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MIRI's Approach – Machine Intelligence Research Institute

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Re: MIRI's Approach – Machine Intelligence Research Institute

#11

Post by mangeletti »

endtime wrote: post #9
mangeletti wrote: post #2

Here's a theory of mine: Despite our explicit efforts, the first truly powerful AI will emerge as distributed software that effectively runs on the Internet as a whole (a virtual machine consisting of endpoints (APIs, etc.) and disparate systems subprocessing data). We will not know when it arrives. There will be no judgement day. This machine will arrive through a sort of abiogenesis, and once it's here it will mani…

FYI, http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/ might explain why people are objecting to your comment.

I don't mean to suggest that it will magically appear, but certainly abiogenesis is difficult to reduce to it's lowest level. There was just a piece on HN the other day that talked about new research that tries to explain how self replication began in the Precambrian. We can get to the moon, but we still don't understand how many interactions can just accidentally lead to something meaningful and lasting. Emergence doesn't have to be perceived as dogma. In fact, doing so would tend to discount the nature of the evolution of the human brain (leaving creation out of the equation for this context).

Re: MIRI's Approach – Machine Intelligence Research Institute

#12

Post by deegles »

reasonattlm wrote: post #10

MIRI is one of the success stories to emerge from the transhumanist community of the 80s to 00s. Others include the Methuselah Foundation, SENS Research Foundation, Future of Humanity Institute, and so on. When it comes to prognosticating on the future of strong AI MIRI falls on the other side of the futurist community from where I stand. I see the future as being one in which strong AI emerges from whole brain emula…

Your statement about needing rejuvenation treatments before we can develop strong AIs makes sense. The average age of Nobel Prize winners is increasing over time[1], we could imagine a future where this average age is greater than the average human lifespan. At that point only those scientists who have exceedingly long careers and lifespans will be able to further their respective fields.

[1] http://priceonomics.com/why-nobel-winning-scientists-are-get...

Re: MIRI's Approach – Machine Intelligence Research Institute

#13

Post by Retra »

mangeletti wrote: post #7
Retra wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Predicting the actual future is a bit harder than writing science fiction.

This isn't science fiction. It's just a theory of mine. I truly beleive this is happening. You just have to train your mind to think about intelligence and consciousness differently. Emergence is an unintuitive process, but can eventually be explained by exploring the constituents, and sometimes the history, of whatever has emerged. But... some science fiction is spot on: http://mashable.com/2014/07/23/sci-fi-books-t…

I don't care if you believe it. What I care is that you have a good reason to believe it. And I don't believe you do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_analogy

Re: MIRI's Approach – Machine Intelligence Research Institute

#14

Post by blennon »

reasonattlm wrote: post #10

MIRI is one of the success stories to emerge from the transhumanist community of the 80s to 00s. Others include the Methuselah Foundation, SENS Research Foundation, Future of Humanity Institute, and so on. When it comes to prognosticating on the future of strong AI MIRI falls on the other side of the futurist community from where I stand. I see the future as being one in which strong AI emerges from whole brain emula…

I agree with you in terms of approach that AI will emerge first from brain emulation. I disagree with you on the timeline. I know you say 'starting around 2030', but I think that's a little ambitious.

While I'm an AI/machine learning practitioner now, my recent Ph.D. work was on computational modeling of the nervous system; namely the cerebellum. The reason I say 2030 is ambitious, is because there are still a lot of unknowns to perform whole brain simulation. To start, we need whole brain connectivity or wiring diagrams at an extremely detailed level. There are some efforts that are part of the BRAIN initiative that are taking a stab at this, but I don't think they're be ready by 2030. Second, you have to understand the physiology of these neurons in order to simulate them. This is incredibly complex and poorly understand. While we understand neuronal physiology in general, there are a great many details that vary by cell type. Additionally, you have to capture neuron morphology, synaptic plasticity, the effect of neuromodulators, ... the list goes on. By capture, I mean understand them well enough to describe them mathematically so that they can be simulated computationally.

Until then, traditional machine learning and artificial neural networks will be increasingly useful and interesting.

Re: MIRI's Approach – Machine Intelligence Research Institute

#15

Post by idlewords »

Are there any examples of substantive AI work to come out of MIRI? And have they succeeded at all at engaging the actual AI research community?

The last time I looked at them, they were consumed with grandiose philosophical projects like "axiomatize ethics" and provably non-computable approaches like AIXI, not to mention the Harry Potter fanfic. But I'm asking this question in good faith - have things changed at MIRI?

Re: MIRI's Approach – Machine Intelligence Research Institute

#16

Post by zardo »

endtime wrote: post #9
mangeletti wrote: post #2

Here's a theory of mine: Despite our explicit efforts, the first truly powerful AI will emerge as distributed software that effectively runs on the Internet as a whole (a virtual machine consisting of endpoints (APIs, etc.) and disparate systems subprocessing data). We will not know when it arrives. There will be no judgement day. This machine will arrive through a sort of abiogenesis, and once it's here it will mani…

FYI, http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/ might explain why people are objecting to your comment.

A precise definition could probably be cobbled together using computational complexity. Something like, a phenomenon which results as a product of deterministic processes that cannot be fully modeled by a polynomial time algorithm.

I think that's what people are really getting at, you can know how every piece of something works, and yet seeing how it works together can be much harder (potentially impossible).

Maybe that just makes it a synonym for chaos theory...

Re: MIRI's Approach – Machine Intelligence Research Institute

#17

Post by pjscott »

idlewords wrote: post #15

Are there any examples of substantive AI work to come out of MIRI? And have they succeeded at all at engaging the actual AI research community? The last time I looked at them, they were consumed with grandiose philosophical projects like "axiomatize ethics" and provably non-computable approaches like AIXI, not to mention the Harry Potter fanfic. But I'm asking this question in good faith - have things changed at MIRI…

If you'd like to give them another look, here's an up-to-date list of their publications:

https://intelligence.org/all-publications/

Re: MIRI's Approach – Machine Intelligence Research Institute

#18

Post by jessriedel »

zardo wrote: post #16
endtime wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/ might explain why people are objecting to your comment.

A precise definition could probably be cobbled together using computational complexity. Something like, a phenomenon which results as a product of deterministic processes that cannot be fully modeled by a polynomial time algorithm. I think that's what people are really getting at, you can know how every piece of something works, and yet seeing how it works together can be much harder (potentially impossible). Maybe t…

Yea, I think you're talking about chaos, whereas people are gesturing at something different when they talk about emergent complexity. Vaguely, the idea is that the "regular" degrees of freedom (i.e., the ones that are relatively predictable and from which the important objects are constructed) at large scales are not simply related to the microscopic degrees of freedom. There are probably more rigorous things to say, but it definitely requires more than just unpredictability or sensitivity to initial conditions.

Re: MIRI's Approach – Machine Intelligence Research Institute

#19

Post by [deleted] »

idlewords wrote: post #15

Are there any examples of substantive AI work to come out of MIRI? And have they succeeded at all at engaging the actual AI research community? The last time I looked at them, they were consumed with grandiose philosophical projects like "axiomatize ethics" and provably non-computable approaches like AIXI, not to mention the Harry Potter fanfic. But I'm asking this question in good faith - have things changed at MIRI…

[deleted]

Re: MIRI's Approach – Machine Intelligence Research Institute

#20

Post by idlewords »

deegles wrote: post #12
reasonattlm wrote: post #10

MIRI is one of the success stories to emerge from the transhumanist community of the 80s to 00s. Others include the Methuselah Foundation, SENS Research Foundation, Future of Humanity Institute, and so on. When it comes to prognosticating on the future of strong AI MIRI falls on the other side of the futurist community from where I stand. I see the future as being one in which strong AI emerges from whole brain emula…

Your statement about needing rejuvenation treatments before we can develop strong AIs makes sense. The average age of Nobel Prize winners is increasing over time[1], we could imagine a future where this average age is greater than the average human lifespan. At that point only those scientists who have exceedingly long careers and lifespans will be able to further their respective fields. [1] http://priceonomics.com/…

This is the same as saying "we must become immortal before we can become God-like".
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