Mark Waser wrote:
Interesting. I believe that we have a fundamental disagreement. I
would argue that the semantics *don't* have to be distributed. My
argument/proof would be that I believe that *anything* can be described
in words -- and that I believe that previous narrow AI are brittle
because they don't have both a) closure over the terms that they use and
b) the ability to learn the meaning if *any* new term (traits that I
believe that humans have -- and I'm not sure at all that the
"intelligent" part of humans have distributed semantics). Of course,
I'm also pretty sure that my belief is in the minority on this list as
well.
I believe that an English system with closure and learning *is* going
to be a complex system and can be grounded (via the closure and
interaction with the real world). And scalable looks less problematic
to me with symbols than without.
We may be different enough in (hopefully educated) opinions that this
e-mail may not allow for a response other than "We shall see" but I
would be interested, if you would, in hearing more as to why you believe
that semantics *must* be distributed (though I will immediately concede
that it will make them less hackable).
Trust you to ask a difficult question ;-).
I'll just say a few things (leaving more detail for some big fat
technical paper in the future).
1) On the question of how *much* the semantics would be distributed: I
don't want to overstate my case, here. The extent to which they would
be distributed will be determined by how the system matures, using its
learning mechanisms. What that means is that my chosen learning
mechanisms, when they are fully refined, could just happen to create a
system in which the atomic concepts were mostly localized, but with a
soupcon of distributedness. Or it could go the other way, and the
concept of "chair" (say) could be distributed over a thousand pesky
concept-fragments and their connections. I am to some extent agnostic
about how that will turn out. (So it may turn out that we are not so
far apart, in the end).
2) But having said that, I think that it would be surprising if a
tangled system of atoms and learning mechanisms were to result in
something that looked like it had the modular character of a natural
language. To me, natural languages look like approximate packaging of
something deeper .... and if that 'something' that is deeper were
actually modular as well, rather than having a distributed semantics,
why doesn't the something stop being shy, come up to the surface, be a
proper language itself, and stop pestering me with the feeling that *it*
is just an approximation to something deeper?! :-)
(Okay, I said that in a very abstract and roundabout way, but if you get
what I am driving at, you might see where I am coming from.)
3) But my real, fundamental reason for believing in distributed
semantics is that I am obliged (because of the complex systems problem)
to follow a certain methodology, and that methodology will not allow me
to make a commitment to a particular semantics ahead of time: just
can't do it, because that would be the worst way to fall into the trap
of restricting the possible complex systems I can consider. And given
that, I just think that an entire localist semantics looks unnatural.
Apart from anything else, semanticists can only resolve the problem of
the correspondence between atomic terms and things in the world by
invoking the most bizarre forms of possible-worlds functions, defined
over infinite sets of worlds. I find that a stretch, and a weakness.
Hope that makes sense.
Richard Loosemore
-----
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=8660244&id_secret=48860497-238484
