It keeps a copy of the searchable part of the Internet in RAM
Sometimes I wonder why I argue with you when you throw around statements
like this that are this massively incorrect. Would you care to retract
this?
You could, in principle, model the Google server in a more powerful
machine and use it to predict the result of a search
What is this "model the Google server" BS? Google search results are a
*rat-simple* database query. Building the database involves a much more
sophisticated algorithm but it's results are *entirely* predictable if you
know the order of the sites that are going to be imported. There is *NO*
mystery or magic here. It is all eminently debuggable if you know the
initial conditions.
My point about AGI is that constructing an internal representation that
allows debugging the learned knowledge is pointless.
Huh? This is absolutely ridiculous. If the learned knowledge can't be
debugged (either by you or by the AGI) then it's going to be *a lot* more
difficult to unlearn/correct incorrect knowledge. How can that possibly be
pointless? Not to mention the fact that teaching knowledge to others is
much easier . . . .
A more powerful AGI could do it, but you can't.
Why can't I -- particularly if I were given infinite time (or even a
moderately decent set of tools)?
You can't do any better than to manipulate the input and observe the
output.
This is absolute and total BS and last two sentences in your e-mail ("If you
tell your robot to do something and it sits in a corner instead, you can't
do any better than to ask it why, hope for a sensible answer, and retrain
it. Trying to debug the reasoning for its behavior would be like trying to
understand why a driver made a left turn by examining the neural firing
patterns in the driver's brain.") are even worse. The human brain *is*
relatively opaque in it's operation but there is no good reason that I know
of why this is advantageous and *many* reasons why it is disadvantageous --
and I know of no reasons why opacity is required for intelligence.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Mahoney" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <agi@v2.listbox.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2006 2:24 PM
Subject: Re: [agi] A question on the symbol-system hypothesis
Sorry if I did not make clear the distinction between knowing the learning
algorithm for AGI (which we can do) and knowing what was learned (which we
can't).
My point about Google is to illustrate that distinction. The Google
database is about 10^14 bits. (It keeps a copy of the searchable part of
the Internet in RAM). The algorithm is deterministic. You could, in
principle, model the Google server in a more powerful machine and use it to
predict the result of a search. But where does this get you? You can't
predict the result of the simulation any more than you could predict the
result of the query you are simulating. In practice the human brain has
finite limits just like any other computer.
My point about AGI is that constructing an internal representation that
allows debugging the learned knowledge is pointless. A more powerful AGI
could do it, but you can't. You can't do any better than to manipulate the
input and observe the output. If you tell your robot to do something and it
sits in a corner instead, you can't do any better than to ask it why, hope
for a sensible answer, and retrain it. Trying to debug the reasoning for
its behavior would be like trying to understand why a driver made a left
turn by examining the neural firing patterns in the driver's brain.
-- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
----- Original Message ----
From: Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2006 9:39:14 AM
Subject: Re: [agi] A question on the symbol-system hypothesis
Mark Waser wrote:
Given sufficient time, anything should be able to be understood and
debugged.
Give me *one* counter-example to the above . . . .
Matt Mahoney replied:
Google. You cannot predict the results of a search. It does not help
that you have full access to the Internet. It would not help even if
Google gave you full access to their server.
This is simply not correct. Google uses a single non-random algorithm
against a database to determine what results it returns. As long as you
don't update the database, the same query will return the exact same results
and, with knowledge of the algorithm, looking at the database manually will
also return the exact same results.
Full access to the Internet is a red herring. Access to Google's database
at the time of the query will give the exact precise answer. This is also,
exactly analogous to an AGI since access to the AGI's internal state will
explain the AGI's decision (with appropriate caveats for systems that
deliberately introduce randomness -- i.e. when the probability is 60/40, the
AGI flips a weighted coin -- but in even those cases, the answer will still
be of the form that "the AGI ended up with a 60% probability of X and 40%
probability of Y and the weighted coin landed on the 40% side).
When we build AGI, we will understand it the way we understand Google.
We know how a search engine works. We will understand how learning
works. But we will not be able to predict or control what we build, even
if we poke inside.
I agree with your first three statements but again, the fourth is simply not
correct (as well as a blatant invitation to UFAI). Google currently
exercises numerous forms of control over their search engine. It is known
that they do successfully exclude sites (for visibly trying to game
PageRank, etc.). They constantly tweak their algorithms to change/improve
the behavior and results. Note also that there is a huge difference between
saying that something is/can be exactly controlled (or able to be exactly
predicted without knowing it's exact internal state) and that something's
behavior is bounded (i.e. that you can be sure that something *won't*
happen -- like all of the air in a room suddenly deciding to occupy only
half the room). No complex and immense system is precisely controlled but
many complex and immense systems are easily bounded.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Mahoney" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <agi@v2.listbox.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2006 10:34 PM
Subject: Re: [agi] A question on the symbol-system hypothesis
I will try to answer several posts here. I said that the knowledge base of
an AGI must be opaque because it has 10^9 bits of information, which is more
than a person can comprehend. By opaque, I mean that you can't do any
better by examining or modifying the internal representation than you could
by examining or modifying the training data. For a text based AI with
natural language ability, the 10^9 bits of training data would be about a
gigabyte of text, about 1000 books. Of course you can sample it, add to it,
edit it, search it, run various tests on it, and so on. What you can't do
is read, write, or know all of it. There is no internal representation that
you could convert it to that would allow you to do these things, because you
still have 10^9 bits of information. It is a limitation of the human brain
that it can't store more information than this.
It doesn't matter if you agree with the number 10^9 or not. Whatever the
number, either the AGI stores less information than the brain, in which case
it is not AGI, or it stores more, in which case you can't know everything it
does.
Mark Waser wrote:
I certainly don't buy the "mystical" approach that says that sufficiently
large neural nets will come up with sufficiently complex >discoveries that
we can't understand them.
James Ratcliff wrote:
Having looked at the nueral network type AI algorithms, I dont see any
fathomable way that that type of architecture could
create a full AGI by itself.
Nobody has created an AGI yet. Currently the only working model of
intelligence we have is based on neural networks. Just because we can't
understand it doesn't mean it is wrong.
James Ratcliff wrote:
Also it is a critical task for expert systems to explain why they are
doing what they are doing, and for business application,
I for one am
not goign to blindy trust what the AI says, without a little background.
I expect this ability to be part of a natural language model. However, any
explanation will be based on the language model, not the internal workings
of the knowledge representation. That remains opaque. For example:
Q: Why did you turn left here?
A: Because I need gas.
There is no need to explain that there is an opening in the traffic, that
you can see a place where you can turn left without going off the road, that
the gas gauge reads "E", and that you learned that turning the steering
wheel counterclockwise makes the car turn left, even though all of this is
part of the thought process. The language model is responsible for knowing
that you already know this. There is no need either (or even the ability)
to explain the sequence of neuron firings from your eyes to your arm
muscles.
and this is one of the requirements for the Project Halo contest (took and
passed the AP chemistry exam)
http://www.projecthalo.com/halotempl.asp?cid=30
This is a perfect example of why a transparent KR does not scale. The
expert system described was coded from 70 pages of a chemistry textbook in
28 person-months. Assuming 1K bits per page, this is a rate of 4 minutes
per bit, or 2500 times slower than transmitting the same knowledge as
natural language.
Mark Waser wrote:
Given sufficient time, anything should be able to be understood and
debugged.
...
Give me *one* counter-example to the above . . . .
Google. You cannot predict the results of a search. It does not help that
you have full access to the Internet. It would not help even if Google gave
you full access to their server.
When we build AGI, we will understand it the way we understand Google. We
know how a search engine works. We will understand how learning works. But
we will not be able to predict or control what we build, even if we poke
inside.
-- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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