Actually, there is another list, called [EMAIL PROTECTED], which
has as frequent posters, Marvin Minsky and Eray Orzul, as well as several
members of this list. I happened to be on a plane with Marvin on the way to
Japan a couple years ago, and he expressed his frustration that the list
was more philosophy than AI, so perhaps we could even convince him to join
our new, more focused AGI list.
I've also been reading the PhD theses of a few of his students, and each of
them were focused on modeling an aspect of general intelligence. The first
is a model of skill acquisition whose architecture explores the interaction
between declarative and procedural knowledge [1], the second is
a program for acquiring new cognitive capabilities through
Piagetian-inspired development [2], a third is an architecture for
reflective common-sense thinking [3] and a fourth is a model of
bootstrapping communication between different mind agents who have access to
different perceptions of the same phenomenon [4]
Any of these theses would be fair game for analyzing what worked, what
didn't, and how it could be improved.
[1] A computer model of skill acquisition, Gerald J Sussman 1973
[2] Made-up minds: A constructivist approach to artificial intelligence.
Gary Drescher 1991
[3] EM-ONE: An architecture for reflective common-sense thinking. Push
Singh 2005
[4] Learning by Learning to Communicate. Jake Beal 2007
Sincerely,
Jeremy
On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 11:29 AM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi Ben,
I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed
focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of
the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But
the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among
competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since
you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a
situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent
blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point
Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your
frustration).
For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which
probably says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many
new insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the
focus, I would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do
it! :-) I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the
decision you made.
Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from
your perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will
be. This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are
there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up
here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research.
Best,
Terren
--- On *Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED]* wrote:
From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:01 AM
Hi all,
I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list.
It seems to me there are two types of conversations here:
1)
Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current
computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by
moderately-sized groups of people
2)
Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is
impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special
characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems
problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and
quadrillions of dollars, or whatever
Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2.
It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ...
certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry.
But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what
approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to
engineer an AGI system.
Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is
impossible, that would be important. But that never seems to be the case.
Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and
opinions in this regard. People are welcome to their own intuitions and
opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about
why AGI is impossible.
One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on
**how to make AGI work**.
If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the
impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off
topic** by definition of the list purpose.
Potentially, there could be another list,
