[agi] Words vs Concepts [ex Defining AGI]
Matthias, You seem - correct me - to be going a long way round saying that words are different from concepts - they're just sound-and-letter labels for concepts, which have a very different form. And the processing of words/language is distinct from and relatively simple compared to the processing of the underlying concepts. So take THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT or THE MIND HAS ONLY CERTAIN PARTS WHICH ARE SENTIENT or THE US IS THE HOME OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS the words c-a-t or m-i-n-d or U-S or f-i-n-a-n-c-i-a-l c-r-i-s-i-s are distinct from the underlying concepts. The question is: What form do those concepts take? And what is happening in our minds (and what has to happen in any mind) when we process those concepts? You talk of patterns. What patterns, do you think, form the concept of mind that are engaged in thinking about sentence 2? Do you think that concepts like mind or the US might involve something much more complex still? Models? Or is that still way too simple? Spaces? Equally, of course, we can say that each *sentence* above is not just a verbal composition but a conceptual composition - and the question then is what form does such a composition take? Do sentences form, say, a pattern of patterns, or something like a picture? Or a blending of spaces ? Or are concepts like *money*? YOU CAN BUY A LOT WITH A MILLION DOLLARS Does every concept function somewhat like money, e.g. a million dollars - something that we know can be cashed in, in an infinite variety of ways, but that we may not have to start cashing in, (when processing), unless really called for - or only cash in so far? P.S. BTW this is the sort of psycho-philosophical discussion that I would see as central to AGI, but that most of you don't want to talk about? Matthias: What the computer makes with the data it receives depends on the information of the transferred data, its internal algorithms and its internal data. This is the same with humans and natural language. Language understanding would be useful to teach the AGI with existing knowledge already represented in natural language. But natural language understanding suffers from the problem of ambiguities. These ambiguities can be solved by having similar knowledge as humans have. But then you have a recursive problem because first there has to be solved the problem to obtain this knowledge. Nature solves this problem with embodiment. Different people make similar experiences since the laws of nature do not depend on space and time. Therefore we all can imagine a dog which is angry. Since we have experienced angry dogs but we haven't experienced angry trees we can resolve the linguistic ambiguity of my former example and answer the question: Who was angry? The way to obtain knowledge with embodiment is hard and long even in virtual worlds. If the AGI shall understand natural language it would be necessary that it makes similar experiences as humans make in the real world. But this would need a very very sophisticated and rich virtual world. At least, there have to be angry dogs in the virtual world ;-) As I have already said I do not think the relation between utility of this approach and the costs would be positive for first AGI. --- 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] Words vs Concepts [ex Defining AGI]
Matthias, I take the point that there is vastly more to language understanding than the surface processing of words as opposed to concepts. I agree that it is typically v. fast. I don't think though that you can call any concept a pattern. On the contrary, a defining property of concepts, IMO, is that they resist reduction to any pattern or structure - which is rather important, since my impression is most AGI-ers live by patterns/structures. Even a concept like triangle cannot actually be reduced to a pattern. Try it, if you wish. And the issue of conceptualisation - of what a concept consists of - is manifestly an unsolved problem for both cog sci and AI and of utmost, central importance for AGI. We have to understand how the brain performs its feats here, because that, at a rough general level, is almost certainly how it will *have* to be done. (I can't resist being snide here and saying that since this an unsolved problem, one can virtually guarantee that AGI-ers will therefore refuse to discuss it). Trying to work out what information the brain handles, for example, when it talks about THE US IS THE HOME OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS - what passes - and has to pass - through a mind thinking specifically of the financial crisis?- is in some ways as great a challenge as working out what the brain's engrams consist of. Clearly it won't be the kind of mere, symbolic, dictionary processing that some AGI-ers envisage. It will be perhaps as complex as the conceptualisation of party in: HOW WAS THE PARTY LAST NIGHT? where a single word may be used to touch upon over, say, two hours of sensory, movie experience in the brain. I partly disagree with you about how we should study all this - it is vital to look at how we understand, or rather fail to understand and get confused by concepts and language - which happens all the time. This can tell us a great deal about what is going on underneath. Matthias: For the discussion of the subject the details of the pattern representation are not important at all. It is sufficient if you agree that a spoken sentence represent a certain set of patterns which are translated into the sentence. The receiving agent retranslates the sentence and matches the content with its model by activating similar patterns. The activation of patterns is extremely fast and happens in real time. The brain even predicts patterns if it just hears the first syllable of a word: http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3244 There is no creation of new patterns and there is no intelligent algorithm which manipulates patterns. It is just translating, sending, receiving and retranslating. From the ambiguities of natural language you obtain some hints about the structure of the patterns. But you cannot even expect to obtain all detail of these patterns by understanding the process of language understanding. There will be probably many details within these patterns which are only necessary for internal calculations. These details will be not visible from the linguistic point of view. Just think about communicating computers and you will know what I mean. - Matthias Mike Tintner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matthias, You seem - correct me - to be going a long way round saying that words are different from concepts - they're just sound-and-letter labels for concepts, which have a very different form. And the processing of words/language is distinct from and relatively simple compared to the processing of the underlying concepts. So take THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT or THE MIND HAS ONLY CERTAIN PARTS WHICH ARE SENTIENT or THE US IS THE HOME OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS the words c-a-t or m-i-n-d or U-S or f-i-n-a-n-c-i-a-l c-r-i-s-i-s are distinct from the underlying concepts. The question is: What form do those concepts take? And what is happening in our minds (and what has to happen in any mind) when we process those concepts? You talk of patterns. What patterns, do you think, form the concept of mind that are engaged in thinking about sentence 2? Do you think that concepts like mind or the US might involve something much more complex still? Models? Or is that still way too simple? Spaces? Equally, of course, we can say that each *sentence* above is not just a verbal composition but a conceptual composition - and the question then is what form does such a composition take? Do sentences form, say, a pattern of patterns, or something like a picture? Or a blending of spaces ? Or are concepts like *money*? YOU CAN BUY A LOT WITH A MILLION DOLLARS Does every concept function somewhat like money, e.g. a million dollars - something that we know can be cashed in, in an infinite variety of ways, but that we may not have to start cashing in, (when processing), unless really called for - or only cash in so far? P.S. BTW this is the sort of psycho-philosophical discussion that I would see as central to AGI, but that most of you don't want
Re: [agi] Re: Defining AGI
Trent: Oh you just hit my other annoyance. How does that work? Mirror neurons IT TELLS US NOTHING. Trent, How do they work? By observing the shape of humans and animals , (what shape they're in), our brain and body automatically *shape our bodies to mirror their shape*, (put themselves into their skin, i.e. body/ into their place/ into their shoes), and we can work out the nature/ style of their movement and with it their emotions. Hence by observing: http://www.hotsalsa.co.uk/danceMat.jpg] (little more than literally shapes of the dancers - with almost zero muscular info) you can not only get up and mimic the immediate shapes/movements of the dancers *but create further movements - a whole dance* in the style of those dancers, which will be reasonably faithful. (Note that we can not only understand the immediate shape/movement and position of their bodies in space, but their preceding movements and subsequent movements - every [still] picture tells a [moving] story to the human brain - a remarkable and v. complicated extension of our powers of mirroring). Similarly by hearing a few words spoken by a person, you can pick up the shape of their voice and style of their diction - and shape your own voice and diction accordingly - and mimic it, and create further lines in their style. For example, just one sentence of 60-odd words: If you want to hear about it, you'll probably want to know where I was born, and what a lousy childhood I had, and how my parents were occupied before they had me, and all the David Copperfield crap, but if you want to know the truth, I don't really want to get into it. can give you a whole voice/character. Both are *whole-bodied* operations - bringing your whole body to bear on the process of understanding - and fundamental to your ability to understand other humans and animals - applied even to inanimate objects (the book lay on the table/the wardrobe stood in the sitting room) - and fundamental to intelligence, and our ability to intelligently copy, and learn from others' skills, and acquire culture generally. Both operations also depend on *fluid transformations* - our ability to mimic others depends on *fluidly transforming* our own body or voice shape to match theirs - a necessarily rough, imprecise, *non-formulaic* operation, since the two bodies will always be significantly different in shape, and there will be no formulaic/mathematical way for our brain to morph one into the other. Fluid, non-formulaic transformations are also fundamental to our capacity for analogy and metaphor and crossing domains - and that thing called general intelligence - our capacity to see a storm in the swirls of milk in a teacup, or tears in drops of rain, or a solar system in an atom. We understand and think with our whole bodies. (Oh, Ben, 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). --- 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.. PS
Trent, I should have added that our brain and body, by observing the mere shape/outline of others bodies as in Matisse's Dancers, can tell not only how to *shape* our own outline, but how to dispose of our *whole body* - we transpose/translate (or flesh out) a static two-dimensional body shape into an extremely complex set of instructions as to how to position and move our entire, *solid* body with all its immensely complex musculature. It's an awesomely detailed process, mechanically, when you analyse it. (It reminds me of an observation by Vlad, long ago, about how efficient some computational coding can be. That painting of the Dancers surely must represent a vastly more efficient form of coding than anything digital or rational languages can achieve. So much info has been packed into such a brief outline. Never was so much told by so little? The same is true of artistic drawing generally). P.S. Perhaps the best summary of all this is that general intelligence depends on body mapping - fluidly and physically/embodied-ly mapping our body onto others (as totally distinct frommapping structures of symbols onto each other). Not worth discussing, Ben? --- 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
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 about this. What it will require is a different and/or additional kind of computer. A computer that can handle not only rational operations, which all depend on taking things to (regular/rational) pieces, but imaginative operations, which all depend on fluid comparisons of (mainly irregular/irrational) wholes (without reducing them to pieces).. A
Re: [agi] Re: Defining AGI.. PS
Matthias: I do not agree that body mapping is necessary for general intelligence. But this would be one of the easiest problems today. In the area of mapping the body onto another (artificial) body, computers are already very smart: See the video on this page: http://www.image-metrics.com/ Matthias, See my reply to David. This is typical of the free-form transformations that computers can achieve - and, I grant you, is v. impressive. (I really think there should be a general book celebrating some of the recent achievements of geometry in animation - is there?). But it is NOT mapping one body onto another. It is working only with one body, and transforming it in highly sophisticated operations. Computer software can't map two totally different bodies onto each other - can't perceive the likeness between the map of Italy and a boot. And it can't usually perceive the same body or face in different physical or facial forms - can't tell that two faces with v. different facial/emotional expressions belong to the same person, eg Madonna, can it? --- 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.. PS
Matthias: I think here you can see that automated mapping between different faces is possible and the computer can smoothly morph between them. I think, the performance is much better than the imagination of humans can be. http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=nice6NYb_WA Matthias, Perhaps we're having difficulties communicating in words about a highly visual subject. The above involves morphing systematically from a single face. It does not involve being confronted with two different faces or objects randomly chosen/positioned and finding/recognizing the similarities between them . My God, if it did, computers would have no problems with visual object (or facial) recognition. Of course, morphing operations by computers are better, i.e. immensely more detailed and accurate, than anything the human mind can achieve - better at, if you like, the mechanical *implementation* of imagination. (But bear in mind that it was the imagination of the programmer that decided in the above software, which face should be transformed into which face. The software could not by itself choose or create a totally new face to add to its repertoire without guidance). What rational computers can't do is find similarities between disparate, irregular objects - via fluid transformation - the essence of imagination. I repeat - computers can't do this - http://www.bearskinrug.co.uk/_articles/2005/09/16/doodle/hero.jpg and therein lies the central mechanism of analogy and metaphor. Rather than simply objecting to this, the focus should be on *how* to endow computers with imagination. --- 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.. PS
Matthias, When a programmer (or cameraman) macroscopic(ally) positions two faces - adjusting them manually so that they are capable of precise point-to-point matching, that proceeds from an initial act of visual object recognition - and indeed imagination, as I have defined it. He will have taken two originally disparate faces moving through many different not-easily-comparable positions, and recognized their compatibility - by, I would argue, a process of fluid transformation. The programmer accordingly won't put any old two faces together - he won't put one person with a harelip and/or one eye together with a regular face, He won't put a woman with hair over her eyes, together with one whose eyes are unobscured - or one with heavy make-up with one who is clear - or, just possibly, one with cosmetic surgery together with a natural face. The human brain is capable of recognizing the similarities and differences between all such faces - the program isn't. (I think you're being a bit difficult here - I don't think many others - incl. say. Ben - would try to ascribe the powers to these particular programs that you are doing). Matthias: I think it does involve being confronted with two different faces or objects randomly chosen/positioned and finding/recognizing the similarities between them. If you have watched the video carefully then you have heard that they have spoken from automated algorithms which do the matching. On an initial macroscopic scale there is some human hint necessary but on a microscopic scale it is done by software alone and after the initial matching, the complete morphing is done even on macroscopic scales. Computer generated morphing between complete different objects as it is the case in your picture is no problem for computers after an initial matching of some points of the first and the last picture is made by humans. It is a common special effect in many science fiction movies. In the morphing video I have given, there were no manual initial matching of points necessary. Only the macroscopic position of two faces had to be adjusted manually. - Matthias Heger Mike Tintner wrote: Matthias: I think here you can see that automated mapping between different faces is possible and the computer can smoothly morph between them. I think, the performance is much better than the imagination of humans can be. http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=nice6NYb_WA Matthias, Perhaps we're having difficulties communicating in words about a highly visual subject. The above involves morphing systematically from a single face. It does not involve being confronted with two different faces or objects randomly chosen/positioned and finding/recognizing the similarities between them . My God, if it did, computers would have no problems with visual object (or facial) recognition. Of course, morphing operations by computers are better, i.e. immensely more detailed and accurate, than anything the human mind can achieve - better at, if you like, the mechanical *implementation* of imagination. (But bear in mind that it was the imagination of the programmer that decided in the above software, which face should be transformed into which face. The software could not by itself choose or create a totally new face to add to its repertoire without guidance). What rational computers can't do is find similarities between disparate, irregular objects - via fluid transformation - the essence of imagination. I repeat - computers can't do this - http://www.bearskinrug.co.uk/_articles/2005/09/16/doodle/hero.jpg and therein lies the central mechanism of analogy and metaphor. Rather than simply objecting to this, the focus should be on *how* to endow computers with imagination. --- 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/?; 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Advocacy Is no Excuse for Exaggeration
Ben: I defy you to give me any neuroscience or cog sci result that cannot be clearly explained using computable physics. Ben, As discussed before, no current computational approach can replicate the brain's ability to produce a memory in what we can be v. confident are only a few neuronal steps - by comparison with computers which often take millions of steps. This is utterly central to general intelligence.and the capacity to produce analogies/metaphors etc. The brain seems to work by recall (if I've got the right term) as opposed to *search.* (And Hawkins argues that the entire brain is a memory system - memories are stored everywhere). That indicates a radically different computer to any we have. Ben:Colin notes that we do not have a good, detailed explanation of how scientific creativity emerges from computational processes. OK. I tried to give such an explanation in From Complexity to Creativity, but of course whether my explanation is right, is subject to debate. Ben, I still intend to reply to your creativity post, but perhaps you/d care to at least label what your explanation of scientific creativity is - I'm not aware of your explaining, or connecting up any of the theories you explore - in any *direct* way with any creative process at all. My brief reading is that you indicate a loose, possible connection, but nothing direct - as your final Conclusion seems to confirm: I14.7 CONCLUSION The phenomenon of creativity is a challenge for the psynet model, and for complexity science as a whole. Are you claiming you have any ideas here that anyone is paying attention to, or should? -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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] Advocacy Is no Excuse for Exaggeration
Ben: I don't have time to summarize all that stuff I already wrote in emails either ;-p Ben, I asked you to at least *label* what your explanation of scientific creativity is.. Just a label, Ben. Books that are properly organized and constructed (and sell), usually do have clearly labelled theories, which they hang their book around. It isn't clear what your book's is. --- 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] Advocacy Is no Excuse for Exaggeration
Trent : If you disagree with my paraphrasing of your opinion Colin, please feel free to rebut it *in plain english* so we can better figure out what the hell you're on about. Well, I agree that Colin hasn't made clear what he stands for [neo-]computationally. But perhaps he is doing us a service, in making clear how neuroscientific opinion is changing? I must confess I didn't know re integrative neuroscience. So there is something important to be explored here - how much *is* science (and cog sci) changing its computational paradigm? Basically, you guys are in general blinkering yourselves to the fact that the brain clearly works *fundamentally differently* to any computer - in major ways. Colin may not have succeeded in fully identifying or translating those differences into any useful mechanical form [or not - I'm certainly interested to hear more]. But sooner or later *someone* will. And it's a safe bet that cog. sci. which still largely underpins your particular computational view of mind, will v. soon sweep the rug from under your feet. If I were you, I'd explore more here. (The parallels between a vastly overleveraged financial, economic political world order suddenly collapsing and a similarly overleveraged (in their claims) cog. sci and AGI also on the verge of collapse, should not escape you). --- 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] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
why don't you start AGI-tech on the forum? enough people have expressed an interest - simply reconfirm - and start posting there - Original Message - From: Derek Zahn To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 9:09 PM Subject: RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list I bet if you tried very hard to move the group to the forum (for example, by only posting there yourself and periodically urging people to use it), people could be moved there. Right now, nobody posts there because nobody else posts there; if one wants one's stuff to be read, one sends it to the high traffic location unless there's a reason not to. -- Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:00:45 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list There is already a forum site on agiri.org . Nobody uses it So, just setting up a forum site is not the answer... ben g -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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] Advocacy Is no Excuse for Exaggeration
Colin: others such as Hynna and Boahen at Stanford, who have an unusual hardware neural architecture...(Hynna, K. M. and Boahen, K. 'Thermodynamically equivalent silicon models of voltage-dependent ion channels', Neural Computation vol. 19, no. 2, 2007. 327-350.) ...and others ... then things will be diverse and authoritative. In particular, those who have recently essentially squashed the computational theories of mind from a neuroscience perspective- the 'integrative neuroscientists': Poznanski, R. R., Biophysical neural networks : foundations of integrative neuroscience, Mary Ann Liebert, Larchmont, NY, 2001, pp. viii, 503 p. Pomerantz, J. R., Topics in integrative neuroscience : from cells to cognition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK ; New York, 2008, pp. xix, 427 p. Gordon, E., Ed. (2000). Integrative neuroscience : bringing together biological, psychological and clinical models of the human brain. Amsterdam, Harwood Colin, This all looks v. interesting - googling quickly. The general integrative approach to the brain's functioning is clearly v. important. *Distinctive Paradigms/Approaches. But are any distinctive models or more specific paradigms emerging? It isn't immediately clear why AGI has to pay special attention here. Can you do a bit more selling of the importance of this field. *Models - I notice some researchers are developing models of the brain's functioning. Are any worthwhile? I called here sometime ago for a Systems Psychology and Systems AI, that would be devoted to developing overall models both of the intelligent brain and of AGI systems. Existing AGI systems like Ben's offer de facto models of what is required for an intelligent mind. So it would be v. valuable to be able to compare different models, both natural and artificial. *Embodied Cognitive Science. How do you see int. neurosci. in relation to this? For example, I noted some purely neuronal models of the self. For me, only integrated brain-body models of the self are valid. *Free Will. An interest of mine. I noted some reference that suggested a neuroscientific attempt to explain this (or perhaps explain it away). Know any more about this? --- 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] Updated AGI proposal (CMR v2.1)
Will:There is a reason why lots of the planets biomass has stayed as bacteria. It does perfectly well like that. It survives. Too much processing power is a bad thing, it means less for self-preservation and affecting the world. Balancing them is a tricky proposition indeed Interesting thought. But do you (or anyone else) have any further thoughts about what the proper balance between brain and body relative to what set of functions/behaviours is, or how it is determined or adjusted? (Obviously a v. difficult question)/ --- 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] Advocacy Is no Excuse for Exaggeration
Colin, Yes you and Rescher are going in a good direction, but you can make it all simpler still, by being more specific.. We can take it for granted that we're talking here mainly about whether *incomplete* creative works should be criticised. If we're talking about scientific theories, then basically we're talking in most cases about detective theories, about theories of whodunit or whatdunit. If you've got an incomplete theory about who committed a murder, because you don't have enough evidence, or enough of a motive - do you want criticism? In general, you'd be pretty foolish not to seek it. Others may point out evidence you've missed, or other motives, or suggest still better suspects. If we're talking about inventions, then we're talking about tools/ machines/ engines etc designed to produce certain effects. If you've got an incomplete machine, it doesn't achieve the effect as desired. It isn't as efficient or as effective as you want. Should you seek criticism? In general, you'd still be pretty foolish not to. Others may point out improved ways of designing or moving your machine parts, or of arranging the objects-to-be-moved. And if nothing else the simple act of presenting your ideas to others allows you to use them as sounding-boards - you get to hear your ideas with a clarity that is difficult to achieve alone, and become more aware of their deficiiencies - and more motivated to solve them. The difficulty with AGI is that we're dealing not with machines or software that are incomplete but simply non-functioning - with essentially narrow AI systems that haven't shown any capacity for general intelligence and problemsolving - with machines that want to be airplanes, but are actually motorbikes, and have never taken off, or shown any ability to get off the ground for even a few seconds. As a result, you have a whole culture where people are happy to tell you how their machine works - the kind of engine or in this case software that they're using - but not happy to tell you what their machine does - what specific problems it addresses - because that will highlight their complete failure so far. Is that sensible? If you want to preserve your dignity, yes. Acknowledging failure is v. painful and humiliating. Plus, in this case, there's the v. serious possbility that you're building totally the wrong machine a motorbike that will never be a plane, (or a narrow plane that will never be a general bird) - or in this case, software that simply doesn't and can't address the right problems at all. If you actually want to get somewhere, though, and not remain trapped in errors, then not presenting and highlighting what your machine does (and how it fails) is also foolish. Colin: The process of formulation of scientific theories has been characterised as a dynamical system nicely by Nicholas Rescher. Rescher, N., Process philosophy : a survey of basic issues, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 2000, p. 144. Rescher, N., Nature and understanding : the metaphysics and method of science, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2000, pp. ix, 186. In that approach you can see critical argument operating operating as a brain process - competing brain electrodynamics that stabilises on the temporary 'winner', whose position may be toppled at any moment by the emergence of a more powerful criticism which destabilises the current equilibrium...and so on. The 'argument' may involve the provision of empirical evidence ... indeed that is the norm for most sciences. In order that a discipline be seen to be real science, then, what one would expect to see such processes happening in a dialog between a diversity of views competing for ownership of scientific evidence through support for whatever theoretical framework seems apt. As a recent entrant here, and seeing the dialog and the issues as they unfold I would have some difficulty classifying what is going on as 'scientific' in the sense that there is no debate calibrated against any overt fundamental scientific theoretical framework(s), nor defined testing protocols. In the wider world of science it is the current state of play that the theoretical basis for real AGI is an open and multi-disciplinary question. A forum that purports to be invested in achievement of real AGI as a target, one would expect that forum to a multidisciplianry approach on many fronts, all competing scientifically for access to real AGI. I am not seeing that here. In having a completely different approach to AGI, I hope I can contribute to the diversity of ideas and bring the discourse closer to that of a solid scientific discipline, with formal testing metrics and so forth. I hope that I can attract the attention of the neuroscience and physics world to this area. Of course whether I'm an intransigent grumpy theory-zealot of the Newtonian kind... well... just let the ideas speak for themselves... :-) The
Re: [agi] creativity
Ben, I'm glad that you have decided to respond to, - or at least recognize - my criticisms/points re creativity, because they are extremely important and central to AGI - as I said, it isn't just you but everyone who is avoiding them - when it is in all your interests to confront them *now*/*urgently*. I think in fact my criticisms do hold - but obviously I will have to look at your book first. [I may have looked at it already - I've read quite a bit of you - but you've written a lot]. If you could link me, or send me a copy, I will reply in a more considered way. ... some loose ends in reply to a message from a few days back ... Mike Tintner wrote: *** Be honest - when and where have you ever addressed creative problems? [Just count how many problems I have raised).. *** In my 1997 book FROM COMPLEXITY TO CREATIVITY *** Just as it is obvious that I know next to nothing about programming, it is also obvious that you have v. little experience of discussing creative problemsolving - at, I stress, a *metacognitive* level. (And nor, AFAIK, do any AGI-ers - only partly excepting Minsky). *** The 1997 book I referenced above in fact contains a significant amount of metacognition about creativity. You seem to have the idea that it's supposed to be possible to explain an AGI's creative process in detail, in specific instances ... and I don't know why you think that, since it's not even the case for humans. *** All this stands in total, stark contrast to any discussion of logical or mathematical, problems, where you are always delighted to engage in detail, and v. helpful and constructive - and do not make excuses to cover up your inexperience. *** Aspects of the mind that are closer to the deliberative, intensely conscious level are easier to discuss explicitly and in detail. Aspects of the mind that are mainly unconscious and have to do mainly with the coordinated activity of a large number of different processes, are harder to describe in detail in specific instances. One can describe the underlying processes but this then becomes technical and lengthy!! -- Ben -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome - Dr Samuel Johnson -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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] Webs vs Nets
As I understand the way you guys and AI generally work, you create well-organized spaces which your programs can systematically search for options. Let's call them nets - which have systematic, well-defined and orderly-laid-out connections between nodes. But it seems clear that natural systems create totally different structures, or almost anti-structures of information. The WWW is indeed a web of information, with the nodes haphazardly linked to each other, without any prior system or planning, (only at best, some v. v. basic, simple rules about for example how links work). Steven Johnson talks of the growth of such webs as like a data fungus. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_johnson_on_the_web_as_a_city.html And, actually, that I suggest is largely how the brain creates its own webs of info., as opposed to organized spaces. You didn't learn about sex, for example, in any organized, rational way. An anecdote here, a few jokes there, the sight of some physical activity there, a sexual manual there, massive amounts of porn and so on, all higgledy-piggledy, freely associated/linked together. A crazy jungle of info rather than a well laid out garden. And when you think about sex, that web as opposed to any rational space, is what your brain brings to bear on the subject. The distinction between webs and nets as different kinds of data structures, seems fundamental and worth exploring. Does such a distinction exist already, and has it been explored? --- 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] Webs vs Nets
Ben, Some questions then. You don't have any spaces or frames as such within your systems? (what terms would you use/prefer here BTW?) Everything is potentially connected to everything else? Perhaps you can give some example from say your pet-in-a-virtual-world (or anything else). It doesn't have a frame say re fetching, or some other activity? How can it connect, as you can connect on the Web, from say the domain of fetching and balls to any other domain ? Like hide-and-seek? Or conversation? (Or, on the Web itself, to planets in a solar system). It won't have ordered hierarchies, say, re animals (...mammals...humans etc? Another feature of the webs vs nets distinction. Webs it seems to me are *multi-domain* of their very nature. .( A domain, for me, consists of a set of elements which behave according to consistent rules - e.g. chess pieces which move in set ways on a board).So webs are composed of diverse and often contradictory domains and rules. Your sex web, for example, will have a whole variety of domains, religious, literary, different moralities, etiquette, fashion, pornographic, fantasy etc offering contradictory rules about whom you can and can't have sex with, and how, and when - and for what reasons Ditto our language webs consist of radically conflicting rules about how we can and can't speak, construct sentences, use words, spell, mix different conventions, accents, tones etc. etc. Do your spaces/domains exist similarly with conflicting rules? You don't need to keep updating them for consistency? Your system can, for example, survive with conflicting rules of logic - Nars-ian and PLN - as your own brain can? I suspect IOW there *are* important distinctions to be drawn explored here. And my first attempt here may be rather like my first attempt at defining programs a long time ago, which failed to distinguish between sequences and structures of instructions - and was then pounced on by AI-ers. On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 7:38 AM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As I understand the way you guys and AI generally work, you create well-organized spaces which your programs can systematically search for options. Let's call them nets - which have systematic, well-defined and orderly-laid-out connections between nodes. That is simply incorrect ... the connections between nodes/terms/concepts/whatever are chaotic and self-organized and disorderly, within OpenCogPrime, NARS, or any of a load of other AGI systems. And then you have some cognitive processes that try to build order out of the chaos and create links imposing some fragmentary order ... which won't last long unless actively maintained [roughly: as some folks build directories of parts of the Web...] There is a large body of study of the connection statistics of large networks, and some (but less) study of the dynamics of connection stats in large networks. -- Ben G -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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] Webs vs Nets PS
I guess the obvious follow up question is when your systems search among options for a response to a situation, they don't search in a systematic way through spaces of options? They can just start anywhere and end up anywhere in the system's web of knowledge - as you can in searching the Web itself? Presumably they must search among well-defined spaces, otherwise how could you have been having this argument about combinatorial explosion with Richard et al? A web, I guess, by definition - (I'm tossing this out as I go along) - can't be systematically searched, and there can be no combinatorial explosion. At worst, you can surf for too long :). --- 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] Logical Intuition
Pei:The NARS solution fits people's intuition You guys keep talking - perfectly reasonably - about how your logics do or don't fit your intuition. The logical question is - how - on what principles - does your intuition work? What ideas do you have about this? --- 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] Logical Intuition PS
What I should have added is that presumably your intuition must work on radically different principles to your logics - otherwise you could incorporate it/them --- 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] Webs vs Nets
Ben, Thanks. But you didn't reply to the surely central-to-AGI question of whether this free-form knowledge base is or can be multi-domain - and particularly involve radically conflicting sets of rules about how given objects can behave - a central feature of the human brain and its knowledge base, I would argue. I haven't thought this through, but my first thought is that such a multi-domain structure lends itself v. strongly to the cross-domain thinking that remains a problem for AGI. Ben:The OpenCog Atomspace --- its knowledge-base of nodes and links --- is totally free-form without any overarching structures imposed by the programmer However, hierarchies or frames can of course exist as structures within this free-form pool of nodes and links In building a particular app using OpenCog, one can opt to build in hierarchies and frames and such (via creating XML files containing appropriate nodes/links and importing them) or one can start from a blank slate and let the whole structure emerge as it will... Ben G On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 9:38 AM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben, Some questions then. You don't have any spaces or frames as such within your systems? (what terms would you use/prefer here BTW?) Everything is potentially connected to everything else? Perhaps you can give some example from say your pet-in-a-virtual-world (or anything else). It doesn't have a frame say re fetching, or some other activity? How can it connect, as you can connect on the Web, from say the domain of fetching and balls to any other domain ? Like hide-and-seek? Or conversation? (Or, on the Web itself, to planets in a solar system). It won't have ordered hierarchies, say, re animals (...mammals...humans etc? Another feature of the webs vs nets distinction. Webs it seems to me are *multi-domain* of their very nature. .( A domain, for me, consists of a set of elements which behave according to consistent rules - e.g. chess pieces which move in set ways on a board).So webs are composed of diverse and often contradictory domains and rules. Your sex web, for example, will have a whole variety of domains, religious, literary, different moralities, etiquette, fashion, pornographic, fantasy etc offering contradictory rules about whom you can and can't have sex with, and how, and when - and for what reasons Ditto our language webs consist of radically conflicting rules about how we can and can't speak, construct sentences, use words, spell, mix different conventions, accents, tones etc. etc. Do your spaces/domains exist similarly with conflicting rules? You don't need to keep updating them for consistency? Your system can, for example, survive with conflicting rules of logic - Nars-ian and PLN - as your own brain can? I suspect IOW there *are* important distinctions to be drawn explored here. And my first attempt here may be rather like my first attempt at defining programs a long time ago, which failed to distinguish between sequences and structures of instructions - and was then pounced on by AI-ers. On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 7:38 AM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As I understand the way you guys and AI generally work, you create well-organized spaces which your programs can systematically search for options. Let's call them nets - which have systematic, well-defined and orderly-laid-out connections between nodes. That is simply incorrect ... the connections between nodes/terms/concepts/whatever are chaotic and self-organized and disorderly, within OpenCogPrime, NARS, or any of a load of other AGI systems. And then you have some cognitive processes that try to build order out of the chaos and create links imposing some fragmentary order ... which won't last long unless actively maintained [roughly: as some folks build directories of parts of the Web...] There is a large body of study of the connection statistics of large networks, and some (but less) study of the dynamics of connection stats in large networks. -- Ben G -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome - Dr Samuel Johnson -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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
Re: AW: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
Ben, I think that's all been extremely clear -and I think you've been very good in all your different roles :). Your efforts have produced a v. good group -and a great many thanks for them. And, just to clarify: the fact that I set up this list and pay $12/month for its hosting, and deal with the occasional list-moderation issues that arise, is not supposed to give my **AI opinions** primacy over anybody else's on the list, in discussions I only intervene as moderator when discussions go off-topic, not to try to push my perspective on people ... and on the rare occasions when I am speaking as list owner/moderator rather than as just another AI guy with his own opinions, I try to be very clear that that is the role I'm adopting.. ben g --- 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] open or closed source for AGI project?
Terren:autopoieisis. I wonder what your thoughts are about it? Does anyone have any idea how to translate that biological principle into building a machine, or software? Do you or anyone else have any idea what it might entail? The only thing I can think of that comes anywhere close is the Carnegie Mellon starfish robot with its sense of self. --- 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] open or closed source for AGI project?
Terren, Thanks for reply. I think I have some idea, no doubt confused, about how you want to evolve a system. But the big deal re autopoiesis for me - correct me - is the capacity of a living system to *maintain its identity* despite considerable disturbances. That can be both in the embryonic/developmental stages and also later in life. A *simple* example of the latter is an experiment where they screwed around with the nerves to a monkey's hands, and neverthless its brain maps rewired themselves, so to speak, to restore normal functioning within months. Neuroplasticity generally is an example - the brain's capacity, when parts are damaged, to get new parts to take on their functions. How a system can be evolved - computationally, say, as you propose - is, in my understanding, no longer quite such a problematic thing to understand or implement. But how a living system manages to adhere to a flexible plan of its identity despite disturbances, is, IMO, a much more problematic thing to understand and implement. And that, for me - again correct me - is the essence of autopoiesis, (which BTW seems to me not the best explained of ideas - by Varela co). Mike, Autopoieisis is a basic building block of my philosophy of life and of cognition as well. I see life as: doing work to maintain an internal self-organization. It requires a boundary in which the entropy inside the boundary is kept lower than the entropy outside. Cognition is autopoieitic as well, although this is harder to see. I have already shared my ideas on how to build a virtual intelligence that satisfies this definition. But in summary, you'd design a framework in which large numbers of interacting parts would evolve into an environment with emergent, persistent entities. Through a guided process you would make the environment more and more challenging, forcing the entities to solve harder and harder problems to stay alive, corresponding with ever increasing intelligence. At some distant point we may perhaps arrive at something with human-level intelligence or beyond. Terren --- On Fri, 10/10/08, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] open or closed source for AGI project? To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Friday, October 10, 2008, 11:30 AM Terren:autopoieisis. I wonder what your thoughts are about it? Does anyone have any idea how to translate that biological principle into building a machine, or software? Do you or anyone else have any idea what it might entail? The only thing I can think of that comes anywhere close is the Carnegie Mellon starfish robot with its sense of self. -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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] open or closed source for AGI project?
-organization. It requires a boundary in which the entropy inside the boundary is kept lower than the entropy outside. Cognition is autopoieitic as well, although this is harder to see. I have already shared my ideas on how to build a virtual intelligence that satisfies this definition. But in summary, you'd design a framework in which large numbers of interacting parts would evolve into an environment with emergent, persistent entities. Through a guided process you would make the environment more and more challenging, forcing the entities to solve harder and harder problems to stay alive, corresponding with ever increasing intelligence. At some distant point we may perhaps arrive at something with human-level intelligence or beyond. Terren --- On Fri, 10/10/08, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] open or closed source for AGI project? To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Friday, October 10, 2008, 11:30 AM Terren:autopoieisis. I wonder what your thoughts are about it? Does anyone have any idea how to translate that biological principle into building a machine, or software? Do you or anyone else have any idea what it might entail? The only thing I can think of that comes anywhere close is the Carnegie Mellon starfish robot with its sense of self. agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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] open or closed source for AGI project?
Russell : Whoever said you need to protect ideas is just shilly-shallying you. Ideas have no market value; anyone capable of taking them up, already has more ideas of his own than time to implement them. In AGI, that certainly seems to be true - ideas are crucial, but require such a massive amount of implementation. That's why I find Peter Voss and others - incl Ben at times - refusing to discuss their ideas, silly. Even if say you have a novel idea for applying AGI or a sub-AGI to some highly commercial field, it would still all depend on implementation. The chance of someone stealing your idea is v. remote. And discussing your ideas openly will only improve them. In many other creative fields, there can be reason to be secretive. If you had an idea for some new, more efficient chemical, or way of treating a chemical, for an electric battery, say, that could be v. valuable and highly stealable. Hence all those formula movies. --- 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.
Ben, V. interesting and helpful to get this pretty clearly stated general position. However: To put it simply, once an AGI can understand human language we can teach it stuff. you don't give any prognostic view about the acquisition of language. Mine is - in your dreams. Arguably, most AGI-ers still see handling language as a largely logical exercise of translating between symbols in dictionaries and texts, with perhaps a little grounding. I see language as an extremely sophisticated worldpicture, and system for handling that picture, which is actually, even if not immediately obvious, a multimedia exercise that is both continuously embodied in our system and embedded in the real world. Not just a mode of, but almost the whole of the brain in action, interacting with the whole of the world. No AGI system will be literate in an awfully long time. Your view? And: I think we're at the stage where a team of a couple dozen could do it in 5-10 years I repeat - this is outrageous. You don't have the slightest evidence of progress - you [the collective you] haven't solved a single problem of general intelligence - a single mode of generalising - so you don't have the slightest basis for making predictions of progress other than wish-fulfilment, do you? Ben:A few points... 1) Closely associating embodiment with GOFAI is just flat-out historically wrong. GOFAI refers to a specific class of approaches to AI that wer pursued a few decades ago, which were not centered on embodiment as a key concept or aspect. 2) Embodiment based approaches to AGI certainly have not been extensively tried and failed in any serious way, simply because of the primitive nature of real and virtual robotic technology. Even right now, the real and virtual robotics tech are not *quite* there to enable us to pursue embodiment-based AGI in a really tractable way. For instance, humanoid robots like the Nao cost $20K and have all sorts of serious actuator problems ... and virtual world tech is not built to allow fine-grained AI control of agent skeletons ... etc. It would be more accurate to say that we're 5-15 years away from a condition where embodiment-based AGI can be tried-out without immense time-wastage on making not-quite-ready supporting technologies work 3) I do not think that humanlike NL understanding nor humanlike embodiment are in any way necessary for AGI. I just think that they seem to represent the shortest path to getting there, because they represent a path that **we understand reasonably well** ... and because AGIs following this path will be able to **learn from us** reasonably easily, as opposed to AGIs built on fundamentally nonhuman principles To put it simply, once an AGI can understand human language we can teach it stuff. This will be very helpful to it. We have a lot of experience in teaching agents with humanlike bodies, communicating using human language. Then it can teach us stuff too. And human language is just riddled through and through with metaphors to embodiment, suggesting that solving the disambiguation problems in linguistics will be much easier for a system with vaguely humanlike embodied experience. 4) I have articulated a detailed proposal for how to make an AGI using the OCP design together with linguistic communication and virtual embodiment. Rather than just a promising-looking assemblage of in-development technologies, the proposal is grounded in a coherent holistic theory of how minds work. What I don't see in your counterproposal is any kind of grounding of your ideas in a theory of mind. That is: why should I believe that loosely coupling a bunch of clever narrow-AI widgets, as you suggest, is going to lead to an AGI capable of adapting to fundamentally new situations not envisioned by any of its programmers? I'm not completely ruling out the possiblity that this kind of strategy could work, but where's the beef? I'm not asking for a proof, I'm asking for a coherent, detailed argument as to why this kind of approach could lead to a generally-intelligent mind. 5) It sometimes feels to me like the reason so little progress is made toward AGI is that the 2000 people on the planet who are passionate about it, are moving in 4000 different directions ;-) ... OpenCog is an attempt to get a substantial number of AGI enthusiasts all moving in the same direction, without claiming this is the **only** possible workable direction. Eventually, supporting technologies will advance enough that some smart guy can build an AGI on his own in a year of hacking. I don't think we're at that stage yet -- but I think we're at the stage where a team of a couple dozen could do it in 5-10 years. However, if that level of effort can't be systematically summoned (thru gov't grants, industry funding, open-source volunteerism or wherever) then maybe AGI won't come about till the supporting
Re: [agi] New Scientist: Why nature can't be reduced to mathematical laws
This is fine and interesting, but hasn't anybody yet read Kauffman's Reinventing the Sacred (publ this year)? The entire book is devoted to this theme and treats it globally, ranging from this kind of emergence in physics, to emergence/evolution of natural species, to emergence/deliberate creativity in the economy and human thinking. Kauffman systematically - and correctly - argues that the entire, current mechanistic worldview of science is quite inadequate to dealing with and explaining creativity in every form throughout the world and at every level of evolution. Kauffman also explicitly deals with the kind of problems AGI must solve if it is to be AGI. In fact, everything is interrelated here. Ben argues: we are not trying to understand some natural system, we are trying to **engineer** systems Well, yes, but how you get emergent physical properties of matter, and how you get species evolving from each other with creative, scientifically unpredictable new organs and features , can be *treated* as design/engineering problems (even though, of course, nature was the designer). In fact, AGI *should* be doing this - should be understanding how its particular problem of getting a machine to be creative, fits in with the science-wide problem of understanding creativity in all its forms. The two are mutually enriching, (indeed mandatory when it comes to a) the human and animal brain's creativity and an AGI's and b) the evolution of the brain and the evolutionary path of AGI's). Richard: Perhaps now that there are other physicists (besides myself) making these claims, people in the AGI community will start to take more seriously the implications for their own field http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026764.100 For those who do not have a New Scientist subscription, the full article refers to a paper at http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0809.0151. Mile Gu et al looked at the possibility of explaining emergent properties of Ising glasses and managed to prove that those properties are not reducible. Myself, I do not need the full force of Gu's proof, since I only claim that emergent properties can be *practically* impossible to work with. It is worth noting that his chosen target systems (Ising glasses) are very closely linked to some approaches to AGI, since these have been proposed by some neural net people as the fundamental core of their approach. I am sure that I can quote a short extract from the full NS article without treading on the New Scientist copyright. It is illuminating because what Gu et al refer to is the problem of calculating the lowest energy state of the system, which approximately corresponds to the state of maximum understanding in the class of systems that I am most interested in: BEGIN QUOTE: Using the model, the team focused on whether the pattern that the atoms adopt under various scenarios, such as a state of lowest energy, could be calculated from knowledge of those forces. They found that in some scenarios, the pattern of atoms could not be calculated from knowledge of the forces - even given unlimited computing power. In mathematical terms, the system is considered formally undecidable. We were able to find a number of properties that were simply decoupled from the fundamental interactions, says Gu. Even some really simple properties of the model, such as the fraction of atoms oriented in one direction, cannot be computed. This result, says Gu, shows that some of the models scientists use to simulate physical systems may actually have properties that cannot be linked to the behaviour of their parts (www.arxiv.org/abs/0809.0151). This, in turn, may help explain why our description of nature operates at many levels, rather than working from just one. A 'theory of everything' might not explain all natural phenomena, says Gu. Real understanding may require further experiments and intuition at every level. Some physicists think the work offers a promising scientific boost for the delicate issue of emergence, which tends to get swamped with philosophical arguments. John Barrow at the University of Cambridge calls the results really interesting, but thinks one element of the proof needs further study. He points out that Gu and colleagues derived their result by studying an infinite system, rather than one of large but finite size, like most natural systems. So it's not entirely clear what their results mean for actual finite systems, says Barrow. Gu agrees, but points out that this was not the team's goal. He also argues that the idealised mathematical laws that scientists routinely use to describe the world often refer to infinite systems. Our results suggest that some of these laws probably cannot be derived from first principles, he says. END QUOTE. I particularly liked his choice of words when he said: We were able to find a number of properties that were simply decoupled from the
Re: [agi] New Scientist: Why nature can't be reduced to mathematical laws
Ben:I didn't read that book but I've read dozens of his papers ... it's cool stuff but does not convince me that engineering AGI is impossible ... however when I debated this with Stu F2F I'd say neither of us convinced each other ;-) ... Ben, His argument (like mine), is that AGI is *algorithmically* impossible, (Similarly he is arguing only that our *present* mechanistic worldview is inadequate). I can't vouch for it, since he doesn't explicitly address AGI as distinct from the powers of algorithms, but I would be v. surprised if he was arguing that AGI is impossible, period (no?). I would've thought that he would argue something like that just as we need a revolutionary new mechanistic worldview, so we need a revolutionary approach to AGI, (and not just a few tweaks :) ). --- 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] New Scientist: Why nature can't be reduced to mathematical laws
Matthias, You don't seem to understand creative/emergent problems (and I find this certainly not universal, but v. common here). If your chess-playing AGI is to tackle a creative/emergent problem (at a fairly minor level) re chess - it would have to be something like: find a new way for chess pieces to move - and therefore develop a new form of chess (without any preparation other than some knowledge about different rules and how different pieces in different games move). Or something like get your opponent to take back his move before he removes his hand from the piece - where some use of psychology, say, might be appropriate rather than anything to do directly with chess itself. IOW by definition a creative/emergent problem is one where you have to bring about a given effect by finding radically new kinds of objects that move or relate in radically new kinds of ways - to produce that effect. By definition, you *do not know which domain is appropriate to solving the problem,* (what kinds of objects or moves are relevant), let alone have a set of instructions to hold your hand every step of the way - and the eventual solution will involve crossing hitherto unrelated domains. That, as Kauffman also insists, is an absolute show stopper. Which is why the show that is AGI cannot not only not go on, but hasn't even started. No form of logic or maths or programming - no preexisting frame - is sufficient to deal with such problems - and cross domains in surprising ways. If those are the only relevant disciplines you know, then you will indeed have major difficulties understanding creative problems. They do not prepare you. PS Ditto all evolutionary steps present creative problems of discovery. For example - give me a *biological* piece of the puzzle that explains how humans/apes with relatively curved spines acquired erect spines (an explanation that reveals something about the *internal* processes by which permanent changes in the body's blueprints come about - as opposed to something about external, natural selection). Matthias: The problem of the emergent behavior already arises within a chess program which visits millions of chess positions within a second. I think the problem of the emergent behavior equals the fine tuning problem which I have already mentioned: We will know, that the main architecture of our AGI works. But in our first experiments we will observe a behavior of the AGI which we don't want to have. We will have several parameters which we can change. The big question will be: Which values of the parameters will let the AGI do the right things. This could be an important problem for the development of AGI because in my opinion the difference between a human and a monkey is only fine tuning. And nature needed millions of years for this fine tuning. I think there is no way to avoid this problem but this problem is no show stopper. - Matthias Mike Tintner wrote: This is fine and interesting, but hasn't anybody yet read Kauffman's Reinventing the Sacred (publ this year)? The entire book is devoted to this theme and treats it globally, ranging from this kind of emergence in physics, to emergence/evolution of natural species, to emergence/deliberate creativity in the economy and human thinking. Kauffman systematically - and correctly - argues that the entire, current mechanistic worldview of science is quite inadequate to dealing with and explaining creativity in every form throughout the world and at every level of evolution. Kauffman also explicitly deals with the kind of problems AGI must solve if it is to be AGI. In fact, everything is interrelated here. Ben argues: we are not trying to understand some natural system, we are trying to **engineer** systems Well, yes, but how you get emergent physical properties of matter, and how you get species evolving from each other with creative, scientifically unpredictable new organs and features , can be *treated* as design/engineering problems (even though, of course, nature was the designer). In fact, AGI *should* be doing this - should be understanding how its particular problem of getting a machine to be creative, fits in with the science-wide problem of understanding creativity in all its forms. The two are mutually enriching, (indeed mandatory when it comes to a) the human and animal brain's creativity and an AGI's and b) the evolution of the brain and the evolutionary path of AGI's). --- 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
Re: [agi] New Scientist: Why nature can't be reduced to mathematical laws
Matthias (cont), Alternatively, if you'd like *the* creative ( somewhat mathematical) problem de nos jours - how about designing a bail-out fund/ mechanism for either the US or the world, that will actually work? No show-stopper for your AGI? [How would you apply logic here, Abram?] --- 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] New Scientist: Why nature can't be reduced to mathematical laws
Ben, I am frankly flabberghasted by your response. I have given concrete example after example of creative, domain-crossing problems, where obviously there is no domain or frame that can be applied to solving the problem (as does Kauffman) - and at no point do you engage with any of them - or have the least suggestion as to how a logical/mathematical AGI could go about solving them, or identify a suitable domain.. On the contrary,it is *you* who repeatedly resort to essentially *reference to authority* arguments - saying read my book, my paper etc etc - and what basically amounts to the tired line I have the proof, I just don't have the time to write it in the margin (Or it's too complicated for your pretty little head.) Be honest - when and where have you ever addressed creative problems? [Just count how many problems I have raised).. Just as it is obvious that I know next to nothing about programming, it is also obvious that you have v. little experience of discussing creative problemsolving - at, I stress, a *metacognitive* level. (And nor, AFAIK, do any AGI-ers - only partly excepting Minsky). All this stands in total, stark contrast to any discussion of logical or mathematical, problems, where you are always delighted to engage in detail, and v. helpful and constructive - and do not make excuses to cover up your inexperience. Mike, by definition a creative/emergent problem is one where you have to bring about a given effect by finding radically new kinds of objects that move or relate in radically new kinds of ways - to produce that effect. By definition, you *do not know which domain is appropriate to solving the problem,* (what kinds of objects or moves are relevant), let alone have a set of instructions to hold your hand every step of the way - and the eventual solution will involve crossing hitherto unrelated domains. That, as Kauffman also insists, is an absolute show stopper. Which is why the show that is AGI cannot not only not go on, but hasn't even started. This is just an argument by reference to authority ... Stu Kauffman wrote a book saying X, therefore we're supposed to believe X is true??? He certainly did not convincingly demonstrate in any of his books or papers that AGI cannot deal with creativity in the same sense that humans can... These discussions get **so** tiresome... I am soon going to stop participating in threads of this nature... ben g -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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.
Brad: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. Brad, Perhaps you could give a single example of what you mean by non-human intelligence. What sort of faculties for instance? Or problemsolving? How will these be fundamentally different? Maybe you didn't follow my discussion with Ben about this - it turned out that Novamente is entirely humanoid. IOW when AGI-ers talk of producing a non-human intelligence, what they actually mean in practice is cherry-picking those human faculties they like ( think they can mimic) ignoring those they don't (or find too difficult). There is no real, thought-through conception of a non-human entity at all.Have you thought one through? --- 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] Super-Human friendly AGI
John, Sorry if I missed something, but I can't see any attempt by you to schematise/ classify emotions as such, e.g. melancholy, sorrow, bleakness... joy, exhilaration, euphoria.. (I'd be esp. interested in any attempt to establish a gradation of emotional terms). Do you have anything like that? --- 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
make up for that loss, because you are in a circumstance of an intrinsically unknown distal natural world, (the novelty of an act of scientific observation). . = COMP is false. == OK. There are subtleties here. The refutation is, in effect, a result of saying you can't do it (replace a scientist with a computer) because you can't simulate inputs. It is just the the nature of 'inputs' has been traditionally impoverished by assumption born merely of cross-disciplinary blindness.. Not enough quantum mechanics or electrodynamics is done by those exposed to 'COMP' principles. This result, at first appearance, says you can't simulate a scientist. But you can! If you already know what is out there in the natural world then you can simulate a scientific act. But you don't - by definition - you are doing science to find out! So it's not that you can't simulate a scientist, it is just that in order to do it you already have to know everything, so you don't want to ... it's useless. So the words 'refutation of COMP by an attempted COMP implementation of a scientist' have to be carefully contrasted with the words you can't simulate a scientist. The self referential use of scientific behaviour as scientific evidence has cut logical swathes through all sorts of issues. COMP is only one of them. My AGI benchmark and design aim is the artificial scientist. Note also that this result does not imply that real AGI can only be organic like us. It means that real AGI must have new chips that fully capture all the inputs and make use of them to acquire knowledge the way humans do. A separate matter altogether. COMP, as an AGI designer' option, is out of the picture. I think this just about covers the basics. The papers are dozens of pages. I can't condense it any more than this..I have debated this so much it's way past its use-by date. Most of the arguments go like this: But you CAN! I am unable to defend such 'arguments from under-informed-authority' ... I defer to the empirical reality of the situation and would prefer that it be left to justify itself. I did not make any of it up. I merely observed. . ...and so if you don't mind I'd rather leave the issue there. .. regards, Colin Hales Mike Tintner wrote: Colin: 1) Empirical refutation of computationalism... .. interesting because the implication is that if anyone doing AGI lifts their finger over a keyboard thinking they can be directly involved in programming anything to do with the eventual knowledge of the creature...they have already failed. I don't know whether the community has internalised this yet. Colin, I'm sure Ben is right, but I'd be interested to hear the essence of your empirical refutation. Please externalise it so we can internalise it :) --- 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/?; 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: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
Matthias: I think it is extremely important, that we give an AGI no bias about space and time as we seem to have. Well, I ( possibly Ben) have been talking about an entity that is in many places at once - not in NO place. I have no idea how you would swing that - other than what we already have - machines that are information-processors with no sense of identity at all.Do you? --- 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] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
Matthias, First, I see both a human body-brain and a distributed entity, such as a computer network, as *physically integrated* units, with a sense of their physical integrity. The fascinating thought, (perhaps unrealistic) for me was of being able to physically look at a scene or scenes, from different POV's more or less simultaneously - a thought worth exploring. Second, your idea, AFAICT, of an unbiassed-as-to-time-and-space intelligence, while v. vague, is also worth exploring. I suspect the all-important fallacy here is of pure objectivity - the idea that an object or scene or world can be depicted WITHOUT any location or reference or comparison. When we talk of time and space, which are fictions that have no concrete existence - we are really talking (no?) of frameworks we use to locate and refer other things to. Clocks. 3/4 dimensional grids... All things have to be referred and compared to other things in order to be understood, which is an inevitably biassed process. So is there any such thing as your non-bias? Just my first stumbling thoughts. Matthias: From my points 1. and 2. it should be clear that I was not talking about a distributed AGI which is in NO place. The AGI you mean consists of several parts which are in different places. But this is already the case with the human body. The only difference is, that the parts of the distributed AGI can be placed several kilometers from each other. But this is only a quantitative and not a qualitative point. Now to my statement of an useful representation of space and time for AGI. We know, that our intuitive understanding of space and time works very well in our life. But the ultimate goal of AGI is that it can solve problems which are very difficult for us. If we give an AGI bias of a model of space and time which is not state of the art of the knowledge we have from physics, then we give AGI a certain limitation which we ourselves suffer from and which is not necessary for an AGI. This point has nothing to do with the question whether the AGI is distributed or not. I mentioned this point because your question has relations to the more fundamental question whether and which bias we should give AGI for the representation of space and time. Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: Mike Tintner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Gesendet: Samstag, 4. Oktober 2008 14:13 An: agi@v2.listbox.com Betreff: Re: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once. Matthias: I think it is extremely important, that we give an AGI no bias about space and time as we seem to have. Well, I ( possibly Ben) have been talking about an entity that is in many places at once - not in NO place. I have no idea how you would swing that - other than what we already have - machines that are information-processors with no sense of identity at all.Do you? --- 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/?; 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: [agi] COMP = false
Matt:The problem you describe is to reconstruct this image given the highly filtered and compressed signals that make it through your visual perceptual system, like when an artist paints a scene from memory. Are you saying that this process requires a consciousness because it is otherwise not computable? If so, then I can describe a simple algorithm that proves you are wrong: try all combinations of pixels until you find one that looks the same. Matt, Simple? Well, you're good at maths. Can we formalise what you're arguing? A computer screen, for argument's sake. 800 x 600, or whatever. Now what is the total number of (diverse) objects that can be captured on that screen, and how long would it take your algorithm to enumerate them? (It's an interesting question, because my intuition says to me that there is an infinity of objects that can be depicted on any screen (or drawn on a page). Are you saying that there aren't? - that you can in effect predict new objects as yet unconceived, new kinds of ipods/inventions/evolved species, say, -at least in terms of their representations on a flat screen - with an algorithm? ) --- 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
Ben, Thanks for reply. I'm a bit lost though. How does this formula take into account the different pixel configurations of different objects? (I would have thought we can forget about the time of display and just concentrate on the configurations of points/colours, but no doubt I may be wrong). Roughly how large a figure do you come up with, BTW? I guess a related question is the old one - given a keyboard of letters, what are the total number of works possible with say 500,000 key presses, and how many 500,000-press attempts will it (or could it) take the proverbial monkey to type out, say, a 50,000 word play called Hamlet? In either case, I would imagine, the numbers involved are too large to be practically manageable in, say, this universe, (which seems to be a common yardstick). Comments? The maths here does seem important, because it seems to me to be the maths of creativity - and creative possibilities - in a given medium. A somewhat formalised maths, since creators usually find ways to transcend and change their medium - but useful nevertheless. Is such a maths being pursued? On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 8:37 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt:The problem you describe is to reconstruct this image given the highly filtered and compressed signals that make it through your visual perceptual system, like when an artist paints a scene from memory. Are you saying that this process requires a consciousness because it is otherwise not computable? If so, then I can describe a simple algorithm that proves you are wrong: try all combinations of pixels until you find one that looks the same. Matt, Simple? Well, you're good at maths. Can we formalise what you're arguing? A computer screen, for argument's sake. 800 x 600, or whatever. Now what is the total number of (diverse) objects that can be captured on that screen, and how long would it take your algorithm to enumerate them? (It's an interesting question, because my intuition says to me that there is an infinity of objects that can be depicted on any screen (or drawn on a page). Are you saying that there aren't? - There is a finite number of possible screen-images, at least from the point of view of the process sending digital signals to the screen. If the monitor refreshes each pixel N times per second, then over an interval of T seconds, if each pixel can show C colors, then there are C^(N*T*800*600) possible different scenes showable on the screen during that time period A big number but finite! Drawing on a page is a different story, as it gets into physics questions, but it seems rather likely there is a finite number of pictures on the page that are distinguishable by a human eye. So, whether or not an infinite number of objects exist in the universe, only a finite number of distinctions can be drawn on a monitor (for certain), or by an eye (almost surely) ben g -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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] Testing, and a question....
Colin: 1) Empirical refutation of computationalism... .. interesting because the implication is that if anyone doing AGI lifts their finger over a keyboard thinking they can be directly involved in programming anything to do with the eventual knowledge of the creature...they have already failed. I don't know whether the community has internalised this yet. Colin, I'm sure Ben is right, but I'd be interested to hear the essence of your empirical refutation. Please externalise it so we can internalise it :) --- 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] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
I think either way - computers or robots - a distributed entity has to be looking at the world from different POV's more or less simultaneously, even if rapidly switching. My immediate intuitive response is that that would make the entity much less self-ish -much more open to merging or uniting with others. The idea of a distributed entity may well have the power to change our ideas about God/ the divine force/principle , I suspect our ideas are directly or indirectly v. located. Even if we, say, think about God or the force being everywhere, it's hard not to think of that being the same force spread out. But the idea of a distributed entity IMO opens up the possibility of an entity with a highly multiple personality - and perhaps also might make it possible to see all humans, say, and/or animals as one - an idea which has always given me, personally, a headache. Ben:yah, I discuss this in chapter 2 of The Hidden Pattern ;-) ... the short of it is: the self-model of such a mind will be radically different than that of a current human, because we create our self-models largely by analogy to our physical organisms ... intelligences w/o fixed physical embodiment will still have self-models but they will be less grounded in body metaphors ... hence radically different we can explore this different analytically, but it's hard for us to grok empathically... a hint of this is seen in the statement my son Zeb (who plays too many videogames) made: i don't like the real world as much as videogames because in the real world I always have first person view and can never switch to third person one would suspect that minds w/o fixed embodiment would have more explicitly contextualized inference, rather than so often positioning all their inferences/ideas within one default context ... for starters... ben On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The foundation of the human mind and system is that we can only be in one place at once, and can only be directly, fully conscious of that place. Our world picture, which we and, I think, AI/AGI tend to take for granted, is an extraordinary triumph over that limitation - our ability to conceive of the earth and universe around us, and of societies around us, projecting ourselves outward in space, and forward and backward in time. All animals are similarly based in the here and now. But,if only in principle, networked computers [or robots] offer the possibility for a conscious entity to be distributed and in several places at once, seeing and interacting with the world simultaneously from many POV's. Has anyone thought about how this would change the nature of identity and intelligence? --- 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 -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome - Dr Samuel Johnson -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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] Dangerous Knowledge
Ben: the reason AGI is so hard has to do with Santa Fe Institute style complexity ... Intelligence is not fundamentally grounded in any particular mechanism but rather in emergent structures and dynamics that arise in certain complex systems coupled with their environments Characterizing what these emergent structures/dynamics are is hard, Ben, Maybe you could indicate how complexity might help solve any aspect of *general* intelligence - how it will help in any form of crossing domains, such as analogy, metaphor, creativity, any form of resourcefulness etc.- giving some example. Personally, I don't think it has any connection - and it doesn't sound from your last sentence, as if you actually see a connection :). --- 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] Dangerous Knowledge
Ben: analogy is mathematically a matter of finding mappings that match certain
constraints. The traditional AI approach to this would be to search the
constrained space of mappings using some search heuristic. A complex systems
approach is to embed the constraints into a dynamical system and let the
dynamical system evolve into a configuration that embodies a mapping matching
the constraints.
Ben,
If you are to arrive at a surprising analogy or solution to a creative problem,
the first task is to find out a new domain that maps on to or is relevant to
the given domain, and by definition you have no rules for where to search. If
for example you had to solve Kauffman's practical problem - how do I
hide/protect a loose computer cord so that no one trips over it? - which
domains do you start with (that connect to computer cords), and where do you
end? Books? Bricks? Tubes? Cellotape? Warning signs? There are actually an
infinity (or practically endless set) of possibilities. And there are no
pre-applicable rules about which domains to search, or what constitutes
hiding/protecting - and therefore the constraints of the problem, or indeed
how much evidence to consider, and what constitutes evidence.And hiding
computer cords and other household objects is not a part of any formal subject
or branch of reasoning.
Ditto if you, say, are an adman and have to find a new analogy for your beer
being as cool as a --- (must be new/surprising aka cabbages and kings, and
preferably in form as well as content, e.g. as cool as a tool in a pool as a
rule [1st attempt] ).
Doesn't complexity only apply when you have some formulae or rules to start
with? But you don't with analogy. That's the very nature of the problem
That's why I asked you to give me a problem example. {Can you remember a
problem example of analogy or otherwise crossing domains from your book - just
one? )
Nor can I see how maths applies to problems such as these, or any crossing of
domains, other than to prove that there are infinite possibilities. Which
branch of maths actually deals with analogies?
And the statement:
it is provable that complex systems methods can solve **any** analogy problem,
given appropriate data
seems outrageous. You can prove mathematically that you can solve the creative
problem of the engram (how info. is laid down in the brain)? That you can
solve any of the problems of discovery and invention currently being faced by
science and technology? A mind-reading machine, say? Or did you mean problems
where you are given appropriate data, i.e. the answers/clues/rules? Those
aren't problems of analogy or creativity.
I don't know about you, but a lot of computer guys don't actually understand
what analogy is. Hofstadter's oft-cited xyy is to xyz as abb is to a--? for
example is NOT an analogy. It is logic.
And if you look at your brief answer para, you will find that while you talk
of mappings and constraints, (which are not necessarily AGI at all), you make
no mention in any form of how complexity applies to the crossing of hitherto
unconnected domains [or matrices, frames etc], which, of course, are.
.
Ben,
Ben: the reason AGI is so hard has to do with Santa Fe Institute style
complexity ...
Intelligence is not fundamentally grounded in any particular mechanism but
rather in emergent structures
and dynamics that arise in certain complex systems coupled with their
environments
Characterizing what these emergent structures/dynamics are is hard,
Ben,
Maybe you could indicate how complexity might help solve any aspect of
*general* intelligence - how it will help in any form of crossing domains, such
as analogy, metaphor, creativity, any form of resourcefulness etc.- giving
some example.
Personally, I don't think it has any connection - and it doesn't sound
from your last sentence, as if you actually see a connection :).
You certainly draw some odd conclusions from the wording of peoples'
sentences. I not only see a connection, I wrote a book on this subject,
published by Plenum Press in 1997: From Complexity to Creativity.
Characterizing these things at the conceptual and even mathematical level is
not as hard at realizing them at the software level... my 1997 book was
concerned with the former.
I don't have time today to cut and paste extensively from there to satisfy
your curiosity, but you're free to read the thing ;-) ... I still agree with
most of it ...
To give a brief answer to one of your questions: analogy is mathematically a
matter of finding mappings that match certain constraints. The traditional AI
approach to this would be to search the constrained space of mappings using
some search heuristic. A complex systems approach is to embed the constraints
into a dynamical system and let the dynamical system evolve into a
configuration that embodies a mapping matching the
Re: [agi] Dangerous Knowledge
Can't resist, Ben.. it is provable that complex systems methods can solve **any** analogy problem, given appropriate data Please indicate how your proof applies to the problem of developing an AGI machine. (I'll allow you to specify as much appropriate data as you like - any data, of course, *currently* available). --- 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] Dangerous Knowledge
Ben, Well, funny perhaps to some. But nothing to do with AGI - which has nothing to with well-defined problems. The one algorithm or rule that can be counted on here is that AGI-ers won't deal with the problem of AGI - how to cross domains (in ill-defined, ill-structured problems). Applies to Richard too. But the reasons for this general avoidance aren't complex :) Ben, It doesn't have any application... My proof has two steps 1) Hutter's paper The Fastest and Shortest Algorithm for All Well-Defined Problems http://www.hutter1.net/ai/pfastprg.htm 2) I can simulate Hutter's algorithm (or *any* algorithm) using an attractor neural net, e.g. via Mikhail Zak's neural nets with Lipschitz-discontinuous threshold functions ... This is all totally useless as it requires infeasibly much computing power ... but at least, it's funny, for those of us who get the joke ;-) ben On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 3:38 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Can't resist, Ben.. it is provable that complex systems methods can solve **any** analogy problem, given appropriate data Please indicate how your proof applies to the problem of developing an AGI machine. (I'll allow you to specify as much appropriate data as you like - any data, of course, *currently* available). agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome - Dr Samuel Johnson -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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] Dangerous Knowledge
Ben,
I must assume you are being genuine here - and don't perceive that you have not
at any point illustrated how complexity might lead to the solution of any
given general (domain-crossing) problem of AGI.
Your OpenCog design also does not illustrate how it is to solve problems - how
it is, for example, to solve the problems of concept, especially speculative
concept,, formation. There are no examples in the relevant passages. General
statements of principle but no practical examples. [Otherwise offhand I can't
see any sections that relate to crossing domains].
You rarely give examples - i.e. you do not ground your theories - your novel
ideas, (as we have discussed before). [You give standard textbook examples of
problems, of course, in other, unrelated discussions].
You have already provided one very suitable example of a general AGI problem -
how is your pet having learnt one domain - to play fetch, - to use that
knowledge to cross into another domain - to learn/discover the game of
hide-and-seek.? But I have repeatedly asked you to give me your ideas how
your system will deal with this problem. And you have always avoided it. I
don't think, frankly, you have an idea how it will make the connection in an
AGI way. I am extremely confident you couldn't begin to explain how a complex
approach will make the cross-domain connection between fetching and
hiding/seeking. (What *is* the connection BTW?)
If it is any consolation - this reluctance to deal with AGI problems is
universal among AGI-ers. Richard. Pei. Minsky...
Check how often in the past few years cross-domain problems have been dealt
with on this group. Masses of programming, logical and mathematical problems,
of course, in great, laudable detail. But virtually none that relate to
crossing domains.
One thing is for sure - if you don't discuss and deal with the problems of AGI
- and lots and lots of examples - you will never get any better at them. The
answers won't magically pop up. No one ever got better at a skill by *not*
practising it.
P.S. As for :
gather as much money as possible while upsetting as few people as pos [or as
little] - it is a massively open-ended [and indeed GI] problem that can be
instantiated in a virtual infinity of moneymaking domains [from stockmarkets,
to careers, small jobs, prostitution and virtually any area of the economy]
with a virtual infinity of constructions of upsetting. . Please explain how
a complex AGII program, which by definition would not be pre-prepared for such
a problem , would tightly define it or even *want* to .
And note your first instinct - rather than asking- how can we deal with this
open-ended problem in an open-ended AGI way - you immediately talk about trying
to define it in a closed-ended, tightly defined, basically *narrow* AI way.
That again is a typical, pretty universal instinct among AGI-ers.
{Remember Levitt's What people need is not a quarter-inch drill, but
quarter-inch holes - AGI should be first foremost not about how you
construct certain logical programs, but how you solve certain problems - and
then work out what programs you need.]
Ben,
Well, funny perhaps to some. But nothing to do with AGI - which has
nothing to with well-defined problems.
I wonder if you are misunderstanding his use of terminology.
How about the problem of gathering as much money as possible while upsetting
people as little as possible?
That could be well defined in various ways, and would require AGI to solve as
far as I can see...
The one algorithm or rule that can be counted on here is that AGI-ers won't
deal with the problem of AGI - how to cross domains (in ill-defined,
ill-structured problems).
I suggestion the OpenCogPrime design can handle this, and it's outlined in
detail at
http://www.opencog.org/wiki/OpenCogPrime:WikiBook
You are not offering any counterarguments to my suggestion, perhaps (I'm not
sure)
because you lack the technical expertise or the time to read about the design
in detail.
At least, Richard Loosemore did provide a counterargument, which I disagreed
with ... but you provide
no counterargument, you just repeat that you don't believe the design
addresses the problem ...
and I don't know why you feel that way except that it intuitively doesn't
seem to feel right
to you...
-- Ben G
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Re: [agi] universal logical form for natural language
Ben and Stephen, AFAIK your focus - and the universal focus - in this debate on how and whether language can be symbolically/logically interpreted - is on *individual words and sentences.* A natural place to start. But you can't stop there - because the problems, I suggest, (hard as they already are), only seriously begin when you try to interpret *passages* - series of sentences from texts - and connect one sentence with another. Take: John sat down in the carriage. His grim reflection stared at him through the window. A whistle blew. The train started shuddering into motion, and slowly gathered pace. He was putting Brighton behind him for good. And just then the conductor popped his head through the door. I imagine you can pose the interpretative questions yourself. How do you connect any one sentence with any other here? Where is the whistle blowing? Where is the train moving? Inside the carriage or outside? Is the carriage inside or outside or where in relation to the moving train? Was he putting Brighton *physically* behind him like a cushion? Did the conductor break his head? etc. etc. The point is - in reading passages, in order to connect up sentences, you have to do a massive amount of *reading between the lines* . In doing that, you have to reconstruct the world or parts of the world, being referred to, from your brain's own models of that world.. (To understand the above passage, for example, you employ a very complex model of train travel). And this will apply to all kinds of passages - to arguments as well as stories. (Try understanding Ben's argument below). 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?) Stephen, Yes, I think your spreading-activation approach makes sense and has plenty of potential. Our approach in OpenCog is actually pretty similar, given that our importance-updating dynamics can be viewed as a nonstandard sort of spreading activation... I think this kind of approach can work, but I also think that getting it to work generally and robustly -- not just in toy examples like the one I gave -- is going to require a lot of experimentation and trickery. Of course, if the AI system has embodied experience, this provides extra links for the spreading activation (or analogues) to flow along, thus increasing the odds of meaningful results... Also, I think that spreading-activation type methods can only handle some cases, and that for other cases one needs to use explicit inference to do the disambiguation. My point for YKY was (as you know) not that this is an impossible problem but that it's a fairly deep AI problem which is not provided out-of-the-box in any existing NLP toolkit. Solving disambiguation thoroughly is AGI-hard ... solving it usefully is not ... but solving it usefully for *prepositions* is cutting-edge research going beyond what existing NLP frameworks do... -- Ben G On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 1:25 PM, Stephen Reed [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben gave the following examples that demonstrate the ambiguity of the preposition with: People eat food with forks People eat food with friend[s] People eat food with ketchup The Texai bootstrap English dialog system, whose grammar rule engine I'm currently rewriting, uses elaboration and spreading activation to perform disambiguation and pruning of alternative interpretations. Let's step through how Texai would process Ben's examples. According to Wiktionary, with has among its word senses the following: a.. as an instrument; by means of a.. in the company of; alongside; along side of; close to; near to a.. in addition to, as an accessory to Its clear when I make these substitutions which word sense is to be selected: People eat food by means of forks People eat food in the company of friends People eat ketchup as an accessory to food Elaboration of the Texai discourse context provides additional entailed propositions with respect to the objects actually referenced in the utterance. The elaboration process is efficiently performed by spreading activation over the KB from the focal terms with respect to context. The links explored by this process can be formed by offline deductive inference, or learned from heuristic search and reinforcement learning, or simply taught by a mentor. Relevant elaborations I would expect Texai to make for the example utterances are: a fork is an instrument there are activities that a person performs as a member of a group of friends; to eat is such an activity ketchup is a condiment; a condiment is an accessory with regard to food Texai considers all interpretations
Re: [agi] universal logical form for natural language
David, Thanks for reply. Like so many other things, though, working out how we understand texts is central to understanding GI - and something to be done *now*. I've just started looking at it, but immediately I can see that what the mind does - how it jumps around in time and space and POV and person/subject - and flexibly applies its world/subworld models - is quite awesome. I think the word/sentence focus BTW is central to cognitive science *and* the embodied cog. sci. of Lakoff and co. as well as AI/AGI. But the understanding of language understanding will only really come alive when we move the focus to passages - and how we use language to construct a) stories b) arguments and c) scenes (descriptive passages). [I wonder whether there are any other major categories of language]. It also entails a switch from just a one-sided embodied POV to a two-sided embodied-embedded overview, looking at how language is embedded in the world. To focus on sentences alone is like focussing on the odd frame in a movie. You can't get the picture at all. A passage/text approach will v. quickly answer Matt's: I mean that a more productive approach would be to try to understand why the problem is so hard. David: 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 (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 | Modify Your Subscription --- 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
Eric, Thanks for link. Flipping through quickly, it still seemed sentence-based. Here's an example of time flipping - fast-forwarding text - and the kind of jumps that the mind can make AGI Year One. AGI is one of the great technological challenges. We believe we have the basic technology - the basic modules - to meet that challenge. AGI Year Five. We can reach the goal of AGI in 10 years, if we really, really try. AGI Year Ten. It may take longer than we thought, but we can get there... AGI Year Fifteen: It's proved a much larger problem than we ever imagined.. [n.b. I'm not trying to be historically or otherwise accurate :) But note how your mind had no problem creating a v. complex underlying time-jumping scenario to understand - and fill/read between the lines of - that text. No current approach has the slightest idea how to do that, I suggest. You can't do it by a surface approach, simply analysing how words are used in however many million verbally related sentences in texts on the net. http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-7933698775159827395ei=Z1rhSJz7CIvw-QHQyNkCq=nltkvt=lf NLTK video ;O On 9/29/08, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: David, Thanks for reply. Like so many other things, though, working out how we understand texts is central to understanding GI - and something to be done *now*. I've just started looking at it, but immediately I can see that what the mind does - how it jumps around in time and space and POV and person/subject - and flexibly applies its world/subworld models - is quite awesome. I think the word/sentence focus BTW is central to cognitive science *and* the embodied cog. sci. of Lakoff and co. as well as AI/AGI. But the understanding of language understanding will only really come alive when we move the focus to passages - and how we use language to construct a) stories b) arguments and c) scenes (descriptive passages). [I wonder whether there are any other major categories of language]. It also entails a switch from just a one-sided embodied POV to a two-sided embodied-embedded overview, looking at how language is embedded in the world. To focus on sentences alone is like focussing on the odd frame in a movie. You can't get the picture at all. A passage/text approach will v. quickly answer Matt's: I mean that a more productive approach would be to try to understand why the problem is so hard. David: 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 (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 | Modify Your Subscription --- 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/?; 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: [agi] universal logical form for natural language
Ben, Er, you seem to be confirming my point. Tomasello from Wiki is an early child development psychologist. I want a model that keeps going to show the stages of language acquistion from say 7-13, on through teens, and into the twenties - that shows at what stages we understand progressively general and abstract concepts like, say, government, philosophy, relationships, etc etc. - and why different, corresponding texts are only understandable at different ages. There is nothing like this because there is no true *embedded* cognitive science that looks at how long it takes to build up a picture of the world, and how language is embedded in our knowledge of the world. [The only thing that comes at all close to it, that I know, is Margaret Donaldson's work, if I remember right]. Re rhetorical structure theory - many thanks for the intro - it looks interesting. But again this is not an embedded approach: RST is intended to describe texts, rather than the processes of creating or reading and understanding them For example, to understand sentences they quote like He tends to be viewed now as a biologist, but in his 5 years on the Beagle his main work was geology, and he saw himself as a geologist. His work contributed significantly to the field. requires a considerable amount of underlying knowledge about Darwin's life, and an extraordinary ability to handle timelines - and place events/sentences in time. I can confidently bet that no one is attempting this type of text/structural analysis because no one, as I said, is taking an embedded approach to language. [Embedded is to embodied in the analysis of language use and thought as environment is to nature in the analysis of behaviour generally]. Ben, Cognitive linguistics also lacks a true deveopmental model of language acquisition that goes beyond the first few years of life, and can embrace all those several - and, I'm quite sure, absolutely necessary - stages of mastering language and building a world picture. Tomassello's theory of language acquisition specifically embraces the phenomena you describe. What don't you like about it? ben -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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
Abram, Yes, I'm aware of Schank - and failed to reference him. I think though that that approach signally failed. And you give a good reason - it requires too much knowledge entry. And that is part of my point. On the surface, language passages can appear to be relatively simple, but actually they involve the manipulation of very complex underlying world pictures to fill in the gaps and complete them. Building up those world pictures is a stage-by-stage developmental, multi-level hierarchical process, which takes more than twenty years of education for a developing human. There are inevitable reasons why you can't simply start your database with sentences like Daddy hit Susan hard and immediately add sentences like The government hit the rebels hard. It takes a lot more knowledge to understand what governments and rebels are than Daddies and to understand how their hitting differs from Daddy's - vastly more than is contained in dictionary definitions.There are no short-cuts to acquiring this knowledge. We need a true developmental psychology [that covers the whole of youth] to help us understand how a world picture is developed, just as we need a true evolutionary psychology [that covers all species and not just human]. P.S. I think also that the passages vs sentences distinction may actually be distinctive, because it really demands that you start with a broad range of actual texts and try to analyse their structural nature. You need an initially scientific and general approach. My guess is that Schank and AI generally start from a technological POV, conceiving of *particular* approaches to texts that they can implement, rather than first attempting a *general* overview. P.P.S. Thanks for the story literature - great page. Mike, If your question is directed toward the general AI community (rather then the people on this list), the answer is a definite YES. It was some time ago, and as far as I know the line of research has been dropped, yet the results are to this day quite surprisingly good (I think). The following site has an example. http://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/ai/vt07/SCHANK.HTM The details of the story can vary fairly significantly and still the system performs as well as it does here (so long as it is still a story about traveling to get something to eat, written with the sorts of grammatical constructs you see in that story). Of course, this is a result of a fair amount of effort, programming scripts for everyday events. The approach was dropped because too much knowledge entry would be required to be practical for reading, say, a random newspaper story. But that is just what Cyc is for. Anyway, the point is, understanding passages is not a new field, just a neglected one. --Abram On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 3:23 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben and Stephen, AFAIK your focus - and the universal focus - in this debate on how and whether language can be symbolically/logically interpreted - is on *individual words and sentences.* A natural place to start. But you can't stop there - because the problems, I suggest, (hard as they already are), only seriously begin when you try to interpret *passages* - series of sentences from texts - and connect one sentence with another. Take: John sat down in the carriage. His grim reflection stared at him through the window. A whistle blew. The train started shuddering into motion, and slowly gathered pace. He was putting Brighton behind him for good. And just then the conductor popped his head through the door. I imagine you can pose the interpretative questions yourself. How do you connect any one sentence with any other here? Where is the whistle blowing? Where is the train moving? Inside the carriage or outside? Is the carriage inside or outside or where in relation to the moving train? Was he putting Brighton *physically* behind him like a cushion? Did the conductor break his head? etc. etc. The point is - in reading passages, in order to connect up sentences, you have to do a massive amount of *reading between the lines* . In doing that, you have to reconstruct the world or parts of the world, being referred to, from your brain's own models of that world.. (To understand the above passage, for example, you employ a very complex model of train travel). And this will apply to all kinds of passages - to arguments as well as stories. (Try understanding Ben's argument below). 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?) Stephen, Yes, I think your spreading-activation approach makes sense and has plenty of potential. Our approach in OpenCog is actually pretty similar, given that our importance-updating dynamics can
Re: [agi] universal logical form for natural language
[Comment: Aren't logic and common sense *opposed*?] Discursive [logical, propositional] Knowledge vs Practical [tacit] Knowledge http://www.polis.leeds.ac.uk/assets/files/research/working-papers/wp24mcanulla.pdf a) Knowledge: practical and discursive Most, if not all understandings of tradition stress the way in which knowledge and beliefs are transmitted or transferred over time. However, as we have seen, different perspectives place varying emphases on the types of knowledge and belief being transferred. Some make practical and tacit knowledge primary, others make rational and/or intellectual knowledge forms of knowledge central. However, in principle there is no reason to assume that both types of knowledge are not important to tradition. Yet to maintain this necessitates examining to what extent these kind of knowledge are distinct and/or compatible. It will be suggested below that we might gain a better grasp of traditions by making a clear distinction between the different types of knowledge they can transmit. Stompka's unpacking of the objects of tradition into material and ideal components is instructive here. For this draws our attention to examine not just the relations between the different ideas within traditions, but also the relations between people and the physical objects relevant to a tradition. Drawing on realist social theory, I suggest drawing a distinction between practical and discursive forms of knowledge3. Practical knowledge . Centrally concerns subject-object relations e.g. someone's skill in using a bottle-opener . Primarily tacit in content, as it involves engaging with reality through activity and dealings with artifacts (rather than manipulating symbols) . Cognitive content entails non-verbal theorising and development of skills (rather than enunciation of propositions) (Archer, 2000: 166) Practical knowledge emerges from our active engagement with the world of objects. In this view pre-verbal practical action is the way in which infants learn principles of logical reasoning. Learning these principles in a is necessary and prior to discursive socialisation and the acquisition of language. However, there is no reason to believe that such non-linguistic forms of practical action cease following the learning of language (Archer, 2000: 153). Indeed the practical skills we develop often do not depend in a direct way upon language e.g. our abilities to use a bottle opener, or to control car gears through use of a clutch, are something we gain a 'feel' for. The best kinds of car-user instruction manual do not of themselves help develop many of the practical skills we need for driving. As such practical knowledge is regulated by our relations with material culture i.e. the objects and artifacts we encounter (ibid. 166) Practical knowledge is thus implicit and tacit, gained through activity rather than through engaging with linguistic propositions or discursive symbols. When practical knowledge is transmitted (e.g. in the form of tradition) it is done so in the form of 'apprenticeship' where skilled individual e.g. Mastercraftsmen or a Professional demonstrates good practice and offers practical criticism and evaluation (ibid. 176) Once such skills are acquired, the use of such practical knowledge often becomes 'second nature'. Discursive knowledge . Centrally concerns subject-subject relations and linguistic communication . Consists of theories, arguments, social norms and their propositional formulation (Archer, 2000: 173-176) . Consist of linguistically generated meaning and symbols Discursive knowledge is developed through our linguistic powers to communicate meaningfully and to attribute meanings to our relations. Thus discursive knowledge may consist of theories, arguments, social norms and the kinds of propositions associated with them (e.g. 'maximum liberty requires a minimal state'). The ideas contained within discursive knowledge stand in logical relationship to one another and can usually be represented in propositional forms. It is through discursive knowledge that we develop and maintain ideational commitments to particular doctrines, theories or world-views (Archer, 2000: 173-176). Discursive knowledge can act to constrain and/or enable our projects as actors in the world. In turn, this discursive knowledge can be elaborated or transformed as a result of our socio-linguistic interactions. Discursive knowledge is transmitted, or handed down (e.g. within tradition) through 'scholarship', the teaching of linguistically encoded theories and propositions. b) The interaction between practical and discursive knowledge If such a distinction between practical and discursive knowledge is accepted then it is clear that traditions may vary in the extent to which they consist of each type. For example, a tradition of British farming would clearly involve a high element of practical knowledge. Conversely, an
Re: [agi] Call yourself mathematicians? [O/T]
Thanks, Ben, Dmitri for replies. --- 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] Balancing Body (and Mind)
Piecing through the notice below with my renowned ignorance, it occurs to me to ask: does the brain/ cerebellum demonstrate as much general intelligence and flexibility in its movements as in its consciously directed thinking? ... In its ability to vary muscle coordination patterns ( structural alignments) to achieve the same motions? (there is no one-to-one correspondence between a desired movement goal, limb motions, or muscle activity)? (Its capacity, for example, to shift around body weight while standing in a given position, in order to ease pressures, or to automatically adjust muscular coordination for walking,say, when a foot is injured, [without any history of such an injury]). ... In its ability to improvise new muscle coordination patterns etc to create new movements, (and move so elegantly through unpredictable and dynamic environments)? (Its capacity for example to immediately contort itself strangely to catch a plate falling at a strange angle, or to writhe every which way to squeeze out of tight corners). [Are there any good/standard terms BTW for this flexibility of motor patterns? Multimuscularity?] Do any AGI's demonstrate any comparable flexibility in trying to solve problems? This perhaps comes down to Minsky's idea that an AGI should be able to switch between different ways to think - or perhaps one can use the word faculties. Are there any systems that can, say, switch flexibly between different kinds of logic (PLN/NARS say) when one doesn't work? Or between logic, language, visualisation, geometry etc - to solve the same problem? Shouldn't this be a foundational requirement for an AGI - the ability to switch between faculties/ modalities in solving intellectual problems, as easily as the body switches between muscle groups in solving motor problems (and as the brain itself switches)? The capacity to have its wits about it? [I get almost 0, googling for multimodal AI]. *** Redwood Seminar - TODAY *** Dimensional Reduction in Motor Patterns for Balance Control Lena H. Ting Department of Biomedical Engineering, Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology, and Fall 2008 Visiting Miller Professor Wednesday, Sept. 24 at 12:00 508-20 Evans Hall How do humans and animals move so elegantly through unpredictable and dynamic environments? And why does this question continue to pose such a challenge? We have a wealth of data on the action of neurons, muscles, and limbs during a wide variety of motor behaviors, yet these data are difficult to interpret, as there is no one-to-one correspondence between a desired movement goal, limb motions, or muscle activity. Using combined experimental and computational approaches, we are teasing apart the neural and biomechanical influences on muscle coordination of during standing balance control in cats and humans. Our work demonstrates that variability in motor patterns both within and across subjects during balance control in humans and animals can be characterized by a low-dimensional set of parameters related to abstract, task-level variables. Temporal patterns of muscle activation across the body can be characterized by a 4-parameter, delayed-feedback model on center-of-mass kinematic variables. Changes in muscle activity that occur following large- fiber sensory-loss in cats, as well as during motor adaptation in humans, appear to be constrained within the low-dimensional parameter space defined by the feedback model. Moreover, well-adapted responses to perturbations are similar to those predicted by an optimal tradeoff between mechanical stability and energetic expenditure. Spatial patterns of muscle activation can also be characterized by a small set of muscle synergies (identified using non-negative matrix factorization) that are like motor building blocks, defining characteristic patterns of activation across multiple muscles. We hypothesize that each muscle synergy performs a task-level function, thereby providing a mechanism by which task-level motor intentions are translated into detailed, low-level muscle activation patterns. We demonstrate that a small set of muscle synergies can account for trial-by-trial variability in motor patterns across a wide range of balance conditions. Further, muscle activity and forces during balance control in novel postural configurations are best predicted my minimizing the activity of a few muscle synergies rather than the activity of individual muscles. Muscle synergies may represent a sparse motor code, organizing muscles to solve an “inverse binding problem” for motor outputs. We propose that such an organization facilitates fast motor adaptation while concurrently imposing constraints on the structure and energetic efficiency of motor patterns used during motor
[agi] Call yourself mathematicians? [O/T]
So can *you* understand credit default swaps? Here's the scary part of today's testimony everyone seems to have missed: SEC chairman Chris Cox's statement that the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market is completely unregulated. It's size? Somewhere in the $50 TRILLION range. --- 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] Call yourself mathematicians? [O/T]
Ben, Are CDS significantly complicated then - as an awful lot of professional, highly intelligent people are claiming? So can *you* understand credit default swaps? Yes I can, having a PhD in math and having studied a moderate amount of mathematical finance ... --- 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: Repair Theory (was Re: Two goals of AGI (was Re: [agi] Re: [OpenCog] Re: Proprietary_Open_Source))
Steve: If I were selling a technique like Buzan then I would agree. However, someone selling a tool to merge ALL techniques is in a different situation, with a knowledge engine to sell. The difference AFAICT is that Buzan had an *idea* - don't organize your thoughts about a subject in random order, or list, or tables or other old structures etc. organize them like a map/tree on a page so that you can oversee them. Not a big idea, but an idea, out of wh. he's made money, clearly appeals to many.. If you have a distinctive idea, wh. you may well have, I've missed it you're not repeating it. A tool to merge all techniques is a goal, not an idea. You have to show me that you have an idea - some new insight into general system principles applying to ,say, repair. And if you are to do focus groups, you will also have to have a new idea to show them test on them. --- 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)
Pei:In a broad sense, formal logic is nothing but domain-independent and justifiable data manipulation schemes. I haven't seen any argument for why AI cannot be achieved by implementing that Have you provided a single argument as to how logic *can* achieve AI - or to be more precise, Artificial General Intelligence, and the crossing of domains? [See attached post to Matt] The line of argument above is classically indirect (and less than logical?). It's comparable to: SHE: Have you been unfaithful to me? HE: Why would I be unfaithful to you? SHE: You've been unfaithful to me, haven't you? HE: What possible reason have you for thinking I've been unfaithful? The task you should by now have achieved is providing a direct argument why AGI *can* be achieved by your logic, not expecting others to show that it can't be. (And can you provide an example of a single surprising metaphor or analogy that have ever been derived logically? Jiri said he could - but didn't.) --- 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)
Ben: Mike: (And can you provide an example of a single surprising metaphor or analogy that have ever been derived logically? Jiri said he could - but didn't.) It's a bad question -- one could derive surprising metaphors or analogies by random search, and that wouldn't prove anything useful about the AGI potential of random search ... Ben, When has random search produced surprising metaphors ? And how did or would the system know that it has been done - how would it be able to distinguish valid from invalid metaphors, and surprising from unsurprising ones? You have just put forward, I suggest, a hypothetical/false and evasive argument. Your task, as Pei's, is surely to provide an argument, or some evidence, as to how the logical system you use can lead in any way to the crossing/ connection of previously uncrossed/unconnected domains - the central task and problem of AGI. Surprising metaphors and analogies are just two examples of such crossing of domains. (And jokes another) You have effectively tried to argue via the (I suggest) false random search example, that it is impossible to provide such an argument.. The truth is - I'm betting - that, you're just making excuses - neither you nor Pei have ever actually proposed an argument as to how logic can solve the problem of AGI and, after all these years, simply don't have one. If you have or do, please link me. P.S. The counterargument is v. simple. A connection of domains via metaphor/analogy or any other means is surprising if it does not follow from any known premises and rules. There were no known premises and rules for Matt to connect altimeters and the measurement of progress, or, if you remember my visual pun, for connecting the head of a clarinet and the head of a swan. Logic depends on inferences from known premises and rules. Logic is therefore quite incapable of - and has always been expressly prohibited from - making surprising connections (and therefore solving AGI). It is dedicated to the maintenance not the breaking of rules. As for Logic, its syllogisms and the majority of its other precepts are of avail rather in the communication of what we already know, or... even in speaking without judgment of things of which we are ignorant, than in the investigation of the unknown. Descartes If I and Descartes are right - and there is every reason to think so, (incl. the odd million, logically inexplicable metaphors not to mention many millions of logically inexplicable jokes) - you surely should be addressing this matter urgently, not evading it.. P.P.S. You should also bear in mind that a vast amount of jokes (which involve the surprising crossing of domains) explicitly depend on ILLOGICALITY. Take the classic Jewish joke about the woman who, told that her friend's son has the psychological problem of an Oedipus Complex, says: Oedipus Schmoedipus, what does it matter as long as he loves his mother? And your logical explanation is..? --- 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)
Ben, Not one metaphor below works. You have in effect accepted the task of providing a philosophy and explanation of your AGI and your logic - you have produced a great deal of such stuff (quite correctly). But none of it includes the slightest explanation of how logic can produce AGI - or, to use your favourite metaphor, how the plane will take off. I don't know the history of the Wright brothers, but I'll confidently bet that they had at least an idea or two, from early on, of how and why their contraption would fly. They didn't entirely wing it. Mike, I understand that my task is to create an AGI system, and I'm working on it ... The fact that my in-development, partial AGI system has not yet demonstrated advanced intelligence, does not imply that it will not do so once completed. No, my AGI system has not yet discovered surprising metaphors, because it is still at an early stage of development. So what. An airplane not yet fully constructed doesn't fly anywhere either. My point was that asking whether a certain type of software system has ever produced a surprising metaphor -- is not a very interesting question. I am quite sure that the chatbot MegaHAL has produced many surprising metaphors. For instance, see his utterances on http://megahal.alioth.debian.org/Classic.html including AMAZING GRACE, HOW SWEET THE SOUND OF ONE OR MORE NUMBERS REPRESENTED IN DIGITAL FORM. HAL IS A CRAZY COW WHEN IT SINGS HALLELUJA LIFE'S BUT A GREEN DUCK WITH SOY SAUCE CHESS IS A FUN SPORT, WHEN PLAYED WITH SHOT GUNS. KEN KESEY WROTE ONE FLEW OVER THE CENTER OF THE CUCKOLDED LIZARD MAN, WHO STRAYED FROM HIS MISTAKES WHEN HE IS A MADEUP WORD. COWS FLY LIKE CLOUDS BUT THEY ARE NEVER COMPLETELY SUCCESSFUL JESUS IS THE BEST RADIO PRODUCER IN THE BEANS. MegaHAL is kinda creative and poetic, and he does generate some funky and surprising metaphors ... but alas he is not an AGI... -- Ben On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 11:30 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben: Mike: (And can you provide an example of a single surprising metaphor or analogy that have ever been derived logically? Jiri said he could - but didn't.) It's a bad question -- one could derive surprising metaphors or analogies by random search, and that wouldn't prove anything useful about the AGI potential of random search ... Ben, When has random search produced surprising metaphors ? And how did or would the system know that it has been done - how would it be able to distinguish valid from invalid metaphors, and surprising from unsurprising ones? You have just put forward, I suggest, a hypothetical/false and evasive argument. Your task, as Pei's, is surely to provide an argument, or some evidence, as to how the logical system you use can lead in any way to the crossing/ connection of previously uncrossed/unconnected domains - the central task and problem of AGI. Surprising metaphors and analogies are just two examples of such crossing of domains. (And jokes another) You have effectively tried to argue via the (I suggest) false random search example, that it is impossible to provide such an argument.. The truth is - I'm betting - that, you're just making excuses - neither you nor Pei have ever actually proposed an argument as to how logic can solve the problem of AGI and, after all these years, simply don't have one. If you have or do, please link me. P.S. The counterargument is v. simple. A connection of domains via metaphor/analogy or any other means is surprising if it does not follow from any known premises and rules. There were no known premises and rules for Matt to connect altimeters and the measurement of progress, or, if you remember my visual pun, for connecting the head of a clarinet and the head of a swan. Logic depends on inferences from known premises and rules. Logic is therefore quite incapable of - and has always been expressly prohibited from - making surprising connections (and therefore solving AGI). It is dedicated to the maintenance not the breaking of rules. As for Logic, its syllogisms and the majority of its other precepts are of avail rather in the communication of what we already know, or... even in speaking without judgment of things of which we are ignorant, than in the investigation of the unknown. Descartes If I and Descartes are right - and there is every reason to think so, (incl. the odd million, logically inexplicable metaphors not to mention many millions of logically inexplicable jokes) - you surely should be addressing this matter urgently, not evading it.. P.P.S. You should also bear in mind that a vast amount of jokes (which involve the surprising crossing of domains) explicitly depend on ILLOGICALITY. Take the classic Jewish joke about the woman who, told that her friend's son has the psychological problem of an Oedipus Complex, says
Re: The brain does not implement formal logic (was Re: [agi] Where the Future of AGI Lies)
Ben, Just to be clear, when I said no argument re how logic will produce AGI.. I meant, of course, as per the previous posts, ..how logic will [surprisingly] cross domains etc. That, for me, is the defining characteristic of AGI. All the rest is narrow AI. --- 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: Repair Theory (was Re: Two goals of AGI (was Re: [agi] Re: [OpenCog] Re: Proprietary_Open_Source))
Steve:question: Why bother writing a book, when a program is a comparable effort that is worth MUCH more? Well,because when you do just state basic principles - as you constructively started to do - I think you'll find that people can't even agree about those - any more than they can agree about say, the principles of self-help. If they can - if you can state some general systems principles that gain acceptance - then you have the basis for your program, and it'll cost you a helluva lot less effort. --- 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] Where the Future of AGI Lies
[You'll note that arguably the single greatest influence on people's thoughts about AGI here is Google - basically Google search - and that still means to most text search. However, video search other kinds of image search [along with online video broadcasting] are already starting to transform the way we think about the world in an equally powerful way - and will completely transform thinking about AGI. This is from the Google blog]. The future of online video 9/16/2008 06:25:00 AM The Internet has had an enormous impact on people's lives around the world in the ten years since Google's founding. It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environment and just about every other topic you can think of. Which got us to thinking, what's going to happen in the next ten years? How will this phenomenal technology evolve, how will we adapt, and (more importantly) how will it adapt to us? We asked ten of our top experts this very question, and during September (our 10th anniversary month) we are presenting their responses. As computer scientist Alan Kay has famously observed, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, so we will be doing our best to make good on our experts' words every day. - Karen Wickre and Alan Eagle, series editors Ten years ago the world of online video was little more than an idea. It was used mostly by professionals like doctors or lawyers in limited and closed settings. Connections were slow, bandwidth was limited, and video gear was expensive and bulky. There were many false starts and outlandish promises over the years about the emergence of online video. It was really the dynamic growth of the Internet (in terms of adoption, speed and ubiquity) that helped to spur the idea that online video - millions of people around the world shooting it, uploading it, viewing it via broadband - was even possible. Today, there are thousands of different video sites and services. In fact it's getting to be unusual not to find a video component on a news, entertainment or information website. And in less than three years, YouTube has united hundreds of millions of people who create, share, and watch video online. What used to be a gap between professional entertainment companies and home movie buffs has disappeared. Everyone from major broadcasters and networks to vloggers and grandmas are taking to video to capture events, memories, stories, and much more in real time. Today, 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and we believe the volume will continue to grow exponentially. Our goal is to allow every person on the planet to participate by making the upload process as simple as placing a phone call. This new video content will be available on any screen - in your living room, or on your device in your pocket. YouTube and other sites will bring together all the diverse media which matters to you, from videos of family and friends to news, music, sports, cooking and much, much more. In ten years, we believe that online video broadcasting will be the most ubiquitous and accessible form of communication. The tools for video recording will continue to become smaller and more affordable. Personal media devices will be universal and interconnected. Even more people will have the opportunity to record and share even more video with a small group of friends or everyone around the world. Over the next decade, people will be at the center of their video and media experience. More and more consumers will become creators. We will continue to help give people unlimited options and access to information, and the world will be a smaller place. Posted by Chad Hurley, CEO and Co-Founder, YouTube --- 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] Where the Future of AGI Lies
Mike, Google has had basically no impact on the AGI thinking of myself or 95% of the other serious AGI researchers I know.. When did you start thinking about creating an online virtual AGI?. --- 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] Where the Future of AGI Lies
Mike, Google has had basically no impact on the AGI thinking of myself or 95% of the other serious AGI researchers I know... Ben, Come again. Your thinking about a superAGI, and AGI takeoff, is not TOTALLY dependent on Google? You would stlll argue that a superAGI is possible WITHOUT access to the information resources of Google? I suggest that you have made a blind claim above - and a classic illustration of McLuhan's argument that most people, including intellectuals, do tend to be blind to how the media they use massively shape their thinking about the world - and reshape their nervous system. --- 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: Repair Theory (was Re: Two goals of AGI (was Re: [agi] Re: [OpenCog] Re: Proprietary_Open_Source))
Steve: Thanks for wringing my thoughts out. Can you twist a little tighter?! Steve, A v. loose practical analogy is mindmaps - it was obviously better for Buzan to develop a sub-discipline/technique 1st, and a program later. What you don't understand, I think, in all your reasoning about repair is that there is probably no principle - however obvious it seems to you, that will not be totally questioned and contradicted, and reasonably so, by someone else. The proof is in the pudding. Get yourself a set of principles together, and try them out on appropriately interested parties - some of your potential audience/customers - *before* you go to the trouble of programming. That's obviously good technological/business practice. Do some market research. I think you'll learn a lot. --- 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] Where the Future of AGI Lies
Ben:I would not even know about AI had I never encountered paper, yet the properties of paper have really not been inspirational in my AGI design efforts... Your unconscious keeps talking to you. It is precisely paper that mainly shapes your thinking about AI. Paper has been the defining medium of literate civilisation. And what characterises all literate forms is nice, discrete, static, fragmented, crystallised units on the page. Whether linguistic, logical, or mathematical. Words, letters and numbers. That was uni-media civilisation. That's the main reason why you think logic, maths and language are all you really need for intelligence - paper. The defining medium now is the screen. And on a screen, everything either changes or is changeable. Fluid. Words can become pictures. And pictures, if they're video, can move and talk. And you can see things whole and complicated , and not just in simplified, verbal/symbolic pieces. This is multi-media civilisation. As video becomes as plentiful and cheap as paper over the next 10 years, the literary/ paper prejudices that you have inherited from Plato, will be dissolved. (Narrow AI is crystallised intelligence, GI is fluid intelligence, Betcha that after fuzzy programming, you will soon see some form of fluid (or bio-logical) programming). The slogan for the next decade is - you ain't seen nothing yet. --- 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: Two goals of AGI (was Re: [agi] Re: [OpenCog] Re: Proprietary_Open_Source)
Steve:View #2 (mine, stated from your approximate viewpoint) is that simple programs (like Dr. Eliza) have in the past and will in the future do things that people aren't good at. This includes tasks that encroach on intelligence, e.g. modeling complex phonema and refining designs. Steve, In principle, I'm all for the idea that I think you (and perhaps Bryan) have expressed of a GI Assistant - some program that could be of general assistance to humans dealing with similar problems across many domains. A diagnostics expert, perhaps, that could help analyse breakdowns in say, the human body, a car or any of many other machines, a building or civil structure, etc. etc. And it's certainly an idea worth exploring. But I have yet to see any evidence that it is any more viable than a proper AGI - because, I suspect, it will run up against the same problems of generalizing - e.g. though breakdowns may be v. similar in many different kinds of machines, technological and natural, they will also each have their own special character. If you are serious about any such project, it might be better to develop it first as an intellectual discipline.rather than a program to test its viability - perhaps what it really comes down to is a form of systems thinking or science. --- 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] Case-by-case Problem Solving (draft)
TITLE: Case-by-case Problem Solving (draft) AUTHOR: Pei Wang ABSTRACT: Case-by-case Problem Solving is an approach in which the system solves the current occurrence of a problem instance by taking the available knowledge into consideration, under the restriction of available resources. It is different from the traditional Algorithmic Problem Solving in which the system applies a given algorithm to each problem instance. Case-by-case Problem Solving is suitable for situations where the system has no applicable algorithm for a problem. This approach gives the system flexibility, originality, and scalability, at the cost of predictability. This paper introduces the basic notion of case-by-case problem solving, as well as its most recent implementation in NARS, an AGI project. Philosophically, this is v. interesting and seems to be breaking important ground. It's moving in the direction I've long been urging - get rid of algorithms; they just don't apply to GI problems. But you seem to be reinventing the term for wheel. There is an extensive literature, including AI stuff, on wicked, ill-structured problems, (and even nonprogrammed decisionmaking which won't, I suggest, be replaced by case-by-case PS. These are well-established terms. You similarly seemed to be unaware of the v. common distinction between convergent divergent problem-solving. As usual, you don't give examples of problems that you're applying your method to . Consequently, it's difficult to know how to interpret: Do not define a problem as a class and use the same method to solve all of its instances. Instead, treat each problem instance as a problem on its own, and solve it in a case-by-case manner, according to the current (knowledge/resource) situation in the system. I would argue that you *must* define every problem, however wicked, as a class, even if only v. roughly, in order to be able to solve it at all. If, for example, the problem is how to physically explore a totally new kind of territory, you must know that it involves some kind of exploration/travel. But you may then have to radically redefine travel - from say walking to swimming/ crawling/ swinging on vines etc. etc. or walking with one foot up, one foot on the level. Typically, some form of creative particular example of the general kind of problem-and-solution may be required - e.g. a strange form of walking/crawling. I would v. much like to know how you propose that logic can achieve that. --- 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] Case-by-case Problem Solving (draft)
Ben, I'm only saying that CPS seems to be loosely equivalent to wicked, ill-structured problem-solving, (the reference to convergent/divergent (or crystallised vs fluid) etc is merely to point out a common distinction in psychology between two kinds of intelligence that Pei wasn't aware of in the past - which is actually loosely equivalent to the distinction between narrow AI and general AI problemsolving). In the end, what Pei is/isn't aware of in terms of general knowledge, doesn't matter much - don't you think that his attempt to do without algorithms IS v. important? And don't you think any such attempt would be better off referring explicitly to the literature on wicked, ill-structured problems? I don't think that pointing all this out is silly - this (a non-algorithmic approach to CPS/wicked/whatever) is by far the most important thing currently being discussed here - and potentially, if properly developed, revolutionary.. Worth getting excited about, no? (It would also be helpful BTW to discuss the wicked literature because it actually has abundant examples of wicked problems - and those, you must admit, are rather hard to come by here ). Ben: TITLE: Case-by-case Problem Solving (draft) AUTHOR: Pei Wang But you seem to be reinventing the term for wheel. There is an extensive literature, including AI stuff, on wicked, ill-structured problems, (and even nonprogrammed decisionmaking which won't, I suggest, be replaced by case-by-case PS. These are well-established terms. You similarly seemed to be unaware of the v. common distinction between convergent divergent problem-solving. Mike, I have to say I find this mode of discussion fairly silly.. Pei has a rather comprehensive knowledge of AI and a strong knowledge of cog-sci as well. It is obviously not the case that he is unaware of these terms and ideas you are referring to. Obviously, what he means by case-by-case problem solving is NOT the same as nonprogrammed decisionmaking nor divergent problem-solving. In his paper, he is presenting a point of view, not seeking to compare this point of view to the whole corpus of literature and ideas that he has absorbed during his lifetime. I happen not to fully agree with Pei's thinking on these topics (though I like much of it), but I know Pei well enough to know that those. places where his thinking diverges from mine, are *not* due to ignorance of the literature on his part... --- 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] Case-by-case Problem Solving (draft)
Ben, Ah well, then I'm confused. And you may be right - I would just like clarification. You see, what you have just said is consistent with my understanding of Pei up till now. He explicitly called his approach in the past nonalgorithmic while acknowledging that others wouldn't consider it so. It was only nonalgorithmic in the sense that the algortihm or problemsolving procedure had the potential to keep changing every time - but there was still (as I think we'd both agree) a definite procedure/algorithm each time. This current paper seems to represent a significant departure from that. There doesn't seem to be an algorithm or procedure to start with, and it does seem to represent a challenge to your conception of AGI design. But I may have misunderstood (which is easy if there are no examples :) ) - and perhaps you or, better still, Pei, would care to clarify. Ben: A key point IMO is that: problem-solving that is non-algorithmic (in Pei's sense) at one level (the level of the particular problem being solved) may still be algorithmic at a different level (for instance, NARS itself is a set of algorithms). So, to me, calling NARS problem-solving non-algorithmic is a bit odd... though not incorrect according to the definitions Pei lays out... AGI design then **is** about designing algorithms (such as the NARS algorithms) that enable an AI system to solve problems in both algorithmic and non-algorithmic ways... ben On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 8:51 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben, I'm only saying that CPS seems to be loosely equivalent to wicked, ill-structured problem-solving, (the reference to convergent/divergent (or crystallised vs fluid) etc is merely to point out a common distinction in psychology between two kinds of intelligence that Pei wasn't aware of in the past - which is actually loosely equivalent to the distinction between narrow AI and general AI problemsolving). In the end, what Pei is/isn't aware of in terms of general knowledge, doesn't matter much - don't you think that his attempt to do without algorithms IS v. important? And don't you think any such attempt would be better off referring explicitly to the literature on wicked, ill-structured problems? I don't think that pointing all this out is silly - this (a non-algorithmic approach to CPS/wicked/whatever) is by far the most important thing currently being discussed here - and potentially, if properly developed, revolutionary.. Worth getting excited about, no? (It would also be helpful BTW to discuss the wicked literature because it actually has abundant examples of wicked problems - and those, you must admit, are rather hard to come by here ). Ben: TITLE: Case-by-case Problem Solving (draft) AUTHOR: Pei Wang But you seem to be reinventing the term for wheel. There is an extensive literature, including AI stuff, on wicked, ill-structured problems, (and even nonprogrammed decisionmaking which won't, I suggest, be replaced by case-by-case PS. These are well-established terms. You similarly seemed to be unaware of the v. common distinction between convergent divergent problem-solving. Mike, I have to say I find this mode of discussion fairly silly.. Pei has a rather comprehensive knowledge of AI and a strong knowledge of cog-sci as well. It is obviously not the case that he is unaware of these terms and ideas you are referring to. Obviously, what he means by case-by-case problem solving is NOT the same as nonprogrammed decisionmaking nor divergent problem-solving. In his paper, he is presenting a point of view, not seeking to compare this point of view to the whole corpus of literature and ideas that he has absorbed during his lifetime. I happen not to fully agree with Pei's thinking on these topics (though I like much of it), but I know Pei well enough to know that those. places where his thinking diverges from mine, are *not* due to ignorance of the literature on his part... agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome - Dr Samuel Johnson -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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] Case-by-case Problem Solving PS
Ben, It's hard to resist my interpretation here - that Pei does sound as if he is being truly non-algorithmic. Just look at the opening abstract sentences. (However, I have no wish to be pedantic - I'll accept whatever you guys say you mean). Case-by-case Problem Solving is an approach in which the system solves the current occurrence of a problem instance by taking the available knowledge into consideration, under the restriction of available resources. It is different from the traditional Algorithmic Problem Solving in which the system applies a given algorithm to each problem instance. Case-by-case Problem Solving is suitable for situations where the system has no applicable algorithm for a problem --- 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] Case-by-case Problem Solving (draft)
Ben, Well then so is S Kauffman's language unclear. I'll go with his definition in Chap 12 Reinventing the Sacred [all about algorithms and their impossibility for solving a whole string of human problems] What is an algorithm? The quick definition is an *effective procedure to calculate a result.' A computer program is an algorithm, and so is long division. See his explanation of how he solved the wicked problem of how to hide a computer cable - Is there an algorithmic way to bound the frame of the features of my table, computer, cord, plug and the rest of the universe, such that I could algorithmically find a solution to my problem? No. But solve it I did! Ben, please listen carefully to the following :). I really suspect that all the stuff I'm saying and others are writing about wicked problems is going in one ear and out the other. You hear it and know it, perhaps, but you really don't register it. If you did register it, you would know that anyone who deals in psychology with wicked problems OBJECTS to the IQ test as a test of intelligence - as only dealing with convergent problem-solving, and not divergent/wicked/ill-structured problemsolving. It's a major issue. Pei clearly in the past didn't know much about this area of psychology, and I wonder whether you really do. (You don't have to know everything - it's not a crime if you don't - it's just that you would be well advised to familiarise yourself with it all..). There is no effective procedure, period, for dealing successfully with wicked, ill-structured, one-off (case-by-case) problems. There is for IQ tests and other examples of narrow AI. (And what do you think Pei *does* mean?) Ben: Your language is unclear Could you define precisely what you mean by an algorithm Also, could you give an example of a computer program, that can be run on a digital computer, that is not does not embody an algorithm according to your definition? thx ben On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 9:15 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben, Ah well, then I'm confused. And you may be right - I would just like clarification. You see, what you have just said is consistent with my understanding of Pei up till now. He explicitly called his approach in the past nonalgorithmic while acknowledging that others wouldn't consider it so. It was only nonalgorithmic in the sense that the algortihm or problemsolving procedure had the potential to keep changing every time - but there was still (as I think we'd both agree) a definite procedure/algorithm each time. This current paper seems to represent a significant departure from that. There doesn't seem to be an algorithm or procedure to start with, and it does seem to represent a challenge to your conception of AGI design. But I may have misunderstood (which is easy if there are no examples :) ) - and perhaps you or, better still, Pei, would care to clarify. Ben: A key point IMO is that: problem-solving that is non-algorithmic (in Pei's sense) at one level (the level of the particular problem being solved) may still be algorithmic at a different level (for instance, NARS itself is a set of algorithms). So, to me, calling NARS problem-solving non-algorithmic is a bit odd... though not incorrect according to the definitions Pei lays out... AGI design then **is** about designing algorithms (such as the NARS algorithms) that enable an AI system to solve problems in both algorithmic and non-algorithmic ways... ben On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 8:51 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben, I'm only saying that CPS seems to be loosely equivalent to wicked, ill-structured problem-solving, (the reference to convergent/divergent (or crystallised vs fluid) etc is merely to point out a common distinction in psychology between two kinds of intelligence that Pei wasn't aware of in the past - which is actually loosely equivalent to the distinction between narrow AI and general AI problemsolving). In the end, what Pei is/isn't aware of in terms of general knowledge, doesn't matter much - don't you think that his attempt to do without algorithms IS v. important? And don't you think any such attempt would be better off referring explicitly to the literature on wicked, ill-structured problems? I don't think that pointing all this out is silly - this (a non-algorithmic approach to CPS/wicked/whatever) is by far the most important thing currently being discussed here - and potentially, if properly developed, revolutionary.. Worth getting excited about, no? (It would also be helpful BTW to discuss the wicked literature because it actually has abundant examples of wicked problems - and those, you must admit, are rather hard to come by here ). Ben: TITLE: Case-by-case Problem Solving (draft) AUTHOR: Pei Wang But you
Re: [agi] Case-by-case Problem Solving (draft)
Matt, Thanks for reference. But it's still somewhat ambiguous. I could somewhat similarly outline a non-procedure procedure which might include steps like Think about the problem then Do something, anything - whatever first comes to mind and If that doesn't work, try something else. But as I said, I'm only seeking clarification and a distinction between CPS and explicitly *Algorithmic* PS surely does require clarification. Matt: Actually, CPS doesn't mean solving problems without algorithms. CPS is itself an algorithm, as described on pages 7-8 of Pei's paper. However, as I mentioned, I would be more convinced if there were some experimental results showing that it actually worked. - -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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] self organization
Terren: I send this along because it's a great example of how systems that self-organize can result in structures and dynamics that are more complex and efficient than anything we can purposefully design. The applicability to the realm of designed intelligence is obvious. Vlad: . Even if there is no top manager of the design and production process, even if nobody holds the whole process in one mind, it is a result of application of optimization pressure of individual people. I don't see how ability to create economically driven processes fundamentally differs from complicated engineering projects like putting a man on the moon of a Boeing. The difficulty here - no? - is that we really don't as a culture have the appropriate life paradigm yet to think about all this. For instance, self-organization for living organisms, seems inevitably to entail: 1) a self, which is 2) an integrated brain-body unit, (has organic integrity) All our machines are basically separate parts yoked together to fit the external plan of a designer. They don't have a self, or any real integrity. I suspect we are going to have to wait for the first artificial organisms to really start to understand the differences between living organisms and dead machines. This v. much affects intelligence. In human brains, thinking is very much a self-directed process, and that is essential to deal with the kinds of problems that characterise GI. --- 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] Artificial [Humor ] vs Real Approaches to Information
Jiri and Matt et al, I'm getting v. confident about the approach I've just barely begun to outline. Let's call it realistics - the title for a new, foundational branch of metacognition, that will oversee all forms of information, incl. esp. language, logic, and maths, and also all image forms, and the whole sphere of semiotics. The basic premise: to understand a piece of information and its information objects, (eg words) , is to realise (or know) how they refer to real objects in the real world, (and, ideally, and often necessarily, to be able to point to and engage with those real objects). - this includes understanding/realising when they are unreal - when they do NOT refer directly to real objects, but for example to sur-real or metaphorical or abstract or non-existent objects Realistics recognizes that understanding involves, you could say, object-ivity. Complementarily, to 'disunderstand is to fail to see how information objects refer to real objects. to be confused is not only to fail to see, but to be unsure *which* of the information objects in a piece of information do not refer to real objects (it's all a bit of a blur) Bear in mind that human information-processing involves an ENORMOUS amount of disunderstanding and confusion. And a *major point* of this approach (to be explained on another occasion) is precisely that a great deal of the time people do not understand/realise *why* they do not understand/ are confused - *why* they have such difficulty understanding genetics, atomic physics, philosophy, logic, maths, ethics, neuroscience etc. etc - just about every subject in the curriculum, academic or social - because, like virtual AGI-ers they fall into the trap of FAILING to refer the information to real objects. They do not try to realise what on earth is being talked about. And they even end up concluding (completely wrongly) that there is something wrong with their brain and its information-processing capacity, ending up with a totally unecessary inferiority complex. (There will probably be v. few here, even at this exalted level of intelligence, who are not so affected). (Realistics should enormously improve human understanding, and holds out the promise that no one will ever fail to understand any information/subject ever again for want of anything other than time and effort). Now there is a LOT more to expand here [later]. But for now it immediately raises the obvious, and inevitable object-ion to any contradictory, unreal /artificial approach to information and esp language processing/NLP such as you and many other AGIers are outlining. How will you understand, and recognize when information objects/ e.g language/words are unreal ? e.g. Turn yourself inside out. Turn that block of wood inside out. Turn around in a straight line. What's inside is not more beautiful than what's on the outside Drill down into Steve's logic. Cars can hover just above the ground The car flew into the wall. The wall flew away. Bush wants to liberalise sexual mores. Truth and beauty are incompatible. [all such statements obviously real/unreal/untrue/metaphorical in different and sometimes multiple simultaneous ways] You might also ask yourself how you will, if your approach extends beyond language, know that any image or photo is unreal. IOW how is any unreal approach to information processing (contradictory to mine) different from a putative logic that does *not* recognize truth or a maths that does *not* recognize equality/equations? Mike, The plane flew over the hill The play is over Using a formal language can help to avoid many of these issues. But then the program must be able to tell what is in what or outside, what is behind/over etc. The communication module in my experimental AGI design includes several specialized editors, one of which is a Space Editor which allows to use simple objects in a small nD sample-space to define the meaning of terms like in, outside, above, under etc. The goal is to define the meaning as simply as possible and the knowledge can then be used in more complex scenes generated for problem solving purposes. Other editors: Script Editor - for writing stories the system learns from. Action Concept Editor - for learning about actions/verbs related roles/phases/changes. Category Editor - for general categorization/grouping concepts. Formula Editor - math stuff. Interface Mapper - for teaching how to use tools (e.g. external software) ... Some of those editors (probably including the Space Editor) will be available only to privileged users. It's all RBAC-based. Only lightweight 3D imagination - for performance reasons (our brains cheat too), and no embodiment.. BTW I still have a lot to code before making the system publicly accessible. To understand is .. in principle, ..to be able to go into the real world and point to the real objects/actions being referred to.. Not from my perspective.
Re: [agi] Artificial humor... P.S
Matt, What are you being so tetchy about? The issue is what it takes for any agent, human or machine.to understand information . You give me an extremely complicated and ultimately weird test/paper, which presupposes that machines, humans and everyone else can only exhibit, and be tested on, their thinking and understanding in an essentially Chinese room, insulated from the world. I am questioning, and refuting the entire assumption, behind those extraordinarily woolly ideas of Turing, (witness the endlessly convoluted discussions of his test on this group - which clearly people had great difficulty understanding precisely because it is so woolly, when you try to understand exactly what's testing). An agent understands information and information objects,IMO, if he can point to the real objects referred to in the real world, OUTSIDE any insulated room. (I am taking Searle one step further). It is on his ability to use language to engage with the real world, - fulfil commands/requests like where's the key?, what food is in the fridge? is the room tidy? (and progressively more general information objects), that an agent's understanding must be tested. That is consistent with every principle that you seem to like to invoke, of evolutionary fitness. Language and other forms of information exist primarily to enable humans to deal with real objects - and to survive - in the real world, and not in any virtual world, that academics and AGI-ers prefer to inhabit. My special distinction, I think, is v. useful - the Chinese translator and AGI's comprehend information/language - merely substituting symbols for other symbols. The agent who can use that language to deal with real objects, truly *understands* it. This explanation is consistent with how humans actually fail to understand on inumerable occasions, and also how computers and would-be AGI's fail to understand - not just outside in the real world, but *inside* their rooms/virtual worlds. All language understanding collapses without real object/world engagement. In case you are unaware how academics will go to quite extraordinary mental lengths to stay inside their rooms, see this famous passage which helped give birth to science , - re natural philosophers who, (with small modifications, like AGI-ers) having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, . as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, worketh according to the stuff; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit. Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning. . Matt: To understand/realise is to be distinguished from (I would argue) to comprehend statements. How long are we going to go round and round with this? How do you know if a machine comprehends something? Turing explained why he ducked the question in 1950. Because you really can't tell. http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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: [agi] Artificial humor... P.S
Matt: How are you going to understand the issues behind programming a computer for human intelligence if you have never programmed a computer? Matt, We simply have a big difference of opinion. I'm saying there is no way a computer [or agent, period] can understand language if it can't basically identify/*see* (and sense) the real objects - (and therefore doesn't know what) - it's talking about. Hence people say when they understand at last - ah now I see.. now I see what you're talking about.. now I get the picture. The issue of what faculties are needed to understand language (and be intelligent) is not, *in the first instance,* a matter of programming. I suggest you may have been v. uncharacteristically short in this exchange, because you may not like the starkness of the message. It is stark, but I believe it's the truth. --- 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] Artificial humor
Jiri, Quick answer because in rush. Notice your if ... Which programs actually do understand any *general* concepts of orientation? SHRDLU I will gladly bet, didn't...and neither do any others. The v. word orientation indicates the reality that every picture has a point of view, and refers to an observer. And there is no physical way around that. You have been seduced by an illusion - the illusion of the flat, printed page, existing in a timeless space. And you have accepted implicitly that there really is such a world - flatland - where geometry and geometrical operations take place, utterly independent of you the viewer and puppeteer, and the solid world of real objects to which they refer. It demonstrably isn't true. Remove your eyes from the page and walk around in the world - your room, say. Hey, it's not flat...and neither are any of the objects in it. Triangular objects in the world are different from triangles on the page, fundamentally different. But it is so difficult to shed yourself of this illusion. You need to look at the history of culture and realise that the imposition on the world/ environment of first geometrical figures, and then, more than a thousand years later, the fixed point of view and projective geometry, were - and remain - a SUPREME TRIUMPH OF THE HUMAN IMAGINATION. They don't exist, Jiri. They're just one of many possible frameworks (albeit v useful) to impose on the physical world. Nomadic tribes couldn't conceive of squares and enclosed spaces. Future generations will invent new frameworks. Simple example of how persuasive the illusion is. I didn't understand until yesterday what the introduction of a fixed point of view really meant - it was that word fixed. What was the big deal? I couldn't understand. Isn't it a fact of life, almost? Then it clicked. Your natural POV is mobile - your head/eyes keep moving - even when reading. It is an artificial invention to posit a fixed POV. And the geometric POV is doubly artificial, because it is one-eyed, no?, not stereoscopic. But once you get used to reading pages/screens you come to assume that an artificial fixed POV is *natural*. [Stan Franklin was interested in a speculative paper suggesting that the evolutionary brain's stabilisation of vision, (a software triumph because organisms are so mobile) may have led to the development of consciousness). You have to understand the difference between 1) the page, or medium, and 2) the real world it depicts, and 3) you, the observer, reading/looking at the page. Your idea of AGI is just one big page [or screen] that apparently exists in splendid self-contained isolation. It's an illusion, and it just doesn't *work* vis-a-vis programs. Do you want to cling to excessive optimism and a simple POV or do you want to try and grasp the admittedly complicated more sophisticated reality? . Jiri: If you talk to a program about changing 3D scene and the program then correctly answers questions about [basic] spatial relationships between the objects then I would say it understands 3D. Of course the program needs to work with a queriable 3D representation but it doesn't need a body. I mean it doesn't need to be a real-world robot, it doesn't need to associate self with any particular 3D object (real-world or simulated) and it doesn't need to be self-aware. It just needs to be the 3D-scene-aware and the scene may contain just a few basic 3D objects (e.g. the Shrdlu stuff). --- 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] Artificial humor
Jiri, Clearly a limited 3d functionality is possible for a program such as you describe - as for SHRDLU. But what we're surely concerned with here is generality. So fine start with a restricted world of say different kinds of kid's blocks and similar. But then the program must be able to tell what is in what or outside, what is behind/over etc. - and also what is moving towards or away from an object, ( it surely should be a mobile program) - and be able to move objects. My assumption is that even a relatively simple such general program wouldn't work - (I obviously haven't thought about this in any detail). It would be interesting to have the details about how SHRDLU broke down. Also - re BillK's useful intro. of DARPA - do those vehicles work by GPS? Mike, Imagine a simple 3D scene with 2 different-size spheres. A simple program allows you to change positions of the spheres and it can answer question Is the smaller sphere inside the bigger sphere? [Yes|Partly|No]. I can write such program in no time. Sure, it's extremely simple, but it deals with 3D, it demonstrates certain level of 3D understanding without embodyment and there is no need to pass the orientation parameter to the query function. Note that the orientation is just a parameter. It Doesn't represent a body and it can be added. Of course understanding all the real-world 3D concepts would take a lot more code and data than when playing with 3D toy-worlds, but in principle, it's possible to understand 3D without having a body. Jiri On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 11:24 AM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jiri, Quick answer because in rush. Notice your if ... Which programs actually do understand any *general* concepts of orientation? SHRDLU I will gladly bet, didn't...and neither do any others. The v. word orientation indicates the reality that every picture has a point of view, and refers to an observer. And there is no physical way around that. You have been seduced by an illusion - the illusion of the flat, printed page, existing in a timeless space. And you have accepted implicitly that there really is such a world - flatland - where geometry and geometrical operations take place, utterly independent of you the viewer and puppeteer, and the solid world of real objects to which they refer. It demonstrably isn't true. Remove your eyes from the page and walk around in the world - your room, say. Hey, it's not flat...and neither are any of the objects in it. Triangular objects in the world are different from triangles on the page, fundamentally different. But it is so difficult to shed yourself of this illusion. You need to look at the history of culture and realise that the imposition on the world/ environment of first geometrical figures, and then, more than a thousand years later, the fixed point of view and projective geometry, were - and remain - a SUPREME TRIUMPH OF THE HUMAN IMAGINATION. They don't exist, Jiri. They're just one of many possible frameworks (albeit v useful) to impose on the physical world. Nomadic tribes couldn't conceive of squares and enclosed spaces. Future generations will invent new frameworks. Simple example of how persuasive the illusion is. I didn't understand until yesterday what the introduction of a fixed point of view really meant - it was that word fixed. What was the big deal? I couldn't understand. Isn't it a fact of life, almost? Then it clicked. Your natural POV is mobile - your head/eyes keep moving - even when reading. It is an artificial invention to posit a fixed POV. And the geometric POV is doubly artificial, because it is one-eyed, no?, not stereoscopic. But once you get used to reading pages/screens you come to assume that an artificial fixed POV is *natural*. [Stan Franklin was interested in a speculative paper suggesting that the evolutionary brain's stabilisation of vision, (a software triumph because organisms are so mobile) may have led to the development of consciousness). You have to understand the difference between 1) the page, or medium, and 2) the real world it depicts, and 3) you, the observer, reading/looking at the page. Your idea of AGI is just one big page [or screen] that apparently exists in splendid self-contained isolation. It's an illusion, and it just doesn't *work* vis-a-vis programs. Do you want to cling to excessive optimism and a simple POV or do you want to try and grasp the admittedly complicated more sophisticated reality? . Jiri: If you talk to a program about changing 3D scene and the program then correctly answers questions about [basic] spatial relationships between the objects then I would say it understands 3D. Of course the program needs to work with a queriable 3D representation but it doesn't need a body. I mean it doesn't need to be a real-world robot, it doesn't need to associate self with any particular 3D object (real-world or simulated) and it doesn't need to be self-aware. It just needs
Re: [agi] Artificial humor
Matt, Jeez, massive question :). Let me 1st partly dodge it, by giving you an example of the difficulty of understanding, say, over, both in NLP terms and ultimately (because it will be the same more or less) in practical object recognition/movement terms - because I suspect none of you have done what I told you, (naughty) looked at Lakoff. You will note the very different physical movements or positionings involved in: The painting is over the mantle The plane flew over the hill Sam walked over the hill Sam lives over the hill The wall fell over Sam turned the page over She spread the cloth over the table. The guards stood all over th ehill Look over my page He went over the horizon The line stretches over the yard The board is over the hole [not to mention] The play is over There are over a hundred Do it over, but don't overdo it. there are many more. See Lakoff for schema illustrations. Nearly all involve very different trajectories, physical relationships. That is why I'm confident that no program can handle that, but yes, Mark, I was putting forward a new idea (certainly to me) in the orientation framework - and doing no more than presenting a reasoned, but pretty ill-informed hypothesis. (And that is what I think this forum is for. And I will be delighted if you, or anyone else, will correct my overgeneralisations and errors). Now a brief, rushed but, I suspect, massive, and new answer to your question - that I think, takes us, philosophically, way beyond the concept of grounding, which a lot of people are currently using for understanding. To understand is to REALISE what [on earth, or in the [real] world] is being talked about. It is, in principle, and often in practice, to be able to go into the real world and point to the real objects/actions being referred to, (or realise that they are unreal/fantastic). So in terms of understanding a statement containing how something is over something else, it is to be able to go and point to the relevant objects in a scene, or, if possible, to recreate the physical events or relationship.. I believe that is actually how we *do* understand, how the brain does work, how a GI *must* work - , if correct, it automatically moves us beyond virtual AGI. I shall hopefully return to this concept on further occasions - I believe it has enormous ramifications. There are many, many qualifications to be made, which I won't attempt now, nevertheless the basic principle holds - and will hold for the psychology of how humans understand or *don't* understand or get confused. IOW not only must an AGI or any GI be embodied it must also be directly indirectly embedded in the world. (Grounding is being currently interpreted in practice almost entirely from the embodied or agent's side - as referring to what goes on *inside* the agent's mind. Realisation involves complementarily defining intelligence from the out-side of its ability to deal with the environment/real world being-referred-to. BIG difference. Like between just using nature/heredity, OTOH, and, OTOH, also using nurture/environment to explain behaviour). I hope you realise what I've been saying :). Matt: Mike, your argument would be on firmer ground if you could distinguish between when a computer understands something and when it just reacts as if it understands. What is the test? Otherwise, you could always claim that a machine doesn't understand anything because only humans can do that. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- On Thu, 9/11/08, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] Artificial humor To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Thursday, September 11, 2008, 1:31 PM Jiri, Clearly a limited 3d functionality is possible for a program such as you describe - as for SHRDLU. But what we're surely concerned with here is generality. So fine start with a restricted world of say different kinds of kid's blocks and similar. But then the program must be able to tell what is in what or outside, what is behind/over etc. - and also what is moving towards or away from an object, ( it surely should be a mobile program) - and be able to move objects. My assumption is that even a relatively simple such general program wouldn't work - (I obviously haven't thought about this in any detail). It would be interesting to have the details about how SHRDLU broke down. Also - re BillK's useful intro. of DARPA - do those vehicles work by GPS? Mike, Imagine a simple 3D scene with 2 different-size spheres. A simple program allows you to change positions of the spheres and it can answer question Is the smaller sphere inside the bigger sphere? [Yes|Partly|No]. I can write such program in no time. Sure, it's extremely simple, but it deals with 3D, it demonstrates certain level of 3D understanding without embodyment and there is no need to pass the orientation parameter to the query function. Note
Re: [agi] Artificial humor
Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To understand is to REALISE what [on earth, or in the [real] world] is being talked about. Matt: Nice dodge. How do you distinguish between when a computer realizes something and when it just reacts as if it realizes it? Yeah, I know. Turing dodged the question too. Matt, I don't understand this objection - maybe I wasn't clear. I said to realise is to be able to go and point to the real objects/actions referred to, and to make the real actions happen. You understand what a key is if you can go and pick one up. You understand what picking up a key is, if you can do it. You understand what sex is, if you can point to it, or, better, do it, the scientific observers, or Turing testers, can observe it. As I said, there are many qualifications and complications - for example to understand what mind is, is also to be able to point to one in action, but it is a complex business on both sides [both mind and the pointing] - nevertheless if both fruitful scientific and philosophical discussion and discovery about the mind are to take place - that real engagement with real objects, is exactly what must happen there too. That is the basis of science (and technology). The only obvious places where understanding/ realisation, as defined here, *don't* happen - or *appear* not to happen - are - can you guess? - yes, logic and mathematics. And what are the subjects closest to the hearts of virtual AGI-ers? So you are generally intelligent if you can not just have a Turing test conversation with me about going and shopping in the supermarket, but actually go there and do it, per verbal instructions. Explain any dodge here. --- 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] Artificial humor... P.S
Matt, To understand/realise is to be distinguished from (I would argue) to comprehend statements. The one is to be able to point to the real objects referred to. The other is merely to be able to offer or find an alternative or dictionary definition of the statements. A translation. Like the Chinese room translator. Who is dealing in words, just words. Mere words. (I'm open to an alternative title for comprehend - if you find it in any way grates on you as a term, please say). --- 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] Artificial humor
Matt: Humor detection obviously requires a sophisticated language model and knowledge of popular culture, current events, and what jokes have been told before. Since entertainment is a big sector of the economy, an AGI needs all human knowledge, not just knowledge that is work related. In many ways, it was brave of you to pursue this idea, the results are fascinating. You see, there is one central thing you need in order to write a joke. (Have you ever tried it? You must presumably in some respect). You can't just logically, formulaically analyse those jokes - the common ingredients of, say, the lightbulb jokes. When you write something - even some logical extension, say, re how many plumbers it takes to change a light bulb - the joke *has to strike you as funny. You have to laugh. It's the only way to test the joke. Obviously you have no plans for endowing your computer with a self and a body, that has emotions and can shake with laughter. Or tears. But what makes you laugh? The common ingredient of humour is human error. We laugh at humans making mistakes - mistakes that were/are preventable. People having their head stuck snootily in the air, and so falling on banana skins. Mrs Malaprop mispronouncing, misconstruing big words while trying to look clever, and refusing to admit her ignorance. And we laugh because we can personally identify, because we've made those kinds of mistakes. They are a fundamental and continuous part of our lives.(How will your AGI identify?) So are AGI-ers *heroic* figures trying to be/produce giants, or are they *comic* figures, like Don Quixote, who are in fact tilting at windmills, and refusing even to check whether those windmill arms actually belong to giants? There isn't a purely logicomathematical way to decide that. It takes an artistic as well as a scientific mentality involving not just whole different parts of your brain, but different faculties and sensibilities - all v. real, and not reducible to logic and maths. When you deal with AGI problems - like the problem of AGI itself - you need them. (You may think this all esoteric, but in fact, you need all those same faculties to understand everything that is precious to you - the universe/ world/ society/ atoms/ genes / machines - even logic maths. But more of that another time). --- 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] Artificial humor
Obviously you have no plans for endowing your computer with a self and a body, that has emotions and can shake with laughter. Or tears. Actually, many of us do. And this is why your posts are so problematical. You invent what *we* believe and what we intend to do. And then you criticize your total fabrications (a.k.a. mental masturbation). You/others have plans for an *embodied* computer with the equivalent of an autonomic nervous systems and the relevant, attached internal organs? A robot? That's certainly news to me. Please expand. --- 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] Artificial humor
There is no computer or robot that keeps getting physically excited or depressed by its computations. (But it would be a good idea). you don't even realize that laptops (and many other computers -- not to mention appliances) currently do precisely what you claim that no computer or robot does. Emotional laptops, huh? Sounds like a great story idea for kids learning to love their laptops. Pixar needs you. [It hasn't crashed, it's just v. depressed]. --- 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
[agi] Re Artificial Humor
Emotional laptops? On 2nd thoughts it's like Thomas the Tank Engine... If s.o. hasn't done it already, there is big money here. Even bigger than you earn, if that's humanly possible. Lenny the Laptop...? A really personal computer. Whatddya think? Ideas? [Shh, darling, Lenny's thinking...] --- 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
[agi] Perception Understanding of Space
[n.b. my posts are arriving in a weird order] Jiri: MTWithout a body, you couldn't understand the joke. False. Would you also say that without a body, you couldn't understand 3D space ? Jiri, You have to offer a reason why something is False :). You're saying it's that 3D space *can* be understood without a body? Er, false. Because 1. Orientation Framework. Your ability to orient yourself in space - or to understand references to orientation in space - e.g whether something is up or down , in or out, towards or away, here or there, on top of or underneath or upside down or right side up, near or far, left or right, over or under, or going through or around , somewhere or nowhere - as distinct from say just being a point[s] or line[s] on a surface - all depend on having a body, and your capacity to move that body in different directions (and understand other bodies as doing the same). (We are talking here about what might be called an orientation framework - anyone got better ideas? - that is as fundamental to your navigation through, and perception, of space, as Descartes' coordinate axes are to geometry - and from which just possibly those axes may have evolved). 2. 3-D Geometry. Similarly, your ability to, and indeed incapacity to do otherwise than, see and understand the lines in those classic depth illusions as being smaller and nearer than the further ones, (when of course they're actually the same size), depends on the embodiment of that process, and your imaginatively, embodied-ly, travelling down the lines. The whole of 3-d geometry is similarly embodied - at a certain depth from you the viewer - who continually imaginatively and embodied-ly travel around its objects and scenes. 3.Photographs of Physical Scenes and Objects. You cannot look at a physical scene without seeing it as entailing a pov from a viewer. You cannot understand how the objects within that scene are about to move - whether a tipping bucket say is about to fall on someone going under the ladder or ascend to heaven - without embodying those objects. You cannot understand the tipping or the falling - or which direction even the objects are moving in - without imaginatively, embodiedly projecting their movements (despite their actual stillness on the page). You cannot look at a street without walking down it. 4. Object-ification. Similarly, your remarkable ability to even conceive of objects as you look around in real space, let alone a screen, depends on having a body and being able to embody them. You don't actually see whole objects as you experience cups/chairs/pencils etc. You just see v. partial facades/surfaces - never the whole object. Objects have to be reconstructed in the observing mind - an embodied process - which derives from your physically having touched and/or travelled around them. [Hence, I guess, touch and movement precede vision in the evolution of species/mind - and blind people don't need vision to see and draw the outlines of objects] 5.Late Development of Transcendental Perspective. Your very capacity to conceive of a disembodied mind out of space and time, whether in the form of a computer or a divine entity or , say, some meditative process that steps outside space and time - is a capacity that has to be developed over time through childhood, pre-stage by pre-stage, from a primarily here and now perspective. (Your whole concept of disembodied or functionalism or any other variation, *presupposes* being embodied). See Margaret Donaldson: Human Minds: An Exploration the development of the Transcendent Mode, summarised in: http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/Thompson.pdf Well worth reading whole paper. V. important. 6. Understanding of Number and Operations on Numbers/Objects. Your very ability to understand number and numerical operations like adding and dividing, depends on your ability to embody them. You automatically understand, for example, that 1 + 1 do NOT equal 2, if you are adding one ice cream to another ice cream. You only came to numbers through your body, and tallying and counting and physically conjoining, objects. In fact, the whole of rationality - logic and maths and formal languages - depend utterly on imagination and embodiment. In fact, your entire worldview - your ability to conceive of the far universe, and the deep interior of atoms and fundamental particles, and the distant past of evolution and the big bang, and the distant future of AGI or, pace Death Race - 2012: The US Economy Has Collapsed - all depend utterly on your capacity for imaginative, embodied projection, and space and time travel, way beyond the very narrow horizons of your immediate environment. Exciting, no? It's best not to try to fight it, but to go with it, and better understand the details. P.S. What has emerged in this post for me is an interesting, single concept - that our understanding of the world and
Re: [agi] Perception Understanding of Space
: You're saying it's that 3D space *can* be understood without a body? Er, false. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU And SHRDLU can generally recognize whether any obect is in any another object - whether a doll is in a box or lying between two walls, whether a box is in another box, whether it's open or lidless, or upside down etc etc.? The result was a tremendously successful demonstration of AI. This led other AI researchers to excessive optimism which was soon lost when later systems attempted to deal with more realistic situations with real-world ambiguity and complexity In out etc are supremely open-ended concepts. Do you think SHRDLU understood such concepts? Check out the extensive discussion of over in Women, Fire and Dangerous Objects and over 180 meanings of the concept, (although I'd take a somewhat different approach). ..unless you prefer excessive optimism :) ... --- 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] Philosophy of General Intelligence
Narrow AI : Stereotypical/ Patterned/ Rational Matt: Suppose you write a program that inputs jokes or cartoons and outputs whether or not they are funny AGI : Stereotype-/Pattern-breaking/Creative What you rebellin' against? Whatcha got? Marlon Brando. The Wild One (1953) On screen, he rebelled against the man; offscreen, he rebelled against the rebel stereotype imposed on him. --- 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] Artificial humor
Matt, Humor is dependent not on inductive reasoning by association, reversed or otherwise, but on the crossing of whole matrices/ spaces/ scripts .. and that good old AGI standby, domains. See Koestler esp. for how it's one version of all creativity - http://www.casbs.org/~turner/art/deacon_images/index.html Solve humor and you solve AGI. --- 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] draft for comment
Pei:As I said before, you give symbol a very narrow meaning, and insist that it is the only way to use it. In the current discussion, symbols are not 'X', 'Y', 'Z', but 'table', 'time', 'intelligence'. BTW, what images you associate with the latter two? Since you prefer to use person as example, let me try the same. All of my experience about 'Mike Tintner' is symbolic, nothing visual, but it still makes you real enough to me... I'm sorry if it sounds rude Pei, You attribute to symbols far too broad powers that they simply don't have - and demonstrably, scientifically, don't have. For example, you think that your experience of Mike Tintner - the rude guy - is entirely symbolic. Yes, all your experience of me has been mediated entirely via language/symbols -these posts. But by far the most important parts of it have actually been images. Ridiculous, huh? Look at this sentence: If you want to hear about it, you'll probably want to know where I was born, and what a lousy childhood I had, and how my parents were occupied before they had me, and all the David Copperfield crap, but if you want to know the truth, I don't really want to get into it. In 60 words, one of the great opening sentences of a novel, Salinger has created a whole character. How? He did it by creating a voice. He did it by what is called prosody (and also diction). No current AGI method has the least idea of how to process that prosody. But your brain does. Pei doesn't. But his/your brain does. And your experience of MT has been heavily based similarly on processing the *sound* images - the voice behind my words. Hence your I'm sorry if it *sounds* rude.. Words, even written words, aren't just symbols, they are sounds. And your brain hears those sounds and from their music can tell many, many things, including the emotions of the speaker, and whether they're being angry or ironic or rude. Now, if you had had more of a literary/arts education, you would probably be alive to that dimension. But, as it is, you've missed it, and you're missing all kinds of dimensions of how symbols work. Similarly, if you had more of a visual education, and also more of a psychological developmental background, you wouldn't find time and intelligence so daunting to visualise. You would realise that it takes a great deal of time and preparatory sensory/imaginative to build up abstract concepts You would realise that it takes time for an infant to come to use that word, and still more for a child to understand the word intelligence. I doubt that any child will understand time before they've seen a watch or clock, and that's what they will probably visualise time as, first. Your capacity to abstract time still further, will have come from having become gradually acquainted with a whole range of time-measuring devices, and seeing the word time and associating that with many other kinds of measurement especially in relation to maths. and science. Similarly, a person's concept of intelligence will come from seeing and hearing people solving problems in different ways - quickly and slowly, for example.. It will be deeply grounded in sensory images and experience. All the most abstract maths and logic that you may think totally abstract are similarly and necessarily grounded. Ben, in parallel to you, didn't realise that the decimal numeral system is digital, based on the hand, and so, a little less obviously, is the roman numeral system. Numbers and logic have to be built up out of experience. [You might profit BTW by looking at Barsalou, [many of his papers online], to see how the mind modally simulates concepts - with lots of experimental evidence] I, as you know, am very ignorant about computers; but you are also very ignorant about all kinds of dimensions of how symbols work, and intelligence generally, that are absolutely essential for AGI. You can continue to look down on me, or you can open your mind, recognize that general intelligence can only be achieved by a confluence of disciplines way beyond the reach of any single individual, and see that maybe useful exchanges can take place. --- 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
[agi] Philosophy of General Intelligence
Jiri: Mike, If you think your AGI know-how is superior to the know-how of those who already built testable thinking machines then why don't you try to build one yourself? Jiri, I don't think I know much at all about machines or software never claim to. I think I know certain, only certain, things about the psychological and philosophical aspects of general intelligence - esp. BTW about the things you guys almost never discuss, the kinds of problems that a general intelligence must solve. You may think that your objections to me are entirely personal about my manner. I suggest that there is also a v. deep difference of philosophy involved here. I believe that GI really is about *general* intelligence - a GI, and the only serious example we have is human, is, crucially, and must be, able to cross domains - ANY domain. That means the whole of our culture and society. It means every kind of representation, not just mathematical and logical and linguistic, but everything - visual, aural, solid, models, embodied etc etc. There is a vast range. That means also every subject domain - artistic, historical, scientific, philosophical, technological, politics, business etc. Yes, you have to start somewhere, but there should be no limit to how you progress. And the subject of general intelligence is tberefore, in no way, just the property of a small community of programmers, or roboticists - it's the property of all the sciences, incl. neuroscience, psychology, semiology, developmental psychology, AND the arts and philosophy etc. etc. And it can only be a collaborative effort. Some robotics disciplines, I believe, do think somewhat along those lines and align themselves with certain sciences. Some AI-ers also align themselves broadly with scientists and philosophers. By definition, too, general intelligence should embrace every kind of problem that humans have to deal with - again artistic, practical, technological, political, marketing etc. etc. The idea that general intelligence really could be anything else but truly general is, I suggest, if you really think about it, absurd. It's like preaching universal brotherhood, and a global society, and then practising severe racism. But that's exactly what's happening in current AGI. You're actually practising a highly specialised approach to AGI - only certain kinds of representation, only certain kinds of problems are considered - basically the ones you were taught and are comfortable with - a very, very narrow range - (to a great extent in line with the v. narrow definition of intelligence involved in the IQ test). When I raised other kinds of problems, Pei considered it not constructive. When I recently suggested an in fact brilliant game for producing creative metaphors, DZ considered it childish, because it was visual and imaginative, and you guys don't do those things, or barely. (Far from being childish, that game produced a rich series of visual/verbal metaphors, where AGI has produced nothing). If you aren't prepared to use your imagination and recognize the other half of the brain, you are, frankly, completely buggered as far as AGI is concerned. In over 2000 years, logic and mathematics haven't produced a single metaphor or analogy or crossed any domains. They're not meant to, that's expressly forbidden. But the arts produce metaphors and analogies on a daily basis by the thousands. The grand irony here is that creativity really is - from a strictly technical pov - largely what our culture has always said it is - imaginative/artistic and not rational.. (Many rational thinkers are creative - but by using their imagination). AGI will in fact only work if sciences and arts align. Here, then is basically why I think you're getting upset over and over by me. I'm saying in many different ways, general intelligence really should be general, and embrace the whole of culture and intelligence, not just the very narrow sections you guys espouse. And yes, I think you should be delighted to defer to, and learn from outsiders, (if they deserve it), just as I'm delighted to learn from you. But you're not - you resent outsiders like me telling you about your subject. I think you should also be prepared to admit your ignorance - and most of you, frankly, don't have much of a clue about imaginative/visual/artistic intelligence and vast swathes of problemsolving, ( just as I have don't have much of a clue re your technology and many kinds of problemsolving...etc). But there is v. little willingness to admit ignorance, or to acknowledge the value of other disciplines. IN the final analysis, I suggest, that's just sheer cultural prejudice. It doesn't belong in the new millennium when the defining paradigm is global (and general) as opposed to the local (and specialist) mentality of the old one - recognizing the value and interdependence of ALL parts of society and culture. And it doesn't
Re: [agi] Philosophy of General Intelligence
Terren, You may be right - in the sense that I would have to just butt out of certain conversations, to go away educate myself. There's just one thing here though - and again this is a central philosophical difference this time concerning the creative process. Can you tell me which kind of programming is necessary for which end-problem[s] that general intelligence must solve? Which kind of programming, IOW, can you *guarantee* me will definitely not be a waste of my time (other than by way of general education) ? Which kind are you *sure* will help solve which unsolved problem of AGI? P.S. OTOH the idea that in the kind of general community I'm espousing, (and is beginning to crop up in other areas), everyone must be proficient in everyone else's speciality is actually a non-starter, Terren. It defeats the object of the division of labour central to all parts of the economy. If you had to spend as much time thinking about those end-problems as I have, I suggest you'd have to drop everything. Let's just share expertise instead? Terren: Good summary. I think your point of view is valuable in the sense of helping engineers in AGI to see what they may be missing. And your call for technical AI folks to take up the mantle of more artistic modes of intelligence is also important. But it's empty, for you've demonstrated no willingness to cross over to engage in technical arguments beyond a certain, quite limited, depth. Admitting your ignorance is one thing, and it's laudable, but it only goes so far. I think if you're serious about getting folks (like Pei Wang) to take you seriously, then you need to also demonstrate your willingness to get your hands dirty and do some programming, or in some other way abolish your ignorance about technical subjects - exactly what you're asking others to do. Otherwise, you have to admit the folly of trying to compel any such folks to move from their hard-earned perspectives, if you're not willing to do that yourself. Terren --- On Sun, 9/7/08, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] Philosophy of General Intelligence To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Sunday, September 7, 2008, 6:26 PM Jiri: Mike, If you think your AGI know-how is superior to the know-how of those who already built testable thinking machines then why don't you try to build one yourself? Jiri, I don't think I know much at all about machines or software never claim to. I think I know certain, only certain, things about the psychological and philosophical aspects of general intelligence - esp. BTW about the things you guys almost never discuss, the kinds of problems that a general intelligence must solve. You may think that your objections to me are entirely personal about my manner. I suggest that there is also a v. deep difference of philosophy involved here. I believe that GI really is about *general* intelligence - a GI, and the only serious example we have is human, is, crucially, and must be, able to cross domains - ANY domain. That means the whole of our culture and society. It means every kind of representation, not just mathematical and logical and linguistic, but everything - visual, aural, solid, models, embodied etc etc. There is a vast range. That means also every subject domain - artistic, historical, scientific, philosophical, technological, politics, business etc. Yes, you have to start somewhere, but there should be no limit to how you progress. And the subject of general intelligence is tberefore, in no way, just the property of a small community of programmers, or roboticists - it's the property of all the sciences, incl. neuroscience, psychology, semiology, developmental psychology, AND the arts and philosophy etc. etc. And it can only be a collaborative effort. Some robotics disciplines, I believe, do think somewhat along those lines and align themselves with certain sciences. Some AI-ers also align themselves broadly with scientists and philosophers. By definition, too, general intelligence should embrace every kind of problem that humans have to deal with - again artistic, practical, technological, political, marketing etc. etc. The idea that general intelligence really could be anything else but truly general is, I suggest, if you really think about it, absurd. It's like preaching universal brotherhood, and a global society, and then practising severe racism. But that's exactly what's happening in current AGI. You're actually practising a highly specialised approach to AGI - only certain kinds of representation, only certain kinds of problems are considered - basically the ones you were taught and are comfortable with - a very, very narrow range - (to a great extent in line with the v. narrow definition of intelligence involved in the IQ test). When I raised other kinds of problems, Pei considered it not constructive. When I recently suggested an in fact brilliant game for producing
Re: [agi] A NewMetaphor for Intelligence - the Computer/Organiser
Will, Yes, humans are manifestly a RADICALLY different machine paradigm- if you care to stand back and look at the big picture. Employ a machine of any kind and in general, you know what you're getting - some glitches (esp. with complex programs) etc sure - but basically, in general, it will do its job. Humans are only human, not a machine. Employ one of those, incl. yourself, and, by comparison, you have only a v. limited idea of what you're getting - whether they'll do the job at all, to what extent, how well. Employ a programmer, a plumber etc etc.. Can you get a good one these days?... VAST difference. And that's the negative side of our positive side - the fact that we're 1) supremely adaptable, and 2) can tackle those problems that no machine or current AGI - (actually of course, there is no such thing at the mo, only pretenders) - can even *begin* to tackle. Our unreliability . That, I suggest, only comes from having no set structure - no computer program - no program of action in the first place. (Hey, good idea, who needs a program?) Here's a simple, extreme example. Will, I want you to take up to an hour, and come up with a dance, called the Keyboard Shuffle. (A very ill-structured problem.) Hey, you can do that. You can tackle a seriously ill-structured problem. You can embark on an activity you've never done before, presumably had no training for, have no structure for, yet you will, if cooperative, come up with something - cobble together a session of that activity, and end-product, an actual dance. May be shit, but it'll be a dance. And that's only an extreme example of how you approach EVERY activity. You similarly don't have a structure for your next hour[s], if you're writing an essay, or a program, or spending time watching TV, flipping chanels. You may quickly *adopt* or *form* certain structures/ routines. But they only go part way, and you do have to adopt and/or create them. Now, I assert, that's what an AGI is - a machine that has no programs, (no preset, complete structures for any activities), designed to tackle ill-structured problems by creating and adopting structures, not automatically following ones that have been laboured over for ridiculous amounts of time by human programmers offstage. And that in parallel, though in an obviously more constrained way, is what every living organism is - an extraordinary machine that builds itself adaptively and flexibly, as it goes along - Dawkins' famous plane that builds itself in mid-air. Just as we construct our activities in mid-air. Also a very different machine paradigm to any we have at the mo (although obviously lots of people are currently trying to design/understand such self-building machines). P.S. The irony is that scientists and rational philosophers, faced with the extreme nature of human imperfection - our extreme fallibility (in the sense described above - i.e. liable to fail/give up/procrastinate at any given activity at any point in a myriad of ways) - have dismissed it as, essentially, down to bugs in the system. Things that can be fixed. AGI-ers have the capacity like no one else to see and truly appreciate that such fallibility = highly desirable adaptability and that humans/animals really are fundamentally different machines. P.P.S. BTW that's the proper analogy for constructing an AGI - not inventing the plane (easy-peasy), but inventing the plane that builds itself in mid-air, (whole new paradigm of machine- and mind- invention). Will: MT:By contrast, all deterministic/programmed machines and computers are guaranteed to complete any task they begin. Will:If only such could be guaranteed! We would never have system hangs, dead locks. Even if it could be made so, computer systems would not always want to do so. Will, That's a legalistic, not a valid objection, (although heartfelt!).In the above case, the computer is guaranteed to hang - and it does, strictly, complete its task. Not necessarily, the task could be interrupted at that process stopped or paused indefinately. What's happened is that you have had imperfect knowledge of the program's operations. Had you known more, you would have known that it would hang. If it hung because of mult-process issues, you would need perfect knowledge of the environment to know the possible timing issues as well. Were your computer like a human mind, it would have been able to say (as you/we all do) - well if that part of the problem is going to be difficult, I'll ignore it or.. I'll just make up an answer... or by God I'll keep trying other ways until I do solve this.. or... .. or ... Computers, currently, aren't free thinkers. Computers aren't free thinkers, but it does not follow from an inability to switch, cancel, pause and restart or modify tasks. All of which they can do admirably. They just don't tend to do so, because they aren't smart enough (and cannot change
Re: [agi] A NewMetaphor for Intelligence - the Computer/Organiser
Sorry - para Our unreliability .. should have contined.. Our unreliabilty is the negative flip-side of our positive ability to stop an activity at any point, incl. the beginning and completely change tack/ course or whole approach, incl. the task itself, and even completely contradict ourself. --- 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] A NewMetaphor for Intelligence - the Computer/Organiser
DZ:AGI researchers do not think of intelligence as what you think of as a computer program -- some rigid sequence of logical operations programmed by a designer to mimic intelligent behavior. 1. Sequence/Structure. The concept I've been using is not that a program is a sequence of operations but a structure., including as per NARS, as I 've read Pei, a structure that may change more or less continuously. Techno-idiot that I am, I am fairly aware that many modern programs are extremely sophisticated and complex structures. I take into account, for example, Minsky's idea of a possible society of mind, with many different parts perhaps competing - not obviously realised in program form yet. But programs are nevertheless manifestly structures. Would you dispute that? And a central point I've been making is that human life and activities are manifestly *unstructured* - that in just about everything we do, we struggle to impose structure on our activities - to impose order and organization., planning, focus etc. . Especially in AGI's central challenge -creativity. Creative activities are outstanding examples of unstructured activities, in which structures have to be created - painting scenes, writing stories, designing new machines, writing music/pop songs - often starting from an entirely blank page. (What's the program equivalent?) 2. A Programmer on Programs. I am persuaded on multiple grounds that the human mind is not always algorithmic, nor merely computational in the syntactic sense of computational. S Kauffman, Reinventing the Sacred Try Chap 12. Computationally, he trumps most AGI-ers in terms of most AI departments, incl. complexity, bioinformatics and general standing, no? Read the whole book in fact - it can be read as being entirely about the creative problem/challenge of AGI - you liked Barsalou, you'll like this. . --- 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] Remembering Caught in the Act
Er sorry - my question is answered in the interesting Slashdot thread (thanks again): Past studies have shown how many neurons are involved in a single, simple memory. Researchers might be able to isolate a few single neurons in the process of summoning a memory, but that is like saying that they have isolated a few water molecules in the runoff of a giant hydroelectric dam. The practical utility of this is highly questionable. (and much more.. good thread) --- 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] A NewMetaphor for Intelligence - the Computer/Organiser
OK, I'll bite: what's nondeterministic programming if not a contradiction? Again - v. briefly - it's a reality - nondeterministic programming is a reality, so there's no material, mechanistic, software problem in getting a machine to decide either way. The only problem is a logical one of doing it for sensible reasons. And that's the long part - there are a continuous stream of sensible reasons, as there are for current nondeterministic computer choices. Yes, strictly, a nondeterministic *program* can be regarded as a contradiction - i.e. a structured *series* of instructions to decide freely . The way the human mind is programmed is that we are not only free, and have to, *decide* either way about certain decisions, but we are also free to *think* about it - i.e. to decide metacognitively whether and how we decide at all - we continually decide. for example, to put off the decision till later. So the simple reality of being as free to decide and think as you are, is that when you sit down to engage in any task, like write a post, essay, or have a conversation, or almost literally anything, there is no guarantee that you will start, or continue to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th step, let alone complete it. You may jack in your post more or less immediately. This is at once the bane and the blessing of your life, and why you have such extraordinary problems finishing so many things. Procrastination. By contrast, all deterministic/programmed machines and computers are guaranteed to complete any task they begin. (Zero procrastination or deviation). Very different kinds of machines to us. Very different paradigm. (No?) I would say then that the human mind is strictly not so much nondeterministically programmed as briefed. And that's how an AGI will have to function. --- 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
