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Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

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Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#101

Post by ShamelessC »

eikenberry wrote: post #54
fatherzine wrote: post #5

Correct. Without real stakes, no real intelligence. Now why on Earth would anyone want to build an embodied AGI, beats me. Actually, it doesn't beat me, it's the age old foolish pride that we'll be able to control our creation. We are not Gods, we won't. There should be international treaties with teeth to ban A(G)I research, like we do for uranium enrichment or (to a lesser extent) for gain of function research. Wha…

Creations are not meant to be controlled. Gods don't create things to control them either (most mythologies have free will or something similar). We want to create an AGI for the same reason we make art. To try to create something beautiful.

I prefer to think it's a survival instinct to pass as much knowledge as possible to the next generation.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#102

Post by Enginerrrd »

andrewflnr wrote: post #100

This conclusion was sealed when they settled on the definition of AGI as being "as good or better than humans at things humans do ", emphasis mine. Things humans do require embodiment. The more interesting proposition (that I'm inclined to believe FWIW) is that "common sense" requires high-bandwidth interaction with an environment, complex inputs and outputs. The environment could be Reality, it could be a simulation…

I think the problem with this assertion is that how do you differentiate between specialization and the "G" for general in AGI. ... in many ways, wouldn't a tree meet your definition of AGI? (Perhaps it should?)

Like, at a sufficiently granular level, I probably couldn't "tree" very well, even with the assistance of tremendous computing power. There's vast amounts of computation being performed during a tree doing its thing. But is a tree really a general intelligence?

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#103

Post by Gatsky »

teraflop wrote: post #79
melony wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do AGIs dream of crystal nights? Greg Egan is calling and he wants his simulated worlds back!

For those who don't get the reference: A significant plot point in one of Egan's early (and excellent) novels, Permutation City , involves creating an accelerated, simulated world containing unicellular life, and waiting for it to evolve sentience through natural selection. Years later, Egan came to the conclusion that even if it was possible to perform such an experiment: > I realised that anyone who actually did th…

Furthermore this is a significant ethical problem with testing and developing an AGI, especially an embodied one. That horrid montage of security footage in Ex Machina makes the point well.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#104

Post by Jack000 »

The idea that embodiment is necessary for intelligence is just another example of anthropocentrism.

It's likely that we will soon have AGI that can solve the protein folding problem, play go at a superhuman level, and create arbitrary images from a text prompt, yet still underperform humans when it comes to proprioception and object manipulation.

Humans have evolved specifically for proprioception for billions of years, it's a core survival skill that all animals have in common. In contrast our history of language and abstract thinking only go back less than a million years.

Human brains are overfit to our environment, which is why we're so good at recognizing human faces and so bad at mathematics. A intelligence created from a blank slate need not share our limitations - it could perceive in more than 3 dimensions, it could grasp quantum amplitudes as easily as we understand integers, it could have multiple embodiments and experiences simultaneously.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#105

Post by dinosaurdynasty »

andrewflnr wrote: post #90
dinosaurdynasty wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says computers have to be digital? Analog computers are already a thing.

The preceding discussion was specifically about "a CPU". Analog computers are specifically excluded. If, despite that, you're trying to simulate an analog entity with an analog computer, or build any analog AGI, the question arises whether it's possible to build one any simpler or faster than existing biological computers, e.g. humans. If no, then why bother?

Considering evolution optimized for biological fitness and not intelligence, it would be incredibly surprising if it wasn't possible to do better, especially using a vastly different architecture.

You could also build an AGI to run on a digital CPU but interact with a simulation that used analog coprocessors (which is a thing these days https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVsUOuSjvcg).

You can also include quantum coprocessors (which already exist in their infancy) for various things (probably only useful for quantum simulations at this point though).

Also considering recent ML work, an AGI is more likely going to run on something similar to a GPU than a CPU.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#106

Post by stephc_int13 »

Most of the things I read about AGI is, in my opinion, highly speculative and low value.

Human Intelligence is not General Intelligence. Trying to mimic Human Intelligence might be a good idea because we can use ourselves as a benchmark, but it might also be a bad idea because the process followed by biological evolution might not be the shortest or optimal path to intelligence.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#107

Post by dinosaurdynasty »

fatherzine wrote: post #84
olalonde wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Einstein developed his groundbreaking theories while working as a clerk in the Swiss patent office. Information and education today are even more accessible than it was back then. If research is banned from universities and companies, someone will eventually discover AGI in their basement.

Not necessarily. It's likely the energy budget to build AGI from scratch vastly exceeds the reach of your average hobbyist.

It is reasonable to imagine that, with the right algorithms, we could simulate a human-level AI on a high-tier modern GPU.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#108

Post by djokkataja »

teraflop wrote: post #79
melony wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do AGIs dream of crystal nights? Greg Egan is calling and he wants his simulated worlds back!

For those who don't get the reference: A significant plot point in one of Egan's early (and excellent) novels, Permutation City , involves creating an accelerated, simulated world containing unicellular life, and waiting for it to evolve sentience through natural selection. Years later, Egan came to the conclusion that even if it was possible to perform such an experiment: > I realised that anyone who actually did th…

> I realised that anyone who actually did this would have to be utterly morally bankrupt. To get from micro-organisms to intelligent life this way would involve an immense amount of suffering, with billions of sentient creatures living, struggling and dying along the way. Yes, this happened to our own ancestors, but that doesn’t give us the right to inflict the same kind of suffering on anyone else.

But by this logic, it's better not to have children, because they will inevitably experience some suffering, and if they have children, so will they, and so on. It's not that the logic is necessarily invalid from its own premises, but that it's self-extinguishing logic because entities that act based on it will stop propagating.

There are also things that we can find worthwhile in living and creating new life. Not that that excuses any creation regardless of suffering, but it puts it in a gray zone where it's important to weigh the specificities of various suffering vs various joys as they come.

Re: Embodiment is indispensable for AGI

#109

Post by dinosaurdynasty »

eikenberry wrote: post #54
fatherzine wrote: post #5

Correct. Without real stakes, no real intelligence. Now why on Earth would anyone want to build an embodied AGI, beats me. Actually, it doesn't beat me, it's the age old foolish pride that we'll be able to control our creation. We are not Gods, we won't. There should be international treaties with teeth to ban A(G)I research, like we do for uranium enrichment or (to a lesser extent) for gain of function research. Wha…

Creations are not meant to be controlled. Gods don't create things to control them either (most mythologies have free will or something similar). We want to create an AGI for the same reason we make art. To try to create something beautiful.

How do you feel about a universe made out of paperclips?
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