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MIT IQ: The MIT Intelligence Quest

iq.mit.edu

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Re: MIT IQ: The MIT Intelligence Quest

#31

Post by kough »

drharby wrote: post #30
kough wrote: post #23

MIT is in the process of converting its brand's value into money. It's interesting, because the brand is so strong that they probably can announce even more stupid "quests" and "initiatives" and "labs" (like the IBM "collaboration") to extract value from industry without seriously harming the quality of the students who apply. But as a current student it's kind of heartbreaking. This place has been so special for so…

What makes MIT so special? They do what they do exceptionally well but arent THAT different. Its all branding - and I say that having taught there for 3 years. Love wandering those halls.

I also couldn't put my finger on any specific difference, but it really does feel like the halls have a magic to them.

(current undergrad, I'm sure you have more insight into what's going on)

Re: MIT IQ: The MIT Intelligence Quest

#32

Post by koopuluri »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #25
kough wrote: post #23

MIT is in the process of converting its brand's value into money. It's interesting, because the brand is so strong that they probably can announce even more stupid "quests" and "initiatives" and "labs" (like the IBM "collaboration") to extract value from industry without seriously harming the quality of the students who apply. But as a current student it's kind of heartbreaking. This place has been so special for so…

Colleges are businesses that deal in information and knowledge for money.

Colleges are businesses that provide a signal of competence, and a network of peers who also want that signal, in exchange for money.

Re: MIT IQ: The MIT Intelligence Quest

#33

Post by azinman2 »

drharby wrote: post #30
kough wrote: post #23

MIT is in the process of converting its brand's value into money. It's interesting, because the brand is so strong that they probably can announce even more stupid "quests" and "initiatives" and "labs" (like the IBM "collaboration") to extract value from industry without seriously harming the quality of the students who apply. But as a current student it's kind of heartbreaking. This place has been so special for so…

What makes MIT so special? They do what they do exceptionally well but arent THAT different. Its all branding - and I say that having taught there for 3 years. Love wandering those halls.

Disagree. The culture is special, and that culture is what drives specific change. The bar is high, and because everyone around you is pushing themselves you end up pushing yourself further than you might have otherwise. The culture pushes you to think big and think impact. The institute gives you such permission to grow your ego in order to grow your work. Having Harvard nearby creates an even more special atmosphere as your social life often involves mixing with others on an intellectual level that spans subject matter. To me that’s just some of the magic.

Re: MIT IQ: The MIT Intelligence Quest

#34

Post by azinman2 »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #12

Understanding the recipie and salient ingredients by which nature generates intelligence so that we can build a theory of intelligence is long overdue but they’re starting at too high of a level. We don’t have a good model for artificial neurogenesis that allows us to create complex AI from a simpler set of building blocks, we don’t have a genotype-to-phenotype mapping or a generic representation to encode complex ph…

What is the “problem?” Depending on what you’re trying to solve, you don’t need to go as low level as possible — it’s likely a mistake as to try and model the universe is a futile exercise.

Re: MIT IQ: The MIT Intelligence Quest

#36

Post by k__ »

lucozade wrote: post #10
justaman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take a stab at it. I think they are saying...Intellectuals are going to change the way they guide their research or formulate their hypothesis based on the this work at MIT. This person believes that this project signifies a paradigm shift in the fundamental origins of thought, hereafter nothing will be the same. I think this person is trying way to hard to sound smart or poetic.

Nah. enord's saying that they'll all sit down together and realise that they don't know very much about intelligence after all. So all the current excitement around super-intelligent AIs, and whatnot, will go the same way as it has the previous times we all got excited.

But isn't AI getting percievably better every run?

Re: MIT IQ: The MIT Intelligence Quest

#37

Post by rdl »

kough wrote: post #23

MIT is in the process of converting its brand's value into money. It's interesting, because the brand is so strong that they probably can announce even more stupid "quests" and "initiatives" and "labs" (like the IBM "collaboration") to extract value from industry without seriously harming the quality of the students who apply. But as a current student it's kind of heartbreaking. This place has been so special for so…

MIT has been in decline since the 1980s. I attribute it to hiring professional education people as administrators, rather than MIT alums as administrators and as equal partners in running the institution. The end of the Cold War and decline in defense research funding might be a factor, too. I was at MIT in the late 90s and I could see it getting worse even over a few years.

It is still decent in bio, some of the graduate institutes, etc, but the core engineering school isn’t the MIT of engineering anymore. My employee friends largely agree.

Re: MIT IQ: The MIT Intelligence Quest

#38

Post by enord »

ddorian43 wrote: post #5
enord wrote: post #3

This is the high water mark, the summer solstice if you will, of the current wave. Buckle up, Serious People are going to rediscover the fundamental Hard Problems and relocate the current Hot Topics into their appropriate ontologies.

Please explain in simpler terms ?

Winter is coming.

Re: MIT IQ: The MIT Intelligence Quest

#39

Post by enord »

nopinsight wrote: post #6
enord wrote: post #3

This is the high water mark, the summer solstice if you will, of the current wave. Buckle up, Serious People are going to rediscover the fundamental Hard Problems and relocate the current Hot Topics into their appropriate ontologies.

What is some evidence or reasoning that we are reaching certain hard limits as you mentioned?

I never mentioned limits, and the reasoning is purely inductive, based on previous events.

We are far away from understanding intelligence in all directions. Top down, bottom up, neurologically, psychologically, logically, mathematically and last but not least philosophically.

There's optimism at the moment, because we are doing more stuff with more annotated data (the annotations providing the semantic grounding, as in "Not hot dog" vs. "Not in category 339492-883764-399274"). The key difference this time being access to (and processing power for-) sufficiently large "training sets" (read "samples") for deep-learning algorithms (read "statistical models"). From an AGI point of view, this is nothing but an expensive parlor trick, because the "intelligent" part is the annotation, not the categorization after the fact.

Re: MIT IQ: The MIT Intelligence Quest

#40

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

randcraw wrote: post #18
nopinsight wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is some evidence or reasoning that we are reaching certain hard limits as you mentioned?

For example, machine translation from one human language to another has been acclaimed as one of the big success areas in deep learning. But when one looks deeper, there be dragons... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/the-s...

Oh wow. That's Douglas Hofstadter in great form. Could you please submit that to HN so it has a chance to get to the fist page?
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