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I always thought this was the only way to build a true AI -- build a 'virtual baby' that has to go through much the same experiences as a human baby. I'm sure

I always thought this was the only way to build a true AI -- build a 'virtual baby' that has to go through much the same experiences as a human baby. I'm sure this idea has been explored somewhere already - anybody have any pointers?

erichocean 11y ago
> anybody have any pointers? BabyX First Words https://vimeo.com/103501130 https://vimeo.com/103501130 Flexible Muscle-Based Locomotion for Bipedal Creatures https://vimeo.com/79098420 https://vimeo.com/79098420
cvarjas 11y ago
I've come across some curiosity driven skill acquisition research for robots that is similar to this. Below is a link to one of the articles and more related articles can be found from this author. https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=Ex14o7gAAAAJ&citation_for_view=Ex14o7gAAAAJ:tzM49s52ZIMC https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...
- progressive_dad 11y ago
  So now we just need a robot that can experience a millenia of evolution in order to attain "curiosity" I'd say we're 15-30 years away...
trump2016chalk 11y ago
Re: Chapie the movie
alan_cx 11y ago
If that were to happen, I would suggest that an artificial "soul" could or would be created. Once you have that on your hands, things being to get interesting. Ethics, religion law, and so on will have one hell of a job on their hands. Especially when you consider that there would be immediate and obvious military applications.
- peterwwillis 11y ago
  Do animals have souls, and do we care?
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    A cow kicked a lantern and burned down Chicago. A powerful and incensed AI could destroy the foundations of global society before we would even know what's going on.
    - peterwwillis 11y ago
      What does that have to do with a soul, whether one exists, or whether we care? A powerful and incensed President could order a nuclear strike that could end civilization as we know it. Why the concern over a theoretical intelligence that could theoretically have emotion and theoretically have so much power it could theoretically do the same?
      - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
        It's hard work to become president. It is much easier to build software that can be hacked to cause far greater devastation than things can be built. Presumably an AI can hack better than humans. It doesn't matter what we define as a soul, it is the relationship humanity will have with artificial intelligences that matters. If we don't ask these questions, our children will wish we had...if they're still around.
        argonaut 11y ago
        No. You are comparing something that we know is possible, to something where we have no idea if/when it will be possible. So for all we know, it's infinitely easier to become a president. There have been 43 individuals in history who have become US president. There are 0 individuals in history who have built devastating AI.
  - aminok 11y ago
peterwwillis 11y ago
Physical babies take a long time to adapt and form complex connections (http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/why-0-3/baby-and-brain http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/why-0-3/baby-and-brain). There are probably a lot of shortcuts one could take to train it for specific tasks. In 'The Matrix' they had developed programs that could be uploaded to a physical brain to essentially pre-wire the brain with complex synaptic connections (or so I imagine was the effect). That would be a lot more efficient than waiting 3 years just to get to the point of trimming useless connections. We may have to 'grow' a virtual brain via training to develop the basic platform, but then pre-load it with operations to save time.
duaneb 11y ago
> true AI What does this even mean?
- marvin 11y ago
  You can define general artificial intelligence in many ways. This is probably not comprehensive, but "an artificially constructed agent that is capable of solving a wide variety of tasks in a wide variety of different environments, doing this to successfully achieve some stated goal" should cover it. Add a clause for mostly being at least as capable of doing this as an average human, if you want to be sure. At the moment this is closer to a philosophical idea than an actual scientific possibility, but science usually makes its biggest advances at the edge of philosophy. This is also where we can get an idea of the high-level problems that need to be solved. Think the idea of manned space exploration before the advent of rocketry, for instance.
  - duaneb 11y ago
    I dunno, there are plenty of humans that wouldn't make it to AI classification by that measurement, so I'm a skeptical to say the least. I don't think any of us are going to see past the uncanny valley of human-computer interaction—computers will have their tasks, but they'll be just that—task solvers. Why make it more magical than that? It's a waste of money to try, too—much of what makes humans unique isn't really useful in a business context (like giving up on problems because you're bored or hungry or having desires).
    - pixl97 11y ago
      >like giving up on problems because you're bored That is actually one of the more useful things a computer can do. It is also one of the hardest to program (see the halting problem). It is very useful for a computer for a computer to be able to do that when it has to pick out millions of likely candidates from quadrillions of possible answers. >but they'll be just that—task solvers. Why make it more magical than that? So you're in the 'people are magic' camp. You'll be very disappointed when you learn that people are just billions of years of bio-chemistry left to run rampant and that electro-mechanics and reproduce the same thing.
jackhack 11y ago
This is precisely the approach taken at MIT under Prof. Rod Brooks: "Within our group, Marjanovic, Scassellati & Williamson(1996) applied a similar bootstrapping technique to enable the robot* to learn to point to a visual target. " *named Cog, short for "Cognition" http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/CMAA-group.pdf http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/CMAA-group.pdf If I may paraphase, his model is biologically inspired -- believing hierarchical layers of behaviours, lack of a central planning model (distributed processing), and physical and temporal placement in the world (rather than abstractions of the world, or observe/process/react loops) are essential to the formation of a truly intelligent machine.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  I have long believed that we aren't going to get an AI that matches biological intelligence until it has to fend for itself. Nearly every biological function is linked to the fundamental need to survive through scarcity in hostile environments in order to reproduce and pass along genetic material. Without that need, there would not have been such rigorous evolutionary arcs that ultimately brought humans to this earth. The question of course, is, how could we deal with the implications of not just creating a smarter computer, or new life, but an entirely new and unprecedented class of life? For one thing, if they're so great, why bother keeping us around?
  - peterwwillis 11y ago
    There are plenty of organisms on the planet that co-exist with more powerful ones and they don't attempt to wipe out the other. There would need to be such fierce competition over natural [or unnatural] resources that only one of the two organisms could exist, and then competition would give rise to a potential outcome of one extinguishing the other. Your question is simply an irrational fear, probably on the order of probability much less likely than us being wiped out by an asteroid.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Plenty of biological organisms. That have niches in the biosphere. But this new life is/has neither. It could decide to cannibalize the earth to fuel a spacefaring civilization for instance. Not an irrational fear.
beambot 11y ago
Took a very similar approach back in 2011: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/this-is-what-pr2s-do-for-fun http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intel...

erichocean 11y ago

> anybody have any pointers? BabyX First Words https://vimeo.com/103501130 https://vimeo.com/103501130 Flexible Muscle-Based Locomotion for Bipedal Creatures https://vimeo.com/79098420 https://vimeo.com/79098420

cvarjas 11y ago

I've come across some curiosity driven skill acquisition research for robots that is similar to this. Below is a link to one of the articles and more related articles can be found from this author. https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=Ex14o7gAAAAJ&citation_for_view=Ex14o7gAAAAJ:tzM49s52ZIMC https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...

progressive_dad 11y ago
So now we just need a robot that can experience a millenia of evolution in order to attain "curiosity" I'd say we're 15-30 years away...

trump2016chalk 11y ago

Re: Chapie the movie

alan_cx 11y ago

If that were to happen, I would suggest that an artificial "soul" could or would be created. Once you have that on your hands, things being to get interesting. Ethics, religion law, and so on will have one hell of a job on their hands. Especially when you consider that there would be immediate and obvious military applications.

peterwwillis 11y ago
Do animals have souls, and do we care?
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  A cow kicked a lantern and burned down Chicago. A powerful and incensed AI could destroy the foundations of global society before we would even know what's going on.
  - peterwwillis 11y ago
    What does that have to do with a soul, whether one exists, or whether we care? A powerful and incensed President could order a nuclear strike that could end civilization as we know it. Why the concern over a theoretical intelligence that could theoretically have emotion and theoretically have so much power it could theoretically do the same?
    - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
      It's hard work to become president. It is much easier to build software that can be hacked to cause far greater devastation than things can be built. Presumably an AI can hack better than humans. It doesn't matter what we define as a soul, it is the relationship humanity will have with artificial intelligences that matters. If we don't ask these questions, our children will wish we had...if they're still around.
      - argonaut 11y ago
        No. You are comparing something that we know is possible, to something where we have no idea if/when it will be possible. So for all we know, it's infinitely easier to become a president. There have been 43 individuals in history who have become US president. There are 0 individuals in history who have built devastating AI.
- aminok 11y ago

peterwwillis 11y ago

Physical babies take a long time to adapt and form complex connections (http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/why-0-3/baby-and-brain http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/why-0-3/baby-and-brain). There are probably a lot of shortcuts one could take to train it for specific tasks. In 'The Matrix' they had developed programs that could be uploaded to a physical brain to essentially pre-wire the brain with complex synaptic connections (or so I imagine was the effect). That would be a lot more efficient than waiting 3 years just to get to the point of trimming useless connections. We may have to 'grow' a virtual brain via training to develop the basic platform, but then pre-load it with operations to save time.

duaneb 11y ago

> true AI What does this even mean?

marvin 11y ago
You can define general artificial intelligence in many ways. This is probably not comprehensive, but "an artificially constructed agent that is capable of solving a wide variety of tasks in a wide variety of different environments, doing this to successfully achieve some stated goal" should cover it. Add a clause for mostly being at least as capable of doing this as an average human, if you want to be sure. At the moment this is closer to a philosophical idea than an actual scientific possibility, but science usually makes its biggest advances at the edge of philosophy. This is also where we can get an idea of the high-level problems that need to be solved. Think the idea of manned space exploration before the advent of rocketry, for instance.
- duaneb 11y ago
  I dunno, there are plenty of humans that wouldn't make it to AI classification by that measurement, so I'm a skeptical to say the least. I don't think any of us are going to see past the uncanny valley of human-computer interaction—computers will have their tasks, but they'll be just that—task solvers. Why make it more magical than that? It's a waste of money to try, too—much of what makes humans unique isn't really useful in a business context (like giving up on problems because you're bored or hungry or having desires).
  - pixl97 11y ago
    >like giving up on problems because you're bored That is actually one of the more useful things a computer can do. It is also one of the hardest to program (see the halting problem). It is very useful for a computer for a computer to be able to do that when it has to pick out millions of likely candidates from quadrillions of possible answers. >but they'll be just that—task solvers. Why make it more magical than that? So you're in the 'people are magic' camp. You'll be very disappointed when you learn that people are just billions of years of bio-chemistry left to run rampant and that electro-mechanics and reproduce the same thing.

jackhack 11y ago

This is precisely the approach taken at MIT under Prof. Rod Brooks: "Within our group, Marjanovic, Scassellati & Williamson(1996) applied a similar bootstrapping technique to enable the robot* to learn to point to a visual target. " *named Cog, short for "Cognition" http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/CMAA-group.pdf http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/CMAA-group.pdf If I may paraphase, his model is biologically inspired -- believing hierarchical layers of behaviours, lack of a central planning model (distributed processing), and physical and temporal placement in the world (rather than abstractions of the world, or observe/process/react loops) are essential to the formation of a truly intelligent machine.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
I have long believed that we aren't going to get an AI that matches biological intelligence until it has to fend for itself. Nearly every biological function is linked to the fundamental need to survive through scarcity in hostile environments in order to reproduce and pass along genetic material. Without that need, there would not have been such rigorous evolutionary arcs that ultimately brought humans to this earth. The question of course, is, how could we deal with the implications of not just creating a smarter computer, or new life, but an entirely new and unprecedented class of life? For one thing, if they're so great, why bother keeping us around?
- peterwwillis 11y ago
  There are plenty of organisms on the planet that co-exist with more powerful ones and they don't attempt to wipe out the other. There would need to be such fierce competition over natural [or unnatural] resources that only one of the two organisms could exist, and then competition would give rise to a potential outcome of one extinguishing the other. Your question is simply an irrational fear, probably on the order of probability much less likely than us being wiped out by an asteroid.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Plenty of biological organisms. That have niches in the biosphere. But this new life is/has neither. It could decide to cannibalize the earth to fuel a spacefaring civilization for instance. Not an irrational fear.

beambot 11y ago

Took a very similar approach back in 2011: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/this-is-what-pr2s-do-for-fun http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intel...