Linas, Not all theoretical problems can or need to be solved by practical testing. Also, in this field, no "infrastructure" is really "theoretically neutral" --- OpenCog is clearly not suitable to test all kinds of AGI theories, though I like the project, and is willing to help.
Open-source will solve many technical problems, and may also reveal many theoretical problems by putting theories under testing. However, it won't replace theoretical thinking. Pei On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 3:59 PM, Linas Vepstas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 18/04/2008, Pei Wang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > I believe AGI is basically a theoretical problem, which will be solved > > by a single person or a small group, with little funding. > > I'm not sure I believe this. After working on this a bit, it has become > clear to me that there are more ideas than there is time to explore > them all. Exploration is further hindered by a lack of software > infrastructure. There are no "lab facilities", no easy way to > perform high-level experiments. I know certainly that I have some > high-level theoreies I want ot explore, but I can't even get started > due to the lack of infrastructure. > > I think what Ben is trying to do is to provide those facilities by providing > OpenCog. I think opeen-source programmers *can* help build this. > And, judging by the Google summer-of-code applications, many of > the students have a strong understanding of many of the basic concepts. > > > Richard wrote: > >.... Though it is unlikely to do so, because collaborative > open-source projects are best suited >to situations in which the > fundamental ideas behind the design has been solved. > > >Just having a large gang of programmers on an open-source project > does not address Pei's >point about AGI being the "most complicated > problem in the history of science". > > Yes, but a large gang of open source programmers can help build > the infrastructure. Curing the Manhattan project, it may have been > Feynmann and von Neumann and Teller and Oppenheimer doing > all the thinking, but it sure wasn't them that built 42 acres of uranium > enrichment plants. This was done by large gangs. > > The fundamental ideas behind Bayesian nets and whatever have > "been solved" but there is no way, not without a lot of work, to hook > Bayesian nets to english language parsers, or to any sort of predicate > reasoning systems, or knowledge representation systems or ontologies. > > Doing such a hookup is "scientifically straight-foward" and > "scientifically easy" but a huge pain-in-the-arse. Until this hookup is done, > we can't run experiments,. can't test theories, can't even get started on > solving the scientifically hard part of the problem. > > --linas > > > > ------------------------------------------- > agi > Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ > Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
