Tesla FSD Beta has a body with sensors (cameras) and actuators (engine/wheels/steering). Does that count as embodiment?
Are you suggesting that Tesla's FSD bears any relation to AGI?
Embodiment is indispensable for AGI
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Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI
#22This is kind of a weird discussion. "Embodiment" here seems to mean "having a body," i.e. being able to perform motor tasks in the external world (as opposed to the way it's used in "Embodiment and the Inner Life" [1]). In that case, I don't think embodiment could ever be considered a necessary condition for AGI. But AGI would need to be able to learn motor tasks if given a body (in order to be called "general"). A d…
"qualia" is the bikeshedding for any discussion on intelligence (biological or artificial). It's an unfalsifiable concept that's much easier to reach to than engaging in the concepts that are actually relevant to modern work in those fields. Posting this is a bit of trying to hold back the tide, because the dominant threads in HN AI/BI discussions are almost always horribly uninformed, but I'm posting this so that if…
Eh? I’m not surprised that AI researchers are not informed about the philosophy of mind, and I doubt that they need to be in order to do their work. But the quale is an important concept and just assuming it doesn’t exist because AI researchers don’t need it is a bit silly.
Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI
#23This is kind of a weird discussion. "Embodiment" here seems to mean "having a body," i.e. being able to perform motor tasks in the external world (as opposed to the way it's used in "Embodiment and the Inner Life" [1]). In that case, I don't think embodiment could ever be considered a necessary condition for AGI. But AGI would need to be able to learn motor tasks if given a body (in order to be called "general"). A d…
Whenever I see "qualia" being discussed I just roll my eyes. Asking whether a CPU can experience qualia is kind of like asking if atoms can experience anything. The CPU is just the substrate on which software runs.
You're being quite dismissive of a very real question. Where does our subjective experience come from? If there was an AGI with human-level intelligence, would it have its own subjective experience? How could we possibly know (either way)?
For that matter, does a brain have a subjective experience, or is it just the substrate on which a mind runs?
Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI
#24This is interesting because, if AGI does require embodiment it will be subject to much stronger physical limitations than present “digital-only” approaches are. To fully experience a human-centric world an agent will need a body not too different from humans, and will have all kinds of interesting power and weight constraints, and only be able to handle a certain volume of processing hardware. Thus they might not be…
Embodiment can be virtual. It can learn about place & environment & physicality through simulation. Ref: wikipedia page[1] on embodied cognition. I tend to think about embodiment as being about sensorial systems, things that can perceive an environment, have capabilities to act or move or alter the environment about them.
At some point it might help to have real world physical manifestations. But for a long time we can kind of explore virtual bodies. Even when we do make robots with bodies, I expect their "brain" is likely to remain in the cloud. The bodies could act more like appendages or peripherals. But it would be interesting & I think valuable to start developing a physical sense of self.
Anyone know any good sci-fi that touches upon this? Ancillary Justice has a neat AI (multi-)"character".
Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI
#25Correct. Without real stakes, no real intelligence. Now why on Earth would anyone want to build an embodied AGI, beats me. Actually, it doesn't beat me, it's the age old foolish pride that we'll be able to control our creation. We are not Gods, we won't. There should be international treaties with teeth to ban A(G)I research, like we do for uranium enrichment or (to a lesser extent) for gain of function research. Wha…
We already have several technological "cats out of the bag".
One can go buy a CRISPR kit for $1,000 and perform gain of function studies in their garage.
One could build an accelerator or neutron source to amass radiological materials.
One could make dangerous drones that use basic pattern recognition to target specific people or groups
There are plenty of dangerous technologies available to rogue actors these days. Embodied AIs are the absolute least of my concerns when it comes to dangerous technologies. I'm more worried about the guy in the Tesla robot leotard going crazy than I am about AI.
Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI
#26Correct. Without real stakes, no real intelligence. Now why on Earth would anyone want to build an embodied AGI, beats me. Actually, it doesn't beat me, it's the age old foolish pride that we'll be able to control our creation. We are not Gods, we won't. There should be international treaties with teeth to ban A(G)I research, like we do for uranium enrichment or (to a lesser extent) for gain of function research. Wha…
Perhaps the right thing to do is place an AGI into a simulated world and observe its behaviour over (accelerated) eons, to understand its true nature. Perhaps that’s what our creator is doing to us.
Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever I see "qualia" being discussed I just roll my eyes. Asking whether a CPU can experience qualia is kind of like asking if atoms can experience anything. The CPU is just the substrate on which software runs.
You're being quite dismissive of a very real question. Where does our subjective experience come from? If there was an AGI with human-level intelligence, would it have its own subjective experience? How could we possibly know (either way)? For that matter, does a brain have a subjective experience, or is it just the substrate on which a mind runs?
Why does it matter?
Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI
#28This is kind of a weird discussion. "Embodiment" here seems to mean "having a body," i.e. being able to perform motor tasks in the external world (as opposed to the way it's used in "Embodiment and the Inner Life" [1]). In that case, I don't think embodiment could ever be considered a necessary condition for AGI. But AGI would need to be able to learn motor tasks if given a body (in order to be called "general"). A d…
It's impossible to not be embodied. Controlling CPU and other hardware like motherboard and computer screen is an embodiment. Why would moving physical objects like electrons by micro meters not be good enough, but by meters it would?
It's not micrometers vs meters, or electrons vs macro objects. It's primarily a matter of sensor density. That is, I feel my fingers move in a way that a CPU does not feel an electron move. When I speak, I experience far more than a CPU experiences writing some bits to some output ports. And so on.
Does that mean that embodiment is required? No. But your definition of "embodied" misses the point of the discussion.
Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI
#29This is something I always thought. AGI must learn what simple ideas such as 'a thing' are, how to find a path (look at how arboreal species navigate) and how that relates to movement, etc. Our physical interactions with the world, as much as our senses, inform everything we do about the world. I do not understand why we would want AGI though. Seems like we already have humans for that.
> Seems like we already have humans for that.
Perhaps this will not always be the case.
Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI
#30Correct. Without real stakes, no real intelligence. Now why on Earth would anyone want to build an embodied AGI, beats me. Actually, it doesn't beat me, it's the age old foolish pride that we'll be able to control our creation. We are not Gods, we won't. There should be international treaties with teeth to ban A(G)I research, like we do for uranium enrichment or (to a lesser extent) for gain of function research. Wha…
DALL-E 2 and Imagen make me feel the Singularity and ensuing AI apocalypse is way closer than we thought :(