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Wrong. A new language will replace apps. Here's how the world works. We have: - the actual world (one in total) - the perceived world (one per agent) - the

Wrong. A new language will replace apps. Here's how the world works. We have: - the actual world (one in total) - the perceived world (one per agent) - the ideal world (one per agent) The goal of each agent is to get the actual world to match their ideal world. To do that, they need to: 1. make their perceived world match the actual world (learn) 2. identify issues with the actual/perceived world in order to define their ideal world (choose) 3. share their ideal world with others (ask) 4. find agents with complementing resources and desires (commit) 5. act on commitments taken to further their ideals (do) What we need is a communication platform with the above processes baked in. Imagine a big semantic knowledge base holding the perceived world of all agents, as an approximation to the actual world (which exists outside of it). Think of it as an encyclopedia, a mirror of the world. All measurements of the actual world made by humans, machines, or bots, will be pushed there. Whenever you browse this knowledge graph, you get to contribute by confirming or opposing facts. Eventually, you will notice a pattern and side with those who agree with you the most. At this point, you can reliably expect those agent's future perceptions to align with yours, and will notice the same for your ideals/wishes. This is when you don't only get to learn about the present/past, but get to decide about the future, shaping your ideals. This is done just like you would describe perceived events, except this takes place in the future. Wishes and predictions, are effectively communicated by describing the future (the only difference being that you accept to lose money/resources/reputation/score in exchange for a wish to happen, and you accept to lose money/resources/reputation/score if a prediction doesn't happen). Once the knowledge graph knows enough about you, it will be able to identify complementing ideals/reality-deltas with other agents (i.e., "I need a couch" and "I no longer need my couch"). This leads to a contract in which all members agree in a shared future reality. This contract/commitment becomes a prediction, and predictions that involve yourself often become todo/tasks for to user to get done (expressed as the state of reality expected to be met). Then, all people need to do is make the actual world match predictions communicated by describing the future of the world. Basically, all we need is a language and interface that let's people describe the world in static terms (i.e., "I was in New York yesterday", "I am in California today", "I will be in China tomorrow"). You don't want a Uber, you want to be home before supper. You don't want to buy a drill on Amazon, you want a hole in your wall. You don't want to unlock your door, you want to be inside the house. You don't want to share a tweet, you want its content to be seen. By getting rid of all verbs except state verbs, we significantly simplify the language. You quickly realize that "read a book", "watch a movie", "learn a recipe", "listen to a song", "see a painting", "meet a person" can all be replaced by "know x". When you share/retweet/submit/send/bookmark x, what you actually want is for someone to "know x". The same thing applies when you "send money", "ship a package", "fly to Hawaii", "walk to the drugstore", "invite someone to an event", "order a pizza". They're all just ways to describe "x is at y". Natural languages are extremely inefficient. We keep repeating the same things, over and over again. We say things that other people have already said before, we say things we have already said before. This is insane. It would be like everyone posting distinct comments on an article instead of upvoting a comment that reflects their thought. Actually, it should not be possible to communicate something that has already been communicated before. There should be no difference between the act of searching for an existing comment/question and coming up with a novel one (i.e., like on Stack Overflow). FAQs are extremely useful, and prevent people from trying to formulate and ask questions that have already been asked and answered. Why not apply that concept to communication as a whole? That's what the knowledge base I mentioned above is for. You no longer have to ask 99% of the questions you would ask otherwise, and you can communicate about yourself by simply agreeing or disagreeing with what has already been said by others. I could go on, but I see this is going off the track. Natural language is fundamentally limited and we must build a new communication platform (and language) that will elevate humanity. The fact that nobody is talking about this is impossible.

brotchie 11y ago
Thanks. Really insightful. I've never really considered the idea of declarative AI personal assistant interactions. The concept is pretty mind-blowing actually. It's pretty damn obvious that's the way to go. i.e. You tell the AI the state of the world you desire and it handles it given an information set much much larger then you as an individual could possibly ingest. Rather than the typical action of "AI bot send flowers to my wife" you'd say "AI bot make my wife know that I love and care for her." Of what the "system" knows about your wife's preferences, it can then indicate the action it believe will maximize the likelihood of adjusting the world into the asked-for state. That could be flowers, it could be a table for two at a restaurant she'd mentioned in an Email 6 months ago that you've forgotten about. Not "AI bot, order me an Uber to location x", rather "AI bot, get me to location x ASAP."
- yomritoyj 11y ago
  Why not just "AI bot, give me the best life possible"? To be less flippant, declarative AI already exists where it is easy. An airline booking website already gives you the ways to getting to location x ASAP. But looking at the performance of current recommendation systems, and natural language processing systems, I doubt if in the near future we would have a bot that would be better than me in guessing whether my wife would prefer flowers or a dinner on a particular anniversary, unless it cheats by using my wife's private information, in which case she's going to hate me either way.
  - miguelrochefort 11y ago
    > unless it cheats by using my wife's private information, in which case she's going to hate me either way The should be no such thing as private information. The fact that you're saying that access to it is "cheating" seems to indicate that access to it is the best outcome on a productivity point of view. Why makes things more difficult in the name of privacy when transparency makes everything easier?
- miguelrochefort 11y ago
  Exactly. One of the big problem in communication and reasoning is that people often skip the "why" and jump straight to a final solution. They immediately come up with a final/complete plan such as "I need to get my car and drive to the nearest Home Depot to purchase a hammer so that I can nail this painting to my bedroom wall". A proper AI assistant would challenge this demand/plan. - Do you really need to use your car to get there? Can't you use your bicycle? Can you wait 15 minutes, your neighbor is also going to Home Depot? Can you wait for tomorrow, you'll drive right next to one in your way to work? - Do you really need to go to Home Depot? You could find a hammer at Walmart, which is closer. You could ask your neighbor for one, he has many and he won't use them today. Maybe there's a Uber fo tools that you could use to rent it? - Do you really need a hammer? Wouldn't some other heavy object do the job? What about this nailgun you received as a gift last year? - Do you really need to nail that painting? Wouldn't it be a better idea to use some of those 3M wall tapes that support up to 30 pounds and can be removed without leaving a mark/hole? - Do you really want to hang that painting in your bedroom? Wouldn't it be better in the living room? Should we ask "Stack Overflow for home decoration"? By locking ourselves into final solutions, we miss all alternatives which in most cases are much superior. By having tools that do exactly as we ask, we can't get what we really need. We need tools that challenge us, ask "why" until they find the actual end and not just the means. Fortunately, the why/how tree axis is first class in my communication platform. You need flour and water to bake bread. Why do you need flour? To bake bread. How will you bake bread? With flour and water. In the ideal world, you simply describe what you want in terms of the highest "why" you can think of, and the system then let you discover the different branches of "how" you can do it. The only reason we do things in a certain order is because of state dependencies. Each task (make dough) needs a valid starting state (access to water and flour) to be completed as the ending state (have dough). You can combine these tasks like you would dominos or functions (and apply all the usual concepts like map, lift, reduce, curry, monoids, monads). Basically, people don't know what they want and tend to copy others and/or their last selves. In order to avoid that and lead to the most efficient solutions, we need a communication system that challenges people until they really understand what and why they want. I can easily imagine a person's complex set of preferences and interests to be reduced to a handful of high-level values/goals from which an infinity of possible plans/solutions/paths can be derived.

brotchie 11y ago

Thanks. Really insightful. I've never really considered the idea of declarative AI personal assistant interactions. The concept is pretty mind-blowing actually. It's pretty damn obvious that's the way to go. i.e. You tell the AI the state of the world you desire and it handles it given an information set much much larger then you as an individual could possibly ingest. Rather than the typical action of "AI bot send flowers to my wife" you'd say "AI bot make my wife know that I love and care for her." Of what the "system" knows about your wife's preferences, it can then indicate the action it believe will maximize the likelihood of adjusting the world into the asked-for state. That could be flowers, it could be a table for two at a restaurant she'd mentioned in an Email 6 months ago that you've forgotten about. Not "AI bot, order me an Uber to location x", rather "AI bot, get me to location x ASAP."

yomritoyj 11y ago
Why not just "AI bot, give me the best life possible"? To be less flippant, declarative AI already exists where it is easy. An airline booking website already gives you the ways to getting to location x ASAP. But looking at the performance of current recommendation systems, and natural language processing systems, I doubt if in the near future we would have a bot that would be better than me in guessing whether my wife would prefer flowers or a dinner on a particular anniversary, unless it cheats by using my wife's private information, in which case she's going to hate me either way.
- miguelrochefort 11y ago
  > unless it cheats by using my wife's private information, in which case she's going to hate me either way The should be no such thing as private information. The fact that you're saying that access to it is "cheating" seems to indicate that access to it is the best outcome on a productivity point of view. Why makes things more difficult in the name of privacy when transparency makes everything easier?
miguelrochefort 11y ago
Exactly. One of the big problem in communication and reasoning is that people often skip the "why" and jump straight to a final solution. They immediately come up with a final/complete plan such as "I need to get my car and drive to the nearest Home Depot to purchase a hammer so that I can nail this painting to my bedroom wall". A proper AI assistant would challenge this demand/plan. - Do you really need to use your car to get there? Can't you use your bicycle? Can you wait 15 minutes, your neighbor is also going to Home Depot? Can you wait for tomorrow, you'll drive right next to one in your way to work? - Do you really need to go to Home Depot? You could find a hammer at Walmart, which is closer. You could ask your neighbor for one, he has many and he won't use them today. Maybe there's a Uber fo tools that you could use to rent it? - Do you really need a hammer? Wouldn't some other heavy object do the job? What about this nailgun you received as a gift last year? - Do you really need to nail that painting? Wouldn't it be a better idea to use some of those 3M wall tapes that support up to 30 pounds and can be removed without leaving a mark/hole? - Do you really want to hang that painting in your bedroom? Wouldn't it be better in the living room? Should we ask "Stack Overflow for home decoration"? By locking ourselves into final solutions, we miss all alternatives which in most cases are much superior. By having tools that do exactly as we ask, we can't get what we really need. We need tools that challenge us, ask "why" until they find the actual end and not just the means. Fortunately, the why/how tree axis is first class in my communication platform. You need flour and water to bake bread. Why do you need flour? To bake bread. How will you bake bread? With flour and water. In the ideal world, you simply describe what you want in terms of the highest "why" you can think of, and the system then let you discover the different branches of "how" you can do it. The only reason we do things in a certain order is because of state dependencies. Each task (make dough) needs a valid starting state (access to water and flour) to be completed as the ending state (have dough). You can combine these tasks like you would dominos or functions (and apply all the usual concepts like map, lift, reduce, curry, monoids, monads). Basically, people don't know what they want and tend to copy others and/or their last selves. In order to avoid that and lead to the most efficient solutions, we need a communication system that challenges people until they really understand what and why they want. I can easily imagine a person's complex set of preferences and interests to be reduced to a handful of high-level values/goals from which an infinity of possible plans/solutions/paths can be derived.