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Artificial languages that remove ambiguity like Lojban do not bring us any closer to solving the AI problem. It is straightforward to convert between artificial languages and structured knowledge (e.g first order logic), but it is still a hard (AI complete) problem to convert between natural and artificial languages. If you could translate English - Lojban - English, then you could just as well translate, e.g. English - Lojban - Russian. Without a natural language model, you have no access to the vast knowledge base of the Internet, or most of the human race. I know people can learn Lojban, just like they can learn Cycl or LISP. Lets not repeat these mistakes. This is not training, it is programming a knowledge base. This is narrow AI. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]-This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/emailTo unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]Thank YouJames Ratcliffhttp://falazar.com Cheap Talk? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates. This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED] Thank YouJames Ratcliffhttp://falazar.com Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail. This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] Natural versus formal AI interface languages
BillK wrote: On 11/1/06, Charles D Hixson wrote: So. Lojban++ might be a good language for humans to communicate to an AI with, but it would be a lousy language in which to implement that same AI. But even for this purpose the language needs a verifier to insure that the correct forms are being followed. Ideally such a verifier would paraphrase the statement that it was parsing and emit back to the sender either an error message, or the paraphrased sentence. Then the sender would check that the received sentence matched in meaning the sentence that was sent. (N.B.: The verifier only checks the formal properties of the language to ensure that they are followed. It had no understanding, so it can't check the meaning.) This discussion reminds me of a story about the United Nations assembly meetings. Normally when a representative is speaking, all the translation staff are jabbering away in tandem with the speaker. But when the German representative starts speaking they all fall silent and sit staring at him. The reason is that they are waiting for the verb to come along. :) Billk Yeah, it wouldn't be ideal for rapid interaction. But it would help people to maintain adherence to the formal rules, and to notice when they weren't. If you don't have feedback of this nature, the language will evolve different rules, more closely similar to those of natural languages. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] Funky Intel hardware, a few years off...
IBM's system [high thermal conductivity interface technology], while not yet ready for commercial production, is reportedly so efficient that officials expect it will double cooling efficiency. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15484274/ Probably being hyped more than its actual performance, but thiswill certainly help. -hank On 10/31/06, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This looks exciting... http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=302type=expertpid=1A system Intel is envisioning, with 100 tightly connected cores on achip, each with 32MB of local SRAM ...This kind of hardware, it seems, would enable the implementation of a powerful Novamente AGI system on a relatively small number ofmachines. Of course, this would require some serious customizationof the Novamente codebase, but not any fundamental change to theNovamente AI paradigm, as the NM system has been designed with highly flexible distributed processing in mind.[And obviously, looking at it less selfishly, there is tremendouspotential for acceleration of other AI systems well; and excitingthings beyond AI such as virtual reality simulations...] This stuff is several years off from commercial production, I'm sure,but nevertheless it is nice to see what's out there.-- Ben G-This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/emailTo unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED] This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] Natural versus formal AI interface languages
Perhaps there is a shortcut to all of this. Provide the AGI with the hardware and software to jack into one or more human brains and let the bio-software of the human brain be the language interface development tool. I think we are creating some of this the hardware. This also puts AGI in a position to become reliant on humans to interface with other humans and perhaps also allows an AGI to learn the virtues of carbon technology and the value of continuing relationships with humans. Some of the drivers that bring humans together such as social relations and sexual relations perhaps can be learned by an AGI and perhaps we can pussywhip an antisocial AGI into a friendly AGI. Remember the KISS rule , sometimes you can focus only on key areas with enormous complexity and later discover that the result is far more simple than originally envisioned. Morris On 10/31/06, John Scanlon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One of the major obstacles to real AI is the belief thatknowledge ofa natural language is necessary for intelligence. Ahuman-level intelligent system should be expected to have the ability to learn a natural language, but it is not necessary. It is better to start with a formal language, with unambiguous formal syntax,as the primary interface between human beings and AI systems. This type of language could be called a para-natural formallanguage. It eliminatesall of the syntactical ambiguity that makes competent use of a natural language so difficult to implement in an AI system. Such a language would also be a member of the class fifth generation computer language. This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED] This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] Natural versus formal AI interface languages
- Original Message - From: Gregory Johnson Provide the AGI with the hardware and software to jack into one or more humanbrains and let the bio-software of the human brain be the language interface development tool. Jacking into the human brain? That is hardly a shortcut to AGI, if we are to invent AGI in the next 30 or 40 years. We are a long ways off from being able to use the human brain the way you mention. Some of the drivers that bring humans together such as social relations and sexual relations perhaps can be learned by an AGI andperhaps we can pussywhip an antisocial AGI into a friendly AGI. Could you elaborate on this? I don't see the reliability of comparing an AGI's motivations with human motivation. Mark N This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
