Re: [agi] Relevance of SE in AGI
Valentina Poletti wrote: I have a question for you AGIers.. from your experience as well as from your background, how relevant do you think software engineering is in developing AI software and, in particular AGI software? Just wondering.. does software verification as well as correctness proving serve any use in this field? Or is this something used just for Nasa and critical applications? 1) Software engineering (if we take that to mean the conventional repertoire of techniques taught as SE) is relevant to any project that gets up above a certain size, but it is less important when the project is much smaller, serves a more exploratory function, or where the design is constantly changing. To this extent I agree with Pei's comments. 2) If you are looking beyond the idea of simply grabbing some SE techniques off the shelf, and are instead asking if SE can have an impact on AGI, then the answer is a dramatic Yes!. Why? Because tools determine the way that we *can* think about things. Tools shape our thoughts. They can sometimes enable us to think in new ways that were simply not possible before the tools were invented. I decided a long time ago that if cognitive scientists had easy-to-use use tools that enabled them to construct realistic components of thinking systems, their entire style of explanation would be revolutionized. Right now, cog sci people cannot afford the time to be both cog sci experts *and* sophisticated software developers, so they have to make do with programming that is, by and large, trivially simple. This determines the kinds of models and explanations they can come up with. (Ditto in spades for the neuroscientists, by the way). So, the more global answer to your question is that nothing could be more important for AGI than software engineering. The problem is, that the kind of software engineering we are talking about is not a matter of grabbing SE components off the shelf, but asking what the needs of cognitive scientists and AGIers might be, and then inventing new techniques and tools that will give these people the ability to think about intelligent systems in new ways. That is why I am working on Safaire. Richard Loosemore --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Relevance of SE in AGI
Well, we have attempted to use sound software engineering principles to architect the OpenCog framework, with a view toward making it usable for prototyping speculative AI ideas and ultimately building scalable, robust, mature AGI systems as well But, we are fairly confident of our overall architecture with this system because there have been a number of predecessor systems based on similar principles, which we implemented and learned a lot from ... If one has a new AGI idea and wants to start experimenting with it, SE is basically a secondary matter ... the point is to explore the algorithms and ideas by whatever means is less time-wasting and frustrating... OTOH, if one has an AGI idea that's already been fleshed out a fair bit and one is ready to try to use it as the basis for a scalable, extensible system, SE is more worth paying attention to... Premature attention to engineering when one should be focusing on science is a risk, but so is ignoring engineering when one wants to build a scalable, extensible system... ben g On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 9:03 AM, Richard Loosemore r...@lightlink.comwrote: Valentina Poletti wrote: I have a question for you AGIers.. from your experience as well as from your background, how relevant do you think software engineering is in developing AI software and, in particular AGI software? Just wondering.. does software verification as well as correctness proving serve any use in this field? Or is this something used just for Nasa and critical applications? 1) Software engineering (if we take that to mean the conventional repertoire of techniques taught as SE) is relevant to any project that gets up above a certain size, but it is less important when the project is much smaller, serves a more exploratory function, or where the design is constantly changing. To this extent I agree with Pei's comments. 2) If you are looking beyond the idea of simply grabbing some SE techniques off the shelf, and are instead asking if SE can have an impact on AGI, then the answer is a dramatic Yes!. Why? Because tools determine the way that we *can* think about things. Tools shape our thoughts. They can sometimes enable us to think in new ways that were simply not possible before the tools were invented. I decided a long time ago that if cognitive scientists had easy-to-use use tools that enabled them to construct realistic components of thinking systems, their entire style of explanation would be revolutionized. Right now, cog sci people cannot afford the time to be both cog sci experts *and* sophisticated software developers, so they have to make do with programming that is, by and large, trivially simple. This determines the kinds of models and explanations they can come up with. (Ditto in spades for the neuroscientists, by the way). So, the more global answer to your question is that nothing could be more important for AGI than software engineering. The problem is, that the kind of software engineering we are talking about is not a matter of grabbing SE components off the shelf, but asking what the needs of cognitive scientists and AGIers might be, and then inventing new techniques and tools that will give these people the ability to think about intelligent systems in new ways. That is why I am working on Safaire. Richard Loosemore --- 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 b...@goertzel.org I intend to live forever, or die trying. -- Groucho Marx --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] Relevance of SE in AGI
I've been experimenting with extending OOP to potentially implement functionality that could make a particular AGI design easier to build. The problem with SE is that it brings along much baggage that can totally obscure AGI thinking. Many AGI people and AI people are automatic top of the line software engineers. So the type of SE for AGI is different than typical SE and the challenges are different. I think though that proto-AGI's will emerge from hybrid SE AGI organizations either independent or embedded within larger orgs. Though some AGI principles are so tantalizing close to a potential software implementation you can almost taste it... though these typically turn out to be mirages... John From: Valentina Poletti [mailto:jamwa...@gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2008 6:29 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: [agi] Relevance of SE in AGI I have a question for you AGIers.. from your experience as well as from your background, how relevant do you think software engineering is in developing AI software and, in particular AGI software? Just wondering.. does software verification as well as correctness proving serve any use in this field? Or is this something used just for Nasa and critical applications? Valentina _ agi | https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Modify Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Relevance of SE in AGI
Ben Goertzel wrote: Well, we have attempted to use sound software engineering principles to architect the OpenCog framework, with a view toward making it usable for prototyping speculative AI ideas and ultimately building scalable, robust, mature AGI systems as well But, we are fairly confident of our overall architecture with this system because there have been a number of predecessor systems based on similar principles, which we implemented and learned a lot from ... If one has a new AGI idea and wants to start experimenting with it, SE is basically a secondary matter ... the point is to explore the algorithms and ideas by whatever means is less time-wasting and frustrating... OTOH, if one has an AGI idea that's already been fleshed out a fair bit and one is ready to try to use it as the basis for a scalable, extensible system, SE is more worth paying attention to... Premature attention to engineering when one should be focusing on science is a risk, but so is ignoring engineering when one wants to build a scalable, extensible system... I think you missed my point, but no matter. My point was that premature attention to engineering is absolutely vital in a field such as the cognitive science approach to AGI. Cognitive scientists simply do not have the time to be experts in cognitive science, AND software engineers at the same time. Fort that reason, their models, and the way they think about theoretical models, are severely constrained by their weak ability to build software systems. In this case, the science is being crippled by the lack of tools, so there is no such thing as premature attention to engineering. Richard Loosemore ben g On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 9:03 AM, Richard Loosemore r...@lightlink.com mailto:r...@lightlink.com wrote: Valentina Poletti wrote: I have a question for you AGIers.. from your experience as well as from your background, how relevant do you think software engineering is in developing AI software and, in particular AGI software? Just wondering.. does software verification as well as correctness proving serve any use in this field? Or is this something used just for Nasa and critical applications? 1) Software engineering (if we take that to mean the conventional repertoire of techniques taught as SE) is relevant to any project that gets up above a certain size, but it is less important when the project is much smaller, serves a more exploratory function, or where the design is constantly changing. To this extent I agree with Pei's comments. 2) If you are looking beyond the idea of simply grabbing some SE techniques off the shelf, and are instead asking if SE can have an impact on AGI, then the answer is a dramatic Yes!. Why? Because tools determine the way that we *can* think about things. Tools shape our thoughts. They can sometimes enable us to think in new ways that were simply not possible before the tools were invented. I decided a long time ago that if cognitive scientists had easy-to-use use tools that enabled them to construct realistic components of thinking systems, their entire style of explanation would be revolutionized. Right now, cog sci people cannot afford the time to be both cog sci experts *and* sophisticated software developers, so they have to make do with programming that is, by and large, trivially simple. This determines the kinds of models and explanations they can come up with. (Ditto in spades for the neuroscientists, by the way). So, the more global answer to your question is that nothing could be more important for AGI than software engineering. The problem is, that the kind of software engineering we are talking about is not a matter of grabbing SE components off the shelf, but asking what the needs of cognitive scientists and AGIers might be, and then inventing new techniques and tools that will give these people the ability to think about intelligent systems in new ways. That is why I am working on Safaire. Richard Loosemore --- 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/?; 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 b...@goertzel.org mailto:b...@goertzel.org I intend to live forever, or die trying. -- Groucho Marx *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modify https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Your Subscription [Powered by Listbox]
Re: [agi] Relevance of SE in AGI
At the current time, almost all AGI projects are still working on conceptual design issues, and the systems developed are just prototypes, so software engineering is not that much relevant. In the future, when most of the theoretical problems have been solved, especially when it becomes clear that one approach is going to lead us to AGI, software engineering will become really relevant. The existing AI applications are not that different from just computer applications, for which software engineering is necessary, but there isn't much intelligence in them. BTW, in a sense software engineering is just the opposite of artificial intelligence: while the latter tries to make machines to work as flexibly as humans, the former tries to make humans (programmers) to work as rigidly as machines. ;-) Pei On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 8:28 PM, Valentina Poletti jamwa...@gmail.com wrote: I have a question for you AGIers.. from your experience as well as from your background, how relevant do you think software engineering is in developing AI software and, in particular AGI software? Just wondering.. does software verification as well as correctness proving serve any use in this field? Or is this something used just for Nasa and critical applications? Valentina 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=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Relevance of SE in AGI
2008/12/21 Valentina Poletti jamwa...@gmail.com: I have a question for you AGIers.. from your experience as well as from your background, how relevant do you think software engineering is in developing AI software and, in particular AGI software? If by software engineering you mean techniques for writing software better, then software engineering is relevant to all production of software, whether for AI or anything else. AI can be thought of as a particularly hard field of software development. Just wondering.. does software verification as well as correctness proving serve any use in this field? I've never used formal proofs of correctness of software, so can't comment. I use software testing (unit tests) on pretty much all non-trivial software thast I write -- i find doing so makes things much easier. -- Philip Hunt, cabala...@googlemail.com Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Relevance of SE in AGI
Valentina, Having written http://www.DrEliza.com, several NN programs, and LOT of financial applications, and holding a CDP - widely recognized in financial programming circles, here are my comments. The real world is a little different than the theoretical world of CS, in that people want results rather than proofs. However, especially in the financial world, errors CAN be expensive. Hence, the usual approaches involve extensive internal checking (lots of Assert statements, etc.), careful code reviews (that often uncover errors that testing just can't catch because a tester may not think of all of the ways that a piece of code might be stressed), and code-coverage analysis to identify what has NOT been exercise/exorcised. I write AI software pretty much the same way that I have written financial software. Note that really good internal checking can almost replace early testing, because as soon as something produces garbage, it will almost immediately get caught. Hence, just write it and throw it into the rest of the code, and let its environment test it. Initially, it might contain temporary code to display its results, which will soon get yanked when everything looks OK. Finally, really good error handling is an absolute MUST, because no such complex application is ever completely wrung out. If it isn't fail-soft, then it probably will never ever make it as a product. This pretty much excuses C/C++ from consideration, but still leaves C# in the running. I prefer programming in environments that check everything possible, like Visual Basic or .NET. These save a LOT of debugging effort by catching nearly all of the really hard bugs that languages like C/C++ seem to make in bulk. Further, when you think that your application is REALLY wrung out, you can then re-compile with most of the error checking turned off to get C-like speed. Note that these things can also be said for Java, but most implementations don't provide compilers that can turn off error checking, which cuts their speed to ~1/3 that of other approaches. Losing 2/3 of the speed is a high price to pay for a platform. Steve Richfield == On 12/20/08, Valentina Poletti jamwa...@gmail.com wrote: I have a question for you AGIers.. from your experience as well as from your background, how relevant do you think software engineering is in developing AI software and, in particular AGI software? Just wondering.. does software verification as well as correctness proving serve any use in this field? Or is this something used just for Nasa and critical applications? Valentina -- *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com/ --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Relevance of SE in AGI
Great post, Steve. Thanks. --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
