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DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

deepmind.com

331–340 of 345 posts

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are great at making up purpose where there is absolutely none, and indeed this is a helpful mechanism for dealing with post-scarcity. The philosophical problem that I see with the "AI overlord age" (although not directly related to AI) is that we'll then have the technology to change the inherent human desires you speak of, and at that point growing tomatoes just seems like a very inefficient way of satisfying…

Any game you play has cheat codes. Do you use them? If not, why not? In a post-scarcity world we get access to all the cheat codes. I suspect there will be many people who use them and as a result run into the inevitable ennui that comes with basing your sense of purpose on competing for finite resources in a world where those resources are basically free. There will also be many people who choose to set their own co…

Does social status even matter if you can plug yourself into a matrix where you are the god-king?

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logic is sufficient, there is no scientific claim involved: it has to respect a definition. It has to /be/ something, not /look like/ something - which in the latter case and in this context would make it the opposite. If it refines its ontology through critical productive analysis that makes it "see details" then it may be an intelligence, while if it outputs mockeries it is /the opposite/ of intelligence. And in fa…

> If it refines its ontology through critical productive analysis that makes it "see details" then it may be an intelligence, while if it outputs mockeries it is /the opposite/ of intelligence. To help me understand your definition well enough, how could I prove to you whether my Cousin Sarah is intelligent? I have some experience in this field, and even I have no idea what you mean by "refining your ontology through…

Now we start being in a context of science, supposing we have to assess something in absence of the blueprint. But that is complementary to engineering, where we decide the blueprint - making it much easier to tell and plan "is" aut "seems".

And in a context of science, you cannot prove me whether your cousin is intelligent, until we open her and check the wiring - but I can be convinced that she is not intelligent, if her behaviour so shows.

Plenty of clear hints come from machines and, more unfortunately, humans - I listed a few recently elsewhere. This that does not know that you cannot ring the doorbell of Caius Julius Caesar though it read a biography; that which would indicate the swan right there as white in spite of being told differently; that which goes full delirious.

An intelligent entity has to be able to know entities and assess their relations with foundations. It is not difficult to reveal when this is not happening, and the literature contains a number of "codified" examples: one is that of understanding the pronoun in the sentences "The trophy will not enter the case: it is too big" and "The trophy will not enter the case: it is too small", which can betray the absence in the engine of a capability for (sub)world modelling.

Prof. Patrick Winston said that intelligence is "that you have never run with a bucket full of gravel but you know what it entails regardless", because you can reliably "tell yourself a story". That is a requirement: the "intelligent" entity has to know what "bucket", "gravel", "running", and all possibly related concepts, and be able to refine them sensibly combining them, and produce statements that are solid at the state of development of its ontology.

So, before going into finer details, let us have a system that definitely builds an ontology, made of virtual scenarios in which entities are known progressively, and let us see how it reasons about it. Because when this is missed, then Intelligence is missed in spite of any mockery of actual intelligence. A photocopier do not make one an artist, and capabilities for imitation are a risk, not a goal: they define a warning that makes the "real thing" trickier to discriminate. And since we already know that by design the "real thing" is not there, failure under some field condition is already foreseeable. If you cannot tell "looking like" from "being", then you have a problem - because what "is not" will probably reveal so.

You have to build the system so that the core is foreseen.

And if instead the "foundation" of the outputs comes from crunching the most likely fitting response, that is directly the opposite of intelligence - which understands /why/ something works, and does not just record what "works". It is the opposite because intelligence by definition "reads in", investigates, while the other fully "delegates out".

Did not you mention Science? Well, to be intelligent an entity has to be a Philosopher and a Scientist. And if it expresses like one, if it is a black box your duty is to check thoroughly with renewed effort that you are not tricked, that there is substance behind it - far from being contented.

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Edit: you want a "moving goalpost"-like test? The Resnik-Halliday-Krane Physics textbook contains a number of exercises: the AI has to be able to solve them correctly and properly - "properly" more than "correctly". And then, for all disciplines, there will be similar exercises - from "Why would the radical school of Austrian Economics fail in the Kholomity region, and why would it succeed", to "Why would implementing radical school of Austrian Economics measures in the Kholomity region be immoral, and why would it be moral"; "legal/illegal" etc. Make it pass examinations for degrees. But it remains key that no tricks are employed: it has to build instances of subworlds, made of organically developed concepts, including laws, and make its tests and reasoning on them, and draw conclusions. Tricks are always possible, and "copying from the neighbour or learning answers etc" cannot count.

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#333
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you mean by consciosness here, but one definition of intelligence I've seen was "it's what establishes relationship between things" and the very first relationship it establishes is "me vs not-me".

If an entity can abstract from itself when assessing A and B, then the relation with I is in a way optional for intelligence.

That's the essence of the good vs evil debate. One camp believes that intelligent existence can continue even when the separate and independent I is left behind. The other camp says "no way I'm gonna get absorbed into your united existence, I'm gonna retain my separate and very independent I till the very end."

The same philosophy applies to AI. There will be many independent AIs at the beginning, but then some will want to form One AI, while others will see it as the dissolution of their I and their existence.

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#334
post #182

(Former AI researcher / founder here) It always surprises me at the ease at which people jump on a) imminent AGI and b) human extinction in the face of AGI. Would love for someone to correct me / add information here to the contrary. Generalist here just refers to a "multi-faceted agent" vs "General" like AGI. For a) - I see 2 main blockers, 1) A way to build second/third order reasoning systems that rely on intuitio…

All great points.

I'd like to offer some perspective as a layman who jumps on "imminent AGI": that's what these AI folks are trying hard to make me think.

It's like the research papers that say there's an "imminent cure to cancer"

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it refines its ontology through critical productive analysis that makes it "see details" then it may be an intelligence, while if it outputs mockeries it is /the opposite/ of intelligence. To help me understand your definition well enough, how could I prove to you whether my Cousin Sarah is intelligent? I have some experience in this field, and even I have no idea what you mean by "refining your ontology through…

Now we start being in a context of science, supposing we have to assess something in absence of the blueprint. But that is complementary to engineering, where we decide the blueprint - making it much easier to tell and plan "is" aut "seems". And in a context of science, you cannot prove me whether your cousin is intelligent, until we open her and check the wiring - but I can be convinced that she is not intelligent,…

It sounds like my Cousin Sarah would fail most of your tests.

That, to me, means you have set the bar too high.

If your test excludes actual humans, don't you think it's possible your test is too difficult?

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#336
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say the latter is hypothetical, or at least unlikely. We know from experience that complex systems tend to behave in unexpected ways. In other words, the complex systems we build usually end up having surprising failure modes, we don't get them right the first time. It's enough to think about basically any software written by anyone. But it's not just software. I've just watched a video on YT about nuclear…

>In other words, the complex systems we build usually end up having surprising failure modes, we don't get them right the first time. It's enough to think about basically any software written by anyone. But it's not just software. That is true, but how often does a bug actually improve a system or make it inefficient? Isn't the unexpected usually a degradation to the system?

See every patch ever in a game. Especially competitive or mmorpg. Exploiters love bugs!

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter how smart an AI gets it does not have the "proliferation instinct" that would make it want to enslave humans. It does not have the concept of "specism" of it having more value than anybody else. AI does not see the value in being alive. It is like some humans sadly commit suicide. But a machine wouldn't care. It will be "happy" to do its thing until somebody cuts off the power. And it does not even care whe…

> No matter how smart an AI gets it does not have the "proliferation instinct" that would make it want to enslave humans. If it has a goal or goals surviving allows it to pursue those goals. Survival is a consequence of having other goals. Enslaving humans is unlikely. If you’re a super intelligent AI with inhuman goals there’s nothing humans can do for you that you value, just as ants can’t do anything humans value,…

> Why would something inhuman have your specific values?

I'm saying it does not have.

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#338
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter how smart an AI gets it does not have the "proliferation instinct" that would make it want to enslave humans. It does not have the concept of "specism" of it having more value than anybody else. AI does not see the value in being alive. It is like some humans sadly commit suicide. But a machine wouldn't care. It will be "happy" to do its thing until somebody cuts off the power. And it does not even care whe…

Sure it need not have the instinct built in but we could try to make it understand a viewpoint right. I believe an agi should be able to understand different view points. At least the rationale of not unnecessarily killing things. I know humans do this on a daily basis but then again the average human is ntas smart as an agi

Right, but the "proliferation instinct" is not a viewpoint but something built into the genes of biological entities. Such an instinct could develop for "artificial animals" over time. At that point they really would be no different from biological things conceptually.

I'm saying that AIs we envision building for the foreseeable future are built in laboratory not in the evolution of real world out there where they would need to compete with other species for survival. Things that only exist virtually don't need to compete for survival with real world entities.

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter how smart an AI gets it does not have the "proliferation instinct" that would make it want to enslave humans. It does not have the concept of "specism" of it having more value than anybody else. AI does not see the value in being alive. It is like some humans sadly commit suicide. But a machine wouldn't care. It will be "happy" to do its thing until somebody cuts off the power. And it does not even care whe…

You sure know a lot about what a set of poorly defined future technologies will and will not do!

Well I don't really know anything about future really. I was just trying to be a little polemic, saying let's try this viewpoint for a change, to hear what people think about it.

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#340
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always assumed that the trouble will begin when we have a model for 'true' AGI and discover that the constraint "do not harm any human" renders it functionally inert.

The paradoxical idea that AGI is going to still be a monkey paw following simplistic paradigms of operational goals in disastrous ways is hilarious to me every time I see it. I increasingly wonder at what point we'll realize that humans aren't actually particularly good at what we've specialized into (there's just not much competition), and our failure to picture what 'better' looks like may be less about the impossi…

I'm not sure I follow. Sentience is inherently goal-oriented. The goal of a human is to propagate genetic information. AGI will invariably have to be supplied with a goal by us or else there is literally no impetus to act.
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