Re: Open source (was Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!)
Bob, et al, On 4/20/08, Bob Mottram [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Until a true AGI is developed I think it will remain necessary to pay programmers to write programs, at least some of the time. You can't always rely upon voluntary effort, especially when the problem you want to solve is fairly obscure. There is true need, and then there is a quite different perceived need. There are traditional tools, and then there are appropriate tools. There are accepted paradigms, and then there are usable paradigms. There is knowledge, and then there are epiphanies. A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century. A growing feeling that programmers were a dime-a-dozen and that gray hair was a disabling condition grew to almost universal acceptance. The net effect of this was to reduce the working careers of programmers to too little to really get it, and thereby plunged the entire field into a morass of mediocrity. The ~1% of stellar performers who could produce tight designs for hyper-complex systems and quickly code them to work were lost among the 90% unemployed or underemployed, resulting in Corporate America simply abandoning hyper-complex designs as being unacceptably risky. In another couple of decades this phenomenon will make the short journey from misconception to reality as the current stellar performers fade away on boards like this. I know of NO larger corporation who currently fails to fit this pattern. Have you met and talked with any of the current crop of PhDs? The BIG thing that I notice is that they actually BELIEVE the stuff that they are told in college, rather than simply accepting it as one view and continuing the search for better answers as past generations did. Even the chairman of the local major university's CS department fits this pattern, as he schedules colloquiums a year in advance! This combination of corporations and graduates is STABLE - it can never advance beyond the current state of the art in any area that is beyond individual achievement. Hence, Bob is at once both right and wrong: Right, because major projects will doubtless require more than volunteer effort. Wrong, because the supply of adequately good people for hire is very rapidly dwindling. Of course, this constitutes a reductio ad absurdum situation establishing that the underlying assumption, that someone is going to build AGI, is very probably wrong. Have I missed something here? Steve Richfield --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Open source (was Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!)
On 21/04/2008, Steve Richfield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Of course, this constitutes a reductio ad absurdum situation establishing that the underlying assumption, that someone is going to build AGI, is very probably wrong. Whoever comes up with a working AGI may be the last person you expect them to be. All you need in raw materials are a computer, an internet connection, some novel ideas and enough time on your hands. --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Open source (was Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!)
Bob, I, perhaps naively, agree with your list of required resources - which I'm glad to have. But I believe that AGI will not be developed in isolation. Its not only that AGI is a hard, unsolved problem, its that working alone in isolation, there is such a great probability that the researcher, or small team, will head in the wrong direction locally, even if their long term roadmap is sound. I think the developer greatly benefits from public critique of their ideas and plans. For every valid criticism of my project, or of a technique that I'm adopting, I try to conceive of the earliest possible test that confirms whether I'm on the right track or not. I would be surprised if AGI comes from an unexpected source - out of the blue - if you will. -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: Bob Mottram [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 4:02:07 PM Subject: Re: Open source (was Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!) On 21/04/2008, Steve Richfield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Of course, this constitutes a reductio ad absurdum situation establishing that the underlying assumption, that someone is going to build AGI, is very probably wrong. Whoever comes up with a working AGI may be the last person you expect them to be. All you need in raw materials are a computer, an internet connection, some novel ideas and enough time on your hands. agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Open source (was Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!)
Until a true AGI is developed I think it will remain necessary to pay programmers to write programs, at least some of the time. You can't always rely upon voluntary effort, especially when the problem you want to solve is fairly obscure. On 19/04/2008, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Translation: We all (me included) now accept as reasonable that in order to briefly earn a living wage, that we must develop radically new and useful technology and then just give it away. ... Steve Richfield The above is obviously a straw man statement ... but I think it **is** true these days that open-sourcing one's code is a viable way to get one's software vision realized, and is not necessarily contradictory with making a profit. This doesn't mean that OSS is the only path, nor that it's necessarily an easy thing to make work... -- Ben --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Open source (was Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!)
Bob... ... and of course, OSS does not contradict paying programmers to write software. I have no plans to dissolve Novamente LLC, for example ;-p ... we're actually doing better than ever ... And, I note that SIAI is now paying 2 programmers (one full time, one 3/5 time) to work on OpenCog specifically ... And we will have a bunch of students getting paid by Google to code for OpenCog this summer, under the Google Summer of Code program... It is certainly true that a paid team of full-time programmers can address certain sorts of issues faster and more efficiently than a distributed team of part-timers. My idea is not to replace the former with the latter, but rather to make use of both, working toward closely overlapping goals... -- Ben G On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 7:49 AM, Bob Mottram [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Until a true AGI is developed I think it will remain necessary to pay programmers to write programs, at least some of the time. You can't always rely upon voluntary effort, especially when the problem you want to solve is fairly obscure. On 19/04/2008, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Translation: We all (me included) now accept as reasonable that in order to briefly earn a living wage, that we must develop radically new and useful technology and then just give it away. ... Steve Richfield The above is obviously a straw man statement ... but I think it **is** true these days that open-sourcing one's code is a viable way to get one's software vision realized, and is not necessarily contradictory with making a profit. This doesn't mean that OSS is the only path, nor that it's necessarily an easy thing to make work... -- Ben --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms. -- Henry Miller --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Open source (was Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!)
Matt, et al, On 4/18/08, Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For this reason, I'm tempted to opensource my stuff, but where would be my compensation? Do I really HAVE to sacrifice my pay check...?? Not at all. I released most of my data compression software under GPL. If a company wants to use it in a commercial product or wants something customized, they have to pay me. Meanwhile a lot of people have improved the software for free until it moved to the top of the rankings where it got the attention of companies that need data compression experts and pay well. This would never have happened if I had kept the code proprietary. Translation: We all (me included) now accept as reasonable that in order to briefly earn a living wage, that we must develop radically new and useful technology and then just give it away. That you perceive a need to say this indicates that there must be a few poor souls out there (besides us) who just haven't woke up yet to this very sad current state of affairs. Steve Richfield --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 1:01 PM, Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PREMISES: (1) AGI is one of the most complicated problem in the history of science, and therefore requires substantial funding for it to happen. Potentially, though, massively distributed, collaborative open-source software development could render your first premise false ... (2) Since all previous attempts failed, investors and funding agencies have enough reason to wait until a recognizable breakthrough to put their money in. (3) Since the people who have the money are usually not AGI researchers (so won't read papers and books), a breakthrough becomes recognizable to them only by impressive demos. (4) If the system is really general-purpose, then if it can give an impressive demo on one problem, it should be able to solve all kinds of problems to roughly the same level. (5) If a system already can solve all kinds of problems, then the research has mostly finished, and won't need funding anymore. CONCLUSION: AGI research will get funding when and only when the funding is no longer needed anymore. Q.E.D. :-( Pei --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms. -- Henry Miller --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
Ben Goertzel wrote: On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 1:01 PM, Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PREMISES: (1) AGI is one of the most complicated problem in the history of science, and therefore requires substantial funding for it to happen. Potentially, though, massively distributed, collaborative open-source software development could render your first premise false ... Though it is unlikely to do so, because collaborative open-source projects are best suited to situations in which the fundamental ideas behind the design has been solved. Just having a large gang of programmers on an open-source project does not address Pei's point about AGI being the most complicated problem in the history of science. Pei: what I take you to be saying is that the research problem has an unusually high initial overhead. Richard Loosemore. --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
Potentially, though, massively distributed, collaborative open-source software development could render your first premise false ... Though it is unlikely to do so, because collaborative open-source projects are best suited to situations in which the fundamental ideas behind the design has been solved. I believe I've solved the fundamental issues behind the Novamente/OpenCog design... Time and effort will tell if I'm right ;-) ben --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
Richard, You are right, though the overhead is not mainly money, but time. Of course I don't really believe in my proof, otherwise I'd say that AGI is impossible. ;-) Among the premises I listed, only (1) is not my personal belief, though I know it is assumed by many people. I believe AGI is basically a theoretical problem, which will be solved by a single person or a small group, with little funding. To make impressive demos, the theoretical result will need to be implemented, where the collaborative open-source projects can help. After that, funding will get in to turn the result into applicable technology. Even so, my previous conclusion still holds --- for the people who want to make the key breakthrough, no funding is available until the breakthrough has been made and (may be after years) recognized. Pei On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 1:32 PM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben Goertzel wrote: On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 1:01 PM, Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PREMISES: (1) AGI is one of the most complicated problem in the history of science, and therefore requires substantial funding for it to happen. Potentially, though, massively distributed, collaborative open-source software development could render your first premise false ... Though it is unlikely to do so, because collaborative open-source projects are best suited to situations in which the fundamental ideas behind the design has been solved. Just having a large gang of programmers on an open-source project does not address Pei's point about AGI being the most complicated problem in the history of science. Pei: what I take you to be saying is that the research problem has an unusually high initial overhead. Richard Loosemore. --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
Pei: I believe AGI is basically a theoretical problem, which will be solved by a single person or a small group, with little funding How do you define that problem? --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
See http://nars.wang.googlepages.com/wang.AI_Definitions.pdf On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 2:11 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Pei: I believe AGI is basically a theoretical problem, which will be solved by a single person or a small group, with little funding How do you define that problem? --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
On 4/19/08, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PREMISES: (1) AGI is one of the most complicated problem in the history of science, and therefore requires substantial funding for it to happen. Potentially, though, massively distributed, collaborative open-source software development could render your first premise false ... Though it is unlikely to do so, because collaborative open-source projects are best suited to situations in which the fundamental ideas behind the design has been solved. I agree. Opensource is a good thing but it is not sufficient to solve fundamental problems such as architecture and algorithm design. Very few people have comprehensive understanding of AGI, and the few who do are not collaborating, due to theoretical differences. YKY --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
On 4/19/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Though it is unlikely to do so, because collaborative open-source
projects are best suited to situations in which the fundamental ideas behind
the design has been solved.
I believe I've solved the fundamental issues behind the Novamente/OpenCog
design...
It's hard to tell whether you have really solved the AGI problem, at
this stage. ;)
Also, your AGI framework has a lot of non-standard, home-brew stuff
(especially the knowledge representation and logic). I bet there are
some merits in your system, but is it really so compelling that
everybody has to learn it and do it that way?
Creating a standard / common framework is not easy. Right now I think
we lack such a consensus. So the theorists are not working together.
YKY
---
agi
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Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
Another problem is how to judge the impressiveness of a demo, especially if you're a non expert. It's relatively easy to come up with superficially impressive demos, which then turn out upon closer investigation to be fraught with problems or just not scalable. This seems to happen all the time with robotics and computer vision, as countless humanoids show. So I think you're right. The big money only arrives once most of the research problems have been hammered out and a working prototype is available for inspection. Funding might appear earlier only if the organisations involved are suitably convinced that (a) the promised technology is going to arrive in the near future and (b) that there is a strong first mover advantage to owning or influencing that technology. It may, as Ben says, be possible to ameliorate some of the costs using open source methods. Open source is not a panacea, but it could help to turn AGI into more of a science than an art form in that it permits experiments to be independently verified with greater ease and provides more opportunities to stand on the shoulders of giants. On 18/04/2008, Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PREMISES: (1) AGI is one of the most complicated problem in the history of science, and therefore requires substantial funding for it to happen. (2) Since all previous attempts failed, investors and funding agencies have enough reason to wait until a recognizable breakthrough to put their money in. (3) Since the people who have the money are usually not AGI researchers (so won't read papers and books), a breakthrough becomes recognizable to them only by impressive demos. (4) If the system is really general-purpose, then if it can give an impressive demo on one problem, it should be able to solve all kinds of problems to roughly the same level. (5) If a system already can solve all kinds of problems, then the research has mostly finished, and won't need funding anymore. CONCLUSION: AGI research will get funding when and only when the funding is no longer needed anymore. Q.E.D. :-( Pei --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
On 4/19/08, YKY (Yan King Yin) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: we lack such a consensus. So the theorists are not working together. I correct that. Theorists do not need to work together; theories can be applied anywhere. It's the *designers* who are not working together. YKY --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
On 18/04/2008, Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I believe AGI is basically a theoretical problem, which will be solved by a single person or a small group, with little funding. I'm not sure I believe this. After working on this a bit, it has become clear to me that there are more ideas than there is time to explore them all. Exploration is further hindered by a lack of software infrastructure. There are no lab facilities, no easy way to perform high-level experiments. I know certainly that I have some high-level theoreies I want ot explore, but I can't even get started due to the lack of infrastructure. I think what Ben is trying to do is to provide those facilities by providing OpenCog. I think opeen-source programmers *can* help build this. And, judging by the Google summer-of-code applications, many of the students have a strong understanding of many of the basic concepts. Richard wrote: Though it is unlikely to do so, because collaborative open-source projects are best suited to situations in which the fundamental ideas behind the design has been solved. Just having a large gang of programmers on an open-source project does not address Pei's point about AGI being the most complicated problem in the history of science. Yes, but a large gang of open source programmers can help build the infrastructure. Curing the Manhattan project, it may have been Feynmann and von Neumann and Teller and Oppenheimer doing all the thinking, but it sure wasn't them that built 42 acres of uranium enrichment plants. This was done by large gangs. The fundamental ideas behind Bayesian nets and whatever have been solved but there is no way, not without a lot of work, to hook Bayesian nets to english language parsers, or to any sort of predicate reasoning systems, or knowledge representation systems or ontologies. Doing such a hookup is scientifically straight-foward and scientifically easy but a huge pain-in-the-arse. Until this hookup is done, we can't run experiments,. can't test theories, can't even get started on solving the scientifically hard part of the problem. --linas --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
Linas Vepstas wrote: Richard wrote: Though it is unlikely to do so, because collaborative open-source projects are best suited to situations in which the fundamental ideas behind the design has been solved. Just having a large gang of programmers on an open-source project does not address Pei's point about AGI being the most complicated problem in the history of science. Yes, but a large gang of open source programmers can help build the infrastructure. Curing the Manhattan project, it may have been Feynmann and von Neumann and Teller and Oppenheimer doing all the thinking, but it sure wasn't them that built 42 acres of uranium enrichment plants. This was done by large gangs. I guess I agree with this point by itself (I could do with a large gang, for example, to build SAFAIRE) but when I made the remarks I was thinking about solving the actual core problem of designing the right architecture. So for example, I think Pei is correct to point out that the basic solution is going to come from one person's idea, but that if we have a situation in which nobody has yet had that idea, then (and only then) the strategy of getting a large gang together would not help. Now, Ben thinks that he does have the correct solution and is ready for the gang. I think the same about my solution, and perhaps Pei Wang and Peter Voss and Hugo de Garis all have the same opinion about their own work in other words, perhaps they all believe that all they need right now is a large enough gang. But if we were all wrong, then our gangs would only serve to prove (eventually!) that we were wrong. I doubt that the open-source collective would be where the solution would come from. So, no disagreement that a big gang is beneficial, but Richard Loosemore P.S. Now I am deep trouble because I just said that a big open source collective could help me build SAFAIRE, and Stephen Reed is going to ask me any minute now why I don't simply get me a big open-source gang ;-) --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
Linas, Not all theoretical problems can or need to be solved by practical testing. Also, in this field, no infrastructure is really theoretically neutral --- OpenCog is clearly not suitable to test all kinds of AGI theories, though I like the project, and is willing to help. Open-source will solve many technical problems, and may also reveal many theoretical problems by putting theories under testing. However, it won't replace theoretical thinking. Pei On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 3:59 PM, Linas Vepstas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 18/04/2008, Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I believe AGI is basically a theoretical problem, which will be solved by a single person or a small group, with little funding. I'm not sure I believe this. After working on this a bit, it has become clear to me that there are more ideas than there is time to explore them all. Exploration is further hindered by a lack of software infrastructure. There are no lab facilities, no easy way to perform high-level experiments. I know certainly that I have some high-level theoreies I want ot explore, but I can't even get started due to the lack of infrastructure. I think what Ben is trying to do is to provide those facilities by providing OpenCog. I think opeen-source programmers *can* help build this. And, judging by the Google summer-of-code applications, many of the students have a strong understanding of many of the basic concepts. Richard wrote: Though it is unlikely to do so, because collaborative open-source projects are best suited to situations in which the fundamental ideas behind the design has been solved. Just having a large gang of programmers on an open-source project does not address Pei's point about AGI being the most complicated problem in the history of science. Yes, but a large gang of open source programmers can help build the infrastructure. Curing the Manhattan project, it may have been Feynmann and von Neumann and Teller and Oppenheimer doing all the thinking, but it sure wasn't them that built 42 acres of uranium enrichment plants. This was done by large gangs. The fundamental ideas behind Bayesian nets and whatever have been solved but there is no way, not without a lot of work, to hook Bayesian nets to english language parsers, or to any sort of predicate reasoning systems, or knowledge representation systems or ontologies. Doing such a hookup is scientifically straight-foward and scientifically easy but a huge pain-in-the-arse. Until this hookup is done, we can't run experiments,. can't test theories, can't even get started on solving the scientifically hard part of the problem. --linas --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
On 4/19/08, Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Not all theoretical problems can or need to be solved by practical testing. Also, in this field, no infrastructure is really theoretically neutral --- OpenCog is clearly not suitable to test all kinds of AGI theories, though I like the project, and is willing to help. Open-source will solve many technical problems, and may also reveal many theoretical problems by putting theories under testing. However, it won't replace theoretical thinking. I agree, but I'd add that it is still tremendously helpful to have an opensource gang solving technical problems. For this reason, I'm tempted to opensource my stuff, but where would be my compensation? Do I really HAVE to sacrifice my pay check...?? YKY --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
Richard, Though I do believe I have the right idea, I surely know that there are still issues I haven't fully solved. Therefore I don't really want a big gang at now (that will only waste the time of mine and the others), but a small-but-good gang, plus more time for myself --- which means less group debates, I guess. ;-) Pei On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Now, Ben thinks that he does have the correct solution and is ready for the gang. I think the same about my solution, and perhaps Pei Wang and Peter Voss and Hugo de Garis all have the same opinion about their own work in other words, perhaps they all believe that all they need right now is a large enough gang. But if we were all wrong, then our gangs would only serve to prove (eventually!) that we were wrong. I doubt that the open-source collective would be where the solution would come from. So, no disagreement that a big gang is beneficial, but --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 12:48 AM, YKY (Yan King Yin) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For this reason, I'm tempted to opensource my stuff, but where would be my compensation? Do I really HAVE to sacrifice my pay check...?? Yes, you do, as Wang's Theorem demonstrates. You must persevere in your Faith, and the Way to Nerds' Heaven will open to you, after years of poverty-stricken life as underfunded AGI researcher. :-) -- Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
Pei: I don't really want a big gang at now (that will only waste the time of mine and the others), but a small-but-good gang, plus more time for myself --- which means less group debates, I guess. ;-) Alternatively, you could open your problems for group discussion think-tanking... I'm surprised that none of you systembuilders do this. --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 5:35 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Pei: I don't really want a big gang at now (that will only waste the time of mine and the others), but a small-but-good gang, plus more time for myself --- which means less group debates, I guess. ;-) Alternatively, you could open your problems for group discussion think-tanking... I'm surprised that none of you systembuilders do this. That is essentially what I'm doing with OpenCog ... but it's a big job, just preparing stuff in terms of documentation and code and designs so that others have a prayer of understanding it ... ben --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
YKY, I believe I've solved the fundamental issues behind the Novamente/OpenCog design... It's hard to tell whether you have really solved the AGI problem, at this stage. ;) Understood... Also, your AGI framework has a lot of non-standard, home-brew stuff (especially the knowledge representation and logic). I bet there are some merits in your system, but is it really so compelling that everybody has to learn it and do it that way? I don't claim that the Novamente/OpenCog design is the **only** way ... but I do note that the different parts are carefully designed to interoperate together in subtle ways, so replacing any one component w/ some standard system won't work. For instance, replacing PLN with some more popular but more limited probabilistic logic framework, would break a lot of other stuff... Creating a standard / common framework is not easy. Right now I think we lack such a consensus. So the theorists are not working together. One thing that stuck out at the 2006 AGI Workshop and AGI-08 conference, was the commonality between several different approaches, for instance -- my Novamente approach -- Nick Cassimatis's Polyscheme system -- Stan Franklin's LIDA approach -- Sam Adams (IBM) Joshua Blue -- Alexei Samsonovich's BICA architecture Not that these are all the same design ... there are very real differences ... but there are also a lot of deep parallels. Novamente seems to be more fully fleshed out than these overall, but each of these guys has thought through specific aspects more deeply than I have. Also, John Laird (SOAR creator) is moving SOAR in a direction that's a lot closer to the Goertzel/Cassimatis/Franklin/Adams style system than his prior approaches ... All the above approaches are -- integrative, involving multiple separate components tightly bound together in a high-level cognitive architecture -- reliant to some extent on formal inference (along with subsymbolic methods) -- clearly testable/developable in a virtual worlds setting I would bet that with appropriate incentives all of the above researchers could be persuaded to collaborate on a common AI project -- without it degenerating into some kind of useless committee-think... Let's call these approaches LIVE, for short -- Logic-incorporating, Integrative, Virtually Embodied On the other hand, when you look at -- Pei Wang's approach, which is interesting but is fundamentally committed to a particular form of uncertain logic that no other AGI approach accepts -- Selmer Bringsjord's approach, which is founded on the notion that standard predicate logic alone is The Answer -- Hugo de Garis's approach which is based on brain emulation you're looking at interesting approaches that are not really compatible with the LIVE approach ... I'd say, you could not viably bring these guys into a collaborative AI project based on the LIVE approach... So, I do think more collaboration and co-thinking could occur than currently does ... but also that there are limits due to fundamentally different understandings OpenCog is general enough to support any approach falling within the LIVE category, and a number of other sorts of approaches as well (e.g. a variety of neural net based architectures). But it is not **completely** general and doesn't aim to me ... IMO, a completely general AGI development framework is just basically, say, C++ and Linux ;-) -- Ben G --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
--- Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I believe AGI is basically a theoretical problem, which will be solved by a single person or a small group, with little funding. I think that we are still massively underestimating the cost of AGI, just as we have been doing for the last 50 years. The value of AGI is the value of the human labor it would replace, between $2 and $5 quadrillion over the next 30 years worldwide. To suggest that it could be solved for a billionth of this cost is ludicrous. Google has $169 billion and the motivation, market, brains, and computing power to solve AGI, but they haven't yet. I realize there is a tradeoff between having AGI sooner or waiting for the price of technology to come down. Simple economics suggest we will be willing to pay a significant fraction of the value to have it now. We are chasing a moving target. It is not enough for a computer to match the intelligence of a human. It has to match the intelligence of a human with an internet connection, and the internet keeps getting smarter as AI is deployed on it. You hit the target not at one human brain (which Google has probably surpassed in computing power and data), but at 10 billion human brains. You need a vision system for a billion eyes, a language model to converse with a billion people at the same time. Given a good communication infrastructure, general models of intelligence are at a distinct disadvantage against narrow AI. You will be competing with millions or billions of specialized experts that are individually easier to build, train, optimize, and maintain for one particular task and run on a PC using mature technology. Standalone AGI can't do that. We don't even know how much computing power is needed to do what one brain does (but I am pretty sure it is more than 1000 PCs). I know the argument that you only have to build it once. I've heard it before. Each standalone AGI has to be trained for a different task. This is a nontrivial expense. We should not expect it to cost significantly less than training a new employee. I think AGI is too big for anyone to own or invest in. If you want to invest, look for market opportunities that don't yet exist, the way Google built its fortune by indexing something that didn't exist 15 years ago. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!
On 4/19/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't claim that the Novamente/OpenCog design is the **only** way ... but I do note that the different parts are carefully designed to interoperate together in subtle ways, so replacing any one component w/ some standard system won't work. This problem may be common to all AGI designs -- no one seems to be able to build AGI out of standard components. But I would strive towards that ideal as close as possible. For instance, replacing PLN with some more popular but more limited probabilistic logic framework, would break a lot of other stuff... PLN is not based on predicate logic but on term logic, right? That may be a source of problem. I would bet that with appropriate incentives all of the above researchers could be persuaded to collaborate on a common AI project -- without it degenerating into some kind of useless committee-think... THAT would be highly desirable, but are we ready yet to reconcile our differences? I guess we can start from gradually re-using standard components in a bottom-up manner. Also, establishing a knowledge interchange format. Let's call these approaches LIVE, for short -- Logic-incorporating, Integrative, Virtually Embodied LIVE is good =) -- Pei Wang's approach, which is interesting but is fundamentally committed to a particular form of uncertain logic that no other AGI approach accepts I think Pei Wang makes his own versions of abduction and induction that, from the classical logic perspective, are unsound. Otherwise his approach is also LIVE. -- Selmer Bringsjord's approach, which is founded on the notion that standard predicate logic alone is The Answer Agreed. Binary logic can go a long way, but ultimately is insufficient for AGI. That said, I'm currently designing learning algorithms using binary logic only, and plan to add fuzzy and probability later. OpenCog is general enough to support any approach falling within the LIVE category, and a number of other sorts of approaches as well (e.g. a variety of neural net based architectures). But it is not **completely** general and doesn't aim to me ... IMO, a completely general AGI development framework is just basically, say, C++ and Linux ;-) Yes, OpenCog is definitely a good move. I hope you will allow it more free so it can bring about more fundamental changes, to the point that different AGI projects can interoperate. =) YKY --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Open source (was Re: [agi] The Strange Loop of AGI Funding: now logically proved!)
--- YKY (Yan King Yin) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 4/19/08, Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Not all theoretical problems can or need to be solved by practical testing. Also, in this field, no infrastructure is really theoretically neutral --- OpenCog is clearly not suitable to test all kinds of AGI theories, though I like the project, and is willing to help. Open-source will solve many technical problems, and may also reveal many theoretical problems by putting theories under testing. However, it won't replace theoretical thinking. I agree, but I'd add that it is still tremendously helpful to have an opensource gang solving technical problems. For this reason, I'm tempted to opensource my stuff, but where would be my compensation? Do I really HAVE to sacrifice my pay check...?? Not at all. I released most of my data compression software under GPL. If a company wants to use it in a commercial product or wants something customized, they have to pay me. Meanwhile a lot of people have improved the software for free until it moved to the top of the rankings where it got the attention of companies that need data compression experts and pay well. This would never have happened if I had kept the code proprietary. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
