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Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

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Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#61

Post by K0SM0S »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #28
Isinlor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly.

The baseline assumption in modern neurology is that meaning, for living things, is derived from their physical experience of the world. In short that no paper definition can ever substitute for experiencing first-hand what the "effect" of something is, what it does to you or to the world and what that entails for your body, your life. That is what "knowing" and "meaning" ultimately are.

These experiences are the basis for associations in our constant cognitive (and emotional, instinctive, sensory, symbolic, etc) modelling of the world. Associations beget complexity (dimensionality, modalities) of the model. Hence, "finely tuned" or "high definition" i.e. ever more "advanced" intelligences.

Given the overall crudeness and extreme simplicity of a CPU (or any man-made machine) compared to any living organism, I'm actually willing to bet that should CPU-based AI's "feel" something, it's on the order of 1/100th of what a shrimp feels, and they'd develop real-world intelligence at that level. Infinitely smarter than a potato, yet infinitely dumber than a fish. You don't run ape software on amoeba hardware.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#62

Post by AnimalMuppet »

UmbertoNoEco wrote: post #47
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's trivial to give a regular CPU better sensing than you in dozens of variables (pressure, temperature, voltage, CO concentration, etc), so your point is rather weak.

I absolutely agree. You can, and better than humans. Not only better for any one sense, but also more senses than humans have.

But that isn't what Isinlor was talking about. They said "moving electrons around" within the normal CPU circuitry as if that was the same as actuators controlling the external world. It's not.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#63

Post by mark_l_watson »

Maybe the embodiment criteria is required, but personally I don’t think so.

re: “Visual language AI that is completely digital is not AGI”:

I think what is required is interaction with people. I think that interaction can be online conversations with millions of people, each with a separate human-specific context in addition to global knowledge. This is really just the Turing Test but so-called up to millions of people with conversations that might span several years, changing world conditions, etc.

A cost function could be continued engagement with people. AGIs that are not interesting are not AGIs and fail.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#64

Post by olalonde »

afarrell wrote: post #43
olalonde wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice theory but: 1) If AGI is possible, it will happen no matter what international treaties are in place. 2) AGI could do an unimaginable amount of good if it is benevolent. It seems a bit premature to stop all research just because you have a bad hunch about it.

Not if there are sufficient incentives to defect from the team trying to develop AGI and sufficient memetic defenses against someone doing so for nationalistic reasons.

Einstein developed his groundbreaking theories while working as a clerk in the Swiss patent office. Information and education today are even more accessible than it was back then. If research is banned from universities and companies, someone will eventually discover AGI in their basement.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#65

Post by K0SM0S »

tshaddox wrote: post #52
K0SM0S wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no asking, let alone answering this question beyond mere speculations, until we've defined "subjective experience" in objective terms — i.e. positively provable, measurable in some unambiguous way (not merely inferred). That is the hard problem. Solving it might require reframing the problem such that this dichotomy isn't even relevant anymore (like say electromagnetic information isn't "opposed" or "dual" or…

It strikes me as odd to start from the position "we declare this thing to undeniably exist" and then spend generations trying to spit out even one sentence describing what evidence or explanation for its existence might even plausibly look like.

…to the point of claiming it "must be present in all things, living or otherwise, even particles, yet perfectly invisible" (panpsychism, iirc?). Because why not generalizing a flawed hypothesis whose observational range is limited to a tiny subset of existence (advanced biological species, as far as we know). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

IMHO it's the old darkness/duality problem all over again — postulating some "essence" (e.g. the spiritual/religious Soul) and basing theory on a mere intuition, instead of invoking a "placeholder" (like "dark matter" isn't necessarily matter but literally "something that behaves as such" whatever it actually is, or like "dark energy" isn't necessarily a fifth interaction but certainly behaves as such or as anti-gravity of sorts; wherein "dark" means "unknown and hidden from direct observation, merely inferred"). Hence my call to not infer the very measurement thereof if we are to call an explanatory hypothesis.

Should we start by stating that "qualia" or "consciousness" or whatever is a placeholder name for "whatever dark (unknown, black-box) mechanism explains the observable phenomenon named as such", then we might have a chance at actually forming a coherent theory thereof. IMHO.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#66

Post by thesz »

"Even the most faithful philosopher cannot live without his blood"

This is The Talos Principle, a game [1] and [2] a basis for so much thought.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Talos_Principle

[2] https://steamcommunity.com/market/listings/753/257510-The%20... - "even the most faithful philosopher cannot live without his blood"

The game was about AGI, by the way, getting a right to be embodied in real world. And it is puzzling why no one mentions it here.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#67

Post by olalonde »

saulpw wrote: post #23
snek_case wrote: post #6

Earlier 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?

You can't possibly know. Just as you can't possibly know if anyone else experiences a subjective experience or if you're the only one who does. In practice, it is advisable to act as if agents who behave as if they had a subjective experience really do (people, AGIs, animals, etc.).

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#68

Post by hackinthebochs »

K0SM0S wrote: post #38
saulpw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There's no asking, let alone answering this question beyond mere speculations, until we've defined "subjective experience" in objective terms — i.e. positively provable, measurable in some unambiguous way (not merely inferred). That is the hard problem. Solving it might require reframing the problem such that this dichotomy isn't even relevant anymore (like say electromagnetic information isn't "opposed" or "dual" or…

This issue of "definition" is missing what's at stake. The issue is modelling nature in such a way that plausibly includes subjective experience. And then validating this model. But subjective experience is intrinsically inaccessible to empirical validation. We can test the physical predictions of the model, but how subjective experience fits into the model is an orthogonal question. If we are to answer the question of subjective experience, we need to embrace "speculation" without empirical anchoring to guide our investigations. Shutting down speculation is just to shut down any investigation at all.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#69

Post by tshaddox »

K0SM0S wrote: post #65
tshaddox wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It strikes me as odd to start from the position "we declare this thing to undeniably exist" and then spend generations trying to spit out even one sentence describing what evidence or explanation for its existence might even plausibly look like.

…to the point of claiming it "must be present in all things, living or otherwise, even particles, yet perfectly invisible" (panpsychism, iirc?). Because why not generalizing a flawed hypothesis whose observational range is limited to a tiny subset of existence (advanced biological species, as far as we know). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ IMHO it's the old darkness /duality problem all over again — postulating some "essence" (e.g. the s…

> Should we start by stating that "qualia" or "consciousness" or whatever is a placeholder name for "whatever dark (unknown, black-box) mechanism explains the observable phenomenon named as such", then we might have a chance at actually forming a coherent theory thereof. IMHO.

Perhaps, although in the case of qualia I’m not sure what the phenomenon is that we need a placeholder explanation for. For dark matter we’ve got certain observations of galaxies. For qualia we’ve got, what? A lot of people who feel very strongly that they are unable to deny the existence of something that they cannot describe beyond that claim of undeniable existence? If that’s how astrophysicists explained dark matter I’d be inclined to think that maybe it just doesn’t exist.

Edit: thanks to autocomplete we were briefly embroiled in an argument about the existence of quails.

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