Is There a Smarter Path to Artificial Intelligence? Some Experts Hope So • Hacker News Board

Re: Is There a Smarter Path to Artificial Intelligence? Some Experts Hope So

#31

Post by chii » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 3:11 PM UTC

choxi wrote: post #28

gremlinsinc wrote: post #24

One problem with ai (or general ai) is ai lives in a box, it experiences what we tell it to experience, unlike a child who learns organically with what it's exposed to randomly while trying to survive and thrive. Perhaps the answer is to figure out all the things that make people tick via deep learning and other techniques, build one huge open api/db for vision/audio/movement in 3d planes/ethics/morality/understandin…

> it all can't be deep learning unfortunately, because that's not how we learn If you could humor me, why can't it all be deep learning? It seems like a robust model for how we learn: we start with some priors (random weights), experience something that either confirms or negates those priors (sampling), and then adjust our priors based on that experience. Of course there are a wide variety of architectures and the h…

> we start with some priors (random weights)

i dont think we start with random priors. We start with a set of priors that are geared for certain things - facial recognition, language etc. The environment then fine tunes them.

Re: Is There a Smarter Path to Artificial Intelligence? Some Experts Hope So

#32

Post by skohan » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 3:26 PM UTC

Deep learning has produced a lot of interesting results over the past few years, but we're still miles away from anything that even approximates human intelligence. When I hear someone like Elon Musk say something like "Autonomous vehicles can drive without Lidar because humans can drive without Lidar" it makes me cringe.

The human brain is unimaginably complex. Even if we created a neural network on the order of the 100 trillion or so connections in the central nervous system we would still not even be close. Each one of those synapse is a complex, constantly adapting chemical computer which is sensitive to the interaction of dozens of neurotransmitters. Gradient descent is to neural adaptation as minecraft is to photorealism.

The idea that artificial intelligence will be achieved by adding a few layers to a "deep" neural network, or by throwing more data at it is laughable.

Re: Is There a Smarter Path to Artificial Intelligence? Some Experts Hope So

#33

Post by garmaine » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 3:35 PM UTC

goatlover wrote: post #22

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Generally speaking, logical modelling is too limited for good concept representations In principle, First Order Logic and equivalent languages can represent anything that can be represented in natural language. The problem is that in practice it is very hard to transfer into a logic language all the knowledge you might need for a useful system. In fact, this was one motivation for at least one branch of machine le…

> In principle, First Order Logic and equivalent languages can represent anything that can be represented in natural language. I doubt this is the case since natural language makes a lot of use of metaphors, and our concepts are probably mostly based on the types of bodies we have and how we interact with the world. See embodied cognition and writings of Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

Look into the field of computational semantics. There is absolutely nothing in your comment which cannot be represented in existing logics. Metaphors and such are no problem.

There is ambiguity in natural languages so the determination of underlying meaning is at best probabilistic, but we have ways of handling that too.

Re: Is There a Smarter Path to Artificial Intelligence? Some Experts Hope So

#34

Post by garmaine » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

russdill wrote: post #29

gremlinsinc wrote: post #24

One problem with ai (or general ai) is ai lives in a box, it experiences what we tell it to experience, unlike a child who learns organically with what it's exposed to randomly while trying to survive and thrive. Perhaps the answer is to figure out all the things that make people tick via deep learning and other techniques, build one huge open api/db for vision/audio/movement in 3d planes/ethics/morality/understandin…

Seen a few people claim from time to time that real world experience is the "special sauce" of general AI. I've never seen anything to substantiate this claim. We all live in a box, we all experience our world through simple electrical signals. Other than being unsubstantiated, the real world only runs at 1x, simulated world can run at any rate your computing platform supports.

Much of our reasoning develops from metaphorical comparisons with our embodied experiences. E.g. it is certainly true that we gain spatial awareness from embodiment, and it is worth noting how much of our language of reasoning uses spatial metaphors. Can we expect a non-embodied AI whose only view of the world is text we feed it to develop a similar understanding?

That’s the steelmanned argument at least.

Re: Is There a Smarter Path to Artificial Intelligence? Some Experts Hope So

#35

Post by sgt101 » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 3:54 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #26

paganel wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In principle, First Order Logic and equivalent languages can represent anything that can be represented in natural language. Is there any proof about an existing non-leaky abstraction between natural language and First Order Logic (or logic in general)? Afaik there is none, but I might me wrong. For example (one amongst thousands): “I don’t like you” can actually mean (and it often does) the exact opposite, and the…

Well, going by formal language theory, FOL is equivalent to a universal Turing machine, which is probably also the full expressive power of human language. Therefore, everything that can be said in human language should in principle be possible to say in FOL. I don't think this is controversial. Notice again that I don't think this is feasible in practice. At least not with hand-crafted FOL expressions and certainly…

Yeah but humans don't have a single consistent logical model for all reasoning - i believe that all my models can be in fol, but i don't believe that they can be unified in fol

Re: Is There a Smarter Path to Artificial Intelligence? Some Experts Hope So

#36

Post by ythn » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 3:55 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #32

Deep learning has produced a lot of interesting results over the past few years, but we're still miles away from anything that even approximates human intelligence. When I hear someone like Elon Musk say something like "Autonomous vehicles can drive without Lidar because humans can drive without Lidar" it makes me cringe. The human brain is unimaginably complex. Even if we created a neural network on the order of the…

> The idea that artificial intelligence will be achieved by adding a few layers to a "deep" neural network, or by throwing more data at it is laughable.

It's called "cargo cult science" and it's an important part of the AI hype train to keep funding coming.

Re: Is There a Smarter Path to Artificial Intelligence? Some Experts Hope So

#37

Post by lawlessone » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #32

Deep learning has produced a lot of interesting results over the past few years, but we're still miles away from anything that even approximates human intelligence. When I hear someone like Elon Musk say something like "Autonomous vehicles can drive without Lidar because humans can drive without Lidar" it makes me cringe. The human brain is unimaginably complex. Even if we created a neural network on the order of the…

>"Autonomous vehicles can drive without Lidar because humans can drive without Lidar"

I have another reason to hate this. If we could give humans lidar to make their driving even better why shouldn't we?

Why should we deny an AI extra senses that can help it do its job better than we can?

Re: Is There a Smarter Path to Artificial Intelligence? Some Experts Hope So

#38

Post by kcorbitt » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #32

Deep learning has produced a lot of interesting results over the past few years, but we're still miles away from anything that even approximates human intelligence. When I hear someone like Elon Musk say something like "Autonomous vehicles can drive without Lidar because humans can drive without Lidar" it makes me cringe. The human brain is unimaginably complex. Even if we created a neural network on the order of the…

> Each one of those synapse is a complex, constantly adapting chemical computer which is sensitive to the interaction of dozens of neurotransmitters.

Granted. On the other hand, electric signals can propagate across a chip several orders of magnitude faster than the chemical-electrical signals neurons use to communicate. So while our current path won't lead us to an artificial brain that works exactly like the human brain, it might still make one that's just as smart through pure brute force.

A biologist in 1902 could very reasonably have scoffed at the heavier-than-air flight enthusiasts who pointed at birds as a proof of concept. The biologist could point out that the complex, many-part motion of a bird's flapping wing was far beyond the crude mechanical processes inventors were trying to use to replicate it. And they'd be right. But in a much more important way, they'd be wrong.

I have no idea whether we're on the path to AGI or not, but I do think that "we're not building machines that work exactly like the brain does" is a poor counterargument.

Re: Is There a Smarter Path to Artificial Intelligence? Some Experts Hope So

#39

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 4:34 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #12

sgt101 wrote: post #3

Why prolog? Why not PRISM or problog?

This is a valid question, I don't know why you (originally) got downvoted. The answer I think, for the applications in industry at least, is that PRISM and other probabilistic programming langauges are not as developed as Prolog, a language that has been around for a good four decades now. Swi-Prolog in particular, is a free and open-source Prolog interpreter with an IDE, a graphical package and a veritable somrgasbo…

[deleted]

Re: Is There a Smarter Path to Artificial Intelligence? Some Experts Hope So

#40

Post by skohan » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC

kcorbitt wrote: post #38

skohan wrote: post #32

Deep learning has produced a lot of interesting results over the past few years, but we're still miles away from anything that even approximates human intelligence. When I hear someone like Elon Musk say something like "Autonomous vehicles can drive without Lidar because humans can drive without Lidar" it makes me cringe. The human brain is unimaginably complex. Even if we created a neural network on the order of the…

> Each one of those synapse is a complex, constantly adapting chemical computer which is sensitive to the interaction of dozens of neurotransmitters. Granted. On the other hand, electric signals can propagate across a chip several orders of magnitude faster than the chemical-electrical signals neurons use to communicate. So while our current path won't lead us to an artificial brain that works exactly like the human…

> "we're not building machines that work exactly like the brain does" is a poor counterargument.

It's not that artificial intelligence has to work exactly like human intelligence; my point is that the system that produces human intelligence is many orders of magnitude more complex than what passes for AI these days.

I think there's an idea out there that because deep learning allows computers to solve some problems that we thought were in the exclusive domain of humanity even a few years ago, that the refinement of these technologies and Moore's law will steadily close the gap between AI and human intelligence. I would venture to guess there are a lot of hard, novel problems left to solve before we get anywhere close.

edit:

It's also not the first time we've thought we had intelligence "figured out". In the middle of last century, there was a lot of hubris around the field of neuroscience as we started to understand the brain's topology, and could map specific functions to brain regions. The feeling at the time was that we would refine our map, and sooner or later once we figured out what all the parts did, we would have a total understanding of the human mind.

This paradigm led to some horrifically misguided practices. For instance the use of lobotomy to treat psychiatric disorders: if the brain is just a collection of functional regions, why not just cut out the bad bits right? Turns out it's not that simple.