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

John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

facebook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 930 posts

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#121

Post by cycrutchfield »

carlosdp wrote: post #100
mochomocha wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He went on a week long cabin-in-the-middle-of-nowhere trip about a year ago to dive in to AI (that's all this guy needs to become pretty damn proficient). You must be joking, right? I'm as much of a Carmack fan as anyone here, but overstating the skills of one personal hero does no good to anyone.

I'm not saying he's LeCun, I'm just saying he gets up to speed absurdly fast. So it's not unreasonable to suppose that by now, he's learned enough to start seriously contributing to this kind of problem. edit: to be clear, all I'm saying is he can catch up to the body of research already out there quicker than the average bear, and he's shown a real knack for designing solutions and being crazy productive. I'm not pr…

Don't be absurd. You're acting like he's Neo from The Matrix, capable of downloading kung-fu directly into his brain.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#122

Post by echelon »

mochomocha wrote: post #91
carlosdp wrote: post #68

This doesn't surprise me at all. He went on a week long cabin-in-the-middle-of-nowhere trip about a year ago to dive in to AI (that's all this guy needs to become pretty damn proficient). (edit: I'm not claiming he's a field expert in a week guys, just that he can probably learn the basics pretty fast, especially given ML tech shares many base maths with graphics) As recent as his last Oculus Connect keynote, he exto…

> He went on a week long cabin-in-the-middle-of-nowhere trip about a year ago to dive in to AI (that's all this guy needs to become pretty damn proficient). You must be joking, right? I'm as much of a Carmack fan as anyone here, but overstating the skills of one personal hero does no good to anyone.

What a weird future it would be if Carmack turns out to be the one to figure out the critical path and get it all working. An entire field of brilliant researchers be damned.

History books (for as long as those continue to exist) would cite AGI as his major contribution to society, and his name would be more renowned than Edison or Tesla. An Einstein. None of his other contributions will matter, as the machines will replace it all.

Just daydreaming, though.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#123

Post by sailingparrot »

nikkwong wrote: post #89

I'm sure he knows his stuff, and is venturing into this knowing that there's somewhat of a "hard problem" to be solved here; serious proponents of AI like Kai-Fung Lee have stated that AGI may never be possible. The fact that he's making a public statement like this leads me to believe he may already have some novel solutions on how to tackle the problem. We won't be expecting to be seeing the same old parlor tricks…

> leads me to believe he may already have some novel solutions on how to tackle the problem.

> That's exhilarating but also terrifying. Our still-barbarian level human systems are still nowhere near ready to deal with the socioeconomic problems that may arise with AGI.

I think you are reading way too much into his statement. It's extremly unlikely that he just magically figured out a way to tackle the problem (just knowing where to get started would be massive).

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#124

Post by wahern »

umvi wrote: post #92

There's no such thing as AGI in my opinion. There is no way to create a "conscious" machine. We might be able to come up with some reasonably impressive imitations, but nothing that is conscious or actually thinking like a human.

If you can explain precisely why we cannot build a conscious machine, you could become one of the most revered, and potentially wealthiest, researchers in the world, as I presume such a proof would necessarily introduce unknown and very useful science.

I personally don't believe modern machine learning is remotely close to AI, except perhaps the very lowest rung of the ladder of self-serving AI definitions. I base that belief on what seem to be the unknowns, reinforced by predictable failures[1]. But I have very little reason to believe it's impossible. Not even the possible necessity of quantum effects would seem to preclude it. Heck, we've already begun harnessing quantum effects in materials science, computing, biology, and other areas.

Unless you mean that whatever we could eventually come up with would be more biological than machine or that only a human could think like a human, but that seems more like word play, the kind of game AI believers play. (That said, that poses an interesting question: which is more likely to be achieved first--a designed-from-scratch, DNA-based cellular intelligence, or something not based on DNA or otherwise mimicking existing organic life? If at all, of course. Also presuming such a distinction isn't in fact hopelessly quaint and naive.)

[1] I'm not a naysayer. While I never believed self-driving cars were around the corner (not even 5 or 10 years out; you can Google my HN comments from years ago), I have no doubt the science has been useful and can and will and is put to great, largely unseen use, as is typical of most science.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#125

Post by popup21 »

asadlionpk wrote: post #41
bronz wrote: post #26

i say this with respect and humility, but i am very surprised at the naivete with which John addressed the subject of AGI. he is so casual about it -- not only the idea of working on it but also the idea of it existing at all. he seems oblivious to the gravity of that discovery. it is not just "very valuable," it will be earth shattering and probably wipe out humanity. and its his side-project. and his son will help…

I think the real naive are the people who are doing it as a day job.

Oh those are some spicy peppers!

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#126

Post by The_rationalist »

thundergolfer wrote: post #23
The_rationalist wrote: post #11

I hope he'll go the hybrid symbolic and neural network way (causal and statistical), instead of just statistical. AGI needs a type system... I hope I'll achieve AGI before him but it's nice to know there's some real competition! (because, reader, there are almost 0 researchers seriously trying to achieve AGI in a not totally bullshit way. Only opencog and Cyc comes to mind).

Where and how are you working on AGI? Are you at opencog or Cyx?

I'm not a big player on the field. I'm specialized in semantic parsing and argument checking. I'm the first to my knowledge to have made a syllogism (and more) checker for English. Also, I have allowed researchers to beat the state of the art on constituency and dependency parsing (but simply by sharing knowledge of the state of the art to other researchers).

I do this on my free time so I'm not productive, but I have designed an intermediary language (IR) for natural languages that seems very promising.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#127

Post by sailingparrot »

skokage wrote: post #34

>Runner up for next project was cost effective nuclear fission reactors, which wouldn’t have been as suitable for that style of work. I can't tell if he was serious about that comment or not... Considering he builds rockets with free time, it could go either way.

> I can't tell if he was serious about that comment or not... Considering he builds rockets with free time, it could go either way.

Nuclear fission shocks you but not AGI?

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#128

Post by true_religion »

zaroth wrote: post #109
carlosdp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying he's LeCun, I'm just saying he gets up to speed absurdly fast. So it's not unreasonable to suppose that by now, he's learned enough to start seriously contributing to this kind of problem. edit: to be clear, all I'm saying is he can catch up to the body of research already out there quicker than the average bear, and he's shown a real knack for designing solutions and being crazy productive. I'm not pr…

No, you can’t push the envelope in AGI after a week in the woods. That must come off as pretty insulting to the hundreds of world class scientists who have been working in the field for decades.

To be fair, they said proficient and not world class or inventing new material.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#129

Post by carlosdp »

zaroth wrote: post #109
carlosdp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying he's LeCun, I'm just saying he gets up to speed absurdly fast. So it's not unreasonable to suppose that by now, he's learned enough to start seriously contributing to this kind of problem. edit: to be clear, all I'm saying is he can catch up to the body of research already out there quicker than the average bear, and he's shown a real knack for designing solutions and being crazy productive. I'm not pr…

No, you can’t push the envelope in AGI after a week in the woods. That must come off as pretty insulting to the hundreds of world class scientists who have been working in the field for decades.

I never said that, where the hell did I say he pushed anything? All I'm saying is he's shown to be insanely productive and effective and I think he can catch up to the body of research (created and shared by those hundreds of scientists) to become a real contributor very quickly.
Post reply on HN