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Cyc

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Re: Cyc

#111

Post by lonelappde »

Rerarom wrote: post #87
catpolice wrote: post #15

I worked for Cycorp for a few years recently. AMA, I guess? I obviously won't give away any secrets (e.g. business partners, finer grained details of how the inference engine works), but I can talk about the company culture, some high level technical things and the interpretation of the project that different people at the company have that makes it seem more viable than you might guess from the outside. There were s…

1) Do you think it's possible that Cyc would lead to AGI? 2) Do you think it's possible that Cyc would lead to AI advances that are impressive to the layman like AlphaGo or GPT-2?

Cyc uses a dead-end 1980s concept of AGI (expert system ruleset) that led to the AI winter.

Re: Cyc

#112

Post by Jeff_Brown »

randomidiot666 wrote: post #98
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We actually do have reason to believe that [intelligence relies on quantum properties] Are you leaving the reason unsaid, or am I in fact reading your argument correctly: "We don't understand consciousness, and we don't understand quantum, therefore it is likely consciousness relies on quantum." There's already plenty of mystery in an ordinary deterministic computation-driven approach to intelligence.

No I'm saying: "We don't have a perfectly accurate physical model of consciousness, we know that physics is incomplete, and our current model of neurons extends to the lowest levels of known physics, therefore there may be unknown physics involved in consciousness, and those unknown physics may not be computable."

In response to

> > we have no reason to believe intelligence relies on [as-yet mysterious aspects of quantum physics]

you wrote

> We actually do have reason to believe that ...

and later clarified

> [some true premises], therefore there may be unknown physics involved in consciousness, and those unknown physics may not be computable.

Saying something could be is different from saying we have reason to believe it. There may be a soul. Absent convincing evidence of the soul, though, we shouldn't predicate other research on the idea that it exists.

Re: Cyc

#113

Post by randomidiot666 »

randomidiot666 wrote: post #98
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We actually do have reason to believe that [intelligence relies on quantum properties] Are you leaving the reason unsaid, or am I in fact reading your argument correctly: "We don't understand consciousness, and we don't understand quantum, therefore it is likely consciousness relies on quantum." There's already plenty of mystery in an ordinary deterministic computation-driven approach to intelligence.

No I'm saying: "We don't have a perfectly accurate physical model of consciousness, we know that physics is incomplete, and our current model of neurons extends to the lowest levels of known physics, therefore there may be unknown physics involved in consciousness, and those unknown physics may not be computable."

I clarified it in my latest reply above. The original comment asked if there is any doubt as to whether a neuron can be represented computationally. We don't know exactly what a neuron is, and are still discovering new subtle mechanisms in their functioning, and they are part of the most complex structure in the known universe, therefore of course there is doubt.

Re: Cyc

#114

Post by drongoking »

yters wrote: post #62
xamuel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been some philosophical speculating but that's generally not very actionable, with people clinging to either side of the question. On the practical side, it's the sort of thing which you can't just throw money at and make progress. Ok, you have $100mil to research whether human intelligence is computable. What do you do? Hire lots of humans and assign them noncomputable tasks and tap your foot waiting for o…

But that's the sort of thing that should be researched: is the question scientifically answerable? The answer is not obviously no. I can think of ways to scientifically test for noncomputability. If I can then certainly much smarter and knowledgeable poeple can. People just assume like yourself it is not and throw lots of money at a certain assumption. If the assumption is wrong, not only is AGI a dead end, but "huma…

OK, what experiments would you design to test whether AGI is possible? Given the decades (centuries?) of thought that have gone into the issue, I'm sure a set of experiments would be valuable.

Re: Cyc

#115

Post by Jeff_Brown »

randomidiot666 wrote: post #74
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intelligence is a human property, yes, but also a Platonic one. We didn't need to understand how humans process math in order to get computers to do it.

As stated in my other reply: "Human consciousness extends far beyond our current understanding. I am referring to the full extent of the capabilities of the human mind, not some isolated aspects of it." Computers have not superseded humans in mathematical research. That is way beyond anything that we can program into a computer. Computers are better at computation, which is not the same thing.

By "math" I mean proving theorems, not doing arithmetic. Yes, we're better at finding useful theorems, but computers can do it.

More generally, the fact that currently humans are the only entity observed doing X does not mean you need to understand humans to understand X.

Re: Cyc

#116

Post by drongoking »

catpolice wrote: post #15

I worked for Cycorp for a few years recently. AMA, I guess? I obviously won't give away any secrets (e.g. business partners, finer grained details of how the inference engine works), but I can talk about the company culture, some high level technical things and the interpretation of the project that different people at the company have that makes it seem more viable than you might guess from the outside. There were s…

Two questions.

It's difficult to evaluate CYC given Cycorp's secrecy. Domingos called it something like a colossal failure, which is hard to believe, but it's hard to argue given how little info gets out of Cycorp. So does Cycorp have any interest in changing this? Do they care about improving their reputation in the AI community?

How would you compare Cyc (both the knowledge base and the inference engine) with current efforts in the semantic web? Is OWL/RDF just too simple to encode the kind of logic you think common sense needs?

Re: Cyc

#117

Post by randomidiot666 »

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #115
randomidiot666 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As stated in my other reply: "Human consciousness extends far beyond our current understanding. I am referring to the full extent of the capabilities of the human mind, not some isolated aspects of it." Computers have not superseded humans in mathematical research. That is way beyond anything that we can program into a computer. Computers are better at computation, which is not the same thing.

By "math" I mean proving theorems, not doing arithmetic. Yes, we're better at finding useful theorems, but computers can do it. More generally, the fact that currently humans are the only entity observed doing X does not mean you need to understand humans to understand X.

I wrote "computation", not "arithmetic". Human intelligence goes beyond computation / mathematical logic, and you seem to ignore all of that. We haven't got a clue how consciousness works. It's a total mystery.

Re: Cyc

#118

Post by et2o »

This Wikipedia article is clearly not neutral in tone. It reads like the CEO wrote it.

Re: Cyc

#119

Post by ma2rten »

lonelappde wrote: post #111
Rerarom wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Do you think it's possible that Cyc would lead to AGI? 2) Do you think it's possible that Cyc would lead to AI advances that are impressive to the layman like AlphaGo or GPT-2?

Cyc uses a dead-end 1980s concept of AGI (expert system ruleset) that led to the AI winter.

Neural networks also led to the AI winter. It wasn't until we had enough compute power that neural networks become popular again.

Some people think that reasoning is the same. If we had a database of enough common sense facts there would be a tipping point were it becomes useful.

Re: Cyc

#120

Post by Jeff_Brown »

randomidiot666 wrote: post #117
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "math" I mean proving theorems, not doing arithmetic. Yes, we're better at finding useful theorems, but computers can do it. More generally, the fact that currently humans are the only entity observed doing X does not mean you need to understand humans to understand X.

I wrote "computation", not "arithmetic". Human intelligence goes beyond computation / mathematical logic, and you seem to ignore all of that. We haven't got a clue how consciousness works. It's a total mystery.

The aim of AI is intelligence, not human intelligence. It's not to emulate a process; it's to solve problems.

If we do build AI, maybe we'll never know if it's conscious. You can't know whether any other human is conscious, either. But you can know whether they make you laugh, or cry, or learn, or love. The knowable things are good enough.

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