Eric wrote:
The challenge is to find a methodology for producing fast enough and frugal enough code, where that methodology is practicable. For example, as a rough upper bound, it would be practicable if it required 10,000 programmer years and 1,000,000 PC-years (i.e a $3Bn budget). (Why should producing a human-level AI be cheaper than decoding the genome?) And of course, it has to scale, in the sense that you have to be able to prove with < $10^7 (preferably < $10^6 ) that the methodology works (as was the case more or less with the genome.) This, it seems to me, requires a first project much more limited than understanding most of English, yet of significant practical benefit. I'm wondering if someone has a good proposal.
I am afraid that it may not be possible to find an initial project that is both * small * clearly a meaningfully large step along the path to AGI * of significant practical benefit My observation is that for nearly all practical tasks, either a) it is a fairly large amount of work to get them done within an AGI architectre or b) narrow-AI methods can do them pretty well with a much smaller amount of work than it would take to do them within an AGI architecture I suspect there are fundamental reasons for this, even though current computer science and AI theory doesn't let us articulate these reasons clearly, at this stage. So, I think that, in terms of proving the value of AGI research, we wll likely have to settle for a combination of: a) an interim task that is relatively small, and is clearly along the path to AGI, and is impressive in itself but is not necessarily of large practical benefit unto itself. b) interim tasks that are of practical value, and utilize AGI-related ideas, but may also be achievable (with different strengths and weaknesses) using narrow-AI methods As an example of a, I suggest robustly learning to carry out a number of Piagetan concrete-operational level tasks in a simulation world. As an example of b, I suggest natural language question answering in a limited domain. Alternate suggestions of tasks are solicited and much valued ... any suggestions?? ;-) Ben ----- 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/?list_id=303
