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The big question is "How much of a body does the AI need?" Should it know pain or pleasure? Does it need to have a blush response to shame? Does it need vision

by d--b 7y ago

The big question is "How much of a body does the AI need?" Should it know pain or pleasure? Does it need to have a blush response to shame? Does it need vision or hearing? Sense of balance? Stomach pain? You can see that humans that are born without sight or hearing still find ways to develop intelligence. Some people don't feel pain. Sociopaths don't feel shame. Yet, the brain manages. It's very hard to define what is the minimal set of functions we need to emulate for AI to emerge.

visarga 7y ago
> Should it know pain or pleasure? It should probably have rewards, positive and negative. I think reinforcement learning is the closest paradigm to AGI.
dustfinger 7y ago
> The big question is "How much of a body does the AI need?" Our bodies give an upper bound of five sensory inputs. With a little scrutiny we can reduce that even further, since we know that a portion of our population are born with less than five senses and exhibit comparable intelligence. Some people are borne blind, deaf, mute, anosmic, or with ageusia. Others are even born with rare sensory deficits such as the inability to feel pain. Although I have not read any studies on the subject, I suspect that being borne with none of the five core sense would have a serious negative impact human intelligence. There is more to the problem though then just the ability to sense our environment. I believe that for an agent to acquire human level intelligence, it is also necessary to have the ability to explore and manipulate the environment in complex ways. It must be able to experiment by making observations, evaluating the outcome and thereby advance its knowledge. Knowledge of course must be retained to be of any use, so it must have memory efficient enough to be practicable. In order for the experimentation to lead to higher levels of enlightenment an intelligent agent must be able to take past knowledge and hypothesis yet unobserved outcomes. This should serve as motivation for further experimentation. Human's have this notion that a per-requisite to real intelligence is to be able to express ones self with a language and thereby share your ideas with others. Communication with language seems to result in social beings, and it is widely believed that social beings do best if they have emotional intelligence, otherwise they will likely be outcast from society. so, I think AI needs a body that at least allows it the following: - Ability to move - Ability to move objects with enough accuracy to assemble or disassemble complex structures - The ability to know the physical properties of objects (maybe through one or more of our five senses, but not necessarily) - Ability to retain knowledge - Ability to hypothesise - The ability to communicate with another agent to share information (helpful, but maybe not necessary) I am not as convinced that emotional intelligence is required, so I left that out of my list. For example, consider that highly intelligent beings could be of a different nature than humans and form societies without emotions or politics. An excellent example are the Primes from Pehter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star where (motiles) are controlled by the commanding caste (immotiles) [1] Of course I am bias since I am human, so I am looking at what is required to achieve intelligence as I know and understand it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga#Pandora's_Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga#Pandora's_St...
- jtbayly 7y ago
  We have more than five senses in reality. Losing your proprioceptive sense, even later in life can actually damage your self-identity. Cause you to question whether you are even you. Read "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" for more info. I don't believe AGI is ever going to happen, but if I did, I'd include that sense as one of the possibly fundamental ones.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    I personally don't believe that there are any fundamental barriers to human or better AGI but I also believe we are a long long way from anything with this capabilities being built. Mind you - I would love to be proved wrong.
  - dustfinger 7y ago
    >I don't believe AGI is ever going to happen Do you mean to say that you don't believe artificial general intelligence will happen for a specific reason, or that you hope that it will never happen for a specific reason? I am curious either way. Thanks for your thoughts.
- nabnob 7y ago
  Pretty much every animal that we consider intelligent is social - orcas, elephants, primates, dogs, cats, etc. Human language developed as a way for humans to communicate with one another. I think you're severely underestimating the importance of emotional intelligence.
  - dustfinger 7y ago
    > I think you're severely underestimating the importance of emotional intelligence. I don't mean to suggest that social intelligence didn't play an important role in the evolution of real general intelligence as we know it. (I define RGI as a GI that evolved through natural processes and without direct intervention of higher level GI). I wanted to keep an open mind about things though. My goal was to try and reduce factors that relate to intelligence on earth so that I might be able to say something about what factors are in fact a prerequisite to AGI. Do you like sci-fi? Have you read Pandora's Star? If you like sci-fi, but have not read said book, then I recommend that you consider putting it in your queue. You might find the Primes to be a believable vector to RGI. A vecto that I believe challenges human bias about GI and what it takes to reach past a class I civilization. Love the discussion, thank you for your thoughts.
jplayer01 7y ago
It seems to me like you (and one of the comments replying to you) are considering this a bit too narrowly. Plenty of animal species have all five senses, and are far less intelligent or conscious than we are. Further, this doesn't have to be about a single human being requiring all five senses to gain intelligence - consider single modern human being has already evolved to a point where the brain already has that intelligence innately, and only needs further input to shape and refine what's already there. It doesn't make any sense to compare AI to this single modern human being who is already innately intelligent. It makes more sense to compare it to the whole of human/ape evolution, and maybe we're limiting ourselves too much by always looking at humans on an individual level. I think we need to find a way to imitate human evolution, selective pressure/natural selection, and human limitations - in whatever form. Hell, give networks some form of reproduction, limited lifespans and limited communication. Throw in what the other commenter said about gaining knowledge and applying that to and manipulating a "real" world (I don't think it actually has to be real, it just needs to be an environment where changes can be made that have some logical/causal effect), learning from experience and whatever other feedback loops we seem to have. Maybe AI will evolve itself into being given the right environmental and personal constraints.

by d--b 7y ago

visarga 7y ago

> Should it know pain or pleasure? It should probably have rewards, positive and negative. I think reinforcement learning is the closest paradigm to AGI.

dustfinger 7y ago

> The big question is "How much of a body does the AI need?" Our bodies give an upper bound of five sensory inputs. With a little scrutiny we can reduce that even further, since we know that a portion of our population are born with less than five senses and exhibit comparable intelligence. Some people are borne blind, deaf, mute, anosmic, or with ageusia. Others are even born with rare sensory deficits such as the inability to feel pain. Although I have not read any studies on the subject, I suspect that being borne with none of the five core sense would have a serious negative impact human intelligence. There is more to the problem though then just the ability to sense our environment. I believe that for an agent to acquire human level intelligence, it is also necessary to have the ability to explore and manipulate the environment in complex ways. It must be able to experiment by making observations, evaluating the outcome and thereby advance its knowledge. Knowledge of course must be retained to be of any use, so it must have memory efficient enough to be practicable. In order for the experimentation to lead to higher levels of enlightenment an intelligent agent must be able to take past knowledge and hypothesis yet unobserved outcomes. This should serve as motivation for further experimentation. Human's have this notion that a per-requisite to real intelligence is to be able to express ones self with a language and thereby share your ideas with others. Communication with language seems to result in social beings, and it is widely believed that social beings do best if they have emotional intelligence, otherwise they will likely be outcast from society. so, I think AI needs a body that at least allows it the following: - Ability to move - Ability to move objects with enough accuracy to assemble or disassemble complex structures - The ability to know the physical properties of objects (maybe through one or more of our five senses, but not necessarily) - Ability to retain knowledge - Ability to hypothesise - The ability to communicate with another agent to share information (helpful, but maybe not necessary) I am not as convinced that emotional intelligence is required, so I left that out of my list. For example, consider that highly intelligent beings could be of a different nature than humans and form societies without emotions or politics. An excellent example are the Primes from Pehter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star where (motiles) are controlled by the commanding caste (immotiles) [1] Of course I am bias since I am human, so I am looking at what is required to achieve intelligence as I know and understand it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga#Pandora's_Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga#Pandora's_St...

jtbayly 7y ago
We have more than five senses in reality. Losing your proprioceptive sense, even later in life can actually damage your self-identity. Cause you to question whether you are even you. Read "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" for more info. I don't believe AGI is ever going to happen, but if I did, I'd include that sense as one of the possibly fundamental ones.
- arethuza 7y ago
  I personally don't believe that there are any fundamental barriers to human or better AGI but I also believe we are a long long way from anything with this capabilities being built. Mind you - I would love to be proved wrong.
- dustfinger 7y ago
  >I don't believe AGI is ever going to happen Do you mean to say that you don't believe artificial general intelligence will happen for a specific reason, or that you hope that it will never happen for a specific reason? I am curious either way. Thanks for your thoughts.
nabnob 7y ago
Pretty much every animal that we consider intelligent is social - orcas, elephants, primates, dogs, cats, etc. Human language developed as a way for humans to communicate with one another. I think you're severely underestimating the importance of emotional intelligence.
- dustfinger 7y ago
  > I think you're severely underestimating the importance of emotional intelligence. I don't mean to suggest that social intelligence didn't play an important role in the evolution of real general intelligence as we know it. (I define RGI as a GI that evolved through natural processes and without direct intervention of higher level GI). I wanted to keep an open mind about things though. My goal was to try and reduce factors that relate to intelligence on earth so that I might be able to say something about what factors are in fact a prerequisite to AGI. Do you like sci-fi? Have you read Pandora's Star? If you like sci-fi, but have not read said book, then I recommend that you consider putting it in your queue. You might find the Primes to be a believable vector to RGI. A vecto that I believe challenges human bias about GI and what it takes to reach past a class I civilization. Love the discussion, thank you for your thoughts.

jplayer01 7y ago

It seems to me like you (and one of the comments replying to you) are considering this a bit too narrowly. Plenty of animal species have all five senses, and are far less intelligent or conscious than we are. Further, this doesn't have to be about a single human being requiring all five senses to gain intelligence - consider single modern human being has already evolved to a point where the brain already has that intelligence innately, and only needs further input to shape and refine what's already there. It doesn't make any sense to compare AI to this single modern human being who is already innately intelligent. It makes more sense to compare it to the whole of human/ape evolution, and maybe we're limiting ourselves too much by always looking at humans on an individual level. I think we need to find a way to imitate human evolution, selective pressure/natural selection, and human limitations - in whatever form. Hell, give networks some form of reproduction, limited lifespans and limited communication. Throw in what the other commenter said about gaining knowledge and applying that to and manipulating a "real" world (I don't think it actually has to be real, it just needs to be an environment where changes can be made that have some logical/causal effect), learning from experience and whatever other feedback loops we seem to have. Maybe AI will evolve itself into being given the right environmental and personal constraints.