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To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

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Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#21
post #10

How is this better than applying the minimum description length principle formalization of Occam's razor? (from 1978 [1]) I admit that I didn't spend time to really delve into it but nothing in this article strikes me as particularly ground breaking. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_description_length edit: innovative --> ground breaking

...applying the minimum description length principle...

Or the Minimum Message Length principle (from 1968 [1])

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_message_length

Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#22

1. Do we have to engineer how much it's being rewarded in each game? 2. What happens in the infinite case? With pacman, there are always a finite number of choices at each state. 3. If it doesn't have to be told the rules, then how does it make decisions? In theory, it may be able to learn how to play jeopardy, but it may be way too inefficient in practice. Humans don't even start with a blank state. 4. I don't think…

> I don't think I ever consciously apply philosophical principles like ockham's razor when I problem solve or learn. It makes me a little uncomfortable that we're starting with a philosophy, rather than having the system discover things itself. I would be ok with it if there was some parallel between ockham's razor and physics.

Why do you think it is relevant what you do consciously? The only things that you do consciously are those things which your brain is ill-equipped to do. The vast majority of your thinking processes are subconscious, as are the principles that drive your conscious thinking. And I guarantee you, Ockham's razor is in there whether you realize it or not. When things get complicated do you purposefully look for a simpler solution? When trying to understand an unknown situation, do you start with something simple and ad complexity as needed? Ockham's razor.

> I would be ok with it if there was some parallel between ockham's razor and physics.

... there's not?

EDIT: As an AI researcher, I'd be more interested in creating an artificial scientist than "artificial science." So what makes the scientist work? Ockham's razor is at the foundation of that.

Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#23
post #9

Am I the only one that gets a bit of a chill watching an UFAI play a game where it runs from its pursuers collecting resources until it gains the power to kill them?

True, but it doesn't kill them very efficiently.

If your scale of Pac-man competence stretches from "my grandma" to "arcade addict", then the AI looks incompetent. But if your scale stretches from "rock" to "human", it looks worryingly competent.

Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#24
post #10

How is this better than applying the minimum description length principle formalization of Occam's razor? (from 1978 [1]) I admit that I didn't spend time to really delve into it but nothing in this article strikes me as particularly ground breaking. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_description_length edit: innovative --> ground breaking

This idea is a generalization of Solomonoff's work on induction from the dawn of Computing. Solomonoff was one of the initial 3 discoverers of Kolmogorov Complexity (Chaitin being the other). MDL is an attempt at a computable Kolmogorov Complexity, however creating a codebook is difficult so MDL is no panacea. Hutter's work is more broad, being interested in the intelligence of an Agent and uses ideas like MDL and compression.

Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#25

It's interesting that, while the system can learn lots of different games, you still have to give it the reward function special for each different game. This may seem obvious, and not much of a limitation- after all, lots of things that we think of as intelligent to varying degrees (different human beings, as well as members of other species) have wildly different ideas of what constitutes "reward", so that can't be…

To start on this you would want a system that got rewarded based on how well it was able to predict aspects of its environment. This would have to go in hand with preferring stimulation, so you would need something like preference for inputs which maximize relative entropy with respect to its thus far learned model.

Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#26

It's interesting that, while the system can learn lots of different games, you still have to give it the reward function special for each different game. This may seem obvious, and not much of a limitation- after all, lots of things that we think of as intelligent to varying degrees (different human beings, as well as members of other species) have wildly different ideas of what constitutes "reward", so that can't be…

I guess that the reward systems that humanity has evolved are complicated and numerous. We've got the basics (food, shelter), the more complicated basics (sex with a suitable mate, companionship) and the million other factors - curiosity, intellectual challenge, positive and negative feedback, power, agency etc, etc....

My thoughts are that if they were to take such a direction with this AI, they'd give it the basics and let it evolve and learn its own complicated reward structure. When you're trying to get a monkey to play pac-man, you bribe him with a capful of ribena - he doesn't care about fun intellectual challenges, but sweet liquids motivate the hell out of him.

(This is the state of actual monkey research - ribena is monkey crack)

Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#27

It's interesting that, while the system can learn lots of different games, you still have to give it the reward function special for each different game. This may seem obvious, and not much of a limitation- after all, lots of things that we think of as intelligent to varying degrees (different human beings, as well as members of other species) have wildly different ideas of what constitutes "reward", so that can't be…

That article on entropy minimization also claimed that a single equation could be the basis of a wide range of intelligent behaviours.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5579047

Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#28
I highly recommend Markus Hutter's book: "Universal Artificial Intelligence: Sequential Decisions Based On Algorithmic Probability" (http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Artificial-Intelligence-Algo... )

Beware, you need some serious maths and a board to follow him. In the end the book is quite rewarding.

Now to AIXI: I don't belive that having a formula solves AI problem. Yes you can model it, but in real environment, I believe there are simpler models to try first. Remember: nature like simpliness first, complex when needed.

Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#29

1. Do we have to engineer how much it's being rewarded in each game? 2. What happens in the infinite case? With pacman, there are always a finite number of choices at each state. 3. If it doesn't have to be told the rules, then how does it make decisions? In theory, it may be able to learn how to play jeopardy, but it may be way too inefficient in practice. Humans don't even start with a blank state. 4. I don't think…

Regarding 4:

A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his morning meal.

“I would like to give you this personality test”, said the outsider, “because I want you to be happy.”

Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster, saying: “I wish the toaster to be happy, too.”

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/koans.html#id3141308

Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#30

1. Do we have to engineer how much it's being rewarded in each game? 2. What happens in the infinite case? With pacman, there are always a finite number of choices at each state. 3. If it doesn't have to be told the rules, then how does it make decisions? In theory, it may be able to learn how to play jeopardy, but it may be way too inefficient in practice. Humans don't even start with a blank state. 4. I don't think…

About countably infinite state space: with about 10^56 states, Pacman still remains a very challenging domain ! Just to put things into perspective, my colleague recently ran some experiment where he would exhaust 8Gb of RAM, but could reduce this number down to 4Gb using random projections for dimensionality reduction.

http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~jpineau/files/whamilton-icml13.pdf

http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~whamil3/files/cpsr-talk.pdf

Also, don't forget that this is a partially observable domain (with only local sensory information) with no apriori knowledge of the overall goal to achieve. It learns completely from scratch ! If we find this task easy as human beings, it's because we have a lot of prior knowledge that we can transfer into this task

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