On 5/6/07, Matt Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
YKY, what do you mean by "scruffie"? Is that anyone who doesn't think
FOPL
should be the core of an AGI?
"Scruffies" tend to think AGI consists of a large number of heterogeneous modules. Let's try to avoid this debate by saying "we'll build as many modules as we see fit." Now FOPL is not the only KR language out there, but anyone can be reasonably familiar with it so it can serve as a foundational framework. If we are to agree on a KR scheme, it should be one that can be explained in 15 minutes.
About programming languages. I do most of my programming in C++ with a
little
bit of assembler. AGI needs some heavy duty number crunching. You really need assembler to do most any kind of vector processing, especially if you
use
a coprocessor like a graphics card or PS3 type hardware. You can get
hundreds
of GFlops for a few hundred dollars now, so why not use it?
I used to be pretty good at C and assembler hacking =) but we definitely should not worry about hardware at *this stage*. We should first focus on the algorithms.
About business. Do you have any specific project goals? Something that
might
bring in money in the next 3-5 years? It is OK with me if our goal is to build something and give it away. A lot of people have made money that
way.
Look at Linux. I gave away my PAQ compressor and I've gotten 3 consulting jobs as a result, not counting work I turned down, and I never even looked
for
work. I just don't want to make the same mistake as Cyc and build
something
that nobody can use. I know AGI has lots of potential applications, but
how
are we going to show that our AGI is better than our competition?
I think we should not go FOSS just because we arn't confident of ourselves, or to try to avoid competition. We love our work and should go the extra miles to make it profitable. Those who're not interested in business matters can leave that to somebody else in the group. A few things have changed since Cyc's start: we have more people working on AGI now; we have the Web; better understanding of many algorithms (eg machine learning, belief revision, probabilistic logic); much better PC hardware; (can someone think of more?) How we can be better than the competition: 1. we focus on AGI, unlike eg, Google on search engine or M$ on the OS and infrastructure 2. as a startup we can experiment on new forms of organization, be more open, innovative, etc 3. our payoff would also be better than if we worked at the major companies 4. capital resource is less important than human resource This talk about tech startups is pretty inspiring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6hoPw5hItY ----- 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/?member_id=231415&user_secret=fabd7936
