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

711–720 of 930 posts

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

#711

Post by simonh »

state_less wrote: post #704
lawlessone wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way i think it can be done is simulated evolution.. be that simulated evolution of neural nets or something else. As others have mentioned here though.. this becomes horrifying if we've created something sentient to kill in games or enslave.

The open ended simulations, similar to earth conditions, might general enough to sprout some artificial general intelligence. Put multiple intelligences in a massive multiplayer online world and have them compete for shelter and resources. It's an environment that we know has produced intelligence. It may be a brutal struggle, but perhaps that struggle is important. Perhaps having a simulated tree fall on you is more…

I think you’re on a potentially productive path, but it took 2 billion years of evolution in a staggeringly vast environment like that to produce results. The question is really how to shortcut that process, but training environments may well have a role to play.

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

#712

Post by marcus_holmes »

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…

But in this classification, isn't "general intelligence" just a meta-single-problem-solver, solving the problem of which single purpose solver to bring to bear on this task?

I think I think, but might I just be using a single problem solver that gives the appearance of thinking?

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

#713

Post by sampo »

betageek wrote: post #686
lawlessone wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way i think it can be done is simulated evolution.. be that simulated evolution of neural nets or something else. As others have mentioned here though.. this becomes horrifying if we've created something sentient to kill in games or enslave.

Ted Chiang wrote an interesting novella, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, about that very subject https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lifecycle_of_Software_Obje...

Another one is Crystal Nights by Greg Egan. Full text here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090604111226/http://ttapress.c...

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

#714

Post by davidgrenier »

_hao wrote: post #606
Jaruzel wrote: post #518

Carmack's post in full: Starting this week, I’m moving to a "Consulting CTO” position with Oculus. I will still have a voice in the development work, but it will only be consuming a modest slice of my time. As for what I am going to be doing with the rest of my time: When I think back over everything I have done across games, aerospace, and VR, I have always felt that I had at least a vague “line of sight” to the sol…

I have FB blocked so thanks for sharing!

I would like to block facebook but I'm on debian. Last thing I tried to block was reddit through /etc/hosts and it didn't work.

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

#715

Post by marcus_holmes »

simonh wrote: post #667
pingyong wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 chan…

they'd do it like we do: by comparing the new situation to previous ones we know about, and applying the model that fits best, and then adapting to results.

For humans, the more previous ones we know about, the better, because we have more chance of applying a model that works in the new environment. That's called "experience".

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

#716

Post by PavlovsCat »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #142
catalogia wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of a better site for him to make such arguments. What's the point of such criticism if the subjects of the criticism never read it?

One-off snide attacks in a comment section without any evidence or argument to back it up offers nothing of value. If you have a strong stance about the evils of software development then write something of substance and post it. I am sure it will get plenty of discussion if there's any merit to it.

> One-off snide attacks in a comment section without any evidence or argument to back it up offers nothing of value.

Can you back that up? Here's the comment:

> You guys really get high on your own supply don't you? It's a toss-up these days whether something from computer science or a programmer will either enhance or erode the human experience and quality of life.

"getting high on your own supply" isn't such a giant insult that you can simply "make the dozen full" and claim whatever you want about the comment.

> I am sure it will get plenty of discussion if there's any merit to it.

Then you're sure of something that is demonstrably false, and one-off low effort sophistry like this offers nothing of value. There is no hard connection between the merit of something and HN's ability to discuss it. Take this story sticking to the top for probably over 24 hours, basically an announement to spend more time with his son, and that's it, while this got sunk off the front page yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21527622

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

#717

Post by hackinthebochs »

wpietri wrote: post #401
hackinthebochs wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent's point was that reaching AGI isn't merely a research problem, in the sense of X amount of person-hours of research by typical researchers will solve the problem. Rather, we need new ideas and new conceptual frameworks, i.e. new imaginative leaps to reveal the path forward towards AGI.

Could you list a few fields of research where "X amount of person-hours of research by typical researchers will solve the problem"? I can't think of one.

It's not about fields specifically, but about particular problems within fields. An example is neuroscience discovering the function of some unknown functional unit of the brain. We have all the conceptual machinery to solve the problem, we just need to fill in the details. On the other hand, the problem of consciousness doesn't even have the conceptual machinery in place such that more details will lead to the solution. A solution here will require conceptual leaps that we can't put a boundary on like we reasonably can when the conceptual groundwork is already established.

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

#718

Post by simonh »

stestagg wrote: post #652
noir-york wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A child picks up an apple but doesn't know what an apple "is". It doesn't even have the vocabulary to describe it. As adults we know what an apple is because we understand it as a concept, the ideal "apple", and can manipulate the concept into areas way outside the original concept (say, the phrase "apple of my eye").

A child comes pre-programmed to put things in their mouth. They also have very sophisticated reward functions built-in that identify tasty sugars entering their mouth. Very quickly (assuming said child doesn't eat something too bad), in the absence of an external oracle, the child learns a very productive mental model of what an apple is. This type of feedback loop seems eminently translatable to machine learning, as…

Right, but that’s actually just a tiny part of the puzzle. The cognitive machinery that knows about edibility, deco possibility (how objects can be decomposed into parts and have internal structure), compost leaves properties (how the parts of an Apple contribute to its attributes as a whole), it’s relationship and interactions with other objects in the environment. All of that cognitive architecture might be a target for your feedback loop, but isn’t a solver and won’t work like a solver.

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

#719

Post by marcus_holmes »

lawlessone wrote: post #607
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…

The only way i think it can be done is simulated evolution.. be that simulated evolution of neural nets or something else. As others have mentioned here though.. this becomes horrifying if we've created something sentient to kill in games or enslave.

well, "kill" becomes moot if the code is preserved. Like "killing" another player in a multi-player game. You're not actually killing them.

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

#720

Post by marcus_holmes »

sampo wrote: post #713
betageek wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ted Chiang wrote an interesting novella, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, about that very subject https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lifecycle_of_Software_Obje...

Another one is Crystal Nights by Greg Egan. Full text here: https://web.archive.org/web/20090604111226/http://ttapress.c...

Or Iain Banks' take on the subject, in Surface Detail(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail)

edit: wrong book ;)

Post reply on HN