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>The detailed inner workings of a complex machine intelligence (or of a biological brain) may turn out to be incomprehensible to our human minds—or at least the

>The detailed inner workings of a complex machine intelligence (or of a biological brain) may turn out to be incomprehensible to our human minds—or at least the human minds of today". Did he really say that? I probably should avoid talking right now. Ahaha. Ahahahahaaaa. Oh boy. I mean, the mind isn't that hard to crack once you start conceiving of exactly what problems it was designed to solve, what functions it was designed to perform. We don't have complete theories yet, but generative causal inference in Turing-complete domains gets us into replicating "psychological" behavior and explaining cognitive-psychology experiments, so hey. And then we've got solid overviews of how you'd go about combining concepts into theories into worldviews, and such. There are a bunch of open problems remaining, but not nearly as many as people think.

jameshart 11y ago
While it's great to hear of progress in the AI research sphere, if you are working in this field, and are truly close to creating true artificial intelligence, I have a little tip for you: You probably want to learn not to include maniacal laughter in your forum posts. Just, you know, when you do combine the concepts into theories into worldviews, and you come to post your "Show HN: Generative causal inference in turing-complete domains replicates cognitive-psychology experiments" announcement to share with the world that you have birthed a genuine universal AI, please don't start that post off: "Ahaha. Ahahahahaaaa." People will likely get entirely the wrong idea.
- yellowapple 11y ago
  Implying that "mad scientist creates an artificial intelligence" is anything but the right idea :)
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  That was actually not traditional maniacal laughter. That would have been more like, "Muahahaha! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!" That was uncomfortable laughter. I'm by no means a researcher, just some guy trying to learn enough to volunteer with a lab and eventually become a PhD student. >Just, you know, when you do combine the concepts into theories into worldviews, and you come to post your "Show HN: Generative causal inference in turing-complete domains replicates cognitive-psychology experiments" announcement to share with the world that you have birthed a genuine universal AI, probmods.org has been on HN before, you know.
resu_nimda 11y ago
Heh, how is this any different from classic AI arrogance, why should we believe this is not exactly the pitfall the author cautions against at the beginning? I mean this sounds almost verbatim like so many "yeah we're getting some really good results, almost there, just a few ends to tie up" sentiments from over the years. Of course I can't say whether you're right or wrong, only time will tell, but I have a pretty strong belief that the first "true AI" is not going to come from any of the currently predominant methods/techniques/lines of inquiry.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  Again: I think the test is to replicate distinctly psychological behavior, to come up with theories of how actually-existing minds work, rather than to come up with theories of "pure logic" or "pure rationality". You don't do real science by trying to explain your sci-fi imaginings. You try to explain things you've already got in the world.
notahacker 11y ago
Various people have been speculating on what problems the human mind was designed to solve since the dawn of human self-awareness. We haven't even got anything close to consensus on fundamental stuff like the extent and direction of causal relationships between language structure and the way a mind operates. Things have got a bit better with fancy math and brain scanners to actually test hypotheses about how these psychological theories correspond to brain function, but we're a long way even from detailed answers to most relatively simple and defined experimental questions like "what's the difference between the way person X's mind and person Y's mind approach narrowly-defined problem A" We're probably not even close to knowing how many open problems we have to solve, never mind actually solving them.

jameshart 11y ago

While it's great to hear of progress in the AI research sphere, if you are working in this field, and are truly close to creating true artificial intelligence, I have a little tip for you: You probably want to learn not to include maniacal laughter in your forum posts. Just, you know, when you do combine the concepts into theories into worldviews, and you come to post your "Show HN: Generative causal inference in turing-complete domains replicates cognitive-psychology experiments" announcement to share with the world that you have birthed a genuine universal AI, please don't start that post off: "Ahaha. Ahahahahaaaa." People will likely get entirely the wrong idea.

yellowapple 11y ago
Implying that "mad scientist creates an artificial intelligence" is anything but the right idea :)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
That was actually not traditional maniacal laughter. That would have been more like, "Muahahaha! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!" That was uncomfortable laughter. I'm by no means a researcher, just some guy trying to learn enough to volunteer with a lab and eventually become a PhD student. >Just, you know, when you do combine the concepts into theories into worldviews, and you come to post your "Show HN: Generative causal inference in turing-complete domains replicates cognitive-psychology experiments" announcement to share with the world that you have birthed a genuine universal AI, probmods.org has been on HN before, you know.

resu_nimda 11y ago

Heh, how is this any different from classic AI arrogance, why should we believe this is not exactly the pitfall the author cautions against at the beginning? I mean this sounds almost verbatim like so many "yeah we're getting some really good results, almost there, just a few ends to tie up" sentiments from over the years. Of course I can't say whether you're right or wrong, only time will tell, but I have a pretty strong belief that the first "true AI" is not going to come from any of the currently predominant methods/techniques/lines of inquiry.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago
Again: I think the test is to replicate distinctly psychological behavior, to come up with theories of how actually-existing minds work, rather than to come up with theories of "pure logic" or "pure rationality". You don't do real science by trying to explain your sci-fi imaginings. You try to explain things you've already got in the world.

notahacker 11y ago

Various people have been speculating on what problems the human mind was designed to solve since the dawn of human self-awareness. We haven't even got anything close to consensus on fundamental stuff like the extent and direction of causal relationships between language structure and the way a mind operates. Things have got a bit better with fancy math and brain scanners to actually test hypotheses about how these psychological theories correspond to brain function, but we're a long way even from detailed answers to most relatively simple and defined experimental questions like "what's the difference between the way person X's mind and person Y's mind approach narrowly-defined problem A" We're probably not even close to knowing how many open problems we have to solve, never mind actually solving them.