Live data from Hacker News

To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

theconversation.com

51–60 of 87 posts

Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#51
Like others have said, this seems to be a generalization of the problem of reinforcement learning. For a good introduction to the subject, check out Reinforcement Learning by Sutton & Barto [1]. After reading the first few chapters, you'll be able to understand most of that equation.

[1] http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~sutton/book/the-book.html

Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#54
post #14
post #10

How is this better than applying the minimum description length principle formalization of Occam's razor? (from 1978 [1]) I admit that I didn't spend time to really delve into it but nothing in this article strikes me as particularly ground breaking. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_description_length edit: innovative --> ground breaking

It's basically that, formulated into a reinforcement learning algorithm. It's innovative because this combination which is unique to Marcus Hutter's Ph.D. thesis basically "solves" the problem of general AI.. if given infinite computation resources. It's provable mathmatically to the be the best possible artificial general intelligence, with constant-time operation.. it's just that constant happens to be larger than…

It's not constant-time. It's not even computable, even in theory, even with infinite resources.

Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#55

>This scientific field is called universal artificial intelligence How many times do we need to re-define the same concept? Artificial Intelligence, Human Level Artificial Intelligence, Artificial General Intelligence, Strong Artificial Intelligence etc.... Lets pick one as a community and stick with it. I thought AGI was in the lead there recently what with the conference, journal and high amount of web searches but…

> Lets pick one as a community and stick with it.

And when our assumptions turn out to be wrong, should we continue working on it even though we know it can never work? The problem is every new term is forged with assumptions because the very idea of what intelligence is the subject of ongoing debate. (I don't even like the one presented here, even though it's pretty good as far as these things go.)

I sympathize though, the nomenclature is polluted with the corpses of would-be giants and makes it hard to talk about what we can all easily recognize as the same broad-strokes effort.

Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#58

Am I the only one that gets a bit of a chill watching an UFAI play a game where it runs from its pursuers collecting resources until it gains the power to kill them?

To be sincere, I don't know what kind of Pac Man implementation was that. In the original game, each ghost has a personality [1], the ones in the video seem to just wander aimlessly, so it doesn't really tell much about strength of the algorithm to beat the game because it's not the same game. So, to comment on your dystopian prediction, I'm not sure this algorithm would do any better against humans, unless all we do…

Probably because they implemented the game themselves and took some shortcuts. But it still seems like pretty much the same game.

I doubt it would do better than humans because it's not very efficient, but a better AI running on the same principles could be smarter than even humans and outperform us outside the virtual world.

Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#59

These are good generalized life lessons for humans as well. Seek new knowledge, learn well, reason logically and inductively, recognize patterns and generalize, contemplate and plan for the future, converse and be social, survive, and strive for optimum health (my addition). Very good advice in whether or not you're an automaton.

Those words are pretty much meaningless. Of course everyone is already trying to survive and recognize patterns and all that.

Re: To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation

#60

Can someone explain the equation in this article?

Yes. The core of AIXI is the part that figures out the nature of the universe in which it finds itself (a formalization of induction), and the algorithm for that is essentially "simulate all possible universes and see which ones give data that matches our observations, then apply Occam's razor and assume the simplest one is true".

It will not have escaped your notice that "simulate all possible universes" would require an infinitely powerful computer, and even finite approximations quickly become wildly intractable, making the algorithm unusable for anything significantly more complex than Pac-Man. Thus AIXI is interesting for philosophical purposes, being a mathematical formalization of intelligence, but not useful for engineering purposes.

Post reply on HN