> --- On Fri, 8/29/08, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> From: Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: [agi] Re: Goedel machines ..PS
> To: agi@v2.listbox.com
> Date: Friday, August 29, 2008, 3:53 PM
> Ben,
...
> If RSI were possible, then you should see some
signs of it within human society, of
> humans recursively self-improving - at
however small a scale. You don't because of this
> problem of crossing and
integrating domains. It can all be done, but laboriously and
> stumblingly not in
some simple, formulaic way. That is culturally a very naive idea.
I hope nobody minds if I interject with a brief narrative concerning a recent
experience. Obviously I don't speak for Ben Goertzel, or anyone else who thinks
RSI or recognizing superior intelligence is possible.
As it happened, I was looking for a new job a while back, and landed an
interview with a major corporate entity. When I spoke to the HR representative,
she bemoaned the lack of hiring standards, especially for her own department.
"It's impossible," she said, "As a consultant explained it to us a few years
ago, the corporation changes with each person we hire or fire, changes into a
related but different entity. If we measure the intelligence of a corporation
in terms of how well suited it is to profit from its environment, my job is to
make sure that people we hire (on average) result in the corporation becoming
more intelligent." She looked at me for sympathy. "As if all our resources were
enough to recognize (much less plan) an entity more intelligent than
ourselves!" She had a point. "What's worse, we're expected to hire new HR staff
and provide training that will make our department more effective at hiring new
people." I nodded. That would lead to
recursive self improvement (RSI), which is clearly impossible. Finally she
said I seemed like the sympathetic sort, and even though that had nothing to do
with her worthless hiring criteria, I could have the job and start right away.
I thought about the problem later, and eventually concluded that one good HR
strategy would be to form hundreds or thousands (millions?) of corporations
with stochastic methods for hiring, firing, training, merging and creating
spinoffs, perhaps using GP or MOSES or some such. Eventually, corporations
would emerge with superior intelligence.
The alternative would be a massive cross-disciplinary effort, only imaginable
by a super-neo-da Vinci character who's a master of psychology, mathematics,
economics, manufacturing, politics -- essentially every field of human
knowledge, including medical sciences, history and the arts.
I guess it doesn't look too hopeful, so we're probably going to be stuck with
hiring, firing and training practices that mean absolutely nothing, forever.
Charles Griffiths
-------------------------------------------
agi
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