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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

#331

Post by mycall »

jacquesm wrote: post #263
brainpool wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGI is not a research problem but an imagination problem. I can’t vouch for how good John Carmack is in imagination, but striving to put things together with a goal seems like a good place to start.

I can imagine AGI just fine. Doesn't get me one tiny little bit closer to being able to make one. There are several ways in which one could go about such a development, all we have for now is an existence proof and none of the paths pointed out so far have been viable. Whether John will come up with novel path is not really an imagination issue but one of very deep understanding of the problem space, what has been tr…

My favorite AGI so far is Cyc.

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

#332

Post by irjustin »

jacquesm wrote: post #168

AGI is not an engineering problem but a research problem. John Carmack is good at putting stuff together but how good he is at coming up with novel concepts for an open research problem remains to be seen. Even the rocketry example that is hailed here as a success mostly wasn't. That doesn't make me happy, it would have been far nicer if Armadillo had succeeded, more competition in that space is better. But for all t…

I would argue that this is exactly the space he should be in.

AGI is a very active research position that arguably lacks the engineering/real-world arm that I believe Carmack could provide.

His early work in 3D graphics and math are supportive arguments for that. Research ideas turned into viable real-world systems.

Is it too early? I think us armchair hnews users can go back and forth all day. But in the end, we'll only find out the answer after the fact.

I hope all the best for him in this. I think this is a perfect space for him to fit int.

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

#333

Post by EamonnMR »

nradov wrote: post #187
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…

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

I'm skeptical of this assertion. It mimics some bits and pieces of the only GI we know about right now; that's as good a start as any, right?

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

#334

Post by jobigoud »

randomidiot666 wrote: post #306
K0SM0S wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still convinced we'll have "good enough" barebones yet spatially aware AR first. It's just less intensive on the front end side, which is the limiting factor now as I understand it. VR is a whole other thing, and I think the "uncanny valley" stretches quite far; ie you need quality really close to what we see in movies to pass the acceptable threshold beyond a few hours of novelty.

VR sickness still applies, even if you have perfectly realistic rendering, infinite frame rate, infinite resolution, perfect tracking, and zero latency. It's caused by a discrepancy between the visual and vestibular systems. That problem cannot be solved by higher quality rendering.

It's only a problem if you are moving in the virtual world using a different method than what your body is using in the real world. If the VR world is a simple 1:1 mapping and you can walk around in it as you do in the physical space, there is no vection.

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

#335

Post by 77pt77 »

umvi wrote: post #149
wahern wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can explain precisely why we cannot build a conscious machine, you could become one of the most revered, and potentially wealthiest, researchers in the world, as I presume such a proof would necessarily introduce unknown and very useful science. I personally don't believe modern machine learning is remotely close to AI, except perhaps the very lowest rung of the ladder of self-serving AI definitions. I base th…

I can't prove it, but I will tell you why I believe it. We can't build a conscious machine because I believe there is a spiritual aspect to life that we have thus far failed to empirically observe or measure. Put another way, I believe all humans have a "spirit" inside of them, and that said spirit is a prerequisite of conscious thought. This same spirit is what makes life after death possible. This belief, of course…

So because of vitalism and dualism whoo whoo.

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

#336

Post by TwoBit »

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.

As impressive as AlphaZero surely is, I don't think it ever got a proper comparison to Stockfish. It was running on a veritable supercomputer while Stockfish was running in a crippled mode on crippled hardware.

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

#337

Post by EamonnMR »

sullyj3 wrote: post #309
lonelappde wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

you're possibly thinking of the problem of consciousness, which is a totally separate thing. AGI is just what it says on the tin - a general intelligence. That is, a problem solver that can operate at a human or greater level in a broad variety of domains. This ability is plausibly totally orthogonal to "having the lights on" - having subjective experience.

The scary thing (imo) is that we don't know where the line is for consciousness - if there even is a line. We've got no problem swatting flies, wonder if it'll be the same with spinning up and spinning down fly-level AGIs.

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

#338

Post by xamuel »

mycall wrote: post #327
xamuel wrote: post #319

I've been dabbling in AGI and it seems like the field has a lot of low-hanging fruit. I'll bet Carmack can offer some significant contributions. I'll take an opportunity to plug a paper I recently published on comparing relative intelligence. The punchline will illuminate the low-hangingness of the fruit in this field. Suppose X and Y are AGIs and you want to know which is more intelligent. For any interactive reward…

How did you rule out other attributes in the voting, such as charisma, political environment, society wellness, etc?

The "voters" are not humans, but environments. A simple example of an environment would be a room with two buttons, one of which rewards you when you press it, and one of which punishes you when you press it. Independently of anything like charisma, society wellness, etc. If X figures this out quicker and pushes the "reward" button more often than Y, then we consider this simple environment to "vote" for X in the intelligence contest. (See the paper for the formal definitions.)

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

#339

Post by randcraw »

ineedasername wrote: post #253
drcode wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carmack is someone who has proven to be an almost unequalled productivity machine when working on medium-difficulty problems... Now, for the first time, we'll see if his approach to problem solving can also work on a truly difficult problem. I agree it's very much an open question.

Is that really true though? It seems more like he's good at a medium difficulty problems in a narrow subdomain of software development, which is saying something a bit different. I might even say he's good at hard problems within that subdomain. How transferable those skills are is the most salient point. Assuming peak genius level intellect (which, I don't know, maybe ?) It would still take something like 4 or 5 yea…

Agreed. Deep learning has revolutionized AI and anyone hoping to contribute to AGI is going to have to master DL first, and probably a lot more AI like a variety of probabilistic methods.

That's a challenging learning curve that's not much different from earning a PhD. And then, to stand out in AGI, you're going to have to integrate a dozen kinds of cutting edge components, none of which are anywhere ready for prime time.

At this moment in time, I think any attempt at implementing AGI is going to be half-baked at best. For now, a Siri / Alexa that can do more than answer single questions will be challenging enough.

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

#340

Post by birdyrooster »

b3kart wrote: post #190
Yajirobe wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? One week is more than enough to go through Siraj's videos.

Please tell me this is sarcasm.

It's HN so only the best sarcasm is allowed here. That is good sarcasm. Bask in it.

Source: Commenter name is DBZ character

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