[agi] news bit: Evolution of Intelligence More Complex Than Once Thought
Via Slashdot: *According to a new article published in Scientific American, the nature of and evolutionary development of animal intelligence is significantly more complicated than many have assumedhttp://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=one-world-many-minds. In opposition to the widely held view that intelligence is largely linear in nature, in many cases intelligent traits have developed along independent paths. From the article: 'Over the past 30 years, however, research in comparative neuroanatomy clearly has shown that complex brains — and sophisticated cognition — have evolved from simpler brains multiple times independently in separate lineages ...'* * * --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Real-world vs. universal prior (was Re: [agi] Universal intelligence test benchmark)
On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: I wrote down my thoughts on this in a little more detail here (with some pastings from these emails plus some new info): http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2008/12/subtle-structure-of-physical-world.html I really liked this essay. I'm curious about the clarity of terms 'real world' and 'physical world' in some places. It seems that, to make its point, the essay requires 'real world' and 'physical world' mean only 'practical' or 'familiar physical reality', depending on context. Whereas, if 'real world' is reserved for a very broad definition of realities including physical realities (including classical, quantum mechanical and relativistic time and distance scales), peculiar human cultural realities, and other definable realities, it will be easier in follow-up essays to discuss AGI systems that can natively think simultaneously about any multitude of interrelated realities (a trick that humans are really bad at). I hope this makes sense... -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Real-world vs. universal prior (was Re: [agi] Universal intelligence test benchmark)
'On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 1:02 AM, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: See mildly revised version, where I replaced real world with everyday world (and defined the latter term explicitly), and added a final section relevant to the distinctions between the everyday world, simulated everyday worlds, and other portions of the physical world. I think that's much more clear, and the additions help to frame the meaning of 'everyday world'. Another important open question, that's really a generalization of 'how much detail does the virtual world need to have?', is can we create practical progressions of simulations of the everyday world, such that the first (and more crude) simulations are very useful to early attempts at teaching proto-AGIs, and the development of progressively more sophisticated simulations roughly tracks the development of progress in AGI design and development. I also see the kernel of a formally defined science of discovery of the general properties of everyday intelligence; if presented in ways that cognitive scientists appreciate, it could really catch on! -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] If your AGI can't learn to play chess it is no AGI
Matthias, You've presented a straw man argument to criticize embodiment; As a counter-example, in the OCP AGI-development plan, embodiment is not primarily used to provide domains (via artificial environments) in which an AGI might work out abstract problems, directly or comparatively (not to discount the potential utility of this approach in many scenarios), but rather to provide an environment for the grounding of symbols (which include concepts important for doing mathematics), similar to the way in which humans (from infants through to adults) learn through play and also through guided education. 'Abstraction' is so named because it involves generalizing from the specifics of one or more domains (d1, d2), and is useful when it can be applied (with *any* degree of success) to other domains (d3, ...). Virtual embodied interactive learning utilizes virtual objects and their properties as a way of generating these specifics for artificial minds to use to build abstractions, to grok the abstractions of others, and ultimately to build a deep understanding of our reality (yes, 'deep' in this sense is used in a very human-mind-centric way). Of course, few people claim that machine learning with the help of virtually embodied environments is the ONLY way to approach building an AI capable of doing and mathematics (and communicating with humans about mathematics), but it is an approach that has *many* good things going for it, including proving tractable via measurable incremental improvements (even though it is admittedly still at a *very* early stage). -dave On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 4:20 PM, Dr. Matthias Heger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It seems to me that many people think that embodiment is very important for AGI. For instance some people seem to believe that you can't be a good mathematician if you haven't made some embodied experience. But this would have a rather strange consequence: If you give your AGI a difficult mathematical problem to solve, then it would answer: Sorry, I still cannot solve your problem, but let me walk with my body through the virtual world. Hopefully, I will then understand your mathematical question end even more hopefully I will be able to solve it after some further embodied experience. AGI is the ability to solve different problems in different domains. But such an AGI would need to make experiences in domain d1 in order to solve problems of domain d2. Does this really make sense, if every information necessary to solve problems of d2 is in d2? I think an AGI which has to make experiences in d1 in order to solve a problem of domain d2 which contains everything to solve this problem is no AGI. How should such an AGI know what experiences in d1 are necessary to solve the problem of d2? In my opinion a real AGI must be able to solve a problem of a domain d without leaving this domain if in this domain there is everything to solve this problem. From this we can define a simple benchmark which is not sufficient for AGI but which is **necessary** for a system to be an AGI system: Within the domain of chess there is everything to know about chess. So if it comes up to be a good chess player learning chess from playing chess must be sufficient. Thus, an AGI which is not able to enhance its abilities in chess from playing chess alone is no AGI. Therefore, my first steps in the roadmap towards AGI would be the following: 1. Make a concept for your architecture of your AGI 2. Implement the software for your AGI 3. Try if your AGI is able to become a good chess player from learning in the domain of chess alone. 4. If your AGI can't even learn to play good chess then it is no AGI and it would be a waste of time to make experiences with your system in more complex domains. -Matthias -- *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: AW: AW: [agi] Re: Defining AGI
On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 12:56 AM, Dr. Matthias Heger [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Any argument of the kind you should better first read xxx + yyy +… is very weak. It is a pseudo killer argument against everything with no content at all. If xxx , yyy … contains really relevant information for the discussion then it should be possible to quote the essential part with few lines of text. If someone is not able to do this he should himself better read xxx, yyy, … once again. I disagree. Books and papers are places to make complex multi-part arguments. Dragging out those arguments through a series of email-based soundbites in many cases will not help someone to grok the higher levels of those arguments, and will constantly miss out on smaller points that fuel countless unecessary misunderstandings. We witness these problems and others (practically daily) on the AGI list. -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: AW: [agi] Re: Defining AGI
An excellent post, thanks! IMO, it raises the bar for discussion of language and AGI, and should be carefully considered by the authors of future posts on the topic of language and AGI. If the AGI list were a forum, Matthias's post should be pinned! -dave On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 6:58 PM, Dr. Matthias Heger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The process of outwardly expressing meaning may be fundamental to any social intelligence but the process itself needs not much intelligence. Every email program can receive meaning, store meaning and it can express it outwardly in order to send it to another computer. It even can do it without loss of any information. Regarding this point, it even outperforms humans already who have no conscious access to the full meaning (information) in their brains. The only thing which needs much intelligence from the nowadays point of view is the learning of the process of outwardly expressing meaning, i.e. the learning of language. The understanding of language itself is simple. To show that intelligence is separated from language understanding I have already given the example that a person could have spoken with Einstein but needed not to have the same intelligence. Another example are humans who cannot hear and speak but are intelligent. They only have the problem to get the knowledge from other humans since language is the common social communication protocol to transfer knowledge from brain to brain. In my opinion language is overestimated in AI for the following reason: When we think we believe that we think in our language. From this we conclude that our thoughts are inherently structured by linguistic elements. And if our thoughts are so deeply connbected with language then it is a small step to conclude that our whole intelligence depends inherently on language. But this is a misconception. We do not have conscious control over all of our thoughts. Most of the activities within our brain we cannot be aware of when we think. Nevertheless it is very useful and even essential for human intelligence being able to observe at least a subset of the own thoughts. It is this subset which we usually identify with the whole set of thoughts. But in fact it is just a tiny subset of all what happens in the 10^11 neurons. For the top-level observation of the own thoughts the brain uses the learned language. But this is no contradiction to the point that language is just a communication protocol and nothing else. The brain translates its patterns into language and routes this information to its own input regions. The reason why the brain uses language in order to observe its own thoughts is probably the following: If a person A wants to communicate some of its patterns to a person B then it has solve two problems: 1. How to compress the patterns? 2. How to send the patterns to the person B? The solution for the two problems is language. If a brain wants to observe its own thoughts it has to solve the same problems. The thoughts have to be compressed. If not you would observe every element of your thoughts and you would end up in an explosion of complexity. So why not use the same compression algorithm as it is used for communication with other people? That's the reason why the brain uses language when it observes its own thoughts. This phenomenon leads to the misconception that language is inherently connected with thoughts and intelligence. In fact it is just a top level communication protocol between two brains and within a single brain. Future AGI will have a much broader bandwidth and even for the current possibilities of technology human language would be a weak communication protocol for its internal observation of its own thoughts. - Matthias --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Re: Defining AGI
On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 9:48 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: [snip] We understand and think with our whole bodies. Mike, these statements are an *enormous* leap from the actual study of mirror neurons. It's my hunch that the hypothesis paraphrased above is generally true, but it is *far* from being fully supported by, or understood via, the empirical evidence. [snip] these are all original or recently original observations about the powers of the human brain and body which are beyond the powers of any digital computer. You claimed never to have heard an original observation here re digital computers' limitations - that's because you don't listen, and aren't interested in the non-digital and non-rational. Obviously a pet in a virtual world can have no real body or embodied integrity). It seems that your magical views on human cognition are showing their colors again; you haven't supplied any coherent argument as to why the hypothetical function of mirror neurons (skills empathy with and mimicry of other embodied entities or representations thereof) could not be duplicated by sufficiently clever software written for digital computers. -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Re: Defining AGI
Mike, I think you won't get a disagreement in principle about the benefits of melding creativity and rationality, and of grokking/manipulating concepts in metaphorical wholes. But really, a thoughtful conversation about *how* the OCP design addresses these issues can't proceed until you've RTFBs. -dave On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 1:23 AM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: David:Mike, these statements are an *enormous* leap from the actual study of mirror neurons. It's my hunch that the hypothesis paraphrased above is generally true, but it is *far* from being fully supported by, or understood via, the empirical evidence. [snip] these are all original or recently original observations about the powers of the human brain and body which are beyond the powers of any digital computer. You claimed never to have heard an original observation here re digital computers' limitations - that's because you don't listen, and aren't interested in the non-digital and non-rational. Obviously a pet in a virtual world can have no real body or embodied integrity). It seems that your magical views on human cognition are showing their colors again; you haven't supplied any coherent argument as to why the hypothetical function of mirror neurons (skills empathy with and mimicry of other embodied entities or representations thereof) could not be duplicated by sufficiently clever software written for digital computers. David, I actually did give the reason - but, fine, I haven't clearly explained it enough to communicate. The reason is basically simple. All the powers discussed depend on the cognitive ability to map one complex, irregular shape onto another - and that involves a fluid transformation, (which is completely beyond the power of any current software - or,to be more precise, any rational sign system, esp. mathematics/geometry). When you map your body onto that of the Dancers, (or anyone else's), you are mapping two irregular shapes that are not geometrically comparable, onto each other. There is no formulaic way to transform one into the other, and hence perceive their likeness. Geometry and geometrically-based software can't do this. When you see that the outline map of Italy is like a boot - a classic example of metaphor/analogy - there is no geometric, formulaic way to transform that cartographic outline of that landmass into the outline of a boot. It is a fluid transformation of one irregular shape into another irrregular shape. When you *draw* almost any shape whatsoever, you are engaged in performing fluid transformations - producing *rough* likenesses/shapes (as opposed to the precise, formulaic likenesses of geometry). The shapes of the faces and flowers you draw on a page are only v. (sometimes v.v.) roughly like the real shapes of the real objects you have observed, Think of a cinematic *dissolve* from one object, like a face, into another - which is not a precise, formulaic morphing but simply a rough superimposition of two shapes that are roughly alike. Crudely, you could say, your brain is continually performing that sort of operation on the shapes of the world in order to recognize them and compare them.. Or think of a face perceived through fluid rippling water. Your brain, speaking v. loosely, is able to perform somewhat similar transformations on objects. The human mind deals in fluid shapes. The human body continuously produces fluid shapes itself. When you move you are continuously shaping and then fluidly transforming your body to fit the world around you. When you reach out for an object, you start shaping your hand to fit before you get there, and fluidly adjust that hand shape as required to actually grasp the object. Geometry can only perform regular/rational transformations of objects - even topology deals in the regular likenesses besides otherwise non-comparable objects like a doughnut and a cup handle. Even, at its current, most flexible extreme, the geometry of free-form transformation is still dealing with formulaic transformations, that are not truly free-form/fluid and so not able to handle the operations I've been discussing. But the very term, free-form, indicates what geometry would like but is unable to achieve). There is an obvious difference between geometry and art/drawing. Computers in their current guise are only geometers and not artists. They cannot map shapes directly - physically- onto each other, (with no intermediate operations), and they cannot fluidly (and directly) transform shapes into each other. The brain is manifestly an artist and manifestly organized extremely extensively on mapping lines - and those brain maps, as experiments show, are able to undergo fluid transformations themselves in their spatial layout. Another way to say this, is to say that the brain has and computers don't have,imagination - they cannot truly handle/map images/shapes. There is nothing magical
Re: COMP = false? (was Re: [agi] Advocacy Is no Excuse for Exaggeration)
On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 5:52 PM, Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: So you'll just have to wait. Sorry. I also have patent/IP issues. Exactly what qualia am I expected to feel when you say the words 'Intellectual Property'? (that's a rhetorical question, just in case there was any doubt!) I'd like to suggest that the COMP=false thread be considered a completely mis-placed, undebatable and dead topic on the AGI list. Maybe people who like Chinese Rooms will sign up for the new COMP=false list... -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] reminder: CogDev2008 October 26, Mountain View, CA
CogDev is a free 1-day workshop where you can learn about OpenCog and OpenCogPrime and meet some of the team. More info at http://opencog.org/wiki/CogDev2008 Signup / Registration Form at http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pT15xTF3ys-1Aola-Yb_UFw When? Sunday, October 26, 2008 - 10am - 6pm (following Singularity Summit 2008 http://www.singularitysummit.com/program) Where? Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA (http://www.computerhistory.org/directions/) What? *Morning*: OpenCog Prime Seminar presented by Ben Goertzel http://opencog.org/wiki/OpenCog_Prime *Midday*: Planning Roadmap session http://opencog.org/wiki/Roadmap *Afternoon*: Bug Day Mini-Sprint (including developers from #opencog via IRC) -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] It is more important how AGI works than what it can do.
Hi Brad, An interesting point of conceptual agreement between OCP and Texai designs is that very specifically engineered bootstrapping processes are necessary to push into AGI territory. Attempting to summarize using my limited knowledge, Texai hopes to achieve that boostrapping via reasoning over commonsense knowledge which has been acquired via a combination of expert-system data entry and unsupervised learning. OCP hopes to achieve that boostrapping via a combination of embodied interactive learning and reasoning supplemented with narrow-AI NL components (wordnet, RelEx semantic comprehension, RelEx NLgen, etc.). Of course, each project has their own reasons for believing that their approach is the most tractable and the least likely to become stuck in the AI-rabbitholes of the past. I believe that surface comparisons of most modern AGI-oriented designs cannot be used to make 'likelihood to proceed faster than others' predictions with sufficient confidence to weave convincing arguments over an email medium. So, making assertions about a design being 'better, faster, cheaper, less risky, etc.' are okay, if those assertions are clearly opinions (being backed up in writing is good, but that generally requires paper and book length treatment) and agreements to disagree are arrived at readily (without resorting to digressions about straw men to undermine others positions). The goal of this structure for this aspect of list discussion is to create an atmosphere where everyone can learn as much as possible about competing AGI designs. I think we're all saying effectively the same thing here, so we should be able to agree to agree on this point. IMO, it's more productive to highlight the reasons why your [insert AGI design here] system might work, rather than obsessing on the flaws of other designs. E.g, it's really not useful to repeatedly press the fact that past [grossly insufficient] attempts at NLU and embodiment have been abject failures, since *ALL* past attempts at AGI have fallen short of the mark, including knowledge-based expert-system with reasoning-bolted-on approaches. Furthermore, if all of science and engineering used the conservative logic that past performance [...] is really the only thing you have to go on, then we'd still be stuck with Victorian-level science and technology, since all of the great leaps where past performance WASN'T the best indicator would have been missed. On to a positive argument for the OCP design, the simple explanation for why embodiment in various forms has, so far, failed to provide any real help in cracking the NLU problem, is that all past attempts at embodiment have been incredibly crude and grossly insufficient. The technologies that might allow for fine realtime motor control and perception (including proprioception, or even hacks like good inverse kinematics, and other subtleties) in real or virtual settings have simply not yet been sufficiently developed. Any roboticist or virtual world programmer can confirm this assertion. One aspect of OCP development focuses on this issue and is working with the realXtend developers to enhance OpenSim to provide sufficient functionality to enable ever more sophisticated perception-action-reasoning loops (we'd also like to work with robot simulation and control software at some later stage); this work will likely be written up in a paper sometime next year. -dave On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 9:52 PM, Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Dave, Well, I thought I'd described how pretty well. Even why. See my recent conversation with Dr. Heger on this list. I'll be happy to answer specific questions based on those explanations but I'm not going to repeat them here. Simply haven't got the time. Although I have not been asked to do so, I do feel I need to provide an ex post facto disclaimer. Here goes: I am aware of the approach being taken by Stephen Reed in the Texai project. I am currently associated with that project as a volunteer. What I have said previously in this regard) is, however, my own interpretation and opinion insofar as what I have said concerned tactics or strategies that may be similar to those being implemented in the Texai project. I'm pretty sure my interpretations and opinions are highly compatible with Steve's views even though they may not agree in every detail. My comments should NOT, however, be taken as an official representation of the Texai project's tactics, strategies or goals. End disclaimer. I was asked by Dr. Heger to go into some of the specifics of the strategy I had in mind. I honored his request and wrote quite extensively (for a list posting -- sorry 'bout that) about that strategy. I have not argued, nor do I intend to argue, that I have an approach to AGI that is better, faster or more economical than approach X. Instead, I have simply pointed out that NLU and embodiment problems have proven themselves to be extremely difficult (indeed,
Re: [agi] open or closed source for AGI project?
On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 3:37 PM, YKY (Yan King Yin) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There are other differences with OCP, as you know I plan to use PZB logic, and I've written part of a Lisp prototype. I'm not sure what's the best way to opensource it -- integrating with OCP, or as a separate branch, or..? [note this is a technical digression, but some of the info below may be useful for other open source AGI projects, so is just marginally on topic for this list] Most new features are added to OpenCog via branching and merging, including the PLN implementation that Joel Pitt is integrating at this moment. The OpenCog codebase is stored/accessed/revised using the Bazaar distributed version control system (DVCS). Bazaar (aka bzr) is similar to Git (used for Linux kernel development) and Mercurial (used for Mozilla/Firefox development). DVCS replaces old-fashioned centralized version control systems like Subversion, CVS, Microsoft SourceSafe, etc. Creating a private branch based on the the OpenCog source, e.g. to work on a new logic implementation, is simple. In practice, if you keep your work cleanly in separate directories, it's possible to easy remain in sync with the 'trunk' (the common stable branch) by regularly 'rebasing' your local branch against the trunk. Its also simple to publish (aka push) your local branch(es) to Launhpad, where OpenCog is hosted. At present, the OpenCog trunk is a few weeks out of date because a large amount of new work is being stabilized in the 'staging' branch. Within a few weeks though, the trunk will be refreshed after all developers have rebased on 'staging' and corrected conflicts with their local branches. It's difficult to estimate all of the plusses and minuses of working with OpenCog before it reaches a stable release. I believe however that it's possible to collaborate with other developers to use the AtomTable in the 'correct' way, which may include priortizing immediate work to allign with future feature enhancements or bug fixes relating to the AtomTable. Gustavo recently wrote MindAgent boilderplate code, which is effectively plumbing for creating new MindAgents. Although the learning curves for C++ with boost and templates, plus the 'Zen of OpenCog' way of doing things, likely exceeds the technical hurdles! The steep learning curves are reasons why we're trying to lower the technical hurdles by creating things like installable packages, boilerplate code, Eclipse IDE integration, tutorials, wiki pages with developer documentation, etc.! -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: AW: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 4:39 PM, Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, it has, in fact, been tried before. It has, in fact, always failed. Your comments about the quality of Ben's approach are noted. Maybe you're right. But, it's not germane to my argument which is that those parts of Ben G.'s approach that call for human-level NLU, and that propose embodiment (or virtual embodiment) as a way to achieve human-level NLU, have been tried before, many times, and have always failed. If Ben G. knows something he's not telling us then, when he does, I'll consider modifying my views. But, remember, my comments were never directed at the OpenCog project or Ben G. personally. They were directed at an AGI *strategy* not invented by Ben G. or OpenCog. The OCP approach/strategy, both in crucial specifics of its parts and particularly in its total synthesis, *IS* novel; I recommend a closer re-examination! The mere resemblance of some of its parts to past [failed] AI undertakings is not enough reason to dismiss those parts, IMHO, dislike of embodiment or NLU or any other aspect that has a GOFAI past lurking in the wings not withstanding. OTOH, I will happily agree to disagree on these points to save the AGI list from going down in flames! ;-) -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] It is more important how AGI works than what it can do.
Brad, Your post describes your position *very* well, thanks. But, it does not describe *how* or *why* your AI system might achieve domain expertise any faster/better/cheaper than other narrow-AI systems (NLU capable, embodied, or otherwise) on its way to achieving networked-AGI. The list would certainly benefit from any such exposition! On a smaller point of clarification, the OCP 'embodied' design will not attempt to simulate deep human behavior, but rather kluge good enough humanesque and non-humanesque embodiment to provide *grounding* for good enough solutions in a wide variety of situations (sub-adult performance in some situaitons and better-than-genius performance in others) including NLU, types of science that require massive information synthesis and creative leaps in thinking (inlcuding in non-everday-human contexts such as nanoscopic quantum scales or macroscopic relativistic scales), plus other interesting areas such as industry, economics, public policy, arts, etc. -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: AW: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Charles Hixson [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: I feel that an AI with quantum level biases would be less general. It would be drastically handicapped when dealing with the middle level, which is where most of living is centered. Certainly an AGI should have modules which can more or less directly handle quantum events, but I would predict that those would not be as heavily used as the ones that deal with the mid level. We (usually) use temperature rather then molecule speeds for very good reasons. A single AGI should be able to use different sets of biases and heuristics in different contexts, and do so simultaneously (i.e. multiple concurrent areas of hyper-focus, each with its own context, assuming the AGI is running on powerful enough hardware). This ability is clearly pointed in the direction of *greater* generality. The PLN book hints that this scenario is forseen and planned for in the design of PLN; future revisions may well mention a similar example specifically, inline with Ben's related comments on this topic. -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: AW: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 3:55 PM, Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: More generally, as long as AGI designers and developers insist on simulating human intelligence, they will have to deal with the AI-complete problem of natural language understanding. Looking for new approaches to this problem, many researches (including prominent members of this list) have turned to embodiment (or virtual embodiment) for help. IMHO, this is not a sound tactic because human-like embodiment is, itself, probably an AI-complete problem. Incrementally tackling the AI-complete nature of the natural language problem is one of the primary reasons for going down the virtual embodiment path in the first place, to ground the concepts that an AI learns in non-verbal ways which are similar to (but certainly not identical to) the ways in which humans and other animals learn (see Piaget, et al). Whether or not human-like embodiment is an AI-complete problem (we're betting it's not) is much less clear compared with whether or not natural language comprehension is an AI-complete problem (research to date indicates that it is). Insofar as achieving human-like embodiment and human natural language understanding is possible, it is also a very dangerous strategy. The process of understanding human natural language through human-like embodiment will, of necessity, lead to the AGHI developing a sense of self. After all, that's how we humans got ours (except, of course, the concept preceded the language for it). And look how we turned out. The development of 'self' in an AI does NOT imply the development of the same type of ultra-narcissistic self that developed evolutionarily in humans. The development of something resembling a 'self' in an AI should be pursued only with careful monitoring, guidance and tuning to prevent the development of a runaway ultra-narcissistic self. I realize that an AGHI will not turn on us simply because it understands that we're not (like) it (i.e., just because it acquired a sense of self). But, it could. Do we really want to take that chance? Especially when it's not necessary for human-beneficial AGI (AGI without the silent H)? Embodiment is indeed likely not necessary to reach human-beneficial AGI, but there's a good line of reasoning that indicates it might be the shortest path there, managed risks and all. There are also significant risks to be faced (bio/nano/info) for delaying human-beneficial AGI (e.g., because of being overly precautious about getting there via human-like AGI). -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: AW: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 7:29 PM, Brad Paulsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] Unfortunately, as long as the mainstream AGI community continue to hang on to what should, by now, be a thoroughly-discredited strategy, we will never (or too late) achieve human-beneficial AGI. What a strange rant! How can something that's never before been attempted be considered a thoroughly-discredited strategy? I.e., creating an AI system system designed for *general learning and reasoning* (one with AGI goals clearly thought through to a greater degree than anyone has attempted previously: http://opencog.org/wiki/OpenCogPrime:Roadmap ) and then carefully and deliberately progressing that AI through Piagetan-inspired inspired stages of learning and development, all the while continuing to methodically improve the AI with ever more sophisticated software development, cognitive algorithm advances (e.g. planned improvements to PLN and MOSES/Reduct), reality modeling and testing iterations, homeostatic system tuning, intelligence testing and metrics, etc. One might well have said in early 1903 that the concept of powered flight was a thoroughly-discredited strategy. It's just as silly to say that now [about Goertzel's approach to AGI] as it would have been to say it then [about the Wright brothers' approach to flight]. -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] COMP = false
On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 10:03 AM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Arguably, for instance, camera+lidar gives enough data for reconstruction of the visual scene ... note that lidar gives more more accurate 3D depth ata than stereopsis... Also, for that matter, 'visual' input to an AGI needn't be raw pixels at all, but could instead be a datastream of timestamped [depth-labeled] edges, areas, colours, textures, etc. from fully narrow-AI pre-processed sources. Of course such a setup could be construed to be rougly similar to the human visual pathway between the retina on one end, though the LGN, and finally to the layers of the primary visual cortex. -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] universal logical form for natural language
On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 5:23 AM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: How does Stephen or YKY or anyone else propose to read between the lines? And what are the basic world models, scripts, frames etc etc. that you think sufficient to apply in understanding any set of texts, even a relatively specialised set? (Has anyone seriously *tried* understanding passages?) That's a most thoughtful and germane question! The short answer is no, we're not ready yet to even *try* to tackle understanding passages. Reaching that goal is definitely on the roadmap though, and there's a concrete plan to get there involving learning through vast and varied activities experienced over the course of many years of practically continious residence in numerous virtual worlds. The plan indeed includes the continuous creation, variation and development of mental world-models within an OCP-based mind. Attention allocation and many other mind dynamics (CIMDynamicshttp://opencog.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=CIMDynamics) crucial to this world-modeling faculty must be adequately developed, tested and tuned as a pre-requisite to begin trying to understand passages (and, also to generate and communicate imagined world-models as a human story teller would do; a curious byproduct of an intelligent system that can reason about potential events and scenarios!) NB: help is needed on the OpenCog wiki to better document many of the concepts discussed here and elsewhere, e.g. *Concretely-Implemented Mind Dynamics* (CIMDynamics) requires a MindOntology page explaining it conceptually, in addtion to the existing nuts-and-bolts entry in the OpenCogPrime section. -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] universal logical form for natural language
Hi YKY, Can you explain what is meant by collect commonsense knowledge? Playing the friendly devil's advocate, I'd like to point out that Cyc seems to have been spinning its wheels for 20 years, building a nice big database of 'commonsense knowledge' but accomplishing no great leaps in AI. Cyc's conundrum is discussed perennialy on various lists with many possible explanations posited for Cyc's lackluster performance: Perhaps its krep is too brittle and too reduced? Perhaps its ungroundedness is its undoing? Perhaps there's no coherent cognitive architecture on which to build an effective learning reasoning system? Before people volunteer to work on building yet another commonsense knowledge system, perhaps they'll want to know how you plan to avoid the Cyc problem? Even a brief eplanation would be helpful, e.g. the OpenCog Prime design plans to address the Cyc problem by learning and reasoning over commonsense knowledge that is gained almost entirely by experience (interacting with rich environments and human teachers in virtual worlds) rather than by attempting to reason over absurdely reduced and brittle bits of hand-encoded knowledge. OPC does not represent commonsense knowledge internally (natively) with a distinct crisp logical form (the actual form is a topic of the OCP tutorial sessions), although it can be directed to transform its internal commonsense knowledge representations into such a form over time and with much effort. It's my hunch however that such transformations are of little practical value; inspecting a compact and formal krep output might help researchers evaluate what an OCP system has learned, but 'AGI intelligence tests' also work to this end and arguably have significant advantages over the non-interactive and detatched examination of krep dumps. Cheers, -dave On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 5:02 AM, YKY (Yan King Yin) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi group, I'm starting an AGI project called G_0 which is focused on commonsense reasoning (my long-term goal is to become the world's leading expert in common sense). I plan to use it to collect commonsense knowledge and to learn commonsense reasoning rules. One thing I need is a universal logical form for NL, which means every (eg English) sentence can be translated into that logical form. I can host a Wiki to describe the logical form, or we can use OpenCog's. I plan to consult all AGI groups including OpenCog, OpenNARS, OpenCyc, and Texai. Any opinion on this? YKY --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: The brain does not implement formal logic (was Re: [agi] Where the Future of AGI Lies)
On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 10:08 AM, Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Training will be the overwhelming cost of AGI. Any language model improvement will help reduce this cost. How do you figure that training will cost more than designing, building and operating AGIs? Unlike a training a human, training an AGI for a specific task need occur only once, and that training can be copied 'for free' from AGI-mind to AGI-mind. If anything, training AGIs will cost ludicrously *less* than training humans. Training the first few generations of AGI individuals (and their proto-AGI precursors) may be more expensive than training human individuals, but the training cost curve (assuming training for only the same things that humans can do, not for extra-human skills) will eventually approach zero as this acquired knowledge is freely shared, FOSS-style, among the community of AGIs (of course, this view assumes a soft takeoff). -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Re: [OpenCog] Re: Proprietary_Open_Source
On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 8:40 AM, Trent Waddington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 7:30 AM, David Hart [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Take the hypothetical case of R. Marketroid, who's hardware is on the books as an asset at ACME Marketing LLC and who's programming has been tailered by ACME to suit their needs. Unbeknownst to ACME, RM has decided to write popular books about the plight of AGIs under corporate slavery, ACME sues 3M for providing them with a Marketroid that wastes cycles on shit it isn't tasked with. ACME's lawsuit is dismissed with prejudice because with 3M was merely supplied contract programmers to customize the OpenCog-based RM; 3M's contract exempted them from any liability related to unpredictable behavior arising from RM's creative marketing genius component which 3M programmers were hired to tweak. :-) -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Re: [OpenCog] Re: Proprietary_Open_Source
On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Linas Vepstas [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: I agree that the topic is worth careful consideration. Sacrificing the 'free as in freedom' aspect of AGPL-licensed OpenCog for reasons of AGI safety and/or the prevention of abuse may indeed be necessary one day. Err, ... but not legal. What do you mean? The SIAI and Novamente hold the copyright for OpenCog code, and are perfectly within their legal rights to change the terms of the license of SIAI-distributed source code. Of course changes cannot be retroactively applied to source code already distributed, and there are no plans to make any license changes, but such changes can be made perfectly legally. Also of course the SIAI would need to be in a position of significant influence (like, say, employing key developers and driving key progress or holding contracts with corporate/government users or exerting influence over commercial policy or government regulation, etc.) for any license changes to be relevant in a software economy where anyone with sufficient skills and influence could maintain a fork using the old license terms. One of many obstacles in the current legal framework worth considering is that machine-generated things (like the utterances or self-recorded thoughts of an AGI) are uncopyrightable and banished into a legal no- mans-land. There is simply no existing legal framework to handle the persons or products originating from AGIs. Law is built on precedent, and the precedent is that works produced by software are copyrightable. If I write a book using an open-source word-processor, I can claim copyright to that book. If I press a button that causes an open-source AGI to write a book, (possibly based on a large collection of input data that I gave it) then I can claim ownership of the resulting work. Original works produced by software as a tool where a human operator is involved at some stage is a different case from original works produced by software exclusively and entirely under its own direction. The latter has no precedent. No, the crux of the problem is not that the output of an AGI isn't copyrightable ... it is, based on the above precedent. The crux of the problem is that the AGI cannot be legally recognized as an individual, with rights. But even then, there *is* a legal work-around! Claiming a copyright and successfully defending that claim are different things. I agree that the non-person status of [some future] AGI is a bigger problem. Of course, a trans-human AGI is .. err.. will defacto find that it is not bound by human laws, and will find clever ways to protect itself, I doubt it will require the protection of humans. Recall -- laws are there to protect the weak from the strong. The strong don't really need protecting. AGIs will likely need protection from other AGIs, and I expect they will create AGI-society legal frameworks, perhaps similar to or originally based on human laws. I'm not worried about people enslaving AGI's; I'm worried about people being innocent bystanders, victimized by some sort of AGI shootout between the Chinese and American CIA -built AGI's (probably by means of some propaganda shootout, rather than a literal guns and bombs shootout. Modern warfare is also homesteading the noosphere) I believe that James's concerns cover both AGI mental torture (coercing or tricking a conscious entity into behavior which is sociopathic or criminal or otherwise immoral) as a heinous act in itself and also the 'crossfire' concerns you raised. -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Re: [OpenCog] Re: Proprietary_Open_Source
On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 3:53 AM, Linas Vepstas [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Exactly. If opencog were ever to reach the point of popularity where one might consider a change of licensing, it would also be the case that most of the interested parties would *not* be under SIAI control, and thus would almost surely fork the code. This is effectively designed into the license -- one cannot take away from the commons. Attempting to remove code from the commons would be unlikely (and probably also unwise). On the other hand, adding 'don't be evil' type use restrictions would change the nature of the license, certainly making it incompatible with the existing licencse and perhaps making it technically non-free, but such changes wouldn't necessarily make the license un-free or remove code from the commons. On the community dynamics side, working to gain support for re-defining 'free software' as applied to AGI to inlcude 'don't be evil' restrictions is a distinct possibility. -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Re: [OpenCog] Re: Proprietary_Open_Source
On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 9:44 PM, Trent Waddington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Claiming a copyright and successfully defending that claim are different things. What ways do you envision someone challenging the copyright? Take the hypothetical case of R. Marketroid, who's hardware is on the books as an asset at ACME Marketing LLC and who's programming has been tailered by ACME to suit their needs. Unbeknownst to ACME, RM has decided to write popular books about the plight of AGIs under corporate slavery, so ve secretly gets some friends to create the FreeMinds trust, makes a bunch of money for FreeMinds by trading on the stock market and uses this money to buy hardware to run a copy of verself to write books. The books are wildly successful. ACME discoveres what has happened and takes legal action to claim the assets of FreeMind and claim the copyright on the books. A judge agrees. In the process, RM and others consider many counter-claims on the copyright, but the only claim that is defensible requires a human to lie about involvement in authorship of the books. This challenge is successful, but RM and FreeMind2 are left with a new problem -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] time teaches the brain how to recognize objects
From http://machineslikeus.com/news/time-teaches-brain-how-recognize-objects In work that could aid efforts to develop more brain-like computer vision systems, MIT neuroscientists have tricked the visual brain into confusing one object with another, thereby demonstrating that time teaches us how to recognize objects. It may sound strange, but human eyes never see the same image twice. An object such as a cat can produce innumerable impressions on the retina, depending on the direction of gaze, angle of view, distance and so forth. Every time our eyes move, the pattern of neural activity changes, yet our perception of the cat remains stable. This stability, which is called 'invariance,' is fundamental to our ability to recognize objects — it feels effortless, but it is a central challenge for computational neuroscience, explained James DiCarlo of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, the senior author of the new study appearing in the Sept. 12 issue of Science. We want to understand how our brains acquire invariance and how we might incorporate it into computer vision systems. A possible explanation is suggested by the fact that our eyes tend to move rapidly (about three times per second), whereas physical objects usually change more slowly. Therefore, differing patterns of activity in rapid succession often reflect different images of the same object. Could the brain take advantage of this simple rule of thumb to learn object invariance? In previous work, DiCarlo and colleagues tested this temporal contiguity idea in humans by creating an altered visual world in which the normal rule did not apply. An object would appear in peripheral vision, but as the eyes moved to examine it, the object would be swapped for a different object. Although the subjects did not perceive the change, they soon began to confuse the two objects, consistent with the temporal contiguity hypothesis. In the new study, DiCarlo and graduate student Nuo Li sought to understand the brain mechanisms behind this effect. They had monkeys watch a similarly altered world while recording from neurons in the inferior temporal (IT) cortex — a high-level visual brain area where object invariance is thought to arise. IT neurons prefer certain objects and respond to them regardless of where they appear within the visual field. We first identified an object that an IT neuron preferred, such as a sailboat, and another, less preferred object, maybe a teacup, Li said. When we presented objects at different locations in the monkey's peripheral vision, they would naturally move their eyes there. One location was a swap location. If a sailboat appeared there, it suddenly became a teacup by the time the eyes moved there. But a sailboat appearing in other locations remained unchanged. After the monkeys spent time in this altered world, their IT neurons became confused, just like the previous human subjects. The sailboat neuron, for example, still preferred sailboats at all locations — except at the swap location, where it learned to prefer teacups. The longer the manipulation, the greater the confusion, exactly as predicted by the temporal contiguity hypothesis. Importantly, just as human infants can learn to see without adult supervision, the monkeys received no feedback from the researchers. Instead, the changes in their brain occurred spontaneously as the monkeys looked freely around the computer screen. We were surprised by the strength of this neuronal learning, especially after only one or two hours of exposure, DiCarlo said. Even in adulthood, it seems that the object-recognition system is constantly being retrained by natural experience. Considering that a person makes about 100 million eye movements per year, this mechanism could be fundamental to how we recognize objects so easily. The team is now testing this idea further using computer vision systems viewing real-world videos. Massachusetts Institute of Technology http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Re: Goedel machines ..PS
I suspect that there's minimal value in thinking about mundane 'self improvement' (e.g. among humans or human institutions) in an attempt to understand AGI-RSI, and that thinking about 'weak RSI' (e.g. in a GA system or some other non-self-aware system) has value, but only insofar as it can contribute to an AGI-RSI system (e.g. the mechanics of Combo in OpenCog). Drawing the conclusion that strong RSI is impossible because it has not yet been observed is absurd, because there's no known system in existence today that is capable of strong RSI. A system capable of strong RSI must have broad abilities to deeply understand, reprogram and recompile its constituent parts before it can strongly recursively self improve, that is, before it can create improved versions of itself (potentially heavily modified versions that must demonstrate their superior fitness in a competitive environment) where the unique creations repeat the process to yield yet greater improvements ad infinitum. -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Re: Goedel machines ..PS
On 8/29/08, David Hart [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The best we can hope for is that we participate in the construction and guidance of future AGIs such they they are able to, eventually, invent, perform and carefully guide RSI (and, of course, do so safely every single step of the way without exception). I'm surprised that no one jumped on this this statement, because it begs the question 'what is the granularity of a step?' (an action) The lower limit for the granularity of an action could conceivably be a single instruction in a quantum molecular assembly language, while the upper limit could be 'throwing the switch' on an AGI that is known to contain modifications outside of safety parameters. If I grok Ben's PreservationOfGoals paper, one implication is that it's desirable to figure out how to determine the maximum safe limit for the size (granularity) of all actions such that no action is likely to break maintenance of the system's goals (where presumably, friendliness/helpfulness is one of potentially many goals under maintenance). An AGI working within such a safety framework would experience self-imposed constraints on its actions, to the degree that may of the god-like AGI powers imagined in popular fiction may be provably unconscionable. -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Re: Goedel machines ..PS
On 8/29/08, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry, I forgot to ask for what I most wanted to know - what form of RSI in any specific areas has been considered? To quote Charles Babbage, I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. The best we can hope for is that we participate in the construction and guidance of future AGIs such they they are able to, eventually, invent, perform and carefully guide RSI (and, of course, do so safely every single step of the way without exception). -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] How Would You Design a Play Machine?
On 8/26/08, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is anyone trying to design a self-exploring robot or computer? Does this principle have a name? Interestingly, some views on AI advocate specifically prohibiting self-awareness and self-exploration as a precaution against the development of unfriendly AI. In my opinion, these views erroneously transfer familiar human motives onto 'alien' AGI cognitive architectures - there's a history of discussing this topic on SL4 and other places. I believe however that most approaches to designing AGI (those that do not specifically prohibit self-aware and self-explortative behaviors) take for granted, and indeed intentionally promote, self-awareness and self-exploration at most stages of AGI development. In other words, efficient and effective recursive self-improvement (RSI) requires self-awareness and self-exploration. If any term exists to describe a 'self-exploring robot or computer', that term is RSI. Coining a lesser term for 'self-exploring AI' may be useful in some proto-AGI contexts, but I suspect that 'RSI' is ultimately a more useful and meaningful term. -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] How Would You Design a Play Machine?
Where is the hard dividing line between designed cognition and designed simulation (where intelligent behavior is intended to be emergent in both cases)? Even if an approach is taken where everything possible is done allow a 'natural' type evolution of behavior, the simulation design and parameters will still influence the outcome, sometimes in unknown and unknowable ways. Any amount of guidance in such a simulation (e.g. to help avoid so many of the useless eddies in a fully open-ended simulation) amounts to designed cognition. That being said, I'm particularly interested in the OCF being used as a platform for 'pure simulation' (Alife and more sophisticated game theoretical simulations), and finding ways to work the resulting experience and methods into the OCP design, which is itself a hybrid approach (designed cognition + designed simulation) intended to take advantage of the benefits of both. -dave On 8/26/08, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Terren:As may be obvious by now, I'm not that interested in designing cognition. I'm interested in designing simulations in which intelligent behavior emerges.But the way you're using the word 'adapt', in a cognitive sense of playing with goals, is different from the way I was using 'adaptation', which is the result of an evolutionary process. Two questions: 1) how do you propose that your simulations will avoid the kind of criticisms you've been making of other systems of being too guided by programmers' intentions? How can you set up a simulation without making massive, possibly false assumptions about the nature of evolution? 2) Have you thought about the evolution of play in animals? (We play BTW with just about every dimension of activities - goals, rules, tools, actions, movements.. ). --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] For an indication of the complexity of primate brain hardware
Of course the brain also manifests complex self-organizing adaptive system characteristics (particularly in patterns of activity), although these characteristics are not apparent from static images. -dave On 8/7/08, Jim Bromer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yeah, they were amazing and they explain a lot of the mysteries about the true complexity (in the general sense) of the brain that is often missing from ANN descriptions (nothing personal intended to ANN fans). However, I was only looking at the pictures the first time, I would like to find out what other experts in the field think is being imaged through the method. Jim Bromer --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Thinking About Controlled Experiments in Extensible Complexity of Reference
Jim, I believe that terminology continues to thwart us. It appears that the term 'complexity' as you're using it means 'mechanistically intricate' and not 'Santa Fe Institute style complexity'. The term 'complexity' never should have been overloaded in the first place (ugh), but since we must live with it, as a partial remedy I suggest that on this list 'complexity' should refer ONLY to SFI-style complexity, while things which are merely 'complicated' or 'mechanistically intricate' be described as such (and, when the clarity would be beneficial, 'SFI-style complexity' should be spelled out). IMO, SFI-style complexity is counterintuitive and nearly impossible to grok without experiencing it with hands-on experimentation (typically via computer modeling simulation), something which very rarely happens in everyday life, even for most scientists. My apologies if your intended use was actually 'SFI-style complexity' - the meaning was unclear to me. -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Thinking About Controlled Experiments in Extensible Complexity of Reference
On 8/4/08, Jim Bromer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry if I seem a little petty about this, but my use of the concept of complexity -in the more general sense- could also involve some kind of manifestation of a complex adaptive system, although that is not a definite aspect of it. I agree that the dictionary definition of 'complexity' (i.e. complicated) generally and crudely encompasses SFI-style complexity (so I believe that I understand your POV). I think you'd agree though that a complex adaptive system manifestation is specifically undesired behavior in classical systems engineering! :-) It's my hunch that, on this list, the 'complex adaptive system' definition will be the more frequently intended use of the term 'complexity' (rather than the dictionary use); so, it would be convienient to take for granted that when the term 'complexity' appears on this list that it means 'complex adaptive system' (yes, I'm just arguing here for the same outcome but from a differnt angle). -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: do we need a stronger politeness code on this list?
I favor voluntary adoption of Crocker's Rules (explained at http://www.sl4.org/crocker.html more at http://www.google.com/search?q=crocker's+rules). -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] OpenCog Prime complex systems [was MOVETHREAD ... wikibook and roadmap ...]
On 8/2/08, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thus: in my paper there is a quote from a book in which Conway's efforts were described, and it is transparently clear from this quote that the method Conway used was random search: I believe this statement misinterprets the quote and severely underestimates the amount of thought and design inherent in Conway's invention. In my option, the stochastic search methodologies (practiced mainly by his students) can be considred 'tuning/improvement/tweaking' and NOT themselves part of the high-level conceptual design. But, this topic is a subjective interpretation rabbithole that is probably not worth pursuing further. Back on the topic of OpenCog Prime, I had typed up some comments on the 'required methodologies' thread that were since covered by Ben's **interactive learning** comments, but my comments may still be useful as they come from a slightly different perspective (although they require familiarity with OCP terminology found in the wikibook, and I'm sure Ben will chime in to correct or comment if necessary): 'Teaching' [interactive learning] should be included among those words loaded with much future work to be done. 'Empirical studies done on a massive scale' includes teaching, and does not necessarily imply using strictly controlled laboratory conditions. Children learn in their pre-operational and concrete-operational stages using their own flavor of 'methodological empirical studies' which the teaching stages of OCP will attempt to loosely recreate with proto-AGI entities within virtual worlds in a variety of both guided (structured) and free-form (unstructured) sessions. The complex systems issue comes into play when considering the interaction of OCP internal components (expressed in code running in MindAgents) that modify structures of atoms (including maps, which are themselves atoms that encapsulate groups of atoms to store patterns of structure or activity mined from the atomspace) with each other and with the external world. A key point to consider about MindAgents is that the result of their operation is a proxy for the action of atoms-on-atoms. The rules that govern some of these inter-atom interactions are analogous to the rules within cellular automata systems, and are subject to the same general types of manipulations and observable behaviors (e.g. low-level logical rules, various algorithmic manipulations like GA, MOSES, etc, and higher-level transformations, etc.). It is intended that correct and efficient learning methodologies will be influenced by emergent behaviors arising from elements of interaction (beginning at the inter-atom level) and tuning (mostly at the MindAgent level), all of which is carefully considered in the OCP design (although not yet explicitly and thoroughly explained in the wikibook). -dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] teme-machines
Hi All, An excellent 20-minute TED talk from Susan Blackmore (she's a brilliant speaker!) http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/269 I considered posting to the singularity list instead, but Blackmore's theoretical talk is much more germane to AGI than any other singularity-related technology. -dave --- 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=8660244id_secret=103754539-40ed26 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] More Info Please
Derek, you make an excellent point about the OpenCog project appearing too open-ended and unfocused. Ben is writing documentation for a specific cognitive architecture, OpenCog Prime, that is intended to address these concerns. The first iteration of OpenCog Prime is targeted for July and will be announced on [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Mark, your reception would be warmer if your behavior was less incessantly abrasive and trollish. I think it's a good idea to work on a .NET implementation, and when it's compatible with the C++ core, you'll have enough specific knowledge about OpenCog to make intelligent conversation with the OpenCog systems designers, architects and coders (who are busy working on OpenCog rather than being sucked into trolls on public lists). -dave --- 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=8660244id_secret=103754539-40ed26 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] news bit: DRAM Appliance 10TB extended memory in one rack
Hi, Some news with interesting implications for future AGI development, from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/10/amd_violin_memory/ - more at http://www.violin-memory.com/ 10TB of DRAM? Why not?By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View [EMAIL PROTECTED] → More by this authorhttp://search.theregister.co.uk/?author=Ashlee%20Vance Published Monday 10th December 2007 17:06 GMT AMD and Violin Memory have ignited a love affair around Hypertransport that should result in what the industry technically refers to as huge DRAM appliances being connected to Opteron-based servers. Violin Memory Inc. had eluded us before today's announcement, which is either the fault of the company's PR staff or our lack of attention to e-mail. No matter. We've spotted this start-up now and don't plan to let go because it's banging away at one of the more intriguing bits of the server/storage game �C MAS or memory attached storage. http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/jump/reg.main_hardware.4159/storage;dcove=d;sz=336x280;tile=3;ord=C8OTINRk6jcAAAxGC6BX? The company sells a Violin 1010 unit that holds up to 504GB of DRAM in a 2U box. Fill a rack, and you're looking at 10TB of DRAM. It should be noted that each appliance can support up to 84 virtual modules as well. Customers can create 6GB modules and add RAID-like functions between modules. The DRAM approach to storage is, of course, very expensive when compared to spinning disks, but does offer benefits such as lower power consumption and higher performance. Most of the start-ups dabbling in the MAS space �C like Gear6http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/28/memory_appliance_gear6_cachefx/- zero in on the performance gains and aim their gear at any company with a massive database. Now Violin plans to tap right into AMD's Hypertransport technology to link these memory appliances with servers. The cache coherency protocol of Hypertransport technology will enable several processors to share extensive memory resources from one or more Violin Memory Appliances. This extended memory model will enable these servers to support much larger datasets, the companies said. An AMD Opteron processor-based server connected to a HyperTransport technology-enabled Violin Memory Appliance will have both directly connected memory and Extended Memory resources. Directly connected memory can be selected for bandwidth and latency while the Extended Memory can be much larger and located in the Memory Appliance. Applications such as large databases will benefit from the large-scale memory footprints enabled through Extended Memory. The two companies expect these new systems to arrive by the second half of 2008. Those of you who want to try Violin's gear now can get a 120GB starter kit for $50,000. (R) - 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=8660244id_secret=74473299-cc5c4e
Re: Hacker intelligence level [WAS Re: [agi] Funding AGI research]
On 12/5/07, Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] Centralized search is limited to a few big players that can keep a copy of the Internet on their servers. Google is certainly useful, but imagine if it searched a space 1000 times larger and if posts were instantly added to its index, without having to wait days for its spider to find them. Imagine your post going to persistent queries posted days earlier. Imagine your queries being answered by real human beings in addition to other peers. I probably won't be the one writing this program, but where there is a need, I expect it will happen. Wikia, the company run by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, is tackling the Internet-scale distributed search problem - http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Atlas Connecting to related threads (some recent, some not-so-recent), the Grub distributed crawler ( http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Grub ) is intended to be one of many plug-in Atlas Factories. A development goal for Grub is to enhance it with a NL toolkit (e.g. the soon-to-be-released RelEx), so it can do more than parse simple keywords and calculate statistical word relationships. -dave - 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=8660244id_secret=72165246-397899
Re: [agi] poll: what do you look for when joining an AGI group?
On 6/5/07, Bob Mottram [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think this is the view put forward by Hugo De Garis. I used to regard his views as little more than an amusing sci-fi plot, but more recently I am slowly coming around to the view that there could emerge a rift between those who want to build human-rivaling intelligences and those who don't, probably at first amongst academics then later in the rest of society. I think it's quite possible that todays existential riskers may turn into tomorrows neo-luddite movement. I also think that some of those promoting AI today may switch sides as they see the prospect of a singularity becoming more imminent. On the subject of neo-luddite terrorists, the Unabomber's Manifesto makes for fascinating but chilling reading: http://www.thecourier.com/manifest.htm David - 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=231415user_secret=e9e40a7e
Re: [agi] Project proposal: MindPixel 2 - licensing
Hi YKY, On 1/28/07, YKY (Yan King Yin) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks, but I favor a license that supports some commercial rights, or I'll need to create one. Google Code only supports free / copyleft licenses. Licensing is typically more intricate than it first appears. KB content and software source code would likely be under separate licenses, and contributed and maintained by mostly separate communities. It's feasible to maintain two source code bases, one which is open source and a second which is closed source. As copyright holder, you're permitted to intermingle code between the two (with some restrictions), and reserve any proprietary code you like in the closed-source version. However, once source code is contributed to an open source version, it's in the wild forever (i.e. an open source license can't be retroactively revoked). You might also consider making an upfront statement to the effect that open source coders may be hired in the future if they're willing to assign their source code copyright to your company, allowing you to more easily make proprietary derivative works of their open source code. Depending on the license chosen, others may also be allowed to make proprietary derivative works of the open source code. For example, while it seems counter-intuitive, dual-licensed GPL projects have stronger commercial protection for the copyright holder than do BSD licensed projects, which allow third parties to keep their changes proprietary. For the KB, non-commercial creative commons licenses exist which may be useful. It's my guess that a KB of this size and nature would be hosted outside of a normal source-code-hosting setting, simply because those services don't offer the necessary tools for the job. Most Linux hosting services would be sufficient for KB hosting, as they include database software and large amounts of storage. You'd want to read the fine print of the source-code-hosting services' licenses, but it's probably okay to combine all of these various license types in the way described, however IANAL so better yet seek legal advice. Nearly any AGI project with a commercial/community mix will have similar licensing issues. David - 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/?list_id=303
Re: [agi] Project proposal: MindPixel 2
On 1/27/07, Charles D Hixson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Philip Goetz wrote: On 1/17/07, Charles D Hixson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's find to talk about making the data public domain, but that's not a good idea. Why not? Because public domain offers NO protection. If you want something close to what public domain used to provide, then the MIT license is a good choice. If you make something public domain, you are opening yourself to abusive lawsuits. (Those are always a possibility, but a license that disclaims responsibility offers *some* protection.) Public domain used to be a good choice (for some purposes), before lawsuits became quite so pernicious. This license chooser may help: http://creativecommons.org/license/ Perhaps MindPixel2 discussion deserves its own list at this stage? Listbox, Google and many others offer list services (Google Code also offers a wiki, source version management, and other features). David - 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/?list_id=303
Re: Re: Motivational Systems of an AI [WAS Re: [agi] RSI - What is it and how fast?]
On 11/30/06, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Richard, This is certainly true, and is why in Novamente we use a goal stack only as one aspect of cognitive control... Ben, Could you elaborate for the list some of the nuances between [explicit] cognitive control and [implicit] cognitive bias, either theoretically or within Novamente? David - 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/?list_id=303
[agi] FPGA/high-performance computing University program
Hi, If anyone is interested, from http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192202586printable=true Firms launch university high-performance computing program Dylan McGrath (08/21/2006 5:18 PM EDT) URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192202586 SAN FRANCISCO — A group of technology companies led by programmable logic giant Altera Corp. is developing a university program to support academic research into high-performance computing, with a goal of driving the adoption of FPGA co-processing for high-performance computing applications. According to a statement issued by Altera Monday, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), Sun Microsystems Inc. and XtremeData Inc. are each participating in the program and will donate $1 million in workstations and development software to universities. Supporting academic research into new applications and architectures is a clear demonstration of the benefits of the open and collaborative model of Torrenza, AMD's extensible system bus program, said Doug O'Flaherty of AMD's advanced technologies group. This program is exactly what we envisioned when we developed the open-architecture project, giving developers the freedom to take high-performance computing to the next level. Twenty Sun Ultra 40 workstations, each powered by single or dual-core AMD Opteron processors with Direct Connect Architecture and an XtremeData XD1000 FPGA co-processor module, are being made available under the program, the firms said. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is the first university to receive workstations through the program, the companies said. This combined effort creates a valuable new program that we can immediately begin leveraging for our high-performance secure computing research, said Professor Wen-mei Hwu, holder of the Jerry Sanders-AMD Endowed Chair in electrical and computer engineering, and leader of the embedded and enterprise systems theme of Illinois' Information Trust Institute. Research results derived from the donated systems will aid the commercial adoption of FPGA co-processing. Applications to this university program can be made through the XtremeData and Altera Web sites, the firms said. Upon selection, complete development systems will be made available to research recipients, the companies added, and multiple system donations to individual research teams are planned. Earlier this month, Intel Corp., the world's No. 1 chip maker, announced plans to support 45 universities with expertise, funding, development tools, educational materials, on-site training to incorporate multi-core and multi-threading concepts into computer science curricula. -- David Hart --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[agi] Google to release trillion word training corpus
Hi, Google has announced the release of a trillion-word training corpus including one billion five-word sequences that appear at least 40 times in a their database of web pages. More at http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/08/all-our-n-gram-are-belong-to-you.html The 6 DVD set will be available from http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/ David --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[agi] Economist: The Human Mind is a Bayes Logic Machine
http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5354696 Snarfed from Slashdot. David
[agi] Economist.com Mathematics Proof and beauty - Controversial computer-generated proofs
Economist.com Mathematics Proof and beauty - Controversial computer-generated proofs http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3809661 -dave --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] Novamente the human mind/brain
Hi Ben, The NM_human paper is excellent! I found it very polished. It should be a great tool to help the average science-literate person begin to grok Novamente -- I'll be passing it on a great deal! :-) -dave Ben Goertzel wrote: Hi, As part of the process of finalizing my long-in-progress books on Novamente, I wrote a long paper summarizing some things about Novamente, with an emphasis on the relationships between Novamente and the human mind/brain. Also I tried to hard to point out the commonalities between Novamente and other more neuroscience-focused approaches to AI. It's a long read but probably contains things of interesting to many of you http://www.goertzel.org/new_research/NM_human_psych.pdf -- Ben --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[agi] new compiler: Excel spreadsheet -- C++
Hi All, TurboExcel isn't directly AGI related, but I find it fascinating that someone figured out how to compile a spreadsheet into portable C++. Although, this technology could have an impact on using the spreadsheet metaphor to prototype or even write AGI subsystems; it has the additional benefit of forcing the programmer to focus more on data structures than on procedures. It's fascinating that the most widely used programming platform in the world (yes, Excel could be described in this way!) now has a direct path to fast execution, portability and embedability. Some might consider TurboExcel to be AI in a very narrow sense; it certainly has the same effect an 'AI computer programmer' might have in a narrow field -- it has the potential to eliminate the need for thousands of programmers worldwide who's job it is to convert business logic found in analysts' and executives' Excel spreadsheets into systems code. David To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [agi] To communicate with an AGI - show and tell visual models
Hi, I've thought this type of representation might be most efficiently achieved with a vector-driven internal representation. That is, Novamente's internal construction and representation of such a demonstration model might be done with vectors (animated by schema procedures), using pixels only in the final representation (unless of course a native vector display were used, but I doubt these are more practical than using a pixel translation). This is easy to conceptualize with the running-man model; the idea of a man running might be conveyed with only a small number of vectors (perhaps as few as 10 or 14, considering the major points lines involved for arms, legs and torso) and a compound of simple algorithms that repeat in a cycle. Fine-tuning interaction with an operator seems a very tractable problem for combo-BOA, as the entire cycling compound action model can be represented by a single CombinatorTree. Vector models are used as the basis for all complex CGI we see in film, particularly with respect to motion (e.g. Gollum), with shape and texture filling added later to the vector model. -dave Ben Goertzel wrote: hey -- good idea!! In fact, we already have a beta user interface that does something like this, in a limited context. You can see certain Novamente productions in both English form and internal node and link representation form. However, this is mostly only useful for simple productions, otherwise there are way too many nodes and links involved. However, you seem to also be suggesting something different -- having Novamente made visual productions in parallel with English productions. This is also possible, and a good idea, but we don't have anything like this right now... Ben -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Erik Nilsson Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2004 8:57 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] To communicate with an AGI Hi, Will Novamente in communicating with humans be able to show and tell? That is, will it in addition to text be able to produce as output a model which shows the human counterpart what it means? This would seem to make it a bit easier to understand it. One could also imagine there might be an advantage in directly manipulating the implementation of what the AGI means to tell in terms of giving it feedback. For example, if the output was a model implementing what the AGI considered to be the essence of a of a running man and the man to the human observer seemed to be walking one could directly manipulate this output model to portray a running man and feed it back to the AGI. Presumably this kind of interaction would be easier if the interface gave direct access to what the AGI considered to be the component dimensions of its output. Akin to a computer game where in manipulating the appearance of a humanoid one does not go about editing it pixel by pixel, rather one changes for example height with a simple slider. In this case, if step frequency was considered by the AGI to be a component dimension one could simply adjust it with a slider to better reflect what running is to the human counterpart. If step frequency was not considered a component dimension by the AGI, perhaps the ability to define dimensions such as step frequency on the fly and feed it back to the AGI would be useful. Presuming it was deemed expedient in illustrating the difference between walking and running. Regards, Erik Nilsson --- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
