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John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

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Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#241

Post by codesushi42 »

nickjj wrote: post #36
vecplane wrote: post #19

I don't understand how he could contribute to the field of AGI research from home, by himself, and maybe with his son. It's the kind of problem that requires incredible amounts of data, hardware, and theory to make any progress. Wouldn't it make more sense for him to join a cutting-edge team, like DeepMind or OpenAI?

John Carmack is practically a machine. He's openly talked about his work ethic in a bunch of places. He's the type of guy who after a life time of coding calculated he's 100% efficient up until 13 hour work days and then he drops off[0]. Although he did mention working those long hours is often best working on multiple things instead of 1 topic but maybe with AGI there's a bunch of different avenues to explore. [0]:…

Uuh, AI research has nothing to do with coding all nighters. This is a common misconception among software engineers. It is more a science, and less an engineering problem. It is more about running experiments than it is writing fancy algorithms.

You are bound by the amount of data and computational resources you have at your disposal. Neither are tied to man hours. You can stay up all night for days waiting for your model to train, and it will do you no good.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#242

Post by sjg007 »

vegarab wrote: post #210
pyentropy wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AlphaZero has coded all the rules for the respective three games, they do a tree search and their neural network output layer has exactly n neurons for max(n) possible moves. Although it's impressive they don't teach it heuristics and strategies, it's a very specific task. What about pigeons predicting breast cancer with 99% probability, rats learning to drive cars, monkeys building tools? Rodents stand a bigger chan…

You are talking about AlphaGo. AlphaZero was not given any prior knowledge of the game and is trained exclusively through self-play -- and it outperforms Monte Carlo tree search-based systems such as AlphaGo and Stockfish in chess 100-0 with a fraction of the training time. AlphaZero is also capable of playing Chess, Shogi and Go at a super-super-human.

You can view these as optimized pattern recognizer regexes. You start with a blank fully connected graph and it eventually converge on a useful function. That graph has many paths encoded in it that represents specific optimal game play.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#243

Post by drcode »

sailingparrot wrote: post #123
nikkwong wrote: post #89

I'm sure he knows his stuff, and is venturing into this knowing that there's somewhat of a "hard problem" to be solved here; serious proponents of AI like Kai-Fung Lee have stated that AGI may never be possible. The fact that he's making a public statement like this leads me to believe he may already have some novel solutions on how to tackle the problem. We won't be expecting to be seeing the same old parlor tricks…

> leads me to believe he may already have some novel solutions on how to tackle the problem. > That's exhilarating but also terrifying. Our still-barbarian level human systems are still nowhere near ready to deal with the socioeconomic problems that may arise with AGI. I think you are reading way too much into his statement. It's extremly unlikely that he just magically figured out a way to tackle the problem (just k…

Carmack is a pragmatist- I'd doubt he'd be doing this if he didn't feel like he had some initial promising directions in mind, though I agree he's probably very early in the process still.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#244

Post by lonelappde »

rfhjt wrote: post #226
nradov wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current ML technology probably has little or nothing to do with whatever technology will eventually be needed to produce true AGI.

And programmers are probably not the ones who will come up with AI ideas. I'd bet on mathematicians that prove those Fermat's or ABC theorems.

Mathematically, AI is a pretty well modelled field. AGI is a philosophical problem.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#245

Post by oarabbus_ »

ekianjo wrote: post #72

Other way to read this: big corporations are slowing down on VR. The market has not taken off as rapidly as they expected so we will see more moves away from heavy investment in VR.

https://qz.com/1739575/strong-oculus-quest-sales-boost-faceb...

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#246

Post by jcims »

pron wrote: post #191
pyentropy wrote: post #33

Progress in AI is due to data and computational power advances. I wonder what kind of advances are needed for AGI. 1. Biological brains are non-differentiable spiking networks much more complicated than backpropagated ANNs. 2. Ion channels may or may not be affected by quantum effects. 3. The search space is huge (but organisms aren't optimal and natural selection is probably local search) 4. If it took ~3.8b years t…

> even rodents can outperform state of the art models at general tasks. Rodents? Try insects [1]. In the late 40s and early 50s, when neural networks were first explored with great enthusiasm, some of the leading minds of that generation believed (were convinced, in fact) that artificial intelligence (or AGI in today's terms) is five/ten years away; the skeptics, like Alan Turing, thought it was fifty years away. Sev…

This jumping spider has ~600k neurons in its brain - https://youtu.be/UDtlvZGmHYk

They are creepy smart.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#247

Post by noonespecial »

AccordingDay wrote: post #214
carlosdp wrote: post #68

This doesn't surprise me at all. He went on a week long cabin-in-the-middle-of-nowhere trip about a year ago to dive in to AI (that's all this guy needs to become pretty damn proficient). (edit: I'm not claiming he's a field expert in a week guys, just that he can probably learn the basics pretty fast, especially given ML tech shares many base maths with graphics) As recent as his last Oculus Connect keynote, he exto…

But there's 100s of world-class researchers working on this problem already.

100s of world-class researchers are trying desperately to get papers into journals fast enough to keep their labs funded.

Carmack may have other priorities. This can only be good.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#248

Post by james_s_tayler »

echelon wrote: post #122
mochomocha wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He went on a week long cabin-in-the-middle-of-nowhere trip about a year ago to dive in to AI (that's all this guy needs to become pretty damn proficient). You must be joking, right? I'm as much of a Carmack fan as anyone here, but overstating the skills of one personal hero does no good to anyone.

What a weird future it would be if Carmack turns out to be the one to figure out the critical path and get it all working. An entire field of brilliant researchers be damned. History books (for as long as those continue to exist) would cite AGI as his major contribution to society, and his name would be more renowned than Edison or Tesla. An Einstein. None of his other contributions will matter, as the machines will…

Doom.

Just think about that name for a second. He might really be onto something.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#249

Post by james_s_tayler »

gdy wrote: post #183
echelon wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a weird future it would be if Carmack turns out to be the one to figure out the critical path and get it all working. An entire field of brilliant researchers be damned. History books (for as long as those continue to exist) would cite AGI as his major contribution to society, and his name would be more renowned than Edison or Tesla. An Einstein. None of his other contributions will matter, as the machines will…

"his name would be more renowned" Or hated as the name of the man who's opened the Pandora box and doomed us all. Just daydreaming and having a nightmare.

I'm Too Young To Die.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#250

Post by qwerty456127 »

umvi wrote: post #92

There's no such thing as AGI in my opinion. There is no way to create a "conscious" machine. We might be able to come up with some reasonably impressive imitations, but nothing that is conscious or actually thinking like a human.

We don't have to. A general AI doesn't imply consciousness inner experience.
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