Live data from Hacker News

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

facebook.com

421–430 of 930 posts

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

#421
post #26

i say this with respect and humility, but i am very surprised at the naivete with which John addressed the subject of AGI. he is so casual about it -- not only the idea of working on it but also the idea of it existing at all. he seems oblivious to the gravity of that discovery. it is not just "very valuable," it will be earth shattering and probably wipe out humanity. and its his side-project. and his son will help…

Stop staying up late to watch DUST on Youtube.

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes the thread even worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#422

This is encouraging. If you're going to work on artificial general intelligence, a reasonable context in which to work on it is game NPCs. They have to operate in a world, interact with others, survive, and accomplish goals. Simulator technology is now good enough that you can do quite realistic worlds. Imagine The Sims, with a lot more internal smarts and real physics, as a base for work. Robotics has the same issue…

Yeah I believe in this game / simulated world NPC idea too. To get the kind of complexity we want we either need sensors in the real world or interfacing in a virtual world that humans bring complexity to (probably both -- the humans are part of the sensing technology to start). Things like AlphaZero etc. got good cuz they had a simulatable model of the world (just a chess board + next state function in their case). We need increasingly complex and intetesting forms of that.

In some sense you can think of interfacing w/ the online world + trying to win attention to yourself as the kind of general game that is being played.

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

#423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I actually don't think mastering deep learning is very difficult. Theres a gazillion papers and ideas floating around, but the core concepts, that actually work, things like batch normalization, gradient descent, dropout, etc are all relatively simple. Most of the complexity comes from second rate scientists pushing their flawed research out into the public in some form of a status game

For anyone unfamiliar with all but the most trivial details, do you have some good papers to recommend, to save us from wading through all the rest?

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

#424
One could imagine him beginning to work in gaming AI, but he says he wants to work on AGI, not simply gaming AI.

I'm personally not convinced that it is encouraging when someone bright sets their sights on AGI, particularly someone who appears to have never competed on Kaggle. It screams hubris.

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

#425
post #312

>For the time being at least, I am going to be going about it “Victorian Gentleman Scientist” style, pursuing my inquiries from home Who will fund the necessary computing resources? If not FB, then he will surely be joining or starting a different org

In Victorian times, a "gentleman" was someone who had so much money they didn't need to work.

He's been a major shareholder in 2 companies that have been acquired (Id and Occulus)

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

#426
post #187

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.

As I like to say: lots of people are working on making a car that is smart enough to drive itself wherever a human wants to go. How many people are working on a car smart enough to tell humans to fuck off, it doesn’t feel like driving anywhere today?

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

#427

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…

I'm not sure I want AGI to succeed, given some of the possibilities. Sure if it plays nicely alongside us, amplifying human society, that's great. But if we get relegated to second class with the AIs doing everything meaningful, then no thanks. But it's still a fascinating endeavor.

Why not? I'd say that a world that is managed by AGI with limited input from human beings is a good goal to have. If AGI could be done without the nasty parts of human psychology and they're inherently superior to genetically intact human beings why shouldn't be embrace it?

I understand that it's a big assumption to make -- that a benevolent AI could be constructed. But under that assumption, why not have a benevolent dictator in the form of an AI?

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

#428
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't his shadow volume technique quite hard and original ? He's not just plumbing things it seems.

A lot of what he did in PC graphics was very original, but in the old days it was narrowly applicable, while by the time Doom 3 was in development, his gfx programming could be more widely applied to other things. I think his fast inverse sqrt was VERY impressive, which he didn't invent first but may have come up with independently.

He didn't do the fast inverse on quake. The wiki article has a bunch of guesses for who did it.

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

#429

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…

I can trust John Carmack's words when he says in an interview, or on stage. There's a passion in his talks, a nervousness in blurting what he really feels, and those are really good traits, in my mind. I genuinely felt a sense of disappointment when he moved to Facebook (via the Occulus acquisition). So yea, fuck you, Facebook and your manipulative, life values corrupting and PR machinery. I place John Carmack miles…

I have to admit, I felt a bit disappointed too. Carmack and Facebook always struck me as an antithetical pairing - the creativity/independence of the former didn't seem to sit right with the maniacal/emotional exploitation of the latter.

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

#430

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.

Yeah, but we really need to know who would win in a lightsaber fight between Carmack and Jeff Dean.

I wonder what they would pick if each had to choose their weapon
Post reply on HN