Well we agree where we disagree.
I'm very confident that AGI can't be achieved but by following crudely
evolutionary and developmental paths. The broad reason is that brain, body,
intelligence and the set, or psychoeconomy of activities of the animal evolve
in interrelationship with each other. All the activities that animals undertake
are extremely problematic, and became ever more complex and problematic as
they evolved - and require ever complex physical and mental structures to
tackle them.
You seem to be making a more sophisticated version of the GOFAI mistake of
thinking intelligence could be just symbolic and rational - and you can jump
straight to the top of evolved intelligence.
A sense of history - of the truth that we are now moving into a new stage of
civilisation that represents an even more drastic change than the end of
feudalism with the beginning of the print era - should warn you. Now it's the
internet era, and the beginning of a multimedia as opposed to a literate
society. And right through our culture you can see the marks of that change,
which involve an end of the old splits, the reuniting of mind and body,
rationality and imagination, symbols and images, reason and emotion,
intelligence and creativity, print, photo and video - recognizing their
multi-levelled interdependence adn rejecting the illusions of their
independence. The new age of flight is not the age of AGI on a computer - it
was symbolised neatly on time by the new age of the autonomous mobile robot, in
the Darpa race. Embodied intelligence, however primitive. You can't cut
corners. There are too many of them.
But I take away from this one personal challenge, which is that it clearly
needs to be properly explained that a) language rests at the top of a giant
picture tree of sign systems in the mind - without the rest of which language
does not "make sense" and you "can't see what you are talking about" (&
there's no choice about that - that's the way the human mind works - and any
equally successful mind will have to work), and b) language also rests on a
complex set of physical motor and manipulative systems - and you can't grasp
the sense of language, if you can't physically grasp the world. Does this last
area - the multilevelled nature of language - interest you?
----- Original Message -----
From: Benjamin Goertzel
To: singularity@v2.listbox.com
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 2:18 AM
Subject: Re: [singularity] Why do you think your AGI design will work?
You seem to be mixing two things up...
1) the definition of the goal of "human level AGI"
2) the right incremental path to get there
I consider these as rather different, separate isses...
In my prior reply to you I was discussing only Point 1, not Point 2
I don't really accept your distinction btw "achieving goals" and "seeking
goals."
Even a system that is able to reprogram its own top-level goals, can still be
judged according to how effectively it can achieve goals...
Of course I agree that to achieve powerful AGI a system will need to be able
to
formulate lots of its own rules rather than just following explicit
high-level
cognitive rules. (Whether that AGI system is still "following rules" as some
low level,
in the manner that humans follow the rules of physics or neurology, is
another question.)
I don't agree that the only viable path to human-level AGI is to recapitulate
evolution and work on animal-level intelligence first. That is **a** viable
path
but IMO not the only one.
-- Ben G
On 4/24/07, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
But there is a difference & I think it's crucial re the goals being set for
AGI.
There is a difference between your version: "achieving goals" which can be
done, if I understand you, by algorithms - and my goal-SEEKING, which is done
by all animals, and can't be done by algorithms alone. It involves finding your
way as distinct from just following the way set by programmed rules.
As I'm defining AGI, one of the central goals will be to provide a set of
rules and principles that allow for themselves to be radically changed and
broken, so that the AGI machine can find its way . Such a set of rules would
allow birds as they did recently in the UK, to switch from flying magnetically
north to their ultimate destination (or whatever they did) to flying along the
central road highways instead (obviously an easier way to fly). Such rules
would among other things allow our agent, whatever it is, to freely experiment.
Now birds clearly must have such rule-breaking rules - but it strikes me
that they still present a challenge to modern programmers, no? (And perhaps
travel by flight might be a good test activity for AGI because it's not that
complicated).
I absolutely agree that the general definition must be accomplished by
specific examples of the activities the AGI machine will tackle.A
sports-playing robot or a multiple-maze-running robot were my first attempts.
I disagree with yours, though. Passing human exams of most if not all kinds
would certainly classify as a proof of AGI. I just think that's like trying to
fly at intergalactic speed before you can even move a finger or a foot.
Language is an embodied skill - the brain can't understand words it can't
literally make sense of. It's based on whole sets of physical, manipulative and
navigational skill as well as a highly evolved visual intelligence with awesome
CGI powers..(Remember - the unconscious mind doesn't think over things in words
alone, which might seem most efficient, but in cinematic dreams. And so, almost
certainly do animal minds).
I reckon an AGI whose skills were in various ways navigational, like those
of the earliest animals, would be a far more realistic target.
----- Original Message -----
From: Benjamin Goertzel
To: singularity@v2.listbox.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 11:58 PM
Subject: Re: [singularity] Why do you think your AGI design will work?
Well, in my 1993 book "The Structure of Intelligence" I defined
intelligence as
"The ability to achieve complex goals in complex environments."
I followed this up with a mathematical definition of complexity grounded
in
algorithmic information theory (roughly: the complexity of X is the
amount of
pattern immanent in X or emergent between X and other Y's in its
environment).
This was closely related to what Hutter and Legg did last year, in a more
rigorous
paper that gave an algorithmic information theory based definition of
intelligence.
Having put some time into this sort of definitional work, I then moved on
to more
interesting things like figuring out how to actually make an intelligent
software system
given feasible computational resources.
The catch with the above definition is that a truly general intelligence
is possible
only w/ infinitely many computational resources. So, different AGIs may
be able
to achieve different sorts of complex goals in different sorts of complex
environments.
And if an AGI is sufficiently different from us humans, we may not even
be able
to comprehend the complexity of the goals or environments that are most
relevant
to it.
So, there is a general theory of what AGI is, it's just not very useful.
To make it pragmatic one has to specify some particular classes of goals
and
environments. For example
goal = getting good grades
environment = online universities
Then, to connect this kind of pragmatic definition with the mathematical
definition, one would have the prove the complexity of the goal (getting
good
grades) and the environment (online universities) based on some relevant
computational model. But the latter seems very tedious and boring work...
And IMO, all this does not move us very far toward AGI, though it may help
avoid some conceptual pitfalls that could have been fallen into
otherwise...
-- Ben G
On 4/24/07, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi,
I strongly disagree - there is a need to provide a definition of AGI -
not necessarily the right or optimal definition, but one that poses concrete
challenges and focusses the mind - even if it's only a starting-point. The
reason the Turing Test has been such a successful/ popular idea is that it
focusses the mind.
(BTW I immediately noticed your lack of a good definition on going
through your site and papers, and it immediately raised doubts in my mind. In
general, the more or less focussed your definition/ mission statement, I would
argue, the more or less seriously people will tend to take you).
Ironically, I was just trying to take Marvin Minsky to task for this on
another forum. I suddenly realised that although he has been talking about the
problem of AGI for decades, he has only waved at it, and not really engaged
with it. He talks about how having different ways of thinking about a problem
like the human mind does, is important for AGI - and that's certainly one
central problem/ goal - but he doesn't really focus it.
Here's my first crack at a definition - very crude - offered strictly
in brainstorming mode - but I think it does focus a couple of AGI challenges at
least - and fits with some of the stuff you say.
AN AGI MACHINE - a truly adaptive, truly learning machine - is one that
will be able to:
1) conduct a set of goal-seeking activities
- where it starts with only a rough, incomplete idea of how to reach
its goals,
- i.e. knows only some of the steps it must take, & some of the rules
that govern those steps
- and can find its way to its goals "making it up as it goes along"
- by finding new ways round more or less unfamiliar obstacles.
To do this it must be able to:
2) Change its steps and rules -
-not just revising them according to predetermined formulae but
-adding new steps and rules, & even
-creating new rules, that break existing ones.
3) can learn new related activities
[[The key things in this definition for me are that it focusses on the
need for AGI to be able to radically change the steps and rules of any activity
it undertakes].
EXAMPLE: {again a very crude one - first that came to mind]:
An AGI machine would be a SPORTING ROBOT that first could learn to play
soccer, as we do, by being taught a few basic principles [like "try to score a
goal by running towards the goal with the ball, or passing it to other team
members, ...." and shown a few soccer games.
It would then be able to learn the game as it goes along, by playing.
And should be able to find and learn new routes to goal, new passes, new kicks
(with perhaps new spins and backswings), It should even be able to adapt its
rules, - adding new ones like "you can move back towards your own goal when you
have the ball, as well as forwards towards the opponent's"
And having learned soccer, it should be able to learn OTHER FIELD/
COURT SPORTS in similar fashion, - like Gaelic football, hockey, basketball,
etc. etc.
[Comment: Perhaps much too extravagant a starting-goal - maybe better
to have a maze-running robot that can learn to run radically different and
suprising kinds of mazes - but once objections are considered, more realistic
goals can be set]
----- Original Message -----
From: Benjamin Goertzel
To: singularity@v2.listbox.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 9:50 PM
Subject: Re: [singularity] Why do you think your AGI design will work?
Hi,
We don't have any solid **proof** that Novamente will "work" in the
sense of leading to powerful AGI.
We do have a set of mathematical conjectures that look highly
plausible and that, if true, would imply that Novamente will work (if properly
implemented and a bunch of details are gotten right, etc.). But we have not
proved these conjectures and are not currently focusing on proving them, as
that is a big hard job in itself.... We have decided to seek proof via
practical construction and experimentation rather than proof via formal
mathematics.
Wright Bros. did not prove their airplane would work before building
it. But they were confident based on their intuitive theoretical model of
aerodynamics, which turned out to be correct. The case with Novamente is a bit
more rigorous than this because we have gotten to the point of stating but not
proving mathematical conjectures that would imply the workability of the
system...
As for Matt Mahoney's point about "definining AGI" being the
bottleneck, I really think that is a red herring. Rigorously defining any
natural language term is a pain. You can play for hours with the definition of
"cup" versus "bowl", or the definition of "flight" versus "leaping" versus
"floating in space", etc. Big deal!
-- Ben G
-- Ben G
On 4/24/07, Joshua Fox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Ben has confidently stated that he believes Novamente will work (
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?m=3 and others).
AGI builders, what evidence do you have that your design will work?
This is an oft-repeated question, but I'd like to focus on two
possible bases for saying that an invention will work before it does.
1. A clear, simple, mathematical theory, verified by experiment.
The experiments can be "pure science" rather than technology tests.
2. Functional tests of component parts or of crude prototypes.
Maybe I am missing something in the articles I have read, but do
contemporary AGI builders have a verified theory and/or verified components and
prototypes?
Joshua
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