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>Dr. Schmidhuber also has a grand vision for A.I. — that self-aware or “conscious machines” are just around the corner — that causes eyes to roll among some of

by rl3 10y ago

>Dr. Schmidhuber also has a grand vision for A.I. — that self-aware or “conscious machines” are just around the corner — that causes eyes to roll among some of his peers. I can't help but wonder if the sole reason AGI doesn't exist is because it hasn't been figured out yet. While that statement sounds obvious on the face of it, the implication is that we may already possess both the sufficient computational resources and human intelligence to realize its creation.

oh_sigh 10y ago
It doesn't really tell us much. There is no reason ancient Athens or Taixue or Gundishapur couldn't have developed calculus or Newtonian physics. No resource was limiting them in the development, but those fields weren't developed until 1600+ years later.
- bcaulfield 10y ago
  Archimedes was close... https://www.sciencenews.org/article/prayer-archimedes https://www.sciencenews.org/article/prayer-archimedes
  - NotUsingLinux 10y ago
    That is so cool...
- NotUsingLinux 10y ago
  I think the printing press was a key invention which was needed for this. So many great things got lost because in history there was only 1 or few copies of it.
Russell91 10y ago
We certainly have enough compute at this point. 10^15 flops should be more than enough to run the brain by pretty much any analysis. Part of the issue is that evolution had at least 1 million such creatures over 52,000,000 weeks to improve since monkeys. So while human intelligent design of AI will certainly be a better algorithm than evolution, we may actually be a bit shy computationally of easily training an AI system, in spite of having more than enough to realize one.
BickNowstrom 10y ago
AGI (as in, a mathematical theory of universal intelligence) has already been figured out by one of Schmidhuber's students, and, proven to be uncomputable: we may never have sufficient computational resources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  AIXI is a pretty deeply flawed theory of "universal intelligence". It can't handle modelling itself, it can't really handle the large dimensionality of its hypothesis space, it can't really handle imprecise stimulus information, and it can be made arbitrarily "stupid" in terms of "lost" rewards by selecting a Universal Turing machine to do the Solomonoff Induction over for which the "right" programs are arbitrarily long. And all of that is before we get to mere computational limitations or the uncomputability issue.
  - BickNowstrom 10y ago
    > AIXI is a pretty deeply flawed theory of "universal intelligence" What would you propose as an alternative? If nothing, fine, but how can we relate, when we only have a single best (or if you prefer: flawed) thing? > It can't handle modelling itself It can add its internal states to the environment, and hence model these internal states. > the large dimensionality of its hypothesis space Its bounded by how many compressors / programs are available to it. Calculating the length of these programs that are consistent with the environment is feasible. > handle imprecise stimulus information I'm not sure if you mean imprecise stimuli here or imprecise sensors. > can be made arbitrarily "stupid" This can be seen as a flaw, or as a simple property (or even a feature). Something that can be optimal, and "stupid", does not detract much from its ability to be optimal. > before we get to mere computational limitations or the uncomputability issue Just because it is uncomputable, does not mean the theory is flawed. Sure, it is not practical, and we like practical things, but it is still valuable to have such a theory. Especially when approximations do yield practical applications. Marcus Hutter on these issues: http://hunch.net/?cat=14 http://hunch.net/?cat=14
    - 10y ago

by rl3 10y ago

oh_sigh 10y ago

It doesn't really tell us much. There is no reason ancient Athens or Taixue or Gundishapur couldn't have developed calculus or Newtonian physics. No resource was limiting them in the development, but those fields weren't developed until 1600+ years later.

bcaulfield 10y ago
Archimedes was close... https://www.sciencenews.org/article/prayer-archimedes https://www.sciencenews.org/article/prayer-archimedes
- NotUsingLinux 10y ago
  That is so cool...
NotUsingLinux 10y ago
I think the printing press was a key invention which was needed for this. So many great things got lost because in history there was only 1 or few copies of it.

Russell91 10y ago

We certainly have enough compute at this point. 10^15 flops should be more than enough to run the brain by pretty much any analysis. Part of the issue is that evolution had at least 1 million such creatures over 52,000,000 weeks to improve since monkeys. So while human intelligent design of AI will certainly be a better algorithm than evolution, we may actually be a bit shy computationally of easily training an AI system, in spite of having more than enough to realize one.

BickNowstrom 10y ago

AGI (as in, a mathematical theory of universal intelligence) has already been figured out by one of Schmidhuber's students, and, proven to be uncomputable: we may never have sufficient computational resources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
AIXI is a pretty deeply flawed theory of "universal intelligence". It can't handle modelling itself, it can't really handle the large dimensionality of its hypothesis space, it can't really handle imprecise stimulus information, and it can be made arbitrarily "stupid" in terms of "lost" rewards by selecting a Universal Turing machine to do the Solomonoff Induction over for which the "right" programs are arbitrarily long. And all of that is before we get to mere computational limitations or the uncomputability issue.
- BickNowstrom 10y ago
  > AIXI is a pretty deeply flawed theory of "universal intelligence" What would you propose as an alternative? If nothing, fine, but how can we relate, when we only have a single best (or if you prefer: flawed) thing? > It can't handle modelling itself It can add its internal states to the environment, and hence model these internal states. > the large dimensionality of its hypothesis space Its bounded by how many compressors / programs are available to it. Calculating the length of these programs that are consistent with the environment is feasible. > handle imprecise stimulus information I'm not sure if you mean imprecise stimuli here or imprecise sensors. > can be made arbitrarily "stupid" This can be seen as a flaw, or as a simple property (or even a feature). Something that can be optimal, and "stupid", does not detract much from its ability to be optimal. > before we get to mere computational limitations or the uncomputability issue Just because it is uncomputable, does not mean the theory is flawed. Sure, it is not practical, and we like practical things, but it is still valuable to have such a theory. Especially when approximations do yield practical applications. Marcus Hutter on these issues: http://hunch.net/?cat=14 http://hunch.net/?cat=14
  - 10y ago