[agi] Out of the Office until August 19
I'm away from the office until August 19 and won't be checking email regularly until then. For urgent matters, you can contact my assistant Jeremy Knight at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or (416) 946-8867. This message was automatically generated. --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] confirmation paradox
Phil wrote: YKY is advocating the post-modern viewpoint that knowledge is context-dependent, and true-false assignments and numeric value judgements are both extremely problematic.Pei is pointing out the commonsense, classicist position, and also the refutation of the post-modern tradition, that some ways of building bridges make bridges that stay standing, and other ways make bridges that fall down. I think that the task of completing the Modernist project, and uniting the many important observations of both enlightment and post-modernist thinking, has fallen to AI; we MUST resolve these two viewpoints before we can create an AGI. That's an interesting perspective. I am actually very modernist in outlook: I believe AGI can be based on logic and a simple architecture, with everything else being knowledge, and that learning is not particularly complex. I want to build a minimalist AGI capable of human-like intelligence / common sense. Adding numerical / truth values to logic is OK if we have a rich set of rules for estimating them. The philosophical foundation of probabilistic logic may still be shaky but we can build a working AGI usingeclectic rules.In this sense I'm postmodern. The problem of context may be avoided by using an unambiguous language (for internal representation). Context-dependent words are a feature of natural language (NL) only. It arises when an NL word maps to multiple concepts in the knowledge representation. It is necessary to separate NL processing (ambiguous) with the internal KR (unambiguous). It's a good idea to reconcile opposing viewpoints to arrive at something practical. YKY To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[agi] Context dependent words/concepts
On 8/19/06, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The problem of context may be avoided by using an unambiguous language (for internal representation).Context-dependent words are a feature of natural language (NL) only.It arises when an NL word maps to multiple concepts in the knowledge representation.It is necessary to separate NL processing (ambiguous) with the internal KR (unambiguous). Well, no. It is true that NL has unnecessary ambiguities, but it is NOT true that a good knowledge representation will remove ALL ambiguities. Complete removal of ambiguity is an unachievable ideal, and trying to approach it too closely results in massive increase in the complexity of representations.Some degree of ambiguity is often useful to achieve representational compactness. And, context is not just about words having different meanings --- it's about concepts having different meanings in different situations ... which need to be determined **on the fly** by a contextualizing process, and can't be pre-figured up-front by decomposing every concept into a set of context-specific subconcepts... Let's take the examples: -apple piemeans a pie with apple fillings. - pizza pie is a pie that islikepizza (not a pie with pizza fillings). - apple juice means a juice made from apples. In #1 #3, I don't see how you can generate the target concepts merely by mixing apple with pie/juice on the fly. In all these cases, the target concepts areactually complex concepts that are first defined in episodic memory (eg we know that there is this thing which is a pie with apple fillings, and this thing is mapped to the phrase apple pie by the natural language processor). So, complex concepts are formed in episodic memory first, using an internal representation that is unambiguous, because they are formed from and groundedby experience (ie sensory processing). YKY To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] Context dependent words/concepts
On 8/19/06, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, but I can generate a hypothetical grounding for mushrooom pie on the fly even though I haven't seen one ;-) And I can form concepts of mathematical structures that I have never experienced nor exemplified and may in fact be inconsistent and not even exist... Not all concepts are formed in episodic memory, of course.. Well, once again the distinction between NL (natural language) andKR (knowledge representation) is important here. Determining what is themeaningof mushroom pieis an NL -- KR problem. In this case a heuristic rule like try to construct the meaning of a compound word XY by looking for words like X'Y where X' is similar to X may be applicable. So NL can be ambiguous, KR is not. Within KR itself, we can form novel concepts out of existing ones, and this operation is not dependent on NL. For example I can form the concept unfair justice. In blackboard the NL word maps to either a board that is black in color or a board for writingthatis usually black/green/white. The KR of those concepts are unambiguous; it's just that there are 2 alternatives. YKY To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] Context dependent words/concepts
In blackboard the NL word maps to either a board that is black in color or a board for writing that is usually black/green/white. The KR of those concepts are unambiguous; it's just that there are 2 alternatives. This is very naive... a concept such as a board that is black in color is not unambiguous at all ... -- what % of the board needs to be black ? -- what kind of object really qualifies as a board? -- how dark does something have to be, to be black? etc. the answers to these questions depend on context, so whether an object is classified as a board that is black in color depends on context... quite independently of any linguistic ambiguities associated... ben --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
