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Re: AI

#201

Post by edanm »

lnanek2 wrote: post #178
edanm wrote: post #86

If anyone is interested in AI, I highly recommend joining Less Wrong, a community started by AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky. He started the community to convince people to focus on the "friendly AI problem". [1] I actually recommend that everyone read LW, but especially if you're interested in AI. [1] In a nutshell, the friendly AI problem is: assume we create an AI. It may rapidly become more intelligent than us, i…

If the AI is more intelligent, I'd prefer it take over anyway, even if it gets rid of us. When you have a child, do you want the child to stay at home and do what you say forever? Or do you want the child to succeed as much as possible? I want the latter.

One of the major realisations from reading Less Wrong is taht Intelligence and Goals/Desires have nothing to do with each other.

An AI might be much more intelligent, but it has a goal system that basically says: "Make as many paperclips as you can". Everything it does will be with the singular purpose of making more paperclips. Not music, math, sport, culture or anything else that we think of as good. Not "help save intelligent creatures and animals from death". Only one goal - making more paperclips.

And if it decides that the optimal way to make paperclips just happens to involve death and destruction to humanity, that won't matter.

So yes, the AI might be more intelligent, but I still wouldn't want to trade humanity for an intelligence which doesn't do anything I value.

Re: AI

#202

Post by edanm »

kamaal wrote: post #184
hooande wrote: post #173

Many people see Artificial General Intelligence as a panacea. The idea is, "We'll create artificially intelligent scientists who will solve all of our other problems for us!". I think that future generations will look back on this as a modern version of alchemy. If blogs had existed centuries ago I'm sure that people would have called the transmutation of metal the most important trend of their time. This isn't to de…

Firstly is there even a Artificial General Intelligence even in Humans? I know how to play chess, but I don't seem to be playing it as well as Gary Kasparov.

Usually, people define Intelligence to be "that thing humans have". We can recognise it in ourselves and other humans, realise it doesn't exist in animals, but there is no really good definition of what that means.

But that doesn't mean anything. Creating something artificial that has whatever it is that we have is the goal.

Re: AI

#203

Post by maaku »

nikbackm wrote: post #199
hmsimha wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theoretically maaku is right. With infinite RAM and CPU you would just have to execute every random string of bytes until one of them happens to be strong AI. Of course, there's probably less than 1% chance of it being friendly...

But how would you recognize those bytes?

How do you define intelligence?

Re: AI

#204

Post by aragot »

aliakbarkhan wrote: post #197
aragot wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personnaly don't think the brain could be as intelligent if it were only a part of it, like if had 3 senses instead of 5 for example: The emulation of a sense by the others might be necessary to bootstrap the system. So we might just be on the wrong path when we try to teach a small machine to learn. And maybe, once you have a fully functional brain, that it constantly derives out of bounds. Like sudden overheating…

The amount of rampant bulshitting here by obviously unqualified people is amazing. If you don't even know that humans do not, in fact, have five senses, I'm not sure I can take your post seriously even as unqualified speculation.

The whole thread including the OP is full of speculation by unqualified people, because AI is the ultimate fantasy for all of us here.

So common sense is a perfectly satisfying qualification to post in this particular thread. Concerning the 5 senses, I refer to common wisdom because it speaks to everyone. Those who know better are probably smart enough to translate "5 senses" into an accurate scientific wording.

Re: AI

#206

Post by mtrimpe »

debt wrote: post #170
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #132

If the only goal is an 'artificial' consciousness, it might be more prudent to consider a functional definition of what consciousness is and try to build that. We didn't make computers by modeling how individual neurons perform mathematical calculations. On the other hand, if you want to go the biological route, there's some awesome work to be done. If I were to study consciousness, here's the question I would ask: h…

We know a ton about the brain but so little about the mind itself. We still don't have definitive answers to what consciousness is, why it's here, what's useful for, etc. Some people debate whether the mind exists at all. Also, there's still very little understanding of the difference between the conscious and unconscious mind. I think building an artificial consciousness is going too far. Artificial intelligence is…

The problem is that we haven't adopted the definition of consciousness that's useful long term yet: that consciousness is best interpreted as a property of reality.

If everything is conscious then some parts of it are just more dynamic (intelligent?) than others. Physical reality least, plants more [1], animals even more and humans most.

Defined like that human consciousness just becomes that part of all consciousness which we recognize as similar to our own.

In that view AI is just making a small part of reality, a computer, more dynamically conscious and, very importantly, more similar to our own so as to be more useful.

[1] http://vimeo.com/69225705

Re: AI

#207

Post by nnq »

hooande wrote: post #173

Many people see Artificial General Intelligence as a panacea. The idea is, "We'll create artificially intelligent scientists who will solve all of our other problems for us!". I think that future generations will look back on this as a modern version of alchemy. If blogs had existed centuries ago I'm sure that people would have called the transmutation of metal the most important trend of their time. This isn't to de…

It's funny that most people that are actually working on AGI have stopped even bothering to provide arguments for why they think AGI it's possible to the general public, because they know they're close and that "they'll just prove that it's possible to build it by fucking building it" instead of doing armchair thinking, while AGI detractors don't lose any opportunity to launch pseudo-arguments like missiles :)

...just to bite the bate a bit:

> We have no proof that artificial general intelligence can exist.

Well, we had no proof that fire can be produced ultil the first paleohumans learned to make fire. We had no proof that mechanized flight was possible until we built the first flying machines. We had no proof that space flight is possible before we made it possible etc.

These kinds of arguments only make some sort of sense when you reason from first principle instead of reasoning by analogy: for example if you found an argument that, starting from the current known basic laws of physics, would after some logical steps (no, analogies with "what we now know exists" don't count as logical steps) arrive at the conclusion that AGI is not possible. Elon Musk has a cute and short explanation of "reasoning from first principle" vs. "reasoning by analogy": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8#t=1356 .

My point is that the way you and other people like you reason "by analogy" is just plain wrong. It's a useful way of thinking, that can help you make lots of very good business decision and profit from them. But when you apply it to technology or science it becomes obvious just how wrong it is, as you just said it: "In fairness, this was said about every amazing thing in modern life.".

If you are a teacher/mentor/speaker etc., please don't expose your students or other younger minds with potential to innovate to this way of thinking! This mindset is the most effective way of killing innovation. It doesn't matter that much the topic of whether AGI is possible or not. It's this way of thinking that is extremely toxic to innovation, even it may seem quite harmless and very useful.

Re: AI

#208

Post by debt »

igravious wrote: post #196
debt wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know a ton about the brain but so little about the mind itself. We still don't have definitive answers to what consciousness is, why it's here, what's useful for, etc. Some people debate whether the mind exists at all. Also, there's still very little understanding of the difference between the conscious and unconscious mind. I think building an artificial consciousness is going too far. Artificial intelligence is…

You've got that exactly backwards. For the longest time it was not even known that the mind inhabited the brain. We've only known about the biology of the brain beginning with cell theory and onwards. Yet we have an entire vocabulary relating to mental states receding so far into the distant past that we don't know how far back language predates using language to speak about mental states. When you really think about…

Thinking about thinking but not finding empirical evidence to validate that thinking. There's no science regarding the mind. Nor is there science distinguishing between consciousness and unconscious thought.

Re: AI

#209

Post by 001sky »

RogerL wrote: post #181
001sky wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold exists, So How would it be impossible alchemy to exist ?

Star fusion does it every day. Evidence that something exists is evidence that it is created.

Alchemy and AI are both a bit more culturally specific. I agree that seeing life on earth would not logically be inconsistent with extr-terrestial life existing. But that is not to say AI=ET.

Re: AI

#210

Post by queensnake »

nl wrote: post #76
rdl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, "There are certainly some reasons to be optimistic. Andrew Ng, who worked or works on Google’s AI, has said that he believes learning comes from a single algorithm - the part of your brain that processes input from your ears is also capable of learning to process input from your eyes. If we can just figure out this one general-purpose algorithm, programs may be able to learn general-purpose things." is what w…

We already have a candidate algorithm[1], which is successful in a broad range of applications[2][3][4]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning#Convolutional_neu... [2] http://deeplearning.net/reading-list/ [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning#Results [4] http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/06/google-x-neural-ne...

Yeah but will it satisfy us, if we can't see it making analogies, can't see its semantics; identify with it? This same lack of breakdown into pieces we understand will make it hard to tweak and advance NNs beyond 'good categorizers'.
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