10 ms·

Nature herself "solved" intelligence as a data optimization problem. We can too.

tathougies 8y ago
I don't disagree. However, the next time you find yourself pondering the question "Why did Bob do X? That's so bizarre, and it makes no sense", you should consider what the repercussions may be if Bob were not just your awkward acquaintance but rather an autonomous computer system distributed across the globe that's assigning credit scores to people. Is there really room for 'Well it just felt right at the time' in those situations? Humans are often quite bright, but we're also known to do the wrong thing for no discernible reason. This is to be expected when there's no fundamental formal system behind behavior, and behavior is instead driven by a black-box neural network.
gerbilly 8y ago
Sure, I don't concede the point. But even if it were true, do you want to spend billions of years solving it that way?
Barrin92 8y ago
There's problems with that attitude. First, it offers no scientific insight. We don't learn anything about the fundamental nature and skeleton of minds by simply replicating evolutionary processes. It does not grant us knowledge. The equivalent in engineering would be to throw over trees and rocks in the hope of building a bridge. Clearly, that is unsatisfactory, we strive to understand the meaning of systems so that we can reason about them and alter them in predictable and fundamental ways. Secondly, we don't know how likely it is that evolution produces intelligence. Maybe we're the only intelligent spot in the universe and it's an aberration. It took 4 billion years as well. That seems to be a fundamentally impoverished way to go about things. We shouldn't forego the ability to understand minds at a deep level just because we have made practical strides in closed domains. That would be to mistake a trojan horse for an actual horse.
- gerbilly 8y ago
  >The equivalent in engineering would be to throw over trees and rocks in the hope of building a bridge. Imagine if aliens dropped a machine learning computer on earth in the 17th century. Maybe we'd have never bothered to derive the laws of classical mechanics.
  - taeric 8y ago
    I don't follow. Classical mechanics are still very useful, no?
    - gerbilly 8y ago
      Yes, but we might have never created metal models and theories if we had a magical machine that could predict the outcomes of physical systems. The machines might have replaced classical mechanics, but the downside is that the machine would be a black box, and we would never really understood how it derived its results.
      - taeric 8y ago
        Fair. That assumes we wouldn't try and understand the black box. I suspect somebody would have, but I have nothing to base that suspicion.
Ngunyan 8y ago
And how did you come to this conclusion?
visarga 8y ago
Nature has a huge environment to run its agents in. AI can only access games. Robots IRL are too expensive for optimisation. Solution: better simulators.
goatlover 8y ago
What was the data optimization problem? To pass our genes on? Because lots of critters have been doing it far longer than the big brained ones. Bacteria and viruses are more successful than any life forms, and they're not running any neural equivalent of data optimization.
- taeric 8y ago
  Well, if you consider nature as an agent, we are part of it. And if we do successfully leave the planet, that will be nature successfully leaving a planet. Which will get nature closer to surviving a sun collapse. Something the rest of nature here is not likely to do. And, in the scale, nature has had to deal with many stars collapsing.
ordu 8y ago
We have an intelligence, while Nature doesn't. We can do better than Nature.

I don't disagree. However, the next time you find yourself pondering the question "Why did Bob do X? That's so bizarre, and it makes no sense", you should consider what the repercussions may be if Bob were not just your awkward acquaintance but rather an autonomous computer system distributed across the globe that's assigning credit scores to people. Is there really room for 'Well it just felt right at the time' in those situations? Humans are often quite bright, but we're also known to do the wrong thing for no discernible reason. This is to be expected when there's no fundamental formal system behind behavior, and behavior is instead driven by a black-box neural network.

gerbilly 8y ago

Sure, I don't concede the point. But even if it were true, do you want to spend billions of years solving it that way?

Barrin92 8y ago

There's problems with that attitude. First, it offers no scientific insight. We don't learn anything about the fundamental nature and skeleton of minds by simply replicating evolutionary processes. It does not grant us knowledge. The equivalent in engineering would be to throw over trees and rocks in the hope of building a bridge. Clearly, that is unsatisfactory, we strive to understand the meaning of systems so that we can reason about them and alter them in predictable and fundamental ways. Secondly, we don't know how likely it is that evolution produces intelligence. Maybe we're the only intelligent spot in the universe and it's an aberration. It took 4 billion years as well. That seems to be a fundamentally impoverished way to go about things. We shouldn't forego the ability to understand minds at a deep level just because we have made practical strides in closed domains. That would be to mistake a trojan horse for an actual horse.

gerbilly 8y ago
>The equivalent in engineering would be to throw over trees and rocks in the hope of building a bridge. Imagine if aliens dropped a machine learning computer on earth in the 17th century. Maybe we'd have never bothered to derive the laws of classical mechanics.
- taeric 8y ago
  I don't follow. Classical mechanics are still very useful, no?
  - gerbilly 8y ago
    Yes, but we might have never created metal models and theories if we had a magical machine that could predict the outcomes of physical systems. The machines might have replaced classical mechanics, but the downside is that the machine would be a black box, and we would never really understood how it derived its results.
    - taeric 8y ago
      Fair. That assumes we wouldn't try and understand the black box. I suspect somebody would have, but I have nothing to base that suspicion.

Ngunyan 8y ago

And how did you come to this conclusion?

visarga 8y ago

Nature has a huge environment to run its agents in. AI can only access games. Robots IRL are too expensive for optimisation. Solution: better simulators.

goatlover 8y ago

What was the data optimization problem? To pass our genes on? Because lots of critters have been doing it far longer than the big brained ones. Bacteria and viruses are more successful than any life forms, and they're not running any neural equivalent of data optimization.

taeric 8y ago
Well, if you consider nature as an agent, we are part of it. And if we do successfully leave the planet, that will be nature successfully leaving a planet. Which will get nature closer to surviving a sun collapse. Something the rest of nature here is not likely to do. And, in the scale, nature has had to deal with many stars collapsing.

ordu 8y ago

We have an intelligence, while Nature doesn't. We can do better than Nature.