Brad wrote: > > It's an interesting idea, to raise Novababy knowing that it can adopt > > different "bodies" at will. Clearly this will lead to a rather > different > > psychology than we see among humans --- making the in-advance design of > > educational environments particularly tricky!! > > First of all, please read Diaspora by Greg Egan. As a SF author, > he excels in his informed approach to AI design, philosophy, and > neuroscience. This book touches on this topic(AI's designed for > multiple bodies) very directly.
I read that book a few years ago, after Eliezer Y kindly sent me a copy (along with Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge). Those gifts from Eli reawakened my interest in SF, which had dwindled to just about zero in the early 90's, due to an apparently lack of decently interesting SF books beyond those I'd already read. I think Egan's speculative physics is pretty nifty [though not nearly crazy enough to be true, to paraphrase one of the founders of quantum theory], but, I wasn't so impressed by Egan's treatment of AI (though I agree it's not *idiotic* (unlike plenty of SF)). He has more uploaded humans than AI's, and even his "AI's" are pretty much derivatives of uploaded humans. He does play around with the difference between embodied and disembodied minds -- BUT, even his disembodied uploads seem to have pretty much the same old human-type sort of self that we have ... presumably because they're uploaded humans (or derivatives thereof) that haven't drifted too far from their roots... > This VR training room initially seemed like a great idea to me, > but on consideration, I'm not so certain it's worth the trouble. > > First of all, you are reducing the complexity of the environment > by orders of magnitude. One could argue that it is a baby's > physical interation with the world is the cornerstone on which > all future intelligence resides. > > Now you've made pains to point out that you're not trying to > recreate people, but intelligence. However, a Novamente grounded > in a different reality will be difficult for people to interact with. > > So here are two possible issues: the VR world might actually slow > down the intellectual growth of the Nova Baby. And even when > intelligent, it will be more alien from us than it needs to be. > > A second point about this plan is that you are creating extra > work for yourself both in designing a VR training paradigm, and > then in bridging the gap from VR to the real world, which would > be no picnic. > > > So there are some possible negatives, the positives you've > already listed. Agree about the possible negatives. However, I'm more worried about the "VR worlds may be too simple to really be useful" problem than about the "too alien to communicate with us" problem, because a) If the VR world is one in which humans can play too, I imagine communication will be possible in the context of that world. b) Humans can interact in the context of virtual worlds dissimilar from physical reality, and I suspect that similarly an AGI bred in a virtual world will be able to interact in the physical world ... *if* it really lives up to the G in AGI.... Of course, there will be a significant transition here, but I doubt it'll be an unbridgeable one. > > If this course is decided upon, First, I stress this is not something the Novamente engineering team will be working on right now. We are not yet at the stage where building a great training environment is our big problem. However, it may be that some additional resources to build this environment may present themselves -- because volunteers who don't have the training to work on AGI research proper, may possibly have the training to work on AI-training-world construction... Anyway, the course is not decided upon yet -- what's decided upon is merely that I'm going to spend a bit of time fleshing out the possibility. We wouldn't decide upon a major course of action such as this without far more careful evaluation... > consider giving the Novamente an > ability to sense objects in their native format (sprites in 3d > coordinates). If your intent is to simplify the world, don't add > in the fuzz of the artificial visual input, which is often flawed > (e.g. clipping errors). Give the Novababy access to the > underlying framework of the world or it will be eternally > confused as it tries to figure out why it can walk through trees, > or why Mr. Smith's left toes are inside its own foot. Very interesting suggestion, thanks!!! Why not, indeed, supply it with native format as well as useful but more derived/processed formats.. I want to add that we've also evaluated the possibility of using actual robotic systems for NM teaching/training, but have concluded that right now this would require significant financial resources, plus the collaboration of a dedicated robotics team. The situation is not as bad as when I last explored this possibility in the late 90's -- I built a small mobile robot hoping to use it to play with AI, but damn if I didn't wind up spending 95% of my time fussing with sensors and actuators and such!! But robotics is still a pretty tricky art.... Collaboration with a robotics group is interesting and would be fun to do -- but even then, a simulation world would likely be developed. But in this case, the simulation world would directly reflect the portion of the world the system's robotic agents were acting in, and would be constantly tuned for greater fidelity.... The simulation approach has the advantage that, if it's judged a good approach, we could pursue it with *relatively* little additional resources (though certainly not zero). Also, if we chose, we could design simulations specifically designed with current robotic technology in mind, so as to smooth the way toward collaboration with robotics groups in the medium-term future. -- Ben G ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
