Hi Matt,
You asked:
What would be a good test for understanding an algorithm?
As I mentioned before, I want to create a system capable of being taught -
specifically capable of being taught skills. And I strongly share your
interest in answers to this question. A student should be able to demonstrate
to its mentor that it has learned, or is making progress learning, the given
subject matter.
A small use case might be the following:
Skill: Trimming the whitespace off both ends of a character string.
Domain knowledge:
* a character string is a sequence of characters
* characters can be partitioned into whitespace and non-whitespace
charactersAssumed existing algorithm skills:
* a sequence of objects can be inspected by index position
* a sequence of objects can be mutated by the remove operation
Tests to be passed by Texai following the skill acquisition:
* what are the preconditions for applying this skill?
* what are the postconditions for applying this skill?
* can this skill be applied to the sequence [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] ?
* can this skill be applied to the string "abc"?
* trim the whitespace off an empty string
* trim the whitespace off the string " abc "
* trim the whitespace off the string "ab c"Cheers.
-Steve
Stephen L. Reed
Artificial Intelligence Researcher
http://texai.org/blog
http://texai.org
3008 Oak Crest Ave.
Austin, Texas, USA 78704
512.791.7860
----- Original Message ----
From: Matt Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Sent: Thursday, May 8, 2008 11:02:33 PM
Subject: Re: Newcomb's Paradox (was Re: [agi] Goal Driven Systems and AI
Dangers)
--- Jim Bromer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I don't want to get into a quibble fest, but understanding is not
> necessarily constrained to prediction.
What would be a good test for understanding an algorithm?
-- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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agi
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