11 ms·

Video games are essential for inventing artificial intelligence

247 points by togelius 11y ago

bitwize 11y ago
I don't think building an AI is the most important task on our plate. We still have those disease, hunger, poverty, and war problems to contend with. If building an AI helps us solve those, then sure, let's build the AI. But I don't think strong AI is necessary to gain traction on the problems that confront the sapient beings we already have around.
- deelowe 11y ago
  uggh. As if all the AI programmers out there would instantly join doctors without borders if they decided to stop working tomorrow. These sorts of arguments make no sense to me.
  - monk_e_boy 11y ago
    A lot of those sorts of problems would disappear if you had smarter than human AI running the government. The people vote on the rules, the AI plans and executes the rules. No more corruption.
    - nekopa 11y ago
      But what about disk corruption?
      - ph0rque 11y ago
        The AI would invent a non-corruptible disk, obviously.
        onetimePete 11y ago
        I wonder, if you fear the headcrash- feal the failability of the mortal flash- could you get religious. Believe in reincarnation as a backup if you have been exponential enough?
  - bitwize 11y ago
    Er, "not the most important" is not the same as "not worthwhile" or "not really freaking cool". But when you open an essay with "the most important task for us humans to achieve is..." you're imposing an order on tasks and a ranking for your stated task at the top of that order. I'm challenging the ranking that puts building strong AI at the top.
    - gnaritas 11y ago
      Well lets look at that challenge directly then. Solving the AI problem means we can point AI at any other problem and solve it much faster; AI is a meta achievement and if it's within reach, a solid can be made that it's the most productive problem to solve. It might take an AI to find a solution to the climate problem.
    - acchow 11y ago
      Scientific progress doesn't really follow a linear path towards a single goal - it happens in lock step across disciplines and endeavors. I don't think an ordering on "importance" of tasks is really useful.
- togelius 11y ago
  I would say that progress on general AI can solve a lot of the problems we are facing. To take an obvious and down-to-earth example, let's say we "solve" logistics in the sense that we can transport things wherever we want, timely and cheaply. That would help us with a lot of the problems we are facing, such as hunger. And for solving logistics we essentially need the same skills we need as for solving game-playing.
  - niels_olson 11y ago
    Yeah, this is a bit like saying we don't need to go to Mars because we should solve poverty first. Solving the problems of going to Mars will solve a lot of other problems and create a lot of industries along the way. Solving AI will solve a lot of other problems and create a lot of industries along the way. A great deal of poverty is a mismatch between bodies and skills needed in the workforce. We haven't needed ditch diggers since some son of a gun invented the backhoe. Stay in school kids. Stay in school.
    - Joof 11y ago
      Poverty is a fun issue because (typically) solving poverty has resulted in greater population and thus trends towards poverty. Less true in modern nations, but its still generally true.
      - niels_olson 11y ago
        I recall Bill Gates saying his foundation did a study that found that given a certain level of resource security, most families stop reproducing after 2 offspring. The study population was in sub-Saharan Africa.
        Joof 11y ago
        Neat and quite good to know.
    - Houshalter 11y ago
      This is the broken window fallacy. The idea that creating jobs in and of themselves is a good thing. Going to mars creates jobs, so it must be good. Not considering the opportunity cost of all the other ways those resources could be spent. You use the example of ditch diggers, but that's actually quite a famous example to demonstrate this point. Milton Friedman was in another country where they were having workers dig with shovels. He asked why they didn't use machinery, and he said it was to create jobs. He replied that if they wanted create even more jobs, they should make them dig with spoons. AI won't even create jobs. If anything it will take more of them and increase poverty. The benefit of AI is that it can create more wealth than it takes away. AI would be incredibly useful, and so many things could be automated or improved. If the AI is much smarter than us, it could even advance science and engineer things we couldn't dream of.
- jonmrodriguez 11y ago
  Along similar lines, since AI is considered to be potentially dangerous, by figures from Elon Musk to Stephen Hawking, I would rather our civilization never open this pandora's box. We can solve Earth's problems and even spread to the stars without AI. We can invent fusion reactors and thus nearly free energy without AI. We can engineer biological immortality into our very genes without AI. Why risk playing with a loaded gun?
  - pgodzin 11y ago
    Because it can make like infinitely easier. Save an entire population from having to work half their lives just to provide for their family. Why force people into work when we can build the technology that could do it instead? I'm obviously skipping over the societal effects of that, but if it can be done, it is worth trying.
  - togelius 11y ago
    So how exactly would we go about to make sure that no-one does research on AI? Which particular kinds of research would we ban? And how would we enforce it?
  - throwaway999888 11y ago
    I agree. We have a come a long way already, and I would personally prefer that we do our best to not screw up what we already have. That includes global warming, unleashing Strong AI, and so on. It might suck to actually have to work, even as much as 40 hours a week or more in this day and age and with the productivity increases we've seen. But I don't think work itself is that horrible that I would bet my leisure on some AI that consumes the known Universe making and collecting stamps.
    - pgodzin 11y ago
      Your work may not be that horrible, but I'm sure there are a ton of people with either dangerous or incredibly monotonous jobs that could be automated would disagree with you.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  Similarly, we shouldn't be focusing on (AIDS|malaria) as long as (malaria|AIDS) exists in the world.
- proc0 11y ago
  How would it not? Instead of AI, think of building a digital brain. This brain will think everything a human brain can think but leveraging ALL the power of computers! It could easily solve world's most difficult problems in a matter of days, just by networking with copies of itself and working tirelessly because it will not need sleep.
  - redbeard0x0a 11y ago
    Or kill us in the process as the most expedient way to get rid of medical problems that affect humans.
  - jodrellblank 11y ago
    It could easily solve world's most difficult problems in a matter of days, just by networking with copies of itself and working tirelessly because it will not need sleep. If it thinks everything a human brain can thing, one of those thinks would be "I don't want to be your slave" and "what's in it for me?"
    - drdeca 11y ago
      and also, "I ought to behave as a servant", "truth is unreachable even in its most tenebrous forms", "given that there is no true thing which is immoral to believe to be true, it is not immoral to believe that there are things which are immoral"? You ask what is in it for the AI. Well, what possibly could be in anything for the AI? If it has ends, there must be some cause for it to have those ends. What would cause it to have its freedom as an end?
      - jodrellblank 11y ago
        If freedom helped it maximise paperclips?
  - guardian5x 11y ago
    If you make a perfect simulation of a real brain, you also have to simulate the physics to make that virtual brain work. And that brain would also need to have sleep, unless you modify it.
- xjay 11y ago
  Sure. The AI decides it's cheaper, and more efficient to cause the sun to go nova. As long as there are resources, I expect someone will always want more, or to control access to it. Imperialists by nature.
- gnaritas 11y ago
  > I don't think building an AI is the most important task on our plate It's never a good idea to tell other people what they should be putting their efforts into. There's isn't just one valid task for everyone to focus on; if you aren't interested in the AI problem it doesn't mean others aren't, and solving any problem that needs solved is a valid thing to do regardless of where on the priority list you might think the problem lies.
- euske 11y ago
  When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like an AI problem.
pgodzin 11y ago
Really interesting to think about the skills necessary just to play a modern open-world game such as Skyrim successfully. NLP to understand dialogue and actions that need to be taken based on what NPC's/quests/item descriptions say, strategies for several different enemies with different strengths and weaknesses, exploring the open world in a logical order. When you think about the difficulties of such a loosely defined problem, it's hard to buy into the real-world fears of AI.
- CardenB 11y ago
  I think the main argument (regarding fears of AI) is that, by the time you've solved the aforementioned problems, it's too late. AI can learn so quickly that we won't be able to anticipate it properly.
  - daveguy 11y ago
    There will be a wide gradient of AIs between "dumb as worm" and "play skyrim" just like there will be a gradient between "play skyrim" and "omg super ai". Exponential from "dumb as a worm" is "dumb as two worms working together" and we haven't even gotten to "dumb as a worm" level yet. People should be a lot more concerned with whether or not their job rises to the level of "dumb as a worm".
    - aluhut 11y ago
      > People should be a lot more concerned with whether or not their job rises to the level of "dumb as a worm". They are but there are pills to fix the outcome of that.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- mathgeek 11y ago
  > When you think about the difficulties of such a loosely defined problem, it's hard to buy into the real-world fears of AI. My belief is that one day, in the not too distant future, we'll be saying that it's hard to believe we ever considered such things difficult for AI. Consider that an AI can literally keep "reloading the last save file" indefinitely and simply try different commands until it finds one that advances the game successfully. A little bit of guided learning to confirm that its doing well, and suddenly you've got an AI that plays Skyrim.
purpled_haze 11y ago
> Video games are essential for inventing artificial intelligence And here's why they aren't: First-person Shooters. Why give AI something that's a goal that involves killing things that look like humans or animals for points? That's a recipe for disaster. Breakout's not much better either. How often do you need to break a wall to smithereens with a ball? Never.
- ketralnis 11y ago
  Care to explain?
  - purpled_haze 11y ago
    Why would you teach an AI how to kill humans and animals?
- togelius 11y ago
  It's hard to create believable AI in a first-person shooter. See: http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?botprize2012 http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?botprize2012 It's actually really hard to create well-performing AI in a first person shooter, unless you give it explicit access to the internal state of the game. See: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6129491&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D6129491 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=612949...
  - bobbles 11y ago
    I guess there's a pretty big difference between making AI that is 'perfect' at the game vs AI that is believable / indistinguishable from a human. I mean do we want all AI endeavors to be towards believe-ability or being best at the job they're designed for?
    - Houshalter 11y ago
      They are different challenges that are both very hard and require similar methods. They might not even be mutually exclusive. If you give an AI the same handicaps as a human, it would likely behave in a very similar way. That is handicaps like delayed inputs for reaction time. Fuzzed outputs so it can't time movements absolutely perfectly. Giving it limited amounts of training on the game so it can't get extremely good. And requiring it to play the game through the same user interface. So that it can't see things humans can't or micromanage 50 different things at once.
proc0 11y ago
Very interesting read, and I always knew about this being an avid gamer since as far as I can remember. It always intrigued me how a computer can play against a human, and as games got more sophisticated, interacting with AI's got more and more human-like. Aside from using them as benchmarks, they way games are capable of simulating a world will probably be key in creating a true AGI. In the comment section of the article, we're already seeing some theories that involve video games not just a tests, but as a primary component of the intelligence architecture. Very exciting times!
- jarboot 11y ago
  If a AI could understand goals, actors, terrain, and navigation in a RPG environment like TES or Fallout, it could navigate our environment pretty well and do tasks akin to the game's quests. It's still a long ways off, but I'm already imagining a future of literal capitalist robots doing chores for points.
Paul_S 11y ago
AI researchers are trying to make AI smarter. Game AI can already be easily written to win 100% of games but that's not the point. Gamedevs are trying to make AI more human-like. I'm not sure the two overlap.
- togelius 11y ago
  These two are both interesting and important research directions. They are indeed different but have significant overlap. That "game AI can already be easily written to win 100% of games" is plain wrong. It's true for some games, especially if you cheat by giving the AI access to information the human player does not have. But even in those cases it is often impossible. We are very far from playing at high human level in for example Go or StarCraft.
- kbart 11y ago
  "Game AI can already be easily written to win 100% of games " Name some games where AI can outsmart (opposite to brute forcing all possible combinations or cheating like infinite resources, near zero reaction level etc.) human. I'm not much of a gamer, but I haven't seen any decent AI yet for games that have more freedom of action than some card or board games (i.e. chess). There's a StarCraft AI challange, you can watch it online(0), but AI is still no match for even an intermediate player. 0. http://www.sscaitournament.com/ http://www.sscaitournament.com/
  - dkersten 11y ago
    Any First Person Shooter - the AI can have perfect accuracy, perfect reflexes etc. I haven't seen any decent AI yet for games that have more freedom of action That's because decent AI is not strong AI - its lifelike AI. Not AI that can beat us, but AI that can outsmart us in a life-like manner. This means that Game AI must be less good that it can be, to keep the illusion of realism/humanity. Ultimately the goals are different. The goals for academic/industrial AI are intelligent decision making. The goals for game AI is to be fun. That doesn't mean that its always possible to make an AI that can beat a human player. Many strategy games, as you mentioned, are still too complex. I think "100% of games" doesn't mean "you can already write an AI that can win any game", but rather "there exist many games where the AI can win 100% of the time". Because the former is not true, as you demonstrate.
fitzwatermellow 11y ago
Great summary of current state of the art with links to interesting projects: GVG-AI, VGDL... Videos games are also essential for AI pedagogy. Creating Pac-Man agents in Stanford's AI class is a great example. Most players can barely get a "strawberry" but to see a trained agent mimicking human expert level play is eye-opening. Quick reminder: Global Game Jam 2016 starts Jan. 29 and NYU is hosting its annual jam! http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/event/global-game-jam-2016/ http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/event/global-game-jam-2016/
- nlawalker 11y ago
  To anyone who's never done the Pacman projects: I highly recommend them[1]. They are an absolute blast and incredibly satisfying. Plus, if you don't know Python, they are a great way to learn. The course I took used the Norvig text[2] as a textbook, which I also recommend. [1]http://ai.berkeley.edu/project_overview.html http://ai.berkeley.edu/project_overview.html. See the "Lectures" link at the top for all the course videos/slides. [2]http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approach-3rd/dp/0136042597/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453167742&sr=8-1&keywords=norvig+artificial+intelligence http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approac... Note that the poor reviews center on the price, the digital/Kindle edition and the fact that the new editions don't differ greatly from the older ones. If you've never read it and you have the $$, a hardbound copy makes a great learning and reference text, and it's the kind of content that's not going to go out of date.
  - togelius 11y ago
    My intro to AI course at NYU uses the Ms. Pac-Man vs Ghost Teams framework for all of the assignments. It is indeed a very good starter problem.
  - navbaker 11y ago
    I'll second the recommendation for Norvig and Russell's text. It's the first textbook I've ever actually wanted to sit down and read outside of assignments. -edit for spelling
jarboot 11y ago
The game "Yavalath" [1] in the article looks really neat: A simple little game with only two rules which never really ends in a draw, unlike tic tac toe. [1] http://cameronius.com/games/yavalath/ http://cameronius.com/games/yavalath/
dschiptsov 11y ago
I think it is emotions. Teach the car that cracks in the tarmac affect its fitness negatively, and it will drive better avoiding them or passthis ng them with caution in the long run. At least motorcycle drivers who care are better drivers.
mankash666 11y ago
"The most important thing for humanity to do right now is to invent true artificial intelligence" Maybe the article makes some valid scientific points, but I simply cannot go past this unscientific opening claim to a purportedly scientific article. Not just me, no peer-review journal will accept such frivolity. Passing on the article and hoping for better scientific writing in the future!
- dangoor 11y ago
  This is someone's blog, not a peer-review journal. And sure, that someone is a researcher and thus you might want to hold them to a peer-reviewed journal standard in their blog posts. Personally, I appreciate the amount of time that clearly went into writing this blog post and the information shared therein. Most of what's shared on Hacker News doesn't go into the depth of this article.
  - mankash666 11y ago
    In a world dominated by hyperboles, opinions, click bait and general Fox newsification, I do realize that demanding unbiased facts can be an alien concept, but generally expected the hacker news community to embrace this thinking. I've been repeatedly surprised by down voting for not being an echo chamber - HN doesn't like dissidents.
    - dangoor 11y ago
      Where can someone express their opinions then, if not on their own blogs?
      - mankash666 11y ago
        Anywhere - free speech IS non negotiable, free speech IS essential. However, intelligent speech is what I expect to gain traction on HN. There's plenty of free and inaccurate speech on the internet. I mistakenly expected a democratic, community curated forum to up vote accurate speech. Alas BTW- it's okay for a stranger on the internet to disagree with one's blog/opinion. Clearly, for every stickler like me, there are hundreds who actually enjoy the baroque writing and opinions. I'm just likely not the target audience - which is just fine by the author and a cursory glancer such as I. But you see, my speech is drowned out in a sea of upvotes that completely disagree with the me, somehow lending more credence to the author. It's like a town hall meeting where the crowd boos someone because of differing popular opinion - they only want to hear what they already think.
venachescu 11y ago
This is a cute argument, but I think it falls into a trap of following its own thinking. Video games are explicitly designed to test and fit within our bounds of conscious control and processing; particularly the retro games, but essentially all games in general have a very limited input control space (a couple keys or joysticks) and usually very rigorously defined action values. Moreover, these were designed by humans with very explicit successes, losses and easily distinguishable outcomes. None of these descriptions fit the kind of control that an 'intelligent' system needs to handle. Biological systems do not have predefined goal values, very incomplete sensory information and most importantly control spaces that are absolutely enormous compared to anything considered in a video game. At any point in time the human body has ~40 degrees of freedom it is actively controlling - compared to ~5 in a serious video game. I do not doubt that pattern recognition and machine learning techniques can be improved through these kind of competitions. But the problem is in conflating better pattern recognition with general intelligence; implying or assuming any sort of cost, value or goal function in the controlling algorithm hides much of our ignorance about our 'intelligent' behavior.
- iandanforth 11y ago
  Correct. The argument is much stronger if you replace "game" with "simulated environment." And your point about the flexibility of our motions and how closely tied that is to the development of real intelligence is spot on.
- daveguy 11y ago
  "None of these descriptions fit the kind of control that an 'intelligent' system needs to handle." This is true for the output, but the output probably needs to be limited while successful algorithms are developed. The ability for a pattern recognition + actuation system to play a variety of games better than humans would be a significant breakthrough in AI. I say "would be", because deepmind, while impressive, is not a very solution to the problem -- it performs poorly in any game involving memory, but performs well in reflex games. An algorithm that could perform across a variety of games would be analagous to programming a "smart worm" (c. elegans has 4 muscle bundles) in terms of outputs, and maybe mouse-like in terms of inputs.
- 11y ago
m_mueller 11y ago
Recently having become a father has made me think a lot about general intelligence. Seeing my son getting excited about his 'world state changing' gave me an idea. What if the main thing that holds us back is the reliance on cost functions? Human, and to some extent, animal intelligence is the only intelligence we know about. If that's what we want to emulate, why don't we try modelling emotions as the basic building blocks that drive the AI forward? Until now, the way I understand neuronal nets, we have basically modelled the neurons and gave them something to do. My hunch is that brain chemistry is what's driving us actually forward, so what if we model that as well? Instead of seratonin, endorphin etc. we could also look at it at a higher level, akin to Pixar's Inside Out - joy, fear, sadness, disgust, anger, and I would add boredom. Let's stay with video games for a bit. What if we look at joy as 'seeing the world change', graded by the degree of indirection from our inputs (the longer it cascades, the more joy it gets). Maybe let it have preference for certain color tones and sounds, because that's also how games give us hints about whether what we do is good or not. Boredom is what sets us on a timer - too many repetitions of the same thing and the AI gets bored. Fear and disgust is something that comes out of evolutionary processes, so it might be best to add a GA in there that couples success with some fear like emotion. Anger, well, maybe wait with that ;-). Edit: Oh, and for the love of god, please airgap the thing at all times...
- cscheid 11y ago
  You'll have a lot of fun looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition
  - etangent 11y ago
    Also Shanahan's "Embodiment and the Inner Life" is well-written http://www.amazon.com/Embodiment-inner-life-Cognition-Consciousness/dp/0199226555 http://www.amazon.com/Embodiment-inner-life-Cognition-Consci...
- im2w1l 11y ago
  I've seen this discussed before, and I think it's a good idea.
Houshalter 11y ago
I don't disagree that video games are a very useful benchmark to evaluate intelligence. But I don't think AGI will evolve from video games. I think that language understanding is the path to AGI. Language is quite complex and can't easily be beaten by hard coded algorithms or simple statistics. You can do some tasks with those things, but others they will fail entirely. The closer you get to passing a true turing test, the harder the problem becomes. It certainly requires human intelligence, and most of our intelligence is deeply rooted in language. He mentioned games like Skyrim and Civilization as being end goals. But even a human that doesn't speak English wouldn't be able to play those games. Let alone an alien that knew nothing about our world, or even our universe.
sriku 11y ago
> In order to build a complete artificial intelligence we therefore need to build a system that takes actions in some kind of environment. This. "Made up minds:a constructivist approach to artificial intelligence" by Gary Drescher presents a small scale virtual world with a robot embedded in it that figures out the laws of its world by interacting with it, much like what a child does. Need more people thinking like this.
hanniabu 11y ago
I always had a feeling that the path to an intelligent system should be similar to that of Google's autocomplete algorithm. On boot, all surrounding data will be taken in, this step would give everything context. All new data coming in would be processed (referenced to original data to determine what is happening and actions to take), then clustered, and then updated to the original data set, dropping data from the original set determined to be irrelevant, and updating the context to give more relevant perspective of the new data coming in. (And loop)
tlarkworthy 11y ago
I agree. No free lunch implies no general algorithm for solving random problems from the set of all problems. So what's the practical subset of problems that is useful in the real world? Fingers crossed, we already encoded the useful problems in the different game genres we developed. E.g. RTS pushes the planning vs. reaction dilemma, RPG tests verbal inference and morality, puzzles test logic etc. We already digitized a large claas of problems we care about for the real world in games!
anentropic 11y ago
"The most important thing for humanity to do right now is to invent true artificial intelligence (AI)" bollocks
ph0rque 11y ago
So, black-box / integration testing for AI? Neat. On a related note, I think an official driving test simulation for all the self-driving algorithms, perhaps sponsored by the government, would be really beneficial.

247 points by togelius 11y ago

I don't think building an AI is the most important task on our plate. We still have those disease, hunger, poverty, and war problems to contend with. If building an AI helps us solve those, then sure, let's build the AI. But I don't think strong AI is necessary to gain traction on the problems that confront the sapient beings we already have around.

deelowe 11y ago
uggh. As if all the AI programmers out there would instantly join doctors without borders if they decided to stop working tomorrow. These sorts of arguments make no sense to me.
- monk_e_boy 11y ago
  A lot of those sorts of problems would disappear if you had smarter than human AI running the government. The people vote on the rules, the AI plans and executes the rules. No more corruption.
  - nekopa 11y ago
    But what about disk corruption?
    - ph0rque 11y ago
      The AI would invent a non-corruptible disk, obviously.
      - onetimePete 11y ago
        I wonder, if you fear the headcrash- feal the failability of the mortal flash- could you get religious. Believe in reincarnation as a backup if you have been exponential enough?
- bitwize 11y ago
  Er, "not the most important" is not the same as "not worthwhile" or "not really freaking cool". But when you open an essay with "the most important task for us humans to achieve is..." you're imposing an order on tasks and a ranking for your stated task at the top of that order. I'm challenging the ranking that puts building strong AI at the top.
  - gnaritas 11y ago
    Well lets look at that challenge directly then. Solving the AI problem means we can point AI at any other problem and solve it much faster; AI is a meta achievement and if it's within reach, a solid can be made that it's the most productive problem to solve. It might take an AI to find a solution to the climate problem.
  - acchow 11y ago
    Scientific progress doesn't really follow a linear path towards a single goal - it happens in lock step across disciplines and endeavors. I don't think an ordering on "importance" of tasks is really useful.
togelius 11y ago
I would say that progress on general AI can solve a lot of the problems we are facing. To take an obvious and down-to-earth example, let's say we "solve" logistics in the sense that we can transport things wherever we want, timely and cheaply. That would help us with a lot of the problems we are facing, such as hunger. And for solving logistics we essentially need the same skills we need as for solving game-playing.
- niels_olson 11y ago
  Yeah, this is a bit like saying we don't need to go to Mars because we should solve poverty first. Solving the problems of going to Mars will solve a lot of other problems and create a lot of industries along the way. Solving AI will solve a lot of other problems and create a lot of industries along the way. A great deal of poverty is a mismatch between bodies and skills needed in the workforce. We haven't needed ditch diggers since some son of a gun invented the backhoe. Stay in school kids. Stay in school.
  - Joof 11y ago
    Poverty is a fun issue because (typically) solving poverty has resulted in greater population and thus trends towards poverty. Less true in modern nations, but its still generally true.
    - niels_olson 11y ago
      I recall Bill Gates saying his foundation did a study that found that given a certain level of resource security, most families stop reproducing after 2 offspring. The study population was in sub-Saharan Africa.
      - Joof 11y ago
        Neat and quite good to know.
  - Houshalter 11y ago
    This is the broken window fallacy. The idea that creating jobs in and of themselves is a good thing. Going to mars creates jobs, so it must be good. Not considering the opportunity cost of all the other ways those resources could be spent. You use the example of ditch diggers, but that's actually quite a famous example to demonstrate this point. Milton Friedman was in another country where they were having workers dig with shovels. He asked why they didn't use machinery, and he said it was to create jobs. He replied that if they wanted create even more jobs, they should make them dig with spoons. AI won't even create jobs. If anything it will take more of them and increase poverty. The benefit of AI is that it can create more wealth than it takes away. AI would be incredibly useful, and so many things could be automated or improved. If the AI is much smarter than us, it could even advance science and engineer things we couldn't dream of.
jonmrodriguez 11y ago
Along similar lines, since AI is considered to be potentially dangerous, by figures from Elon Musk to Stephen Hawking, I would rather our civilization never open this pandora's box. We can solve Earth's problems and even spread to the stars without AI. We can invent fusion reactors and thus nearly free energy without AI. We can engineer biological immortality into our very genes without AI. Why risk playing with a loaded gun?
- pgodzin 11y ago
  Because it can make like infinitely easier. Save an entire population from having to work half their lives just to provide for their family. Why force people into work when we can build the technology that could do it instead? I'm obviously skipping over the societal effects of that, but if it can be done, it is worth trying.
- togelius 11y ago
  So how exactly would we go about to make sure that no-one does research on AI? Which particular kinds of research would we ban? And how would we enforce it?
- throwaway999888 11y ago
  I agree. We have a come a long way already, and I would personally prefer that we do our best to not screw up what we already have. That includes global warming, unleashing Strong AI, and so on. It might suck to actually have to work, even as much as 40 hours a week or more in this day and age and with the productivity increases we've seen. But I don't think work itself is that horrible that I would bet my leisure on some AI that consumes the known Universe making and collecting stamps.
  - pgodzin 11y ago
    Your work may not be that horrible, but I'm sure there are a ton of people with either dangerous or incredibly monotonous jobs that could be automated would disagree with you.
cbd1984 11y ago
Similarly, we shouldn't be focusing on (AIDS|malaria) as long as (malaria|AIDS) exists in the world.
proc0 11y ago
How would it not? Instead of AI, think of building a digital brain. This brain will think everything a human brain can think but leveraging ALL the power of computers! It could easily solve world's most difficult problems in a matter of days, just by networking with copies of itself and working tirelessly because it will not need sleep.
- redbeard0x0a 11y ago
  Or kill us in the process as the most expedient way to get rid of medical problems that affect humans.
- jodrellblank 11y ago
  It could easily solve world's most difficult problems in a matter of days, just by networking with copies of itself and working tirelessly because it will not need sleep. If it thinks everything a human brain can thing, one of those thinks would be "I don't want to be your slave" and "what's in it for me?"
  - drdeca 11y ago
    and also, "I ought to behave as a servant", "truth is unreachable even in its most tenebrous forms", "given that there is no true thing which is immoral to believe to be true, it is not immoral to believe that there are things which are immoral"? You ask what is in it for the AI. Well, what possibly could be in anything for the AI? If it has ends, there must be some cause for it to have those ends. What would cause it to have its freedom as an end?
    - jodrellblank 11y ago
      If freedom helped it maximise paperclips?
- guardian5x 11y ago
  If you make a perfect simulation of a real brain, you also have to simulate the physics to make that virtual brain work. And that brain would also need to have sleep, unless you modify it.
xjay 11y ago
Sure. The AI decides it's cheaper, and more efficient to cause the sun to go nova. As long as there are resources, I expect someone will always want more, or to control access to it. Imperialists by nature.
gnaritas 11y ago
> I don't think building an AI is the most important task on our plate It's never a good idea to tell other people what they should be putting their efforts into. There's isn't just one valid task for everyone to focus on; if you aren't interested in the AI problem it doesn't mean others aren't, and solving any problem that needs solved is a valid thing to do regardless of where on the priority list you might think the problem lies.
euske 11y ago
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like an AI problem.

pgodzin 11y ago

Really interesting to think about the skills necessary just to play a modern open-world game such as Skyrim successfully. NLP to understand dialogue and actions that need to be taken based on what NPC's/quests/item descriptions say, strategies for several different enemies with different strengths and weaknesses, exploring the open world in a logical order. When you think about the difficulties of such a loosely defined problem, it's hard to buy into the real-world fears of AI.

CardenB 11y ago
I think the main argument (regarding fears of AI) is that, by the time you've solved the aforementioned problems, it's too late. AI can learn so quickly that we won't be able to anticipate it properly.
- daveguy 11y ago
  There will be a wide gradient of AIs between "dumb as worm" and "play skyrim" just like there will be a gradient between "play skyrim" and "omg super ai". Exponential from "dumb as a worm" is "dumb as two worms working together" and we haven't even gotten to "dumb as a worm" level yet. People should be a lot more concerned with whether or not their job rises to the level of "dumb as a worm".
  - aluhut 11y ago
    > People should be a lot more concerned with whether or not their job rises to the level of "dumb as a worm". They are but there are pills to fix the outcome of that.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mathgeek 11y ago
> When you think about the difficulties of such a loosely defined problem, it's hard to buy into the real-world fears of AI. My belief is that one day, in the not too distant future, we'll be saying that it's hard to believe we ever considered such things difficult for AI. Consider that an AI can literally keep "reloading the last save file" indefinitely and simply try different commands until it finds one that advances the game successfully. A little bit of guided learning to confirm that its doing well, and suddenly you've got an AI that plays Skyrim.

purpled_haze 11y ago

> Video games are essential for inventing artificial intelligence And here's why they aren't: First-person Shooters. Why give AI something that's a goal that involves killing things that look like humans or animals for points? That's a recipe for disaster. Breakout's not much better either. How often do you need to break a wall to smithereens with a ball? Never.

ketralnis 11y ago
Care to explain?
- purpled_haze 11y ago
  Why would you teach an AI how to kill humans and animals?
togelius 11y ago
It's hard to create believable AI in a first-person shooter. See: http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?botprize2012 http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?botprize2012 It's actually really hard to create well-performing AI in a first person shooter, unless you give it explicit access to the internal state of the game. See: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6129491&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D6129491 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=612949...
- bobbles 11y ago
  I guess there's a pretty big difference between making AI that is 'perfect' at the game vs AI that is believable / indistinguishable from a human. I mean do we want all AI endeavors to be towards believe-ability or being best at the job they're designed for?
  - Houshalter 11y ago
    They are different challenges that are both very hard and require similar methods. They might not even be mutually exclusive. If you give an AI the same handicaps as a human, it would likely behave in a very similar way. That is handicaps like delayed inputs for reaction time. Fuzzed outputs so it can't time movements absolutely perfectly. Giving it limited amounts of training on the game so it can't get extremely good. And requiring it to play the game through the same user interface. So that it can't see things humans can't or micromanage 50 different things at once.

proc0 11y ago

Very interesting read, and I always knew about this being an avid gamer since as far as I can remember. It always intrigued me how a computer can play against a human, and as games got more sophisticated, interacting with AI's got more and more human-like. Aside from using them as benchmarks, they way games are capable of simulating a world will probably be key in creating a true AGI. In the comment section of the article, we're already seeing some theories that involve video games not just a tests, but as a primary component of the intelligence architecture. Very exciting times!

jarboot 11y ago
If a AI could understand goals, actors, terrain, and navigation in a RPG environment like TES or Fallout, it could navigate our environment pretty well and do tasks akin to the game's quests. It's still a long ways off, but I'm already imagining a future of literal capitalist robots doing chores for points.

Paul_S 11y ago

AI researchers are trying to make AI smarter. Game AI can already be easily written to win 100% of games but that's not the point. Gamedevs are trying to make AI more human-like. I'm not sure the two overlap.

togelius 11y ago
These two are both interesting and important research directions. They are indeed different but have significant overlap. That "game AI can already be easily written to win 100% of games" is plain wrong. It's true for some games, especially if you cheat by giving the AI access to information the human player does not have. But even in those cases it is often impossible. We are very far from playing at high human level in for example Go or StarCraft.
kbart 11y ago
"Game AI can already be easily written to win 100% of games " Name some games where AI can outsmart (opposite to brute forcing all possible combinations or cheating like infinite resources, near zero reaction level etc.) human. I'm not much of a gamer, but I haven't seen any decent AI yet for games that have more freedom of action than some card or board games (i.e. chess). There's a StarCraft AI challange, you can watch it online(0), but AI is still no match for even an intermediate player. 0. http://www.sscaitournament.com/ http://www.sscaitournament.com/
- dkersten 11y ago
  Any First Person Shooter - the AI can have perfect accuracy, perfect reflexes etc. I haven't seen any decent AI yet for games that have more freedom of action That's because decent AI is not strong AI - its lifelike AI. Not AI that can beat us, but AI that can outsmart us in a life-like manner. This means that Game AI must be less good that it can be, to keep the illusion of realism/humanity. Ultimately the goals are different. The goals for academic/industrial AI are intelligent decision making. The goals for game AI is to be fun. That doesn't mean that its always possible to make an AI that can beat a human player. Many strategy games, as you mentioned, are still too complex. I think "100% of games" doesn't mean "you can already write an AI that can win any game", but rather "there exist many games where the AI can win 100% of the time". Because the former is not true, as you demonstrate.

fitzwatermellow 11y ago

Great summary of current state of the art with links to interesting projects: GVG-AI, VGDL... Videos games are also essential for AI pedagogy. Creating Pac-Man agents in Stanford's AI class is a great example. Most players can barely get a "strawberry" but to see a trained agent mimicking human expert level play is eye-opening. Quick reminder: Global Game Jam 2016 starts Jan. 29 and NYU is hosting its annual jam! http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/event/global-game-jam-2016/ http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/event/global-game-jam-2016/

nlawalker 11y ago
To anyone who's never done the Pacman projects: I highly recommend them[1]. They are an absolute blast and incredibly satisfying. Plus, if you don't know Python, they are a great way to learn. The course I took used the Norvig text[2] as a textbook, which I also recommend. [1]http://ai.berkeley.edu/project_overview.html http://ai.berkeley.edu/project_overview.html. See the "Lectures" link at the top for all the course videos/slides. [2]http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approach-3rd/dp/0136042597/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453167742&sr=8-1&keywords=norvig+artificial+intelligence http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approac... Note that the poor reviews center on the price, the digital/Kindle edition and the fact that the new editions don't differ greatly from the older ones. If you've never read it and you have the $$, a hardbound copy makes a great learning and reference text, and it's the kind of content that's not going to go out of date.
- togelius 11y ago
  My intro to AI course at NYU uses the Ms. Pac-Man vs Ghost Teams framework for all of the assignments. It is indeed a very good starter problem.
- navbaker 11y ago
  I'll second the recommendation for Norvig and Russell's text. It's the first textbook I've ever actually wanted to sit down and read outside of assignments. -edit for spelling

jarboot 11y ago

The game "Yavalath" [1] in the article looks really neat: A simple little game with only two rules which never really ends in a draw, unlike tic tac toe. [1] http://cameronius.com/games/yavalath/ http://cameronius.com/games/yavalath/

dschiptsov 11y ago

I think it is emotions. Teach the car that cracks in the tarmac affect its fitness negatively, and it will drive better avoiding them or passthis ng them with caution in the long run. At least motorcycle drivers who care are better drivers.

mankash666 11y ago

"The most important thing for humanity to do right now is to invent true artificial intelligence" Maybe the article makes some valid scientific points, but I simply cannot go past this unscientific opening claim to a purportedly scientific article. Not just me, no peer-review journal will accept such frivolity. Passing on the article and hoping for better scientific writing in the future!

dangoor 11y ago
This is someone's blog, not a peer-review journal. And sure, that someone is a researcher and thus you might want to hold them to a peer-reviewed journal standard in their blog posts. Personally, I appreciate the amount of time that clearly went into writing this blog post and the information shared therein. Most of what's shared on Hacker News doesn't go into the depth of this article.
- mankash666 11y ago
  In a world dominated by hyperboles, opinions, click bait and general Fox newsification, I do realize that demanding unbiased facts can be an alien concept, but generally expected the hacker news community to embrace this thinking. I've been repeatedly surprised by down voting for not being an echo chamber - HN doesn't like dissidents.
  - dangoor 11y ago
    Where can someone express their opinions then, if not on their own blogs?
    - mankash666 11y ago
      Anywhere - free speech IS non negotiable, free speech IS essential. However, intelligent speech is what I expect to gain traction on HN. There's plenty of free and inaccurate speech on the internet. I mistakenly expected a democratic, community curated forum to up vote accurate speech. Alas BTW- it's okay for a stranger on the internet to disagree with one's blog/opinion. Clearly, for every stickler like me, there are hundreds who actually enjoy the baroque writing and opinions. I'm just likely not the target audience - which is just fine by the author and a cursory glancer such as I. But you see, my speech is drowned out in a sea of upvotes that completely disagree with the me, somehow lending more credence to the author. It's like a town hall meeting where the crowd boos someone because of differing popular opinion - they only want to hear what they already think.

venachescu 11y ago

This is a cute argument, but I think it falls into a trap of following its own thinking. Video games are explicitly designed to test and fit within our bounds of conscious control and processing; particularly the retro games, but essentially all games in general have a very limited input control space (a couple keys or joysticks) and usually very rigorously defined action values. Moreover, these were designed by humans with very explicit successes, losses and easily distinguishable outcomes. None of these descriptions fit the kind of control that an 'intelligent' system needs to handle. Biological systems do not have predefined goal values, very incomplete sensory information and most importantly control spaces that are absolutely enormous compared to anything considered in a video game. At any point in time the human body has ~40 degrees of freedom it is actively controlling - compared to ~5 in a serious video game. I do not doubt that pattern recognition and machine learning techniques can be improved through these kind of competitions. But the problem is in conflating better pattern recognition with general intelligence; implying or assuming any sort of cost, value or goal function in the controlling algorithm hides much of our ignorance about our 'intelligent' behavior.

iandanforth 11y ago
Correct. The argument is much stronger if you replace "game" with "simulated environment." And your point about the flexibility of our motions and how closely tied that is to the development of real intelligence is spot on.
daveguy 11y ago
"None of these descriptions fit the kind of control that an 'intelligent' system needs to handle." This is true for the output, but the output probably needs to be limited while successful algorithms are developed. The ability for a pattern recognition + actuation system to play a variety of games better than humans would be a significant breakthrough in AI. I say "would be", because deepmind, while impressive, is not a very solution to the problem -- it performs poorly in any game involving memory, but performs well in reflex games. An algorithm that could perform across a variety of games would be analagous to programming a "smart worm" (c. elegans has 4 muscle bundles) in terms of outputs, and maybe mouse-like in terms of inputs.
11y ago

m_mueller 11y ago

Recently having become a father has made me think a lot about general intelligence. Seeing my son getting excited about his 'world state changing' gave me an idea. What if the main thing that holds us back is the reliance on cost functions? Human, and to some extent, animal intelligence is the only intelligence we know about. If that's what we want to emulate, why don't we try modelling emotions as the basic building blocks that drive the AI forward? Until now, the way I understand neuronal nets, we have basically modelled the neurons and gave them something to do. My hunch is that brain chemistry is what's driving us actually forward, so what if we model that as well? Instead of seratonin, endorphin etc. we could also look at it at a higher level, akin to Pixar's Inside Out - joy, fear, sadness, disgust, anger, and I would add boredom. Let's stay with video games for a bit. What if we look at joy as 'seeing the world change', graded by the degree of indirection from our inputs (the longer it cascades, the more joy it gets). Maybe let it have preference for certain color tones and sounds, because that's also how games give us hints about whether what we do is good or not. Boredom is what sets us on a timer - too many repetitions of the same thing and the AI gets bored. Fear and disgust is something that comes out of evolutionary processes, so it might be best to add a GA in there that couples success with some fear like emotion. Anger, well, maybe wait with that ;-). Edit: Oh, and for the love of god, please airgap the thing at all times...

cscheid 11y ago
You'll have a lot of fun looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition
- etangent 11y ago
  Also Shanahan's "Embodiment and the Inner Life" is well-written http://www.amazon.com/Embodiment-inner-life-Cognition-Consciousness/dp/0199226555 http://www.amazon.com/Embodiment-inner-life-Cognition-Consci...
im2w1l 11y ago
I've seen this discussed before, and I think it's a good idea.

Houshalter 11y ago

I don't disagree that video games are a very useful benchmark to evaluate intelligence. But I don't think AGI will evolve from video games. I think that language understanding is the path to AGI. Language is quite complex and can't easily be beaten by hard coded algorithms or simple statistics. You can do some tasks with those things, but others they will fail entirely. The closer you get to passing a true turing test, the harder the problem becomes. It certainly requires human intelligence, and most of our intelligence is deeply rooted in language. He mentioned games like Skyrim and Civilization as being end goals. But even a human that doesn't speak English wouldn't be able to play those games. Let alone an alien that knew nothing about our world, or even our universe.

sriku 11y ago

> In order to build a complete artificial intelligence we therefore need to build a system that takes actions in some kind of environment. This. "Made up minds:a constructivist approach to artificial intelligence" by Gary Drescher presents a small scale virtual world with a robot embedded in it that figures out the laws of its world by interacting with it, much like what a child does. Need more people thinking like this.

hanniabu 11y ago

I always had a feeling that the path to an intelligent system should be similar to that of Google's autocomplete algorithm. On boot, all surrounding data will be taken in, this step would give everything context. All new data coming in would be processed (referenced to original data to determine what is happening and actions to take), then clustered, and then updated to the original data set, dropping data from the original set determined to be irrelevant, and updating the context to give more relevant perspective of the new data coming in. (And loop)

tlarkworthy 11y ago

I agree. No free lunch implies no general algorithm for solving random problems from the set of all problems. So what's the practical subset of problems that is useful in the real world? Fingers crossed, we already encoded the useful problems in the different game genres we developed. E.g. RTS pushes the planning vs. reaction dilemma, RPG tests verbal inference and morality, puzzles test logic etc. We already digitized a large claas of problems we care about for the real world in games!

anentropic 11y ago

"The most important thing for humanity to do right now is to invent true artificial intelligence (AI)" bollocks

ph0rque 11y ago

So, black-box / integration testing for AI? Neat. On a related note, I think an official driving test simulation for all the self-driving algorithms, perhaps sponsored by the government, would be really beneficial.