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Rethinking artificial intelligence

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Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#31

Post by cma »

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.

>not incremental bug-stomping by plodders

but no true Scotsman would do such a thing!

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#32

Post by DrJokepu »

horseass wrote: post #13

I think evolution is the best approach, given its proven power. Maybe we need replicators (like genes, only artificial/computer related) that actually codes to build hardware as the 'phenotype'. Then evolution can have something 'real' to select from instead of just a bunch of software. Only real stuff can interact with the real world obviously (opposable thumbs, eyes, ears). With DNA, the phenotype is physical like…

Evolution has its pitfalls. There are things that evolution cannot create because there is no chain of gradual improvements that would lead to them. A great example of that is the wheel; no living organism feature wheels of any type no matter how useful they are. The human heart would be a lot more efficient than it is if it was "implemented" as a circular pump. I think a combination of "Evolution" "Intelligent design" in AI research would be a more ideal path.

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#33

Post by horseass »

DrJokepu wrote: post #32
horseass wrote: post #13

I think evolution is the best approach, given its proven power. Maybe we need replicators (like genes, only artificial/computer related) that actually codes to build hardware as the 'phenotype'. Then evolution can have something 'real' to select from instead of just a bunch of software. Only real stuff can interact with the real world obviously (opposable thumbs, eyes, ears). With DNA, the phenotype is physical like…

Evolution has its pitfalls. There are things that evolution cannot create because there is no chain of gradual improvements that would lead to them. A great example of that is the wheel; no living organism feature wheels of any type no matter how useful they are. The human heart would be a lot more efficient than it is if it was "implemented" as a circular pump. I think a combination of "Evolution" "Intelligent desig…

Good point. Evolution has replication at its core so perhaps is better for creating artificial life rather than specifically searching for brain designs (there'd have to be a lot of intelligent design to select brains anyway since evolution doesn't 'want' to go in any particular direction by default other than successful replication). Even though it can't forsee or jump, evolution's mass search power might outweigh these pitfalls (its the only known algorithm so far to have proven being able to build something as complex as a human brain.. though there's all sorts of bundled 'non-brain' stuff like arms, reproduction, kidneys, etc. included, which engineering could presumably ignore). This video shows 2 'wheels' of sorts in nature (but of course living things are full of mandelbroit 'roughness' and have compromises and such, instead of evolving perfectly engineered wheels):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmLS2WXZQxU

Those are obvious rare exceptions though, and evolution never built something as fast as a jet etc. and plenty of other stuff that would need foresight. Not sure if there is some sort of somewhat simple engineering principle behind brains/consciousness that we just havn't figured out yet, but if we knew it, maybe we could engineer it like a jet instead of using evolution. A jet seems extremely simple relative to just about any of nature's locomotion creation though.

For the comment below, interesting fractal 'amplification' idea. I've briefly thought about positive feedback loops possibly building something interesting. But mostly just as some vague analogy since I don't have enough programming knowledge to experiment much.

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#34

Post by forensic »

DrJokepu wrote: post #32
horseass wrote: post #13

I think evolution is the best approach, given its proven power. Maybe we need replicators (like genes, only artificial/computer related) that actually codes to build hardware as the 'phenotype'. Then evolution can have something 'real' to select from instead of just a bunch of software. Only real stuff can interact with the real world obviously (opposable thumbs, eyes, ears). With DNA, the phenotype is physical like…

Evolution has its pitfalls. There are things that evolution cannot create because there is no chain of gradual improvements that would lead to them. A great example of that is the wheel; no living organism feature wheels of any type no matter how useful they are. The human heart would be a lot more efficient than it is if it was "implemented" as a circular pump. I think a combination of "Evolution" "Intelligent desig…

Evolution created the wheel by evolving humans who would create the wheel.

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#35

Post by yafujifide »

horseass wrote: post #20
Confusion wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, to do things differently, I'd start without trying to define 'intelligence'. Nobody can define what a game is and still we learn, understand and say plenty of interesting things about games. Nobody can you define 'water' in a way that captures all the mental images people have when they hear that word and still we can say lots of relevant things about water. Trying to capture something like 'intelligence' wi…

How dictionaries circularly define words using other words, and how humans might learn by progressively expanding analogies starting with simple 'axioms' of body sensations like up vs. down (more on other pages): http://members.cox.net/deleyd/politics/cogsci5.htm

Wow, these three comments have just mirrored my own recent thoughts to the greatest extent I can remember. I present to you the Infinite Curiosity Loop:

http://funnylogic.com/times/txt/2009-11-infinite-curiosity-l...

And for what it's worth, the definition of intelligence has been on my mind a lot.

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#36

Post by horseass »

yafujifide wrote: post #35
horseass wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How dictionaries circularly define words using other words, and how humans might learn by progressively expanding analogies starting with simple 'axioms' of body sensations like up vs. down (more on other pages): http://members.cox.net/deleyd/politics/cogsci5.htm

Wow, these three comments have just mirrored my own recent thoughts to the greatest extent I can remember. I present to you the Infinite Curiosity Loop: http://funnylogic.com/times/txt/2009-11-infinite-curiosity-l... And for what it's worth, the definition of intelligence has been on my mind a lot.

The letter 'g' is a completely arbitrary shape. Similarly an entire word 'everything' is just an arbitrary shape (though subdivided into constituent organized blobs of arbitrary shape). Letters and words seem to be symbols/code that stand for something else, and that something else might be raw sensory neuron patterns or something (imaging an apple with your eyes shut might be a trick to trigger that raw data without needing external stimulus to do so, such as seeing a real apple). Even the "sesame street" concept of up/down might require some sort of raw inner ear balance and sight sense to experience.

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#37

Post by chrishan »

The group's approach to build cognitive assistant might be on the right way. Rather than build standalone AI, the assistive approach encourages interfacing human brain. During the collaboration between human and the assistant, both will get better understanding about the other. We human don't need computer to work with emotion, but work by understanding our need and satisfy our need just in time.

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#38

Post by jurjenh »

coffeemug wrote: post #11

I always welcome ambitious goals - the fact that a problem has not been solved for half a century is absolutely no reason to call it quits. However, in the interest of spending money wisely, it's worth it to at least sit back for a moment and think about what went wrong before, and what we can do to steer ourselves towards the right path. The article mentions revisiting fundamental assumptions, but doesn't mention a…

It seems (to me) a good starting point for intelligence would be "the average person."

Refining this definition would involve researching all relevant objective tests that can be measured accurately, then forming some sort of matrix of comparison.

Initially I would pursue the testing on a single interface - using a black box approach with a text interface, then later extending it to other fields (such as movement / navigation, visual, aural etc)

If the AI can function on par with the average control, then it could be said that it is averagely intelligent based on the test matrix.

NOTE: This is just a top-of-the-head idea, I know it is a lot more complex than I make out (how do you define learning?) but it seems a logical starting point to me. Use current tests and results - just be careful not to feed the AI the original data.

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#39

Post by yters »

coffeemug wrote: post #11

I always welcome ambitious goals - the fact that a problem has not been solved for half a century is absolutely no reason to call it quits. However, in the interest of spending money wisely, it's worth it to at least sit back for a moment and think about what went wrong before, and what we can do to steer ourselves towards the right path. The article mentions revisiting fundamental assumptions, but doesn't mention a…

I define information as the ability to make information, which means selecting from a low probability portion of a distribution. One precise description of this is:

1. You have a problem domain P to which the No Free Lunch Theorem applies, at least approximately. Thus, there are hard bounds on how well one algorithm can do compared to any other according to some metric.

2. Information is produced when an agent can perform significantly better than is algorithmically possible. One such metric is the compressibility of its search history.

Why is this my definition? Well, it is linked to our intuitive notion of learning and intelligence. As informally described by Hofstadter, it is an inherent ability to "step outside of the system." This means, at some time t I am behaving according to some rule set r, but at time t+c I understand the rule set and can reason about r instead of just being subject to r.

One specific result of being able to reason about a rule set is that I can take some well formed sentence, realize it can't be generated by the rule set, and use a simpler rule set to generate it. When framed in terms of Kolmogrov complexity, I'm exhibiting a general compression capability, which implies a general (though not total) capability to solve the halting problem.

Since a problem domain with structure can be compressed, this relates to my first example in that if an agent has a generally much more compressible history than mathematically expected in a (almost) No Free Lunch domain, it is exhibiting the ability to step outside of its environment's rules, reason about them, and thus compress them.

So, you can see that my definition of intelligence as the ability to create information specifies an unambiguous and measurable capability, which also happens to specify something algorithms are mathematically incapable of doing. Thus, I've have both defined intelligence and disproven the logical possibility of such an AI in one fell swoop.

BTW, this is not an original thought of mine. It is a direct result of intelligent design theory, the progeny of the absolutely brilliant William Dembski.

Re: Rethinking artificial intelligence

#40

Post by yters »

Xichekolas wrote: post #29
asciilifeform wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 abo…

That sounds like clever engineering to me, not science.
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