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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

#41
YEs this is all good but who determines whether something is "good" or "bad"? That's the interesting part. Who sets the goals? And how do they score an intermediate situation on the way to achieving them?

Don't get me wrong, a machine can achieve goals is really, really useful. After all, chess playing programs use the AlphaBeta algorithm to prune future positions intelligently, but to score the positions they still need human input. It may be, however, that they infer their OWN rules from past positions, with absolutely no human input. Then it becomes interesting. Still, the initial rules of the chess game have to be set down.

So while this is intelligence, this is not sentience.

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

#43
post #13

Is AIXI capable of recognizing itself? If an AIXI agent were controlling a robot body, would it realize that the body's actions correlate with its own intentions? Would it pass the mirror test?

What is recognition? What are intentions? These terms are void of meaning outside of human context. So if intelligence is defined around those human-centred terms (that are even too vague to account for human-specific intelligence[1]), surely nothing will ever be considered intelligent but a human being.

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

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

#44

>This scientific field is called universal artificial intelligence How many times do we need to re-define the same concept? Artificial Intelligence, Human Level Artificial Intelligence, Artificial General Intelligence, Strong Artificial Intelligence etc.... Lets pick one as a community and stick with it. I thought AGI was in the lead there recently what with the conference, journal and high amount of web searches but…

> How many times do we need to re-define the same concept?

I sometimes think everybody's still afraid there'll be another AI Winter (and/or that the first one hasn't ended yet), and are therefore anxious to come up with a new name for what they're doing every so often as sort of a pre-emptive dodge.

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

#45
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pac-Man was designed as a game for humans, with a priori knowledge of what kinds of things humans find rewarding. Thus the goal is obvious because it was designed to be similar to other human goals. Eat the food, don't get eaten. For this reason, it's not at all special that humans can determine the goal of the game.

Yeah. Try sticking a more abstract game like Go in front of a random person and see how that works out. Without being taught the rules, a human will have absolutely no idea how to proceed. This would put a human in pretty much the same boat as a computer.

A friend of mine had a meta-game he'd play with his step father. His step father would buy a new game, but not tell him the rules. They'd play this game until he figured it out and consistently trounced his step dad. Then his step dad would buy a new game.

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

#46
What if you gradually introduce more and more complicated games? Start with Pong, then PacMan, Super Mario World, etc etc until you get to today's games, which are far more complicated and more importantly, very realistic. Now that you AI is well trained, attach a camera to the computer and point the machine at the most complicated game of all: reality.

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

#47

> AIXI now uses this model for approximately predicting the future and bases its decisions on these tentative forecasts. AIXI contemplates possible future behaviour: “If I do this action, followed by that action, etc, this or that will (un)likely happen, which could be good or bad. And if I do this other action sequence, it may be better or worse.” What I want to know, is how long does it spend doing this? Does the d…

That's a really good question because a sense of self is integral to our definition of consciousness. Presumably this machine as able to understand math, so it should be able to comprehend it's own formula or source code.

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

#48
post #36

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…

Yeah, this strikes me as similar to - and basically no more intelligent than - Eurisko. Such is the progress we have made on AI in 40 years.

No. AIXI is unique, in the technical sense of that word. It's similar to Eurisko in that there are goals and things. If you get any deeper, the similarity ends.

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

#49

What if you gradually introduce more and more complicated games? Start with Pong, then PacMan, Super Mario World, etc etc until you get to today's games, which are far more complicated and more importantly, very realistic. Now that you AI is well trained, attach a camera to the computer and point the machine at the most complicated game of all: reality.

Good point: I don't think they've ever taken an agent which has been learning for a while in one environment and placed it in another. I don't know, but I would expect that the current version at least would have to fail hard, basically unlearning everything, before it started to succeed in the new environment. That's a weakness, if so.

How do humans avoid this? Because our brains are evolved to be plastic but not too plastic. We encounter new environments (like going from one level of Pac-Man to the next), but not new laws of physics (like going from Pac-Man to Mario).

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

#50
post #49

What if you gradually introduce more and more complicated games? Start with Pong, then PacMan, Super Mario World, etc etc until you get to today's games, which are far more complicated and more importantly, very realistic. Now that you AI is well trained, attach a camera to the computer and point the machine at the most complicated game of all: reality.

Good point: I don't think they've ever taken an agent which has been learning for a while in one environment and placed it in another. I don't know, but I would expect that the current version at least would have to fail hard, basically unlearning everything, before it started to succeed in the new environment. That's a weakness, if so. How do humans avoid this? Because our brains are evolved to be plastic but not to…

The whole point is that the intelligence is "universal." By definition, we are talking about a thing which is able to transcend what it knows. So to me, the whole point is to introduce a variety of environments so that it learns the truly salient knowledge that is applicable across many games. And the most important of facts is this: stay alive. We might be able to bootstrap an ai up to a self-aware, self-preserving, rational agent which can adapt to any environment.
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