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MIT professor Marvin Minsky wins $540,000 award

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Re: MIT professor Marvin Minsky wins $540,000 award

#101

Post by anigbrowl »

bermanoid wrote: post #47
yc-kjh wrote: post #9

Idiocy: My thermostat has three possible beliefs: 1) It is too warm in here. 2) It is too cold in here. 3) It is just about right. Minsky is wrong about AI in the same way that McCarthy was wrong. McCarthy really "believed" that his thermostat had three possible beliefs, and that his thermostat really "believed" one of them at any given time. http://Books.Google.com/books?id=yNJN-_jznw4C&pg=PA30&lpg=PA... Searle debu…

Are you seriously bringing up Searle's Chinese Room as an argument against AI research? According to Wikipedia, "The Chinese room argument is primarily an argument in the philosophy of mind, and both major computer scientists and artificial intelligence researchers consider it irrelevant to their fields." Right on. First off, philosophy of mind is 100% irrelevant to modern AI research, which is more concerned with cr…

I care about this question. I think that 'creating algorithms that act as if at a human level of intelligence than creating algorithms that recreate human states of mind' is part of the problem, and acts as a limitation on our AI. I am actively interested in AI that has a sense of self and is capable of developing preferences rather than mere opinions.

That doesn't mean I buy Searle's argument, and indeed have refuted it below. But I do think that dismissing the questions asked by philosophy out of hand is a mistake, and is causing us to overlook opportunities. The most likely place for general AI to develop is on mobile devices - not in a her type human fashion, though.

Re: MIT professor Marvin Minsky wins $540,000 award

#102

Post by mikeash »

mikhael wrote: post #100
mikeash wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems clear to me that qualia must affect physical reality. If it didn't, we wouldn't be talking about it. If it was just a byproduct with causality going only in one direction, then we'd never talk about it, because the behavior of a physical system with that byproduct would be identical to that same physical system without it. There has to be a causal chain from this discussion back to qualia, unless the discuss…

i'll admit that that's a convincing argument, but there are ways in which apparent causality can be shown to be illusory. one thought experiment i remember from school involves someone watching a movie in which one character punches another character, and the punched character falls backward. suppose the watcher knows absolutely nothing about how movies are recorded, or re-played, and sees only the lifelike images; t…

Well, it's a probabilistic argument. While it's possible that it's just a coincidence that we both have qualia and discuss qualia, it's an extremely unlikely coincidence.

To twist your movie analogy beyond all use, it's like trying on some clothes in a dressing room, then watching a movie with a scene that features you trying on those exact same clothes in that exact same dressing room in the exact same way you tried them on. It's possible that the filmmaker just happened to capture the exact same scene by chance, but it's vastly more likely that he was secretly recording you.

Re: MIT professor Marvin Minsky wins $540,000 award

#103

Post by mikhael »

mikeash wrote: post #102
mikhael wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'll admit that that's a convincing argument, but there are ways in which apparent causality can be shown to be illusory. one thought experiment i remember from school involves someone watching a movie in which one character punches another character, and the punched character falls backward. suppose the watcher knows absolutely nothing about how movies are recorded, or re-played, and sees only the lifelike images; t…

Well, it's a probabilistic argument. While it's possible that it's just a coincidence that we both have qualia and discuss qualia, it's an extremely unlikely coincidence. To twist your movie analogy beyond all use, it's like trying on some clothes in a dressing room, then watching a movie with a scene that features you trying on those exact same clothes in that exact same dressing room in the exact same way you tried…

i would argue that we can't accurately infer any likelihood without knowing what the entire probability space is. in the dressing-room example, we are assuming there are not many, many dressing rooms that look similar, and many, many people that look just like us, and many different sets of the same clothes. but that is just an assumption. we have no idea about the probability space of different material universes and how qualia is embedded in them.

Re: MIT professor Marvin Minsky wins $540,000 award

#104

Post by SimHacker »

yc-kjh wrote: post #18
ehsanu1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there are some things which are philosophical, yet not scientific, which was what I was alluding to. My experience is that these purely philosophical discussions tend to churn over the same issues repetitively without any resolution - because there is no clear way to reach one, unlike there is with science. In fact, philosophers write whole books addressing each others arguments without much in the way of changin…

> But there are some things which are philosophical, yet not scientific I think you are wrong here as well. There is an entire branch of philosophy dedicated to the study of what we (can) know, and how we know it: epistemology. Some philosophers get things wrong, just like some people get their mathematical sums wrong, and some scientists follow incorrect hypotheses for many years. But that is not a valid excuse for…

"Now what is the message there? The message is that there are no "knowns." There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know." -Donald Rumsfeld

Some philosophers of epistemology get things so terribly wrong that they follow incorrect hypotheses for so many years and actually take the country to war based on fabricated intelligence that they knew was in fact provably wrong, which they manufactured for purely political reasons to justify their hidden agenda, yet they still won't admit that they were wrong.

Re: MIT professor Marvin Minsky wins $540,000 award

#105

Post by SimHacker »

Houshalter wrote: post #75
yc-kjh wrote: post #9

Idiocy: My thermostat has three possible beliefs: 1) It is too warm in here. 2) It is too cold in here. 3) It is just about right. Minsky is wrong about AI in the same way that McCarthy was wrong. McCarthy really "believed" that his thermostat had three possible beliefs, and that his thermostat really "believed" one of them at any given time. http://Books.Google.com/books?id=yNJN-_jznw4C&pg=PA30&lpg=PA... Searle debu…

There is no such thing as semantics (in the sense that you mean.) You are basing your entire argument on a bad intuition. You literally just made up a definition of "semantics" that excludes computers, and then Argue 'By Definition' ( http://lesswrong.com/lw/nz/arguing_by_definition/ ).

SimAntics is a visual artificial intelligence programming language for scripting the behavior of irrational simulated people and intelligent inanimate objects, developed for The Sims at Maxis. ;)

(That's lower case game industry artificial intelligence, not Upper Case Marvin Minsky Artificial Intelligence.)

http://wiki.niotso.org/SimAntics

http://simswiki.info/SimAntics

http://modthesims.info/t/111469

http://niotso.org/2012/12/23/edith-cracked/

http://www.qrg.cs.northwestern.edu/papers/Files/Programming_...

http://donhopkins.com/home/movies/TheSimsPieMenus.mov

Re: MIT professor Marvin Minsky wins $540,000 award

#106

Post by SimHacker »

yc-kjh wrote: post #9

Idiocy: My thermostat has three possible beliefs: 1) It is too warm in here. 2) It is too cold in here. 3) It is just about right. Minsky is wrong about AI in the same way that McCarthy was wrong. McCarthy really "believed" that his thermostat had three possible beliefs, and that his thermostat really "believed" one of them at any given time. http://Books.Google.com/books?id=yNJN-_jznw4C&pg=PA30&lpg=PA... Searle debu…

Henry Minsky, Marvin's son, works at Nest on the "Thermogotchi", a digital pet that lives on your wall, that's a sensor-driven, Wi-Fi-enabled, self-learning, programmable thermostat which you train to adapt to your habits and lifestyle, and keep happy by feeding love and energy.

http://www.beartronics.com/

Google liked the idea so much that they acquired the company that developed it. So if that isn't a practical application of AI, I don't know what is.

Re: MIT professor Marvin Minsky wins $540,000 award

#107

Post by Groxx »

vidarh wrote: post #59
Groxx wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... since the human obviously has both intentions and goals ... You're just arguing past people. Humans obviously do this, computers obviously don't, therefore computers cannot do what humans do. There's nothing "obvious" about this. It's a completely subjective interpretation. How do you respond to people who say humans obviously do act precisely like a very-complex computer?

In fact one of the reasons I bothered answering him on this, is that the more I learn about how humans respond, the less I am inclined to consider the possibility that we're not machines, and I find it extremely fascinating how someone can feel so sure we're not. More and more, I am coming to terms with seeing humans as far simpler machines in many respects than what we'd like to think, on the basis of how many respo…

I suspect people can "feel so sure" because they can feel, and see no evidence that computers can.

But that's a dangerous edge to walk regardless. Humans feel, computers don't - most would agree. Humans feel, animals don't - many would agree, many would not, many would draw a finer line between e.g. mammals and others. Humans feel, inferior-race-X does not (frequently argued about slaves) - many would disagree, but obviously many do think this is true.

For myself: I've seen nowhere near conclusive proof either way, and continually-increasing evidence in favor of human == machine.

Re: MIT professor Marvin Minsky wins $540,000 award

#108

Post by bermanoid »

chrisdevereux wrote: post #81
bermanoid wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously bringing up Searle's Chinese Room as an argument against AI research? According to Wikipedia, "The Chinese room argument is primarily an argument in the philosophy of mind, and both major computer scientists and artificial intelligence researchers consider it irrelevant to their fields." Right on. First off, philosophy of mind is 100% irrelevant to modern AI research, which is more concerned with cr…

> Philosophers have always been misinterpreting AI research's goals, which is why nobody in AI has ever paid them any attention, and which is also why they'll never be relevant to anything. Even if they're right, they're not asking questions that anyone cares about. That's totally unfair. Serious philosophers object to the misapplication of AI research to answer philosophical questions about the mind (not necessarily…

That's fair - I'm biased by having too many conversations with self professed philosophers telling me that any push towards AGI is wasted effort because of X, where X just means that it wouldn't satisfy whatever they think is special about humans.

I don't think AI researchers have anything to offer philosophy. The thing is, AI researchers rarely engage at all except when philosophers pop up and tell them that what they're doing is impossible. AI researchers generally don't give a shit about philosophy, whereas there is a ton of noise coming from the other direction.

You may be right in your implicit suggestion that the people bringing up Searle are really just amateurs, though. I don't ever recall anyone with bona fide credentials in philosophy ever mentioning the guy as anything more than a sad amusement...

Re: MIT professor Marvin Minsky wins $540,000 award

#109

Post by chrisdevereux »

bermanoid wrote: post #108
chrisdevereux wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Philosophers have always been misinterpreting AI research's goals, which is why nobody in AI has ever paid them any attention, and which is also why they'll never be relevant to anything. Even if they're right, they're not asking questions that anyone cares about. That's totally unfair. Serious philosophers object to the misapplication of AI research to answer philosophical questions about the mind (not necessarily…

That's fair - I'm biased by having too many conversations with self professed philosophers telling me that any push towards AGI is wasted effort because of X, where X just means that it wouldn't satisfy whatever they think is special about humans. I don't think AI researchers have anything to offer philosophy. The thing is, AI researchers rarely engage at all except when philosophers pop up and tell them that what th…

Philosophy often borrows examples from other fields in order to provide concrete examples of quite abstract ideas.

Unfortunately, this often gets misunderstood (both by practitioners of those fields and people with an axe to grind) as being critical of the field. The criticism is usually really directed at another philosophical position.

I think the reason the Chinese Room argument gets so much attention is that it's an argument against a position that was popular in the 1970s --- that mental states are identical (as in, strict identity) to classical computational states --- while being easy to understand and criticise. As you say, it assumes its own conclusion.

To be fair to Searle, I shoul point out that while the chinese room argument isn't taken seriously, he did other unrelated work that is still relevant!

Re: MIT professor Marvin Minsky wins $540,000 award

#110

Post by Double_Cast »

Houshalter wrote: post #95
Double_Cast wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's suppose you're lost in the Amazon. Would you not prefer a professionally-drawn map of the Amazon over a "map" I whimsically scribbled while blindfolded? After all, my map might not correspond to the Amazon, but it must correspond to something .

I'm not sure if you are responding the the right comment or if you understood what I said. The point is when you initialize weights randomly, you aren't starting with a blank map and then adding stuff to it. You are starting with a random map and then trying to correct it. Random bias is still bias.

My bad. The way I interpreted your comment was

> But (a random map is useful because) it does match a territory (somewhere out in the actual universe), it's just a (location that's hard to find).

I don't know what I was thinking.

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