[agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy

[Steve Richfield]

Mike, Stan, et al,

I have recently had some interesting off-line discussions that may be
pulling things together, so I thought that I would run the emerging
concept up the flagpole here and get any opinions.

I have previously posted here the horrific problems trying to deal with the
Wiki people, as they apparently perceive value in impeding a good AI/AGI
interface to Wikipedia. Apparently, even their own internal people can't get
help here, as it might lead to loosing control over the search business.
However...

The Wikipedia software is open source, and some companies even maintain
their own domain-specific wikis as knowledge base. Further, the AI/AGI
interface problem is certainly not their only problem. The 2nd biggest
problem is their implicit insistence on a single model/paradigm behind every
article, which limits Wiki to being of value only for grade-school support.

Note in passing the value of faulty models. Often the most accurate model
suggests no means of correction, whereas a less accurate model suggests
corrections that quite often (but sometimes don't) work (see puppy update
below). Limiting articles to single models destroys MOST of the potential
value of Wikipedia, as does blocking an AI/AGI interface.

Proposal: Start a new AI/AGI Wikipedia, starting with the present
open-source Wikipedia software with minor mods to collect additional
information from authors and build a database on an associated FTP site for
anyone to download. This should soon take over the Wiki business from the
present Wikipedia folks. A well placed patent application would impede their
following suit, thereby seizing this entire marketplace.

Unfortunately, this is too big of a project to be funded with my lunch money
or built and maintained with my limited spare time. However, with an
investor to cover miscellaneous expenses, a server to hold the site, and
some co-conspirators to help make it go; and this could quite easily take
over much/most of the Internet in a way that would be MUCH bigger than ever
envisioned by Wikipedia.

*Does anyone else here share my dream of a worldwide AI with all of the
knowledge of the human race to support it - built with EXISTING Wikipedia
and Dr. Eliza software and a little glue to hold it all together?*

Note that unlike the present Internet, that Dr. Eliza is pretty much
language-independent. You can even put in a problem statement in one
language, and get the unanswered questions and analysis out in another
language. The principles underlying this are similar to financial systems
that keep the numbers in a database, and use different language versions of
their program to access it, only in Dr. Eliza, nearly every record has a
field to indicate language so that no software changes are needed to support
different languages, though trivial enhancements ARE needed to support new
languages with previously unsupported features, e.g. the differing use of
periods and commas in numbers depending on which side of the pond that you
reside on. With this, the WHOLE world would be automatically included,
rather than just the English language part of it (with trivial separate
participation by other languages) as is presently the case. No longer would
the Internet be divided up according to languages.

Puppy Update:

The puppy is doing MUCH better, and is now starting to explore. Three new
theories as to its problems have emerged:

1.  Pus found on its fur pointed the way to an abscess in its armpit that
had evaded previous inspection. The abscess seems to be too small to be
life-threatening, but who knows?
2.  It has an umbilical hernia that might be strangling some intestines.
3.  Like some people, it would apparently rather die than eat puppy food,
though it doesn't seem to be picky about eating minced leftovers.

However, earlier theories, though probably incorrect, DID guide the way to
treatment that, though not perfect (it would have been nice to lance the
abscess), was sufficiently successful to save its life. This serves to
highlight the value of incorrect theories, that they often provide the right
answers in a timely manner, even when for the wrong reasons.

Steve Richfield

---
agi
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Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy

[Stephen Reed]

Steve Richfield said:


Does anyone else here share my dream of a worldwide AI with all of the 
knowledge of the human race to support it - built with EXISTING Wikipediaand 
Dr. Eliza software and a little glue to hold it all together?

Hi Steve,

I share part of your dream, in that I am strongly attracted to Wikipedia as 
great corpus of commonsense knowledge that should be incorporated into my AGI 
project, Texai.I've looked at the Freebase Wikipedia Extraction:


The Freebase Wikipedia Extraction (WEX) is a processed dump of the English 
language Wikipedia. The wiki markup for each article is transformed into 
machine-readable XML, and common relational features such as templates, 
infoboxes, categories, article sections, and redirects are extracted in tabular 
form.
Freebase WEX is provided as a set of database tables in TSV format for 
PostgreSQL, along with tables providing mappings between Wikipedia articles and 
Freebase topics, and corresponding Freebase Types.
My plan: 

1. Rather than deal with Wikimedia, collaborating on a AGI-style 
interface , I would simply process (i.e. parse and completely understand) their 
content.  

2. One could then teach Texai how to edit a Wikipedia article to close 
the loop.FYI.  Another great corpus of knowledge is an online patent database.  
In the US, patents include a section that describes the background of the 
invention.   On the road to generally applicable machine vision, I can envision 
a facility that can read various types of patent diagrams.

Cheers,
-Steve

Stephen L. Reed


Artificial Intelligence Researcher
http://texai.org/blog
http://texai.org
3008 Oak Crest Ave.
Austin, Texas, USA 78704
512.791.7860



- Original Message 
From: Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 9:31:58 AM
Subject: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy


Mike, Stan, et al,
 
I have recently had some interesting off-line discussions that may be pulling 
things together, so I thought that I would run the emerging concept up the 
flagpole here and get any opinions.
 
I have previously posted here the horrific problems trying to deal with the 
Wiki people, as they apparently perceive value in impeding a good AI/AGI 
interface to Wikipedia. Apparently, even their own internal people can't get 
help here, as it might lead to loosing control over the search business. 
However...
 
The Wikipedia software is open source, and some companies even maintain their 
own domain-specific wikis as knowledge base. Further, the AI/AGI interface 
problem is certainly not their only problem. The 2nd biggest problem is their 
implicit insistence on a single model/paradigm behind every article, which 
limits Wiki to being of value only for grade-school support.
 
Note in passing the value of faulty models. Often the most accurate model 
suggests no means of correction, whereas a less accurate model suggests 
corrections that quite often (but sometimes don't) work (see puppy update 
below). Limiting articles to single models destroys MOST of the potential value 
of Wikipedia, as does blocking an AI/AGI interface.
 
Proposal: Start a new AI/AGI Wikipedia, starting with the present open-source 
Wikipedia software with minor mods to collect additional information from 
authors and build a database on an associated FTP site for anyone to download. 
This should soon take over the Wiki business from the present Wikipedia folks. 
A well placed patent application would impede their following suit, thereby 
seizing this entire marketplace.
 
Unfortunately, this is too big of a project to be funded with my lunch money or 
built and maintained with my limited spare time. However, with an investor to 
cover miscellaneous expenses, a server to hold the site, and some 
co-conspirators to help make it go; and this could quite easily take over 
much/most of the Internet in a way that would be MUCH bigger than ever 
envisioned by Wikipedia.
 
Does anyone else here share my dream of a worldwide AI with all of the 
knowledge of the human race to support it - built with EXISTING Wikipedia and 
Dr. Eliza software and a little glue to hold it all together?
 
Note that unlike the present Internet, that Dr. Eliza is pretty much 
language-independent. You can even put in a problem statement in one language, 
and get the unanswered questions and analysis out in another language. The 
principles underlying this are similar to financial systems that keep the 
numbers in a database, and use different language versions of their program to 
access it, only in Dr. Eliza, nearly every record has a field to indicate 
language so that no software changes are needed to support different languages, 
though trivial enhancements ARE needed to support new languages with previously 
unsupported features, e.g. the differing use of periods and commas in numbers 
depending on which side of the pond that you reside on. With this, the 

Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy

[Matt Mahoney]

--- Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> *Does anyone else here share my dream of a worldwide AI with all of the
> knowledge of the human race to support it 

Yes

> - built with EXISTING Wikipedia

No.  Wikipedia has the right idea that it reflects a consensus of
knowledge with instant peer review, which is usually more accurate than
individual knowledge.  However, it is centralized, so it depends on
donations of money to keep running on a single server, rather than self
sustaining market driven contributions of computing resources in a
distributed environment.

> and Dr. Eliza software and a little glue to hold it all together?*

The "glue", the distributed search index or message routing service, will
be the major component of distributed AGI.  Most of the intelligence will
go into directing messages to the right experts based on content, and
filtering spam.

Dr. Eliza reflects your personal agenda.  It will be judged as a peer in a
competitive marketplace where information has negative value on average. 
If you go against the majority, you will be blocked.  To get your message
out, you will either need to back up your claims with research, or back
off your claims to a personal case history, or buy advertising from peers
with high reputations.


-- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]

---
agi
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Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy

[Steve Richfield]

Steve,

The missing and apparently impossible to reconstruct information, without
which your plan cannot hope to succeed in doing what I am doing (though you
might have different achievable goals), is a syntactical expression of what
people typically say that indicates that they do NOT understand the contents
of an article, and that they have a problem built on that ignorance.

Perhaps one of the greatest discoveries behind Dr. Eliza is that the regular
expressions typically needed to recognize these statement of ignorance and
SIMPLE, though they often take some thought to create.

How are you planning to function without this information?

Steve Richfield

On 5/16/08, Stephen Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>  Steve Richfield said:
>
>
> *Does anyone else here share my dream of a worldwide AI with all of the
> knowledge of the human race to support it - built with EXISTING Wikipediaand 
> Dr. Eliza software and a little glue to hold it all together?
>
> *
> Hi Steve,
>
> I share part of your dream, in that I am strongly attracted to Wikipedia as
> great corpus of commonsense knowledge that should be incorporated into my
> AGI project, Texai.I've looked at the Freebase Wikipedia 
> Extraction<http://download.freebase.com/wex/>
> :
>
>  The *Freebase Wikipedia Extraction* (*WEX*) is a processed dump of the
> English language Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/>. The wiki markup for
> each article is transformed into machine-readable XML, and common relational
> features such as templates, infoboxes, categories, article sections, and
> redirects are extracted in tabular form.
>
> Freebase WEX is provided as a set of database tables in TSV format for
> PostgreSQL <http://www.postgresql.org/>, along with tables providing
> mappings between Wikipedia articles and 
> Freebase<http://www.freebase.com/>topics, and corresponding Freebase Types.
> **
> My plan:
>
>1. Rather than deal with Wikimedia, collaborating on a AGI-style
>interface , I would simply process (i.e. parse and completely understand)
>their content.
>2. One could then teach Texai how to edit a Wikipedia article to close
>the loop.
>
> FYI.  Another great corpus of knowledge is an online patent database.  In
> the US, patents include a section that describes the background of the
> invention.   On the road to generally applicable machine vision, I can
> envision a facility that can read various types of patent diagrams.
>
> Cheers,
> -Steve
>
> **Stephen L. Reed
>
> Artificial Intelligence Researcher
> http://texai.org/blog
> http://texai.org
> 3008 Oak Crest Ave.
> Austin, Texas, USA 78704
> 512.791.7860
>
>  - Original Message 
> From: Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: agi@v2.listbox.com
> Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 9:31:58 AM
> Subject: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy
>
> Mike, Stan, et al,
>
> I have recently had some interesting off-line discussions that may be
> pulling things together, so I thought that I would run the emerging
> concept up the flagpole here and get any opinions.
>
> I have previously posted here the horrific problems trying to deal with the
> Wiki people, as they apparently perceive value in impeding a good AI/AGI
> interface to Wikipedia. Apparently, even their own internal people can't get
> help here, as it might lead to loosing control over the search business.
> However...
>
> The Wikipedia software is open source, and some companies even maintain
> their own domain-specific wikis as knowledge base. Further, the AI/AGI
> interface problem is certainly not their only problem. The 2nd biggest
> problem is their implicit insistence on a single model/paradigm behind every
> article, which limits Wiki to being of value only for grade-school support.
>
> Note in passing the value of faulty models. Often the most accurate model
> suggests no means of correction, whereas a less accurate model suggests
> corrections that quite often (but sometimes don't) work (see puppy update
> below). Limiting articles to single models destroys MOST of the potential
> value of Wikipedia, as does blocking an AI/AGI interface.
>
> Proposal: Start a new AI/AGI Wikipedia, starting with the present
> open-source Wikipedia software with minor mods to collect additional
> information from authors and build a database on an associated FTP site for
> anyone to download. This should soon take over the Wiki business from the
> present Wikipedia folks. A well placed patent application would impede their
> following suit, thereby seizing this entire marketplace.
>
> Unfortunately, this is too big of a project to be funded with my lunch
> money or built and m

Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy

[Steve Richfield]

Matt,

On 5/16/08, Matt Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> --- Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > *Does anyone else here share my dream of a worldwide AI with all of the
> > knowledge of the human race to support it
>
> Yes
>
> > - built with EXISTING Wikipedia
>
> No.  Wikipedia has the right idea that it reflects a consensus of
> knowledge with instant peer review, which is usually more accurate than
> individual knowledge.  However, it is centralized, so it depends on
> donations of money to keep running on a single server, rather than self
> sustaining market driven contributions of computing resources in a
> distributed environment.


I agree. The missing piece are tags to communicate important information
that is NOT in the articles themselves, e.g. the regular expressions needed
to recognize statements of ignorance and applicability of the article. These
could be included in every page on the Internet, but current editors don't
support new tags, so there is a chicken-or-egg problem here that may need a
catalyst to get over.

> and Dr. Eliza software and a little glue to hold it all together?*
>
> The "glue", the distributed search index or message routing service, will
> be the major component of distributed AGI.  Most of the intelligence will
> go into directing messages to the right experts based on content, and
> filtering spam.


My plan is to use the system to routinely solve problems that are beyond all
human experts, though sometimes a solution hinges on a particular issue that
isn't adequately explained on-line. I don't currently see any way to
efficiently automate the routing to experts without sending far more crap
than good queries. Remember, just because your computer thinks that you must
dig deeper into something than the on-line information supports does NOT
mean that the user agrees. How do you plan to deal with the pissed-off
experts who are bombarded with queries by disinterested users?

Dr. Eliza reflects your personal agenda.


Simply, Dr. Eliza works now, and I see NO other workable approach on the
horizon, that shows any evidence that the really hard problems have been
worked out..

It will be judged as a peer in a
> competitive marketplace where information has negative value on average.


THAT is why the only real hope is to graduate from the present information
paradigm to a knowledge paradigm

If you go against the majority, you will be blocked.


I absolutely agree, as I have seen this ever so clearly.

To get your message
> out, you will either need to back up your claims with research,


What sort of "research" did you have in mind?

or back
> off your claims to a personal case history,


... like how it took me 4 months on the Internet to do what should have been
done in 10 minutes?

or buy advertising from peers
> with high reputations.


I don't understand what you are suggesting here.

Steve Richfield

---
agi
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Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy

[Stephen Reed]

Hi Steve, thanks for responding to my post.

I naively expect misunderstandings and ignorance on the part of the user to be 
reconciled via clarification dialog.  Perhaps you accomplish this via regular 
expressions applied to the user's input.   In my ideal system, constructions 
serve the function of your regular expressions, hopefully even capturing the 
entirety of the user's confusion.

Steve, I really do appreciate discussing your system as it implemented enough 
to comment about how it works in the real world, whereas I am not yet at that 
point.

Cheers.
-Steve

 Stephen L. Reed


Artificial Intelligence Researcher
http://texai.org/blog
http://texai.org
3008 Oak Crest Ave.
Austin, Texas, USA 78704
512.791.7860



- Original Message 
From: Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 9:50:34 PM
Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy


Steve,
 
The missing and apparently impossible to reconstruct information, without which 
your plan cannot hope to succeed in doing what I am doing (though you might 
have different achievable goals), is a syntactical expression of what people 
typically say that indicates that they do NOT understand the contents of an 
article, and that they have a problem built on that ignorance.
 
Perhaps one of the greatest discoveries behind Dr. Eliza is that the regular 
expressions typically needed to recognize these statement of ignorance and 
SIMPLE, though they often take some thought to create.
 
How are you planning to function without this information?
 
Steve Richfield

On 5/16/08, Stephen Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
Steve Richfield said:


 
Does anyone else here share my dream of a worldwide AI with all of the 
knowledge of the human race to support it - built with EXISTING Wikipediaand 
Dr. Eliza software and a little glue to hold it all together?

Hi Steve,

I share part of your dream, in that I am strongly attracted to Wikipedia as 
great corpus of commonsense knowledge that should be incorporated into my AGI 
project, Texai.I've looked at the Freebase Wikipedia Extraction:


The Freebase Wikipedia Extraction (WEX) is a processed dump of the English 
language Wikipedia. The wiki markup for each article is transformed into 
machine-readable XML, and common relational features such as templates, 
infoboxes, categories, article sections, and redirects are extracted in tabular 
form.
Freebase WEX is provided as a set of database tables in TSV format for 
PostgreSQL, along with tables providing mappings between Wikipedia articles and 
Freebase topics, and corresponding Freebase Types.
My plan: 

1. Rather than deal with Wikimedia, collaborating on a AGI-style 
interface , I would simply process (i.e. parse and completely understand) their 
content.  

2. One could then teach Texai how to edit a Wikipedia article to close 
the loop.FYI.  Another great corpus of knowledge is an online patent database.  
In the US, patents include a section that describes the background of the 
invention.   On the road to generally applicable machine vision, I can envision 
a facility that can read various types of patent diagrams.

Cheers,
-Steve

Stephen L. Reed


Artificial Intelligence Researcher
http://texai.org/blog
http://texai.org
3008 Oak Crest Ave.
Austin, Texas, USA 78704
512.791.7860 



- Original Message 
From: Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 9:31:58 AM
Subject: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy


Mike, Stan, et al,
 
I have recently had some interesting off-line discussions that may be pulling 
things together, so I thought that I would run the emerging concept up the 
flagpole here and get any opinions.
 
I have previously posted here the horrific problems trying to deal with the 
Wiki people, as they apparently perceive value in impeding a good AI/AGI 
interface to Wikipedia. Apparently, even their own internal people can't get 
help here, as it might lead to loosing control over the search business. 
However...
 
The Wikipedia software is open source, and some companies even maintain their 
own domain-specific wikis as knowledge base. Further, the AI/AGI interface 
problem is certainly not their only problem. The 2nd biggest problem is their 
implicit insistence on a single model/paradigm behind every article, which 
limits Wiki to being of value only for grade-school support.
 
Note in passing the value of faulty models. Often the most accurate model 
suggests no means of correction, whereas a less accurate model suggests 
corrections that quite often (but sometimes don't) work (see puppy update 
below). Limiting articles to single models destroys MOST of the potential value 
of Wikipedia, as does blocking an AI/AGI interface.
 
Proposal: Start a new AI/AGI Wikipedia, starting with the present open-source 
Wikipedia software with minor 

Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy

[Steve Richfield]

Steve,

On 5/16/08, Stephen Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>  I naively expect misunderstandings and ignorance on the part of the user
> to be reconciled via clarification dialog.
>

What else is there besides misunderstandings and ignorance on the part of
the user? Is there something else for computers to address?!

 Perhaps you accomplish this via regular expressions applied to the user's
> input.
>

Actually, there are many regular expressions that are used to also identify
negation (e.g. I do NOT have asthma) and time (I had asthma as a child).

 In my ideal system, constructions
>

At the risk of expressing my ignorance, what is a "construction"?

 serve the function of your regular expressions, hopefully even capturing
> the entirety of the user's confusion.
>

Probably not possible, because that confusion is more likely than not to be
illogical, and computers don't do well at all in addressing the illogical.
Everything that goes in and out must be paradigm-shifted to the illogic,
which is a nearly impossible job even for a human. They offer PhDs in
Psychology to people who develop skills in this area.


>  Steve, I really do appreciate discussing your system as it implemented
> enough to comment about how it works in the real world, whereas I am not yet
> at that point.
>

I suspect that some of my skepticism must be oozing from your screen. I have
seen SO many efforts based on "I'll do the best that I can and see where I
can get to" when there are impossible roadblocks that are sometimes never
seen. The latest Wiki efforts seem doomed to this demise. After a while
this has made me jaded even to new efforts that may not have the fatal flaws
of past efforts. I think I now know what the "hard questions" are, so please
grab hold of them and answer them the best you can, as hopefully when you
see the difficulties in answering them, you will also see the same fatal
flaws in your approach that I (think that I) see.

Yes, I know, it IS difficult to compare real with planned systems.

Steve Richfield
=
- Original Message 
From: Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: agi@v2.listbox.com

>    Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 9:50:34 PM
> Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy
>
> Steve,
>
> The missing and apparently impossible to reconstruct information, without
> which your plan cannot hope to succeed in doing what I am doing (though you
> might have different achievable goals), is a syntactical expression of what
> people typically say that indicates that they do NOT understand the contents
> of an article, and that they have a problem built on that ignorance.
>
> Perhaps one of the greatest discoveries behind Dr. Eliza is that the
> regular expressions typically needed to recognize these statement of
> ignorance and SIMPLE, though they often take some thought to create.
>
> How are you planning to function without this information?
>
> Steve Richfield
> 
> On 5/16/08, Stephen Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>  Steve Richfield said:
>>
>>
>> *Does anyone else here share my dream of a worldwide AI with all of the
>> knowledge of the human race to support it - built with EXISTING Wikipediaand 
>> Dr. Eliza software and a little glue to hold it all together?
>>
>> *
>> Hi Steve,
>>
>> I share part of your dream, in that I am strongly attracted to Wikipedia
>> as great corpus of commonsense knowledge that should be incorporated into my
>> AGI project, Texai.I've looked at the Freebase Wikipedia 
>> Extraction<http://download.freebase.com/wex/>
>> :
>>
>>  The *Freebase Wikipedia Extraction* (*WEX*) is a processed dump of the
>> English language Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/>. The wiki markup
>> for each article is transformed into machine-readable XML, and common
>> relational features such as templates, infoboxes, categories, article
>> sections, and redirects are extracted in tabular form.
>>
>> Freebase WEX is provided as a set of database tables in TSV format for
>> PostgreSQL <http://www.postgresql.org/>, along with tables providing
>> mappings between Wikipedia articles and 
>> Freebase<http://www.freebase.com/>topics, and corresponding Freebase Types.
>> **
>> My plan:
>>
>>1. Rather than deal with Wikimedia, collaborating on a AGI-style
>>interface , I would simply process (i.e. parse and completely understand)
>>their content.
>>2. One could then teach Texai how to edit a Wikipedia article to close
>>the loop.
>>
>> FYI.  Another great corpus of knowledge is an online patent database.  In
&

Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy

[John Bäckstrand]

Just a pointer: atleast some wikia admins seem to have a interest in AI.
Unfortunately a wikia only allows you to edit new data, they probably would
not like one to modify the software too much. They do enable use of semantic
mediawiki if one wants to, though, and it seems to be working nicely.

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

> Mike, Stan, et al,
>
> I have recently had some interesting off-line discussions that may be
> pulling things together, so I thought that I would run the emerging
> concept up the flagpole here and get any opinions.
>
> I have previously posted here the horrific problems trying to deal with the
> Wiki people, as they apparently perceive value in impeding a good AI/AGI
> interface to Wikipedia. Apparently, even their own internal people can't get
> help here, as it might lead to loosing control over the search business.
> However...
>
> The Wikipedia software is open source, and some companies even maintain
> their own domain-specific wikis as knowledge base. Further, the AI/AGI
> interface problem is certainly not their only problem. The 2nd biggest
> problem is their implicit insistence on a single model/paradigm behind every
> article, which limits Wiki to being of value only for grade-school support.
>
> Note in passing the value of faulty models. Often the most accurate model
> suggests no means of correction, whereas a less accurate model suggests
> corrections that quite often (but sometimes don't) work (see puppy update
> below). Limiting articles to single models destroys MOST of the potential
> value of Wikipedia, as does blocking an AI/AGI interface.
>
> Proposal: Start a new AI/AGI Wikipedia, starting with the present
> open-source Wikipedia software with minor mods to collect additional
> information from authors and build a database on an associated FTP site for
> anyone to download. This should soon take over the Wiki business from the
> present Wikipedia folks. A well placed patent application would impede their
> following suit, thereby seizing this entire marketplace.
>
> Unfortunately, this is too big of a project to be funded with my lunch
> money or built and maintained with my limited spare time. However, with an
> investor to cover miscellaneous expenses, a server to hold the site, and
> some co-conspirators to help make it go; and this could quite easily take
> over much/most of the Internet in a way that would be MUCH bigger than ever
> envisioned by Wikipedia.
>
> *Does anyone else here share my dream of a worldwide AI with all of the
> knowledge of the human race to support it - built with EXISTING Wikipedia
> and Dr. Eliza software and a little glue to hold it all together?*
>
> Note that unlike the present Internet, that Dr. Eliza is pretty much
> language-independent. You can even put in a problem statement in one
> language, and get the unanswered questions and analysis out in another
> language. The principles underlying this are similar to financial systems
> that keep the numbers in a database, and use different language versions of
> their program to access it, only in Dr. Eliza, nearly every record has a
> field to indicate language so that no software changes are needed to support
> different languages, though trivial enhancements ARE needed to support new
> languages with previously unsupported features, e.g. the differing use of
> periods and commas in numbers depending on which side of the pond that you
> reside on. With this, the WHOLE world would be automatically included,
> rather than just the English language part of it (with trivial separate
> participation by other languages) as is presently the case. No longer would
> the Internet be divided up according to languages.
>
> Puppy Update:
>
> The puppy is doing MUCH better, and is now starting to explore. Three new
> theories as to its problems have emerged:
>
> 1.  Pus found on its fur pointed the way to an abscess in its armpit that
> had evaded previous inspection. The abscess seems to be too small to be
> life-threatening, but who knows?
> 2.  It has an umbilical hernia that might be strangling some intestines.
> 3.  Like some people, it would apparently rather die than eat puppy food,
> though it doesn't seem to be picky about eating minced leftovers.
>
> However, earlier theories, though probably incorrect, DID guide the way to
> treatment that, though not perfect (it would have been nice to lance the
> abscess), was sufficiently successful to save its life. This serves to
> highlight the value of incorrect theories, that they often provide the right
> answers in a timely manner, even when for the wrong reasons.
>
> Steve Richfield
>
>  --
>   *agi* | Archives 
>  | 
> ModifyYour Subscription
> 
>



-- 
John Bäckstrand

--

Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy

[Steve Richfield]

John,

Your posting suggests that you know something that I don't, but I can't
figure out just what it is. Hence, I'll comment from my solid position of
ignorance and hopefully you will see the error in my understanding and
correct it.

Note the STRONG parallel here with the general AGI problem-solving problem,
wherein you, our simulated AGI, must figure out just what it is that I don't
understand and feed me whatever is needed to correct my lack of
understanding. THIS is the piece that appears (to me) to be beyond
reasonable automation.

On 5/17/08, John Bäckstrand <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Just a pointer: atleast some wikia admins seem to have a interest in AI.


Which, since it is HIGHLY fluid at this point in history, must mean that
they are open to new software entering to implement AI.



> Unfortunately a wikia only allows you to edit new data,


Wiki now only supports VISIBLE data, with no provision for supporting
INvisible metadata to guide AI engines. The KEY piece seems to be the
regular expressions needed to recognize the combination of domain-specific
ignorance coupled with applicability of the material in the article.



> they probably would not like one to modify the software too much.


Which tells me two things:

1.  They aren't all that interested in AI, and
2.  Wiki software isn't sufficiently modular to allow for simple add-on
capabilities.


> They do enable use of semantic mediawiki if one wants to, though, and it
> seems to be working nicely.


For searching, but NOT for problem solving, that requires (at bare minimum)
the regular expressions mentioned above.

Hopefully from my comments, you can ferret out whatever it is that I am
missing.

Thanks.

Steve Richfield
===

>  On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Steve Richfield <
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>  Mike, Stan, et al,
>>
>> I have recently had some interesting off-line discussions that may be
>> pulling things together, so I thought that I would run the emerging
>> concept up the flagpole here and get any opinions.
>>
>> I have previously posted here the horrific problems trying to deal with
>> the Wiki people, as they apparently perceive value in impeding a good AI/AGI
>> interface to Wikipedia. Apparently, even their own internal people can't get
>> help here, as it might lead to loosing control over the search business.
>> However...
>>
>> The Wikipedia software is open source, and some companies even maintain
>> their own domain-specific wikis as knowledge base. Further, the AI/AGI
>> interface problem is certainly not their only problem. The 2nd biggest
>> problem is their implicit insistence on a single model/paradigm behind every
>> article, which limits Wiki to being of value only for grade-school support.
>>
>> Note in passing the value of faulty models. Often the most accurate model
>> suggests no means of correction, whereas a less accurate model suggests
>> corrections that quite often (but sometimes don't) work (see puppy update
>> below). Limiting articles to single models destroys MOST of the potential
>> value of Wikipedia, as does blocking an AI/AGI interface.
>>
>> Proposal: Start a new AI/AGI Wikipedia, starting with the present
>> open-source Wikipedia software with minor mods to collect additional
>> information from authors and build a database on an associated FTP site for
>> anyone to download. This should soon take over the Wiki business from the
>> present Wikipedia folks. A well placed patent application would impede their
>> following suit, thereby seizing this entire marketplace.
>>
>> Unfortunately, this is too big of a project to be funded with my lunch
>> money or built and maintained with my limited spare time. However, with an
>> investor to cover miscellaneous expenses, a server to hold the site, and
>> some co-conspirators to help make it go; and this could quite easily take
>> over much/most of the Internet in a way that would be MUCH bigger than ever
>> envisioned by Wikipedia.
>>
>> *Does anyone else here share my dream of a worldwide AI with all of the
>> knowledge of the human race to support it - built with EXISTING Wikipedia
>> and Dr. Eliza software and a little glue to hold it all together?*
>>
>> Note that unlike the present Internet, that Dr. Eliza is pretty much
>> language-independent. You can even put in a problem statement in one
>> language, and get the unanswered questions and analysis out in another
>> language. The principles underlying this are similar to financial systems
>> that keep the numbers in a database, and use different language versions of
>> their program to access it, only in Dr. Eliza, nearly every record has a
>> field to indicate language so that no software changes are needed to support
>> different languages, though trivial enhancements ARE needed to support new
>> languages with previously unsupported features, e.g. the differing use of
>> periods and commas in numbers depending on which side of the pond that you
>> reside on. With this

Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy

[Matt Mahoney]

--- Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 5/16/08, Matt Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> or buy advertising from peers
> > with high reputations.
> 
> I don't understand what you are suggesting here.

See my previous post about competitive message routing.  In a market where
information has negative value, peers with reputations for being a high
quality source of information (e.g. Google) can sell advertising.

-- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]

---
agi
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Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy

[Stephen Reed]

Steve Richfield asked:


what is a "construction"?

By way of preface, any AGI developer will be initially ignorant of a great deal 
of the subject matter that will be required to build their AGI.  There are so 
many fields to draw from, and also the great many sub-fields in narrow AI to 
master, at least to the degree of selecting applicable techniques.   Although I 
took some linguistics back at college in 1970-73, very little of that theory is 
now current - or worse, considered wrong.  Eighteen months ago I learned about 
Construction Grammar from Dr. Jerry Ball's web site here.   A good introduction 
is the Wikipedia article here.  In a nutshell a construction is a linguistic 
object that couples form with semantic content.  You can find out more about my 
approach by reading my blog posts on grammar.

 
Cheers,
-Steve

Stephen L. Reed


Artificial Intelligence Researcher
http://texai.org/blog
http://texai.org
3008 Oak Crest Ave.
Austin, Texas, USA 78704
512.791.7860



- Original Message 
From: Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 11:59:24 PM
Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy

Steve,


On 5/16/08, Stephen Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
I naively expect misunderstandings and ignorance on the part of the user to be 
reconciled via clarification dialog.
 
What else is there besides misunderstandings and ignorance on the part of the 
user? Is there something else for computers to address?!

Perhaps you accomplish this via regular expressions applied to the user's input.
 
Actually, there are many regular expressions that are used to also identify 
negation (e.g. I do NOT have asthma) and time (I had asthma as a child).

In my ideal system, constructions
 
At the risk of expressing my ignorance, what is a "construction"?

serve the function of your regular expressions, hopefully even capturing the 
entirety of the user's confusion.
 
Probably not possible, because that confusion is more likely than not to be 
illogical, and computers don't do well at all in addressing the illogical. 
Everything that goes in and out must be paradigm-shifted to the illogic, which 
is a nearly impossible job even for a human. They offer PhDs in Psychology to 
people who develop skills in this area.
 
Steve, I really do appreciate discussing your system as it implemented enough 
to comment about how it works in the real world, whereas I am not yet at that 
point.
 
I suspect that some of my skepticism must be oozing from your screen. I have 
seen SO many efforts based on "I'll do the best that I can and see where I can 
get to" when there are impossible roadblocks that are sometimes never seen. The 
latest Wiki efforts seem doomed to this demise. After a while this has made me 
jaded even to new efforts that may not have the fatal flaws of past efforts. I 
think I now know what the "hard questions" are, so please grab hold of them and 
answer them the best you can, as hopefully when you see the difficulties in 
answering them, you will also see the same fatal flaws in your approach that I 
(think that I) see.
 
Yes, I know, it IS difficult to compare real with planned systems.
 
Steve Richfield
=
- Original Message 
From: Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: agi@v2.listbox.com

Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 9:50:34 PM
Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy


Steve,
 
The missing and apparently impossible to reconstruct information, without which 
your plan cannot hope to succeed in doing what I am doing (though you might 
have different achievable goals), is a syntactical expression of what people 
typically say that indicates that they do NOT understand the contents of an 
article, and that they have a problem built on that ignorance.
 
Perhaps one of the greatest discoveries behind Dr. Eliza is that the regular 
expressions typically needed to recognize these statement of ignorance and 
SIMPLE, though they often take some thought to create.
 
How are you planning to function without this information?
 
Steve Richfield

On 5/16/08, Stephen Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
Steve Richfield said:


 
Does anyone else here share my dream of a worldwide AI with all of the 
knowledge of the human race to support it - built with EXISTING Wikipediaand 
Dr. Eliza software and a little glue to hold it all together?

Hi Steve,

I share part of your dream, in that I am strongly attracted to Wikipedia as 
great corpus of commonsense knowledge that should be incorporated into my AGI 
project, Texai.I've looked at the Freebase Wikipedia Extraction:


The Freebase Wikipedia Extraction (WEX) is a processed dump of the English 
language Wikipedia. The wiki markup for each article is transformed into 
machine-readable XML, and common relational features such as templates, 
infoboxes, categories,

Different problem types was Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy

[William Pearson]

2008/5/16 Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Does anyone else here share my dream of a worldwide AI with all of the
> knowledge of the human race to support it - built with EXISTING Wikipedia
> and Dr. Eliza software and a little glue to hold it all together?
>

I'm taking this as a jumping off point to try and describe and expand
upon something I have been mulling over whilst reading your messages.

I think you and Matt are interested in solving the oracle problem.
That is going to one entity  for answers to general questions. I am
interested in solving more personal problems. That is there are
problems that are unique to the individual at each time.

The search problem is a good example. To present the optimal search
for an individual you must have as much data about the individual as
possible. For example if the search engine knew I had been talking to
you it would return different results when I searched for Dr. Eliza
(assuming google knows anything about your system). As I would not be
comfortable with this level of information being known about me, a
centralized search oracle will not work (I will have to stop using
gmail when AI gets too advanced).

The problems essence is finding pertinent information and presenting
it at the right time to the user.  I shall call it the whisperer class
of problems for the moment. I am also strongly interested in Augmented
Reality, where knowing when to interrupt you with emails and other
communications is an important thing for the system to do.

Both types of system are important, I don't think I can do a decent
whisperer system with current technologies, including Dr Eliza. Not to
denigrate your approach, but to acknowledge that there are more types
of problems out there to be solved.

  Will Pearson

---
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Re: Different problem types was Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy

[Steve Richfield]

Will,

I have read and reread your posting and still there are some ambiguities in
your meaning. Hence, I will presume (perhaps wrongly) to understand what you
are saying and respond. If I misunderstood, then please feel free to correct
me...

On 5/16/08, William Pearson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> 2008/5/16 Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> > Does anyone else here share my dream of a worldwide AI with all of the
> > knowledge of the human race to support it - built with EXISTING Wikipedia
> > and Dr. Eliza software and a little glue to hold it all together?
> >
>
> I'm taking this as a jumping off point to try and describe and expand
> upon something I have been mulling over whilst reading your messages.
>
> I think you and Matt are interested in solving the oracle problem.
> That is going to one entity  for answers to general questions.


I don't think so. Dr. Eliza is designed to respond to complex problem
statements. Being too general just gets a pile of questions to de-generalize
the problem statement.

I am
> interested in solving more personal problems. That is there are
> problems that are unique to the individual at each time.
>
> The search problem is a good example. To present the optimal search
> for an individual you must have as much data about the individual as
> possible. For example if the search engine knew I had been talking to
> you it would return different results when I searched for Dr. Eliza
> (assuming google knows anything about your system). As I would not be
> comfortable with this level of information being known about me, a
> centralized search oracle will not work (I will have to stop using
> gmail when AI gets too advanced).


I suspect that a capability that includes automatically appending your
entire autobiography onto any problem statements would do this job handily.

The problems essence is finding pertinent information and presenting
> it at the right time to the user.  I shall call it the whisperer class
> of problems for the moment. I am also strongly interested in Augmented
> Reality, where knowing when to interrupt you with emails and other
> communications is an important thing for the system to do.


I don't see how this would fit in.

Both types of system are important, I don't think I can do a decent
> whisperer system with current technologies, including Dr Eliza. Not to
> denigrate your approach, but to acknowledge that there are more types
> of problems out there to be solved.


Yes. Dr. Eliza is NOT a fit replacement for a search capability, where there
is no difficult problem to solve, but instead the user just wants to
retrieve some data. However, many people (including myself) use search
capabilities to solve in days/weeks/months problems that should just take
minutes (at most) to solve. My own spending 4 full-time months on what
should have been a 10 minute problem solving was my own motivation to create
Dr. Eliza. Of course, there are other completely different uses of the
Internet, e.g. on-line communities, porn, casinos, etc., etc.

Steve Richfield

---
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Re: Different problem types was Re: [agi] AGI and Wiki, was Understanding a sick puppy

[William Pearson]

2008/5/17 Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Will,
>
> I have read and reread your posting and still there are some ambiguities in
> your meaning. Hence, I will presume (perhaps wrongly) to understand what you
> are saying and respond. If I misunderstood, then please feel free to correct
> me...
>
> On 5/16/08, William Pearson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> 2008/5/16 Steve Richfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>> > Does anyone else here share my dream of a worldwide AI with all of the
>> > knowledge of the human race to support it - built with EXISTING
>> > Wikipedia
>> > and Dr. Eliza software and a little glue to hold it all together?
>> >
>>
>> I'm taking this as a jumping off point to try and describe and expand
>> upon something I have been mulling over whilst reading your messages.
>>
>> I think you and Matt are interested in solving the oracle problem.
>> That is going to one entity  for answers to general questions.
>
>
> I don't think so. Dr. Eliza is designed to respond to complex problem
> statements. Being too general just gets a pile of questions to de-generalize
> the problem statement.

I didn't mean general in that sense, I should have tried to have found
a better word. I meant common problems that have a common solution
between people and times.

>>
>> I am
>> interested in solving more personal problems. That is there are
>> problems that are unique to the individual at each time.
>>
>> The search problem is a good example. To present the optimal search
>> for an individual you must have as much data about the individual as
>> possible. For example if the search engine knew I had been talking to
>> you it would return different results when I searched for Dr. Eliza
>> (assuming google knows anything about your system). As I would not be
>> comfortable with this level of information being known about me, a
>> centralized search oracle will not work (I will have to stop using
>> gmail when AI gets too advanced).
>
>
> I suspect that a capability that includes automatically appending your
> entire autobiography onto any problem statements would do this job handily.

Since I don't keep an autobiography this might prove somewhat of a problem.

>>
>> The problems essence is finding pertinent information and presenting
>> it at the right time to the user.  I shall call it the whisperer class
>> of problems for the moment. I am also strongly interested in Augmented
>> Reality, where knowing when to interrupt you with emails and other
>> communications is an important thing for the system to do.
>
>
> I don't see how this would fit in.

An augmented reality system has a certain amount of knowledge about
the situation you are in, it has to make a decision about whether you
need to know about a piece of information it has acquired (via email,
IM or through it scraping the web) in this situation. If it can't make
this decision well it will forever be annoying you by popping up
alerts at inappropriate times. Don't alert you to friends lewd but
funny picture during a meeting, but do alert you to some negative news
from a newspaper about your company. It is a question of what data you
want to get and when.

>>
>> Both types of system are important, I don't think I can do a decent
>> whisperer system with current technologies, including Dr Eliza. Not to
>> denigrate your approach, but to acknowledge that there are more types
>> of problems out there to be solved.
>
>
> Yes. Dr. Eliza is NOT a fit replacement for a search capability, where there
> is no difficult problem to solve, but instead the user just wants to
> retrieve some data.

Not some data. The *correct* data. That is difficult and valuable.
Else google wouldn't have been able to have taken over yahoo.

> However, many people (including myself) use search
> capabilities to solve in days/weeks/months problems that should just take
> minutes (at most) to solve. My own spending 4 full-time months on what
> should have been a 10 minute problem solving was my own motivation to create
> Dr. Eliza.

So search isn't perfect but doesn't need to be solved?

  Will Pearson

---
agi
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