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

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

#221

Post by carlosdp »

AccordingDay wrote: post #214
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…

But there's 100s of world-class researchers working on this problem already.

I bet those people don't read comments on HN, so I'm not too concerned.

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

#222

Post by goatlover »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #66
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…

What is your source for saying AGI will probably wipe out humanity? How could we ever even attempt to guess at the motivations of something we can barely comprehend and doesn't even exist yet?

The main concern is not that it's like Skynet and wishes us harm, but that it does things harmful to us because the means to accomplish the AI's goals are at odds with human values, which was unanticipated by the human creators, since the AGI is coming up with its own solutions. And the AGI doesn't have the same values as humans, so it doesn't care if its solutions are harmful.

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

#224

Post by throwaway35784 »

mortenjorck wrote: post #178
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…

Carmack is unquestionably a genius, but I think it's quite unlikely his solo work in a new domain will leapfrog an entire field of researchers. I wouldn't, however, bet against some kind of insanely clever development coming out of his new endeavor. Something like an absurdly efficient new object classifier, that reduces the compute requirements for self-driving cars by a non-trivial factor, would be a very Carmack t…

He's not leap frogging it. He's leaping to the next level from its shoulders.

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

#225

Post by kyle-rb »

nwsm wrote: post #195

What a joke. Carmack is going to sit at home and solve what teams of scientists can't do in decades. I'm complaining less about Carmack wanting to spend his time doing this and more about the comments here acting like he is some 10000x research scientist.

No one expects him to emerge with a fully formed AGI. By through experimenting he might contribute some new incremental but still useful improvements.

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

#226

Post by rfhjt »

nradov wrote: post #187
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…

Current ML technology probably has little or nothing to do with whatever technology will eventually be needed to produce true AGI.

And programmers are probably not the ones who will come up with AI ideas. I'd bet on mathematicians that prove those Fermat's or ABC theorems.

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

#227

Post by drcode »

nwsm wrote: post #195

What a joke. Carmack is going to sit at home and solve what teams of scientists can't do in decades. I'm complaining less about Carmack wanting to spend his time doing this and more about the comments here acting like he is some 10000x research scientist.

There are few AI researchers (maybe around 5 or so) that could credibly claim technical accomplishments of any sort in the same ballpark as Carmack's.

People with this level of track record should not be underestimated, there aren't many of them out there... They matter.

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

#229

Post by TaupeRanger »

m0zg wrote: post #42
pyentropy wrote: post #33

Progress in AI is due to data and computational power advances. I wonder what kind of advances are needed for AGI. 1. Biological brains are non-differentiable spiking networks much more complicated than backpropagated ANNs. 2. Ion channels may or may not be affected by quantum effects. 3. The search space is huge (but organisms aren't optimal and natural selection is probably local search) 4. If it took ~3.8b years t…

You forgot to mention, crucially, that neurons in close proximity affect each other, which is just one of the things that makes modeling of more than a few neurons in time domain a complete non-starter. It all results in enormous systems of PDEs which we don't know how to solve yet at all. You could say that we do not have the right mathematical apparatus to model any such thing.

I don't follow that. What would prevent (perhaps quite slow) simulation of a larger system of such neurons? E.g. N-body problems are analytically beyond us, but can be simulated to arbitrary precision with certain trade-offs.

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

#230

Post by zhoujianfu »

I’ll take this opportunity to just put out some thoughts I have about intelligence, wisdom, AI, and AGI.

In general, building/switching contexts in your head takes intelligence (and the more intelligent you are, the better/faster you are at it), whereas already having a context in your head is wisdom.

I think of the current state of AI as us being able to teach computers a few very specific contexts, i.e. imparting wisdom to them.

An AGI would be actually creating intelligence. And they are not the same thing at all. In fact, some might say your conscience/soul is just this brain context switcher/creator in action. An AGI would have consciousness.

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