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and the mysterious hallmark of Homo sapiens - our capacity to experience insights and apply intuition AlphaGo demonstrated that it can find a better solution t

and the mysterious hallmark of Homo sapiens - our capacity to experience insights and apply intuition AlphaGo demonstrated that it can find a better solution than players who spent their whole lives practicing intuition, which is limited by the brain's "capacity" and "computing power". If the problem is 'asking the right question', perhaps this can eventually also be brute-forced by machines faster.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
That's not in any way the hallmark of Homo Sapiens. Animals of all sorts can improvise solutions in similar ways. The real hallmark of Homo Sapiens is that culture and knowledge are externalised and persist outside individuals. So there's a social bootstrapping effect, because individual insights persist even after the humans who had the insights die. Which means other individuals don't have to keep (literally) reinventing the wheel. Or quantum theory. Or technology in general. If you take an individual human and don't expose him/her to culture or language, you get an animal with very ordinary and limited abilities. This is one reason I think the current ML systems aren't necessarily looking in the right places. Learning is one thing, but systems teaching systems - or at least systems communicating insights via a common knowledge/abstraction framework/protocol might be something else again.
- RobertoG 10y ago
  "The real hallmark of Homo Sapiens is that culture and knowledge are externalised and persist outside individuals." Homo Sapiens can do that, but I think it's more a consequence of our particularities that a cause. I think the 'real hallmark' it's our capacity for abstraction: never mind how hard you try, you will never teach the Pythagorean theorem to a dog. From the point of view or our current knowledge, there are not reasons for that being impossible to implement in software. Also, why was the grandparent down-voted, please?
- ilaksh 10y ago
  I think you are right in that animals of all sorts can improvise solutions in similar ways, most current ML systems aren't looking in the right places, and communication between systems is important. Where I differ is that what is I believe animal intelligence (with human intelligence an example of to a higher degree) is actually incredibly powerful, and its that type of intelligence that we haven't quite been able to replicate yet. I think that combining highly parallel approaches like deep learning with virtually embodied AI will lead to animal-like general intelligence within a few years. When that happens, when we have human level general artificial intelligence, the ability to perhaps instantly transfer granular knowledge between AIs, or at least, replicate full AI datasets, may be the biggest aspect that humans can't keep up with. That is where things like DARPA brain computer interface research projects can help us to keep up.
- taneq 10y ago
  > If you take an individual human and don't expose him/her to culture or language, you get an animal with very ordinary and limited abilities. Can you suggest any research worth reading on this topic? I'd assume that a healthy human who was raised in isolation (if such a human could be considered healthy) would be seriously handicapped compared to properly raised humans but would still be significantly above all other animals in mental ability, but I'm really just guessing.
  - foobiekr 10y ago
    You want to read about Genie and other children raised without language. The problem, however, is that these were also inherently abuse situations and the victims may also have had other abnormalities.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago

That's not in any way the hallmark of Homo Sapiens. Animals of all sorts can improvise solutions in similar ways. The real hallmark of Homo Sapiens is that culture and knowledge are externalised and persist outside individuals. So there's a social bootstrapping effect, because individual insights persist even after the humans who had the insights die. Which means other individuals don't have to keep (literally) reinventing the wheel. Or quantum theory. Or technology in general. If you take an individual human and don't expose him/her to culture or language, you get an animal with very ordinary and limited abilities. This is one reason I think the current ML systems aren't necessarily looking in the right places. Learning is one thing, but systems teaching systems - or at least systems communicating insights via a common knowledge/abstraction framework/protocol might be something else again.

RobertoG 10y ago
"The real hallmark of Homo Sapiens is that culture and knowledge are externalised and persist outside individuals." Homo Sapiens can do that, but I think it's more a consequence of our particularities that a cause. I think the 'real hallmark' it's our capacity for abstraction: never mind how hard you try, you will never teach the Pythagorean theorem to a dog. From the point of view or our current knowledge, there are not reasons for that being impossible to implement in software. Also, why was the grandparent down-voted, please?
ilaksh 10y ago
I think you are right in that animals of all sorts can improvise solutions in similar ways, most current ML systems aren't looking in the right places, and communication between systems is important. Where I differ is that what is I believe animal intelligence (with human intelligence an example of to a higher degree) is actually incredibly powerful, and its that type of intelligence that we haven't quite been able to replicate yet. I think that combining highly parallel approaches like deep learning with virtually embodied AI will lead to animal-like general intelligence within a few years. When that happens, when we have human level general artificial intelligence, the ability to perhaps instantly transfer granular knowledge between AIs, or at least, replicate full AI datasets, may be the biggest aspect that humans can't keep up with. That is where things like DARPA brain computer interface research projects can help us to keep up.
taneq 10y ago
> If you take an individual human and don't expose him/her to culture or language, you get an animal with very ordinary and limited abilities. Can you suggest any research worth reading on this topic? I'd assume that a healthy human who was raised in isolation (if such a human could be considered healthy) would be seriously handicapped compared to properly raised humans but would still be significantly above all other animals in mental ability, but I'm really just guessing.
- foobiekr 10y ago
  You want to read about Genie and other children raised without language. The problem, however, is that these were also inherently abuse situations and the victims may also have had other abnormalities.