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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

#471

Post by hestefisk »

jorblumesea wrote: post #162
derefr wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many historical figures went through the same thing? Who do we know for their contributions to field X, when 99% of their life was spent contributing to field Y?

Very few, at least for STEM fields. If you look at notable scientists in any given field, their main contributions were in their expertise area before the thing that made them famous. Teller had already made serious contributions to physics before the atom bomb. Jennifer Doudna (CRISPR, CAS9) was the first to see the structure of RNA (except for tRNA) using an innovative crystalline technique. Planck is mainly known…

I like that you put Danielewski in (almost) same sentence as Einstein. HoL is a stroke of genius!

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

#472

Post by fooker »

visarga wrote: post #462
throw231 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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) To be honest anyone who has a very good working knowledge of Linear Algebra can learn much of ML-math in a day. There really isn't anything mat…

If you know about math you're just as good at ML as a person who read everything about swimming is in swimming. You got to run experiments to see what happens, build an intuition, understand the problem from the inside. Math leaves you with a few pretty formulas and nothing else.

Ah, you've almost described the contemporary profession of being a Machine Learning Priest.

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

#473

Post by alpaca128 »

visarga wrote: post #447
Animats wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long taken the position that intelligence is mostly about getting through the next 10-30 seconds of life without screwing up. Not falling down, not running into stuff, not getting hurt, not breaking things, making some progress on the current task. Common sense. Most of animal brains, and a large fraction of the human brain, is devoted to managing that. On top of that is some kind of coarse planner giving goals…

> On top of that is some kind of coarse planner giving goals to the lower level systems. There are counterexamples, such as AlphaGo which is all about planning and deep thinking. It also combines learning with evolution (genetic selection).

True, but AlphaGo is specialized on a very specific task where planning and deep thinking is a basic requirement for high level play.

We don't need to think 10 "turns" ahead when trying to walk through a door, we just try to push or pull on it. And if the door is locked or if there's another person coming from the opposite side we'll handle that situation when we come across it.

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

#474

Post by mr_mitm »

rfhjt wrote: post #445
short_sells_poo wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but let's not assume the the hundreds of other scientists in the field have just been twiddling their thumbs the whole time. It is preposterous to assume that someone largely new to a highly specialized field can somehow start pushing the envelope within a week. Yes, JC is nothing short of brilliant, but these sort of assumptions just set him up to disappoint and is also highly unfair to all the other hardworkin…

How many of them are doing real research, though? Corporate researchers improve ads impressions and academics researches are busy generating pointless papers or they won't be paid. Very few if any do actual research.

Generating papers is research. I don't understand why you dismiss all papers as pointless.

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

#475

Post by PeterStuer »

Animats wrote: post #313

This is encouraging. If you're going to work on artificial general intelligence, a reasonable context in which to work on it is game NPCs. They have to operate in a world, interact with others, survive, and accomplish goals. Simulator technology is now good enough that you can do quite realistic worlds. Imagine The Sims, with a lot more internal smarts and real physics, as a base for work. Robotics has the same issue…

I did my msc thesis in AI back then writing a dedicated simulater for a specific robot used in autonomous systems research. You find that especially when trying to faithfully reproduce sensor signals you need to dive deep into not just the physics of e.g. infrared light, but also the specific electronic operation of the sensor itself.

But that kind of realism is not needed for all AGI research.

I also spent some years on using evolutionary algorithms to evolve control networks for simple robots. The computational resources available at the time were rather limited though. Should be more promising these days now that your commodity gaming pc can spew out in 30 minutes what back then took all the labs networked machines running each night for a few weeks.

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

#476

Post by tomaskafka »

Animats wrote: post #313

This is encouraging. If you're going to work on artificial general intelligence, a reasonable context in which to work on it is game NPCs. They have to operate in a world, interact with others, survive, and accomplish goals. Simulator technology is now good enough that you can do quite realistic worlds. Imagine The Sims, with a lot more internal smarts and real physics, as a base for work. Robotics has the same issue…

I love the idea of using the Sims as a platform, as it's a place where it will be blatantly obvious that 'effective' AI without built-in ethics is repulsively inhuman.

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

#478

Post by TeamSlytherin »

Jach wrote: post #257
mrfusion wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think there are many researchers in AGI. AFAIK it’s kind of a joke field because no one has any clue how to approach true AGI. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

People have approaches. There's no end to half-assed "I thought about this for 10 seconds, how hard could it be!" solutions, really old approaches from decades ago where the brightest academics thought they could lick the problem over a summer, and some new public or hidden approaches that might be promising but (I can't know of course) I predict will still look a lot different than the final thing. I think a big rea…

Yes, AGI is as much or more cognitive neuroscience and philosophy than computer science right now, but a lot depends on the approach one is taking. It's funny to think you have some kind of working model you can throw research data against to see how it holds up, and then doubt yourself when you spend 3 hours on Twitter arguing over fundamentals with another person that is also convinced of their model. A lot of popular ideas sound crazy (or non-workable), so you just have to accept that whatever idea you are pushing is going to crazy as well.

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

#479

Post by tomaskafka »

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…

> he extolled his frustration with having to do the sort of "managing up" of constantly having to convince others of a technical path he sees as critical.

Sigh. I assumed the whole point of hiring John Carmack is that you trust him to identify critical problems - and to find the best way to solve them.

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

#480

Post by randomsearch »

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…

What scientific work has Carmack done?
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