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What you wanted to know about AI

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Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#131

Post by tmerr »

themgt wrote: post #37

I've begun to think about AI more in terms of "artificial will" than "artificial intelligence". Intelligence and will seem mostly orthogonal, in that advanced computational reductionism appears capable of extremely intelligent behavior without anywhere near the amount of self-determinism shown by insects. Whether artificial will is something that can be implemented in a turing machine and run on silicon seems an open…

If you knew how the atoms were arranged in an animal simulating the animal's behavior would be as simple as simulating each individual atom. In practice that's not tractable but it shows that in theory, since the behavior of atoms is computable (blah blah quantum physics shut up), anything an animal can do can be simulated by a turing machine including will. Just because it's not simple to express in a programming language doesn't mean it not possible.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#133

Post by maaku »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #123
maaku wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, color me disappointed. I think there are many arguments against the viewpoints of MIRI and Bostrom, both discrediting the perceived risk of super-intelligences and the the idea that we could build a "provably friendly" alternative. But I don't think it's at all a fair criticism to say that you need a technical roadmap to engage in that debate. I would rather say that they need to be willing to discuss specific…

I would rather say that they need to be willing to discuss specific architectural details in order to even sit at the table, sure. We are in violent agreement then. When I say roadmap I certainly don't intend to mean that each step needs to be perfectly detailed. The field of "AI safety" needs more engineering and less philosophy. But that doesn't require unity around a single roadmap, or any concept of deliverable d…

Awesome :)

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#134

Post by poopchute »

FiatLuxDave wrote: post #83
jallmann wrote: post #39

When I started school, my dream was to figure out a theory to underpin a grand unified model of artificial intelligence. Imagine my disappointment once I started studying the subject in detail. Most functional AI nowadays consists of algorithms that are carefully tuned to solve a very specific problem in a narrowly defined environment. All the research nowadays is pushing the boundaries of a local optimum. Right now,…

There is a problem with naming. There are two kinds of AI which get discussed - AI (Artificial Intelligence) and AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). The problem with these names are that they are not easily distinguishable by the general public or others who are not already familiar with the concepts. Its like the poor coding pattern where you have two variables in your code with almost the same names - 'wfieldt'…

A name I've heard for this non general type of AI is RI (restricted intelligence).

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#135

Post by maaku »

csallen wrote: post #116
darkmighty wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's precisely because the it can't be argued against that it's not much use? There's no way we could tell it will ever happen in the moment, no way to tell how intelligent we can make computers, and so on. You can't reliably argue for or against. So what's the point? I mean, you may want to form a group and discuss those scenarios, but it's not excusable to spread fear mongering in the media with no substance…

I disagree that it can't be argued against. It's a set of logical steps, any one of which can be critiqued: 1 - There's no real dispute that computers will eventually be as "powerful" as brains. In fact, it's likely that they will one day be far more powerful. 2 - Assuming the brain evolved naturally, there's no reason to assume humans won't eventually duplicate the software once we have the hardware. It's really onl…

Step 4 is not at all obvious and would require some significant justification.

General intelligence is, well, general. My primate brain may not be able at all to intuit what it is like to move on a 7-dimensional hyper-surface in an 11-dimensional space, but thanks to the wonders of formalized mathematics I can work out and tell you anything you want to know about higher-dimensional geometry. If the super-intelligence itself is computable, and we have the machinery to verify portions of the computation ourselves, it is in principle understandable.

Of course there will be computational limits, but that's hardly anything new. There is no single person who can tell you absolutely everything about how a Boeing 787 works. Not even the engineers that built the thing. They work in groups as a collective intelligence, and use cognitive artifacts (CAD systems, simulators, automated design) to enhance their productive capacity. But still, we manage to build and fly them safely and routinely.

There is no law of nature which says that human beings can't understand something which is smarter than them. Deep Blue is way smarter than me or any other human being at Chess. But its operation and move selection is no mystery to anyone who cares to investigate its inner workings.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#136

Post by maaku »

deeviant wrote: post #126
davmre wrote: post #18

A lot of respected AI researchers and practitioners are writing these "AIs are really stupid" articles to rebut superintelligence fearmongering in the popular press. That's a valuable service, and everything this article says is correct. Deepmind's Atari network is not going to kick off the singularity. I worry that the flurry of articles like this, rational and well-reasoned all, will be seen as a "win" for the noth…

Whose to say that the world wouldn't be a better place, with an advanced AGI entity in control?

Maybe. If the machine shared your values.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#137

Post by imh »

foreigner wrote: post #48
jallmann wrote: post #39

When I started school, my dream was to figure out a theory to underpin a grand unified model of artificial intelligence. Imagine my disappointment once I started studying the subject in detail. Most functional AI nowadays consists of algorithms that are carefully tuned to solve a very specific problem in a narrowly defined environment. All the research nowadays is pushing the boundaries of a local optimum. Right now,…

The key to self-driving cars is to realize that they don't have to be perfect - they just have to be better than us. It's not that the AI driver so good - it's that human drivers are SO BAD! I agree with you that AI is a pipe dream but I do think self-driving cars will succeed. I don't think the computers will ever match our judgement but it's trivially easy for them to beat us on attention span and reaction time, wh…

To add to what has already been said, I sorta disagree with "they just have to be better than us." I would prefer the car to not just be better than an average driver, but be better than me. As any person, I'm sure I dramatically overestimate my skills, which makes that bar quite high. So it doesn't have to just be better than us, it has to be better than we (however wrongly) think we are.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#138

Post by kamaal »

I'm not sure why this is so difficult. AI simply going to be a highly context sensitive answering machine which will rely and pick its answers from a massive knowledge graph(which it can grow as it spends more time interacting with assisted learning). If there is no context, it will just pickup the most commonly expected answer based on weights and priorities. This is exactly what human mind does as well.

Everything else is parsing the sensor inputs in a language that makes sense to the AI answering machine.

So its knowledge category and context. Form a big enough and comprehensive graph of interconnected elements, and traversing that graph is what AI will do eventually. Apart from growing the graph and using the knowledge within the graph to improve itself.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#139

Post by aamar »

themgt wrote: post #84
jallmann wrote: post #39

When I started school, my dream was to figure out a theory to underpin a grand unified model of artificial intelligence. Imagine my disappointment once I started studying the subject in detail. Most functional AI nowadays consists of algorithms that are carefully tuned to solve a very specific problem in a narrowly defined environment. All the research nowadays is pushing the boundaries of a local optimum. Right now,…

The core dilemma, and I'm paraphrasing I can't remember who, is that for every other problem given to computer scientists to solve, there already exists an understanding of what the problem space is and what a solution is required to do. The computer scientist just architects and implements the solution in software, but they're implementing business logic, or physics equations to guide a spacecraft, or "route this ca…

But why would sentience or consciousness be necessary for (or even relevant to) a system's utility and/or hazard? Put differently, it seems like what's really relevant is its cognitive ability, model of the world, decision-making skills, and so on, all so-called "easy problems". Despite the designation they're not truly easy problems to investigate; on the other hand, neuroscientists and other researchers are making steady, semi-predictable progress on these questions every year.

So what role is left for sentience? Maybe it is the idea that only sentience could cause something to act "on its own", to have "intentions"? To that I would ask if any creature, sentient or otherwise, can be said to act free from its "programming", genetic, cultural, etc.

Alternately maybe you think sentience would be necessary for an entity to perform unexpected actions in furtherance of subgoals (a weaker interpretation of "intention"). Or conversely: without sentience, computers can only perform actions which are trivial consequences of the orders they have been given. But, of course, even computers today do all kinds of things "automatically". If I ask for a browser tab to open on my laptop, memory gets freed and allocated, various fans turn on and off, lots more happens that would be very difficult for me to predict (even if I designed the system). Again, sentience seems entirely besides the point.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#140

Post by ghaff »

ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #121
jallmann wrote: post #39

When I started school, my dream was to figure out a theory to underpin a grand unified model of artificial intelligence. Imagine my disappointment once I started studying the subject in detail. Most functional AI nowadays consists of algorithms that are carefully tuned to solve a very specific problem in a narrowly defined environment. All the research nowadays is pushing the boundaries of a local optimum. Right now,…

Jeremy Clarkson made a fascinating point about the self-driving car and it's "intelligence." shortly before the whole fracas thing: If you assume these cars will some day be able to identify humans, what decision is made in a situation where the car can either swerve and (potentially) injure a bystander, or continue on a trajectory which calculates to be certain death for its occupants? What shocks me is how few peop…

Eh. If we get to the point where an AI has this degree of resolution, we've solved a LOT of problems that we don't know how to solve today. And the answer is that I either get to choose a setting or you save me because I'm the owner of the AI.
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