Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Singularity Institute excommunicates open source guru

streebgreebling.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 12 posts

Re: Singularity Institute excommunicates open source guru

#2

Post by jey »

OpenCog isn't worth any attention, imnsho. It basically takes the "if we glue together enough parts that intuitively seem relevant to AGI, maybe AGI will pop out!" approach. There's no convincing defense of its design as far as I can see, just unconvincing heuristic hand-waving. (I respect the guys behind it, but completely disagree with them on the approach.)

Re: Singularity Institute excommunicates open source guru

#4

Post by bengoertzel »

On the contrary, there IS a detailed, well-thought-out defense of the OpenCog design, but it's sufficiently complicated that the casual observer may not be able to appreciate it. Wait for the book "Building Better Minds" (http://opencog.org/wiki/Building_Better_Minds).. to be available later this year... for a detailed treatment of the theoretical foundations of OpenCog. Or for a few clues see http://goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2009/general_ai.htm and the references therein. For a crisp write-up of many of the ideas, and a comparison to other AGI approaches, see the proposal http://www.goertzel.org/CogBot_public.pdf . -- Ben Goertzel, leader of OpenCog ...

Re: Singularity Institute excommunicates open source guru

#6

Post by jey »

bengoertzel wrote: post #4

On the contrary, there IS a detailed, well-thought-out defense of the OpenCog design, but it's sufficiently complicated that the casual observer may not be able to appreciate it. Wait for the book "Building Better Minds" ( http://opencog.org/wiki/Building_Better_Minds ).. to be available later this year... for a detailed treatment of the theoretical foundations of OpenCog. Or for a few clues see http://goertzel.org/d…

Looking forward to it, Ben. And while I respectfully disagree on principles, I greatly appreciate the work you do to advance thought and discussion on these issues.

Re: Singularity Institute excommunicates open source guru

#7

Post by mark_l_watson »

The gossip mills in computer science :-)

I used to work with Ben Goertzel (a lot of fun, BTW) but I don't know David Hart. Sounds like personal issues.

BTW, OpenCog is an interesting system. I have spent a little time playing with it on Ubuntu. I would be more interested if it was not mostly written in C++ (with some Guile Scheme and Lua scripting). If you like working with C++ and are interested in AI, then it is worth a look.

Re: Singularity Institute excommunicates open source guru

#8

Post by Estragon »

nailer wrote: post #5

This is online drama, and doesn't contribute anything. Either make a point in the article itself explaining what the situation is or don't bother posting this to HN.

The original email (http://sluggish.uni.cc/david_hart_siai_rant.txt) makes it clear that they had good reason for firing him. He presents himself in a very immature and egotistical fashion, and the email to google was impulsive and potentially damaging to the organization's image. Characterizing the expulsion as an "excommunication," as if there was some kind of religious basis to it, is quite sensationalist. From the bottom of that email:

  The funding request you sent to the Google guys was inappropriate for a
  couple of reasons:
  
     1) Google funded OpenCog on the basis of the Google Summer of Code
     only.  For-profit organizations like Google do not regularly fund
     outside projects besides special programs like Summer of Code.  If
     they want that sort of association, they will buy out the entity.
  
     2) You CCd a number of SIAI people in your email, making it very much
     seem that we had made the decision to approach them as a group, when
     no such thing ever happened.  This ruins our brand by association it
     with requests for handouts from for-profit companies.  We value our
     relationship with Google very much -- by jumping in with your
     unplanned email, you make us look like beggars.  .
  
  The correct way of making your request would have been to send separate
  requests to SIAI and Google as a personal request, not using SIAI's name
  to make a request to Google without clearing it with us.

Re: Singularity Institute excommunicates open source guru

#9

Post by CapitalistCartr »

jey wrote: post #2

OpenCog isn't worth any attention, imnsho. It basically takes the "if we glue together enough parts that intuitively seem relevant to AGI, maybe AGI will pop out!" approach. There's no convincing defense of its design as far as I can see, just unconvincing heuristic hand-waving. (I respect the guys behind it, but completely disagree with them on the approach.)

"if we glue together enough parts that intuitively seem relevant to AGI, maybe AGI will pop out!" approach.

That sounds like the way I approach most problems I don't know the answer to. I fiddle with various relevant parts, and see what pops out. My first version is rarely a good one, but it leads (always has so far) to version 2 which works well.

Re: Singularity Institute excommunicates open source guru

#10

Post by wynand »

jey wrote: post #2

OpenCog isn't worth any attention, imnsho. It basically takes the "if we glue together enough parts that intuitively seem relevant to AGI, maybe AGI will pop out!" approach. There's no convincing defense of its design as far as I can see, just unconvincing heuristic hand-waving. (I respect the guys behind it, but completely disagree with them on the approach.)

Research wouldn't be necessary if we knew beforehand what we needed to look for. Granted, it doesn't help to glue things together indiscriminately, but I doubt that is that OpenCog is doing.

Someone has to try this and if their idea doesn't work, I will bet good money that they'll stumble upon other interesting results (if they keep going).

Post reply on HN