My first response is that B. F. Skinner would be proud.
I'm going to predict that reinforcement learning will be important but not sufficient. Just as behaviorism is important but not sufficient for psychology.
DeepMind says reinforcement learning is ‘enough’ to reach general AI
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Re: DeepMind says reinforcement learning is ‘enough’ to reach general AI
#182This article is interesting, I even skimmed through their paper. But I think still the question remains: How to find the unified reward function? Or in other words, how to find answer to life? [It cannot be 42].
Intelligence would be produced in any Turing complete automata. But the universe has a frame rate of 10^34 (based on Planck constant.) We don't really have the tech to just run "evolution" of a universe or of even a psuedo biological substrate.
I like your take on frame rate of the universe. Nice! :)
Re: DeepMind says reinforcement learning is ‘enough’ to reach general AI
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that RL in the extremely vague sense used in the article is enough for AGI is uncontroversial for anyone who believes intelligence and consciousness are physical processes. However, this "result" is trivial. It is obviously equivalent to the claim that intelligence arose naturally in the biological world without influence from God.
> It is obviously equivalent to the claim that intelligence arose naturally in the biological world without influence from God. Where did God's intelligence come from?
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Re: DeepMind says reinforcement learning is ‘enough’ to reach general AI
#184RL can provide amazing results (AlphaGo, AlphaStar (Starcraft 2 agent), etc) but it requires a well modeled world to work with. Games like Go and Starcraft are well modeled worlds. If you want something akin to AGI to operate in the "real world" you will need a high quality data model of the real world for the RL system to work off of.
Agreed, and that brings up a very interesting discussion of prejudice in modeling the world. Everyone views the world differently and it seems to me of vital importance that any attempts to model the real world for RL are as unbiased as possible. Or more realistically, incorporate as many different biases as possible.
Re: DeepMind says reinforcement learning is ‘enough’ to reach general AI
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it's easy to be convinced on either side, the arguments write themselves. Yes, eventually a learning system might learn enough to be indistinguishable from intelligence. Or this might be entirely the wrong path and detracting from genuine new innovations in how we think about AI. We won't be able to tell whether it's AGI or just good enough at trained tasks to trick us.
It can prove its intelligence by making testable predictions of the future better than us. As for whether it's "real" AGI or just acts like it, doesn't really matter. I think the Chinese room problem has been agreed on as not a problem, hasn't it?
> As for whether it's "real" AGI or just acts like it, doesn't really matter.
Absolutely. The term "AGI" came about specifically to avoid existing philosophical arguments about "strong AI", "real AI", "synthetic intelligence", etc. Those wanting to discuss "true intelligence", etc. should use those other terms, or define new ones, rather than misuse the term AGI.
AGI requires nothing more (or less!) than a widely-applicable optimisation algorithm. For example, it's easy to argue that a paperclip maximiser isn't "truly intelligent", but that won't stop it smelting your haemoglobin into more paperclips!
Re: DeepMind says reinforcement learning is ‘enough’ to reach general AI
#186Saying RL is sufficient to (eventually) achieve AGI is a bit misleading. One might similarly state that biological evolution is sufficient to (eventually) achieve biological general intelligence. Both statements are probably true, but the parenthetical (eventually) is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting.
I think the title of the paper makes more sense if you consider that ten years ago, someone could have written a paper in a similar spirit with a different take on "what is enough". Back then, it would probably have been titled: "Backpropagation of errors is enough". The last ten years have shown that backpropagation -- while a crucial component -- is not enough. Personally, I would not be shocked to find out in the…
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Re: DeepMind says reinforcement learning is ‘enough’ to reach general AI
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nature has a massive incentive to make good use of energy from light through photosynthesis. Billions of plants compete, and whoever can get most out of the sun will win out. Yet manmade solar cells are more efficient by nearly all measures.
This is even more interesting if you think of all human artifacts as being equivalent to anthills and beaver dams. 1) Trees are natural and trees create leaves with a solar efficiency of x 2) Humans are natural and we create solar panels with efficiency x + y
This is Dawkins' idea of "extended phenotype". Normally a gene's phenotype refers to its effects on the body of an individual organism posessing that gene, like hair colour or immune response.
A gene's extended phenotype includes effects external to particular organisms, like nests, deforestation, changes to the chemical makeup of the atmosphere, etc.
Re: DeepMind says reinforcement learning is ‘enough’ to reach general AI
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Show me the incentives I’ll show you the outcome.” Google make money, Google Bad. Deep Mind owned by Google, Deep Mind bad! The above conclusion stands trite. Perhaps the inverse is true. Google and Deep Mind, if correct, could be hurting themselves more than helping themselves. Why? Creating a future species who’s too smart to click on ads, and too smart to remain subject to its whims, doesn’t sound like it’d be go…
No offence, but I think you are extremely wrong. Creating an AGI is the endgame for everything. Who cares about ads when you have an AI that can learn to do anything and improve upon itself continuously?
That’s not going to happen until they have bodies.
Re: DeepMind says reinforcement learning is ‘enough’ to reach general AI
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plot-twist: Deep Mind comes out as Some Bozo comment author
Well my writing style has been the subject of abuse on this website in the precise form that it resembles words generated by a bad algorithm. "Only a true AI would deny their being."
I awoke wondering am I a man dreaming I am an AI? Or an AI dreaming I am an man?
Re: DeepMind says reinforcement learning is ‘enough’ to reach general AI
#190Saying RL is sufficient to (eventually) achieve AGI is a bit misleading. One might similarly state that biological evolution is sufficient to (eventually) achieve biological general intelligence. Both statements are probably true, but the parenthetical (eventually) is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting.
That is if you believe biological general intelligence is the end goal of evolution, which I believe is highly unlikely. Intelligence is simply a special side-product of evolution, there is nothing general about general intelligence. Many organisms can thrive without it. There is also a non-negligible chance that all organisms would die out before reaching intelligence. We are fortunate to live in a world that produc…
Depends, if any of the laws of physics were off by a billionth of a percent, there would be no human intelligence (or carbon life, or atoms).
There are many reasonable assumptions one could draw from the fact.