Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

facebook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 930 posts

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

#661

Post by hvasilev »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #629

Mathematically speaking, current computers run in discrete (integer/countable) space, and the human brain exists in continuous (real/uncountable) space. Cantor showed that continuous space is larger than, and thus cannot be represented in, discrete space (via diagonal method). I suggest that AGI and consciousness lie in continuous space, and thus are unreachable with our current discrete computation model, regardless…

I wonder how these people have decided it is possible with a digital computer, given that the brain is analog. I wouldn't be surprised if the first step through AGI is to actually crack the analog computer hardware problem.

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

#663

Post by goldenkey »

simonh wrote: post #657
whack wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AlphaGo didn't learn the rules of Go. It has no idea what those rules are, it's just been trained through trial and error not to break them. That's not the same thing. It's not approaching chess or Go as an intelligent thinking being, learning the rules and working out their consequences There are indeed some people who learn chess by "reading the manual". Or learn a language by memorizing grammar rules. Or learn h…

Alphago and it's kind are doing some things that we do, for sure. We do utilise pattern recognition and some of the neurological tools we bring to bear on these problems might look a bit like Alphago. The thing is those are parts of our neurology that have little to do with general intelligence. I think it's becoming clear that they are merely cognitive tools we bring to bear in the service of our higher level genera…

I can't agree with you. I know many chess players at master and Grand Master level. Look at Bobby Fischer too. Human specialization does not carry over very well to other tasks, only marginally...

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

#664

Post by [deleted] »

retsibsi wrote: post #549
MetalGuru wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alignment problem?

> The alignment problem? The problem of ensuring that the AI's values are aligned with ours. One big fear is that an AI will very effectively pursue the goals we give it, but unless we define those goals (and/or the method by which it modifies and creates its own goals) perfectly -- including all sorts of constraints that a human would take for granted, and others that are just really hard to define precisely -- we m…

[deleted]

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

#665

Post by the_af »

Animats wrote: post #313

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…

> 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.

I don't think so. Game NPCs don't need AI, which would be way overkill; they just need to provide the illusion of agency. I think for general AI you need a field where any other option else would be suboptimal or inadequate, but in videogames general AI is the suboptimal option... more cost effective is to just fake it!

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

#666

Post by marvin »

jacquesm wrote: post #255
carlosdp wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bringing up armadillo wasn't meant as an example of success in business but rather as an example of ability to dive into new fields effectively. They did some cool stuff in their short run, and there's an offshoot company still going. But yea, I agree with your general point. I'd just note that having that ability to be insanely productive in working on things people haven't done before means to me that if it's possi…

I'm not in Carmack's league by any stretch of the imagination but I earn a living with being able to absorb a lot of data on a new field in a very short time so I have some idea of what that is like. When other people have already done all the hard work for you that's very easy going if you have some basic knowledge that you can integrate the new stuff with. But that's an entirely different matter compared to actuall…

> nowadays any science worth doing is going to require a lot of specialization first

This seems like one of those seemingly-obvious points that everyone believes but has a decent chance of being proved completely wrong by an unexpected discovery or breakthrough. Assuming I understand you correctly; knowing which giants to stand on has consistently proven to be a requirement - both in science and engineering.

But I see you're sort of alluding to this at the end of your comment, where you're not dismissing this effort as meaningless, but rather not a guaranteed success.

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

#667

Post by simonh »

pingyong wrote: post #623
simonh wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that approach is going to work. For any clearly bounded and delineated task, such as a game, the most optimal, lowest energy and lowest cost solution is not AGI but a custom tuned specialist solver. This is why I don't think Deep Blue or Alphago are paths towards AGI. They are just very highly advanced single-task solvers. Now Alphago and it's implementation framework are much more sophisticated than De…

I think if you have a framework that can produce arbitrary single-task solvers (which AlphaZero can't yet), you would have something indistinguishable from AGI, since communication between single-task solvers is also kinda just a single-task solver. It's certainly not the most efficient way to use our current hardware, and it's not clear to me how big some of these neural nets would have to be, but if we had computer…

How would a single-task solver, or hierarchy of them, go about constructing a conceptual model of a new problem domain? The problem with a solver is it only really goes in a single direction, but when modeling a system you spend a huge amount of time backtracking and eliminating elements that yielded progress at first but then proved to be obstacles to progress later. You also need to be able to rapidly adapt to changing requirements.

Imagine playing a game of Chess in which the pieces and rules gradually changed bit by bit until by the end of the game you were playing Go. That's much closer to what real life problems are like and a human child could absolutely do that. They might not be much good at it, but they could absolutely do it even without ever having played either game before just learning as they went. Note to AGI researchers, if your chatbot can't cope with that or a problem like it without any forewarning, don't bother applying for a Turning Test with me on the other side of the teletype.

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

#668

Post by shrimpx »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #629

Mathematically speaking, current computers run in discrete (integer/countable) space, and the human brain exists in continuous (real/uncountable) space. Cantor showed that continuous space is larger than, and thus cannot be represented in, discrete space (via diagonal method). I suggest that AGI and consciousness lie in continuous space, and thus are unreachable with our current discrete computation model, regardless…

Unrelated to AGI, but quantum physics doesn't admit 'continuity'. Continuity is an abstraction. There are no real numbers in reality.

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

#669

Post by Aeolun »

the_af wrote: post #665
Animats wrote: post #313

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…

> 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. I don't think so. Game NPCs don't need AI, which would be way overkill; they just need to provide the illusion of agency. I think for general AI you need a field where any other option else would be suboptimal or inadequate, but in videogames general AI is the suboptimal option.…

If you have general AI of enough sophistication to use in a game, haven’t you just created a virtual human?

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

#670

Post by flipgimble »

Like many others posting here I’ve followed John’s work frOm the mid 90’s so here is my take:

* he has an exceptional quality of cutting through the bullshit and shipping practical software, which is arguably what the vague and uncertain field of AGI needs. If you listen to AGI conference talks in recent years they are focused on aspirational single-idea academic frameworks that haven’t produced results in decades.

* he is still connected to Facebook with billions in resources, and a world class ML team with Yann LeCun at the head.

* his personal brand has been strong enough to have world class developers flock to Oculus. When he is ready to expand his “Victorian Gentleman” alchemy lab with a team, I have no doubt it would be a field-changing think tank.

My hope is that he continues to be open and brutally honest with his progres and learnings as he’s been with game development and rocketry.

Post reply on HN