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Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

theatlantic.com

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Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#121

Post by sown »

krichman wrote: post #106
SeanLuke wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The field is now called AGI. No it's not.

The parent post spent a lot of time to try and inform us, including multiple links. To post a dismissive comment in response, with no explanation whatsoever, is well beyond rude.

I think people are suspicious or dismissive of AGI, HTM, etc because...well...there doesn't seem to be anything really to it. People who know AI I've talked to in the know about HTM don't know anything about it or have mildly negative things to say. Ditto for AGI. It's a contentious topic and people just get defensive.

Many of those links in grandparent post were from or about opencog. I can make long blog posts about opencog that refer to opencog as proof, too...but it wouldn't mean anything. Religious people do that sort of thing all the time.

The proof would be in the pudding, right? So if AGI at least has some hypothesis, then it should be able to produce some results, right?

I very much want AGI to happen. You want AGI to happen. Our interests are in agreement. However, there isn't really much proof about any current hypothesis, as far as I can tell, that can produce any real system. It's a dream so far.

I don't mean it has to be a really solid understanding of conscience but it's so undefined, unknown area right now we can't even approach it.

Instead of making long blog posts and replies to comments, and then get offended when people don't buy into it, the most people can do right now is to go investigate, hypothesize and try to build something.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#122

Post by sown »

ilaksh wrote: post #83

The field is now called AGI. It isn't mentioned in this article. Everyone seems to be ignoring the whole field of AGI (artificial general intelligence). Or maybe they truly are ignorant of it. Anyway, suffice to say, AI and AGI didn't stop progressing, and Chomsky is no longer any sort of expert in those fields. Even Norvig isn't up to speed on the most advanced approaches to AGI, but at least he enters the same room…

>1. Senses to obtain features from ‘the world’ (virtual or actual), >2. A coherent means for storing knowledge obtained this way, and >3. Adaptive output/ actuation mechanisms (both static and dynamic).

What does that even mean?

If it's so easy to sum it up in a chapter of a book, why don't they build it and allow others to examine it, submit it for review, write papers and submit to ACM, build fantastic machines based on it? All I want is a bit of proof.

You and I have similar interests: we would like for AGI to happen. Even though I'm not sure what AGI means. It's a sort of dream right now for me, but perhaps more of a reality for you?

Most of that large post is neat, but it's not going to convince me if I've never heard of AGI and if I currently know something about AI.

The most you can do is to go do what I mentioned earlier: go build systems, investigate, write papers and go to conferences and I don't mean conferences where it's just AGI people.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#123

Post by corporalagumbo »

duaneb wrote: post #55
Cacti wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which way is he vague? He basically reinvented a Turing Machine with human language and brought linguistics around to the idea that, yes, language isn't something that's vaguely "out there" tabula-rasa-style, it's built into our genetics at a very fundamental level. Fundamental enough that he tied linguistics DIRECTLY to math and from there to programming. The Chomsky Heirarchy is no joke. Your link relating to st…

> it's built into our genetics at a very fundamental level. Chomsky's evidence for this is.... iffy at best. Yes, I think we are predisposed to HAVE language, but I don't think we can learn as much as he proposes about the structure of modern language from the human genome.

1) You should read The Language Instinct.

2) I don't think the problem with learning about language from the genome is specific to language. There are just so many layers of molecular interactions between the genetic code and activity at our level of reality that trying to link the two is incredibly difficult, and we are not even close to having the computing power or theoretical models necessary to link them up. But that doesn't mean that language and genes aren't linked.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#124

Post by sown »

ilaksh wrote: post #94
SeanLuke wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The field is now called AGI. No it's not.

What they are talking about is the idea of human-like general intelligence, and AI mostly doesn't try to do that anymore, although there are some people who are seriously trying and calling it AI and even a few who are sort of aware of what the AGI people are doing or have projects that are as sophisticated. But most of the researchers who are farthest along and most serious about it have been calling it AGI. Anyway,…

> and AI mostly doesn't try to do that anymore,

I think part of the problem is that we don't even know what AGI really is. How do you define conscience in a rigourous way. Doesn't mean it can't be done without such work but it just seems soooo undefined right now that people are suspicious if someone comes along and claims to have a partial solution.

Do we even know what we're looking for? When we do know or have an idea, I am willing to imagine that we'd have more AI research in that area and the AGI would be taken more seriously.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#125

Post by jklio »

zerostar07 wrote: post #33
achy wrote: post #27

Like many things, Chomsky is both right and wrong. He's right in that if we studied the structure and functioning of the brain we could built more accurate AI. He's terribly wrong because the structures of the brain are fuzzy and give rise to probabilistic and 'statistical' functioning that is itself based on training (much like the models he derides).

How are brain structures fuzzy?

Optical illusions where we see one thing then another are numerous, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_vase

In these there is obviously some contest going on between fuzzy classifiers, as there is in conceptual association games, misinterpretations of song lyrics between people and errors like the Freudian slip. There are at least large parts of our brains that seem to operate in this manner.

That said our use of logic and reason certainly says there is a part of our brain that works in a non-fuzzy way, or at least can be trained to work like. However, while there are people who understand the odds and are just there for a good time, it's instructive to go to a Casino and see how many people believe they can win and believe in lucky charms.

This topic is a minefield of semantic games with hidden assumptions and people arguing across each other though.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#126

Post by cdavid »

Evbn wrote: post #87
cdavid wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your observation is so vague and general to the point of being rather meaningless. Almost every physical theory is described by an underlying mapping between inputs. The interesting point is the expression power of your model. : to take an example I am somehow familiar with, current large vocabulary speech recognizers have millions of parameters. They work relatively well, but they are very difficult to interpret, an…

Do you have any reason to suspect this isn't how the brain works? Maybe language isn't a small set of high level rules. Why should we suspect it to be? The probablistic models seem to be very similar to how real people actually learn informal language. Formal languages of course have high-level rules, and these are well modelled algorithmically.

I don't particularly have any reason to believe one way or the other. Certainly, the probabilistic models for language are created "out of the blue" without any attempt to model how human learn languages.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#127

Post by zerostar07 »

jklio wrote: post #125
zerostar07 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are brain structures fuzzy?

Optical illusions where we see one thing then another are numerous, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_vase In these there is obviously some contest going on between fuzzy classifiers, as there is in conceptual association games, misinterpretations of song lyrics between people and errors like the Freudian slip. There are at least large parts of our brains that seem to operate in this manner. That said our use…

I think you mean human behavior is fuzzy. Brain circuits are sometimes chaotic but pretty deterministic. The sensory input is noisy though.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#128

Post by cdavid »

confluence wrote: post #117
corporalagumbo wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky_bibliography Chomsky's a pretty substantial walker.

I think you mean talker. Walker would be things that actually did stuff - you know like search, translation, locomotion or prediction. That's a lot of words and a lot of books in a bunch of the soft sciences (linguistics and politics) which are highly susceptible to class A bullshit. All of that doesn't mean anything - no different from Richard Dawkins who irritates me in a similar fashion - I ask once again - where'…

If your definition of real science is something that has good prediction/application potential, that's a rather unusual definition of science. Are mathematicians, theoretical physicists all talk as well ?

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#129

Post by confluence »

cdavid wrote: post #128
confluence wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you mean talker. Walker would be things that actually did stuff - you know like search, translation, locomotion or prediction. That's a lot of words and a lot of books in a bunch of the soft sciences (linguistics and politics) which are highly susceptible to class A bullshit. All of that doesn't mean anything - no different from Richard Dawkins who irritates me in a similar fashion - I ask once again - where'…

If your definition of real science is something that has good prediction/application potential, that's a rather unusual definition of science. Are mathematicians, theoretical physicists all talk as well ?

String theorists are bullshitty yes.

Mathematicians aren't - you can prove their correctness over abstract planes and use them to for example run a hedge fund or a software company into trillions of revenue when making testable predictions in macro reality.

Theoretical physicists that use mathematics to make testable predictions are too. You can use them to also make electric engines, statistical extractors and accurate physical simulations that are corroborated with empirical evidence.

If the prediction is not testable, is unfalsifiable, is unreproducible, is not independent and is not supported by overwhelming evidence - it is bullshit - no ifs, buts or ands.

Re: Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

#130

Post by ilaksh »

sown wrote: post #122
ilaksh wrote: post #83

The field is now called AGI. It isn't mentioned in this article. Everyone seems to be ignoring the whole field of AGI (artificial general intelligence). Or maybe they truly are ignorant of it. Anyway, suffice to say, AI and AGI didn't stop progressing, and Chomsky is no longer any sort of expert in those fields. Even Norvig isn't up to speed on the most advanced approaches to AGI, but at least he enters the same room…

>1. Senses to obtain features from ‘the world’ (virtual or actual), >2. A coherent means for storing knowledge obtained this way, and >3. Adaptive output/ actuation mechanisms (both static and dynamic). What does that even mean? If it's so easy to sum it up in a chapter of a book, why don't they build it and allow others to examine it, submit it for review, write papers and submit to ACM, build fantastic machines bas…

Maybe you misunderstood. Those projects haven't achieved AGI or claimed to. But they are making tangible progress as I specified.
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