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Rethinking artificial intelligence

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Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#21

Post by tjr »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #17
asciilifeform wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google and MS both do systems research, as do several financial firms and software companies servicing the financial industry Where, then, is the desktop operating system not built of recycled crud? Where can I see a conceptually original system created after the 1980s? > the field itself is alive and well I disagree entirely. It is a zombie, maintaining the illusion of life where there is none. Hell, UNIX still li…

Lack of adoption of systems research by desktop operating systems does not prove the absence of interesting systems research. With the exception of MS, most of the systems research I was referring to is not used in (or intended for) desktop operating systems.

And even systems research that is intended for desktop operating systems can be a hard sell. David Gelernter, for instance, has had a lot of interesting ideas, but getting enough regular users to adopt these systems could be a harder task than developing them in the first place.

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#22

Post by joevandyk »

asciilifeform wrote: post #14
yummyfajitas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the CS academy has many issues, the field itself is alive and well. Google and MS both do systems research, as do several financial firms and software companies servicing the financial industry. As a person moving from physics to CS, I personally find computing to be a very interesting place right now.

> Google and MS both do systems research, as do several financial firms and software companies servicing the financial industry Where, then, is the desktop operating system not built of recycled crud? Where can I see a conceptually original system created after the 1980s? > the field itself is alive and well I disagree entirely. It is a zombie, maintaining the illusion of life where there is none. Hell, UNIX still li…

Because you don't see a new desktop os, you assume that computing research is dead?

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#23

Post by Retric »

motters wrote: post #3

Rethinking your fundamental assumptions is always a good idea, especially if progress seems to be stagnating. Some of the assumptions might be: - That thought occurs inside the head. To what extent is thought a process distributed across multiple individuals? - That you can make a sharp delineation between reasoning and perception. Many AI systems assume that tasks like object recognition can be completely separated…

IMO, one of the fundamental problems with AI research is the idea that thought is important. When a chess program keeps track of the best moves nobody really cares how that thought is stored or retrieved. What's interesting is how to measure what thoughts are useful (for a given problem) and how to generate useful thoughts efficiently (better than random.) But, when people focus on thought implying something that people do, but earthworms don't do they get into a tailspin.

Language as a portable method of conveying thought is a great subject of research. But, attempting to attack a human language in all it's glory is a huge pitfall. Nouns, verbs, additives, adverbs, intonation, tense, and a 29 years of knowledge and I frequently have no idea what someone is saying. But, linking the word ball, with the concept ball, with the sensory perception of ball might be possible today. Link that to some simple nouns like roll, toss, catch, etc and we can start a meaningful integration of language and actions.

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#24

Post by potatolicious »

asciilifeform wrote: post #14
yummyfajitas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the CS academy has many issues, the field itself is alive and well. Google and MS both do systems research, as do several financial firms and software companies servicing the financial industry. As a person moving from physics to CS, I personally find computing to be a very interesting place right now.

> Google and MS both do systems research, as do several financial firms and software companies servicing the financial industry Where, then, is the desktop operating system not built of recycled crud? Where can I see a conceptually original system created after the 1980s? > the field itself is alive and well I disagree entirely. It is a zombie, maintaining the illusion of life where there is none. Hell, UNIX still li…

> Where, then, is the desktop operating system not built of recycled crud?

You're willing to look past our massive advances in optimization, control systems, search technology, computer vision, etc etc, and pretend they don't exist...

... because desktop OSes still suck?

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#25

Post by btilly »

asciilifeform wrote: post #14
yummyfajitas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the CS academy has many issues, the field itself is alive and well. Google and MS both do systems research, as do several financial firms and software companies servicing the financial industry. As a person moving from physics to CS, I personally find computing to be a very interesting place right now.

> Google and MS both do systems research, as do several financial firms and software companies servicing the financial industry Where, then, is the desktop operating system not built of recycled crud? Where can I see a conceptually original system created after the 1980s? > the field itself is alive and well I disagree entirely. It is a zombie, maintaining the illusion of life where there is none. Hell, UNIX still li…

> Where, then, is the desktop operating system not built > of recycled crud? Where can I see a conceptually > original system created after the 1980s?

MS Bob.

I'm serious. And the example I offered shows why a conceptually original system is not necessarily a good thing.

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#26

Post by asciilifeform »

potatolicious wrote: post #24
asciilifeform wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google and MS both do systems research, as do several financial firms and software companies servicing the financial industry Where, then, is the desktop operating system not built of recycled crud? Where can I see a conceptually original system created after the 1980s? > the field itself is alive and well I disagree entirely. It is a zombie, maintaining the illusion of life where there is none. Hell, UNIX still li…

> Where, then, is the desktop operating system not built of recycled crud? You're willing to look past our massive advances in optimization, control systems, search technology, computer vision, etc etc, and pretend they don't exist... ... because desktop OSes still suck?

> our massive advances in optimization, control systems, search technology, computer vision, etc

Ok, I'll bite. What advances? I'm talking about real change, not incremental bug-stomping by plodders.

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#27

Post by asciilifeform »

joevandyk wrote: post #22
asciilifeform wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google and MS both do systems research, as do several financial firms and software companies servicing the financial industry Where, then, is the desktop operating system not built of recycled crud? Where can I see a conceptually original system created after the 1980s? > the field itself is alive and well I disagree entirely. It is a zombie, maintaining the illusion of life where there is none. Hell, UNIX still li…

Because you don't see a new desktop os, you assume that computing research is dead?

Oh, it isn't dead. It is undead. Animated yes, but with no life behind it.

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#28

Post by Jeema3000 »

asciilifeform wrote: post #14
yummyfajitas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the CS academy has many issues, the field itself is alive and well. Google and MS both do systems research, as do several financial firms and software companies servicing the financial industry. As a person moving from physics to CS, I personally find computing to be a very interesting place right now.

> Google and MS both do systems research, as do several financial firms and software companies servicing the financial industry Where, then, is the desktop operating system not built of recycled crud? Where can I see a conceptually original system created after the 1980s? > the field itself is alive and well I disagree entirely. It is a zombie, maintaining the illusion of life where there is none. Hell, UNIX still li…

I tend to agree with you. I'm personally still waiting for my intelligent compiler that fixes mistakes automatically. I mean, you would think if it can tell you that your semicolon is missing that it would at least be able to fix it without interrupting you, right?... :)

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#29

Post by Xichekolas »

asciilifeform wrote: post #26
potatolicious wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where, then, is the desktop operating system not built of recycled crud? You're willing to look past our massive advances in optimization, control systems, search technology, computer vision, etc etc, and pretend they don't exist... ... because desktop OSes still suck?

> our massive advances in optimization, control systems, search technology, computer vision, etc Ok, I'll bite. What advances? I'm talking about real change, not incremental bug-stomping by plodders.

Computer Vision, for one, is making massive advances.

I just spent three weeks (class project) implementing a new algorithm to find the minimum cut of a directed planar graph in O(nlgn) time. The algorithm is actually quite elegant:

http://www-cvpr.iai.uni-bonn.de/pub/pub/schmidt_et_al_cvpr09...

This came out of a Ph.D. thesis written in 2008, and was applied to some computer vision problems in the paper I linked above. This isn't a minor speedup or optimization... it yields asymptotically faster results.

My vision professor is fairly young, and recently did his own Ph.D. work on Shape From Shading. This is the problem of recovering 3D shape from a single image (no stereo or video). His solution used Loopy Belief Propagation and some clever probability priors to achieve solutions that were orders of magnitude better than previous work. In fact, his solution is so good that rendering the resulting 3D estimate is identical (to the naked eye) to the original (although the actual underlying shape varies, since there are multiple shapes that can all appear the same given the lightning conditions and viewing angles).

There is also a ton of interesting progress in the last two decades making functional languages practical in terms of speed (and hence useful). My advisor did his Ph.D. in this area.

The entirety of CS is not evidenced by the current state of operating systems. In fact, I'd argue that OS research at this point has less to do with computation than it does with human-computer interaction, which seems like it requires more research about humans than computers.

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#30

Post by asciilifeform »

btilly wrote: post #25
asciilifeform wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google and MS both do systems research, as do several financial firms and software companies servicing the financial industry Where, then, is the desktop operating system not built of recycled crud? Where can I see a conceptually original system created after the 1980s? > the field itself is alive and well I disagree entirely. It is a zombie, maintaining the illusion of life where there is none. Hell, UNIX still li…

> Where, then, is the desktop operating system not built > of recycled crud? Where can I see a conceptually > original system created after the 1980s? MS Bob. I'm serious. And the example I offered shows why a conceptually original system is not necessarily a good thing.

> MS Bob

There is nothing new about straightjacketing computing into an "everyday household objects" metaphor. As in, "the desktop," for instance. It is a very old idea which simply refuses to die.

And here is what the late Erik Naggum had to say about "user friendliness," the ancient disease which gave us MS BOB:

"the clumsiness of people who have to engage their brain at every step is unbearably painful to watch, at least to me, and that's what the novice-friendly software makes people do, because there's no elegance in them, it's just a mass of features to be learned by rote."

(http://tinyurl.com/ya86frv)

"The Novice has been the focus of an alarming amount of attention in the computer field. It is not just that the preferred user is unskilled, it is that the whole field in its application rewards novices and punishes experts. What you learn today will be useless a few years hence, so why bother to study and know /anything/ well?"

(http://tinyurl.com/yjfpbyq)

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