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Yeah I believe in this game / simulated world NPC idea too. To get the kind of complexity we want we either need sensors in the real world or interfacing in a v

Yeah I believe in this game / simulated world NPC idea too. To get the kind of complexity we want we either need sensors in the real world or interfacing in a virtual world that humans bring complexity to (probably both -- the humans are part of the sensing technology to start). Things like AlphaZero etc. got good cuz they had a simulatable model of the world (just a chess board + next state function in their case). We need increasingly complex and intetesting forms of that. In some sense you can think of interfacing w/ the online world + trying to win attention to yourself as the kind of general game that is being played.

Animats 7y ago
I've long taken the position that intelligence is mostly about getting through the next 10-30 seconds of life without screwing up. Not falling down, not running into stuff, not getting hurt, not breaking things, making some progress on the current task. Common sense. Most of animal brains, and a large fraction of the human brain, is devoted to managing that. On top of that is some kind of coarse planner giving goals to the lower level systems. This area is under-studied. The logicians spent decades on the high level planner part. The machine learning people are mostly at the lower and middle vision level - object recognition, not "what will happen next". There's a big hole in the middle. It's embarrassing how bad robot manipulation is. Manipulation in unstructured situations barely works better than it did 50 years ago. Nobody even seems to be talking about "common sense" any more. "Common sense" can be though of as the ability to predict the consequences of your actions. AI is not very good at this yet, which makes it dangerous. Back when Rod Brooks did his artificial insects, he was talking about jumping to human level AI, with something called "Cog".[1] I asked him "You built a good artificial insect. Why not go for a next step, a good artificial mouse?" He said "Because I don't want to go down in history as the man who created the world's best artificial mouse". Cog was a flop, and Brooks goes down in history as the inventor of the mass market robot vacuum cleaner. Oh well. [1] http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/CMAA-group.pdf http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/CMAA-group.pdf
- visarga 7y ago
  > On top of that is some kind of coarse planner giving goals to the lower level systems. There are counterexamples, such as AlphaGo which is all about planning and deep thinking. It also combines learning with evolution (genetic selection).
  - alpaca128 7y ago
    True, but AlphaGo is specialized on a very specific task where planning and deep thinking is a basic requirement for high level play. We don't need to think 10 "turns" ahead when trying to walk through a door, we just try to push or pull on it. And if the door is locked or if there's another person coming from the opposite side we'll handle that situation when we come across it.
    - toxik 7y ago
      That’s not true, human beings plan ahead when opening doors more than many things — should I try to open this bathroom door or will that make it awkward if it’s locked and I have to explain that to my coworker afterwards? Should I keep this door open for a while so the guy behind me gets through as well? Not to mention that people typically route plan at doorways. Doors are basically planning triggers more than many things.
      - username90 7y ago
        Horses don't plan though, and they are much better than computers at a lot of tasks. If we can make a computer as smart as a horse, then we can likely also make it as smart as a human by bolting some planning logic on top of that.
        Mtinie 7y ago
        “Horses don’t plan though[...]” Can you expand on this statement? While I have no way to “debug” a horse’s brain in real-time, my experiences suggest they absolutely conduct complex decision-making while engaging in activities. Two examples which immediately come to mind where I believe I see evidence of “if this, then that” planning behavior: 1. Equestrian jumping events; horses often balk before a hurdle 2. Herds of wild horses reacting to perceived threats and then using topographic and geographic features to escape the situation.
visarga 7y ago
Board games have been solved. Now the big boys are working on Starcraft and Dota 2, and it takes a shitload of money to pay for the compute and simulation necessary to train them. No something you can do on the cheap.
- toxik 7y ago
  The next arena is multi task learning. Sure, I lose to specialized intelligences in each separate game, but I can beat the computer at basically every other game, including the game of coming up with new fun games.
- marcusverus 7y ago
  Deepmind's StarCraft AIs are already competing at the Grandmaster level[0], which is the highest tier of competitive play and represents the top 0.6 % of competitors. I am pleasantly surprised by how quickly they have been tackling big new decision spaces. [0]https://deepmind.com/blog/article/AlphaStar-Grandmaster-level-in-StarCraft-II-using-multi-agent-reinforcement-learning https://deepmind.com/blog/article/AlphaStar-Grandmaster-leve...
defterGoose 7y ago
Perhaps the first sentient program will be born in an MMORPG?
- Animats 7y ago
  Read "Three Laws Lethal", by Walton.
- radicalbyte 7y ago
  There's an entire Anime genre about that.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isekai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isekai
- socceroos 7y ago
  Ah, I knew anime would be useful someday
- jack_pp 7y ago
  https://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal https://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal
- Izkata 7y ago
  Just imagine all the exploits they'll find and abuse. OpenAI has already done some experiments here [0]. All the way down at the bottom, under the "surprising behaviors" heading, 3 of the 4 examples involve the AIs finding bugs in the simulation and using it to their advantage. The 4th isn't a bug exactly, but a (missing) edge case in their behavior not initially anticipated. [0] https://openai.com/blog/emergent-tool-use/ https://openai.com/blog/emergent-tool-use/

Animats 7y ago

I've long taken the position that intelligence is mostly about getting through the next 10-30 seconds of life without screwing up. Not falling down, not running into stuff, not getting hurt, not breaking things, making some progress on the current task. Common sense. Most of animal brains, and a large fraction of the human brain, is devoted to managing that. On top of that is some kind of coarse planner giving goals to the lower level systems. This area is under-studied. The logicians spent decades on the high level planner part. The machine learning people are mostly at the lower and middle vision level - object recognition, not "what will happen next". There's a big hole in the middle. It's embarrassing how bad robot manipulation is. Manipulation in unstructured situations barely works better than it did 50 years ago. Nobody even seems to be talking about "common sense" any more. "Common sense" can be though of as the ability to predict the consequences of your actions. AI is not very good at this yet, which makes it dangerous. Back when Rod Brooks did his artificial insects, he was talking about jumping to human level AI, with something called "Cog".[1] I asked him "You built a good artificial insect. Why not go for a next step, a good artificial mouse?" He said "Because I don't want to go down in history as the man who created the world's best artificial mouse". Cog was a flop, and Brooks goes down in history as the inventor of the mass market robot vacuum cleaner. Oh well. [1] http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/CMAA-group.pdf http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/CMAA-group.pdf

visarga 7y ago
> On top of that is some kind of coarse planner giving goals to the lower level systems. There are counterexamples, such as AlphaGo which is all about planning and deep thinking. It also combines learning with evolution (genetic selection).
- alpaca128 7y ago
  True, but AlphaGo is specialized on a very specific task where planning and deep thinking is a basic requirement for high level play. We don't need to think 10 "turns" ahead when trying to walk through a door, we just try to push or pull on it. And if the door is locked or if there's another person coming from the opposite side we'll handle that situation when we come across it.
  - toxik 7y ago
    That’s not true, human beings plan ahead when opening doors more than many things — should I try to open this bathroom door or will that make it awkward if it’s locked and I have to explain that to my coworker afterwards? Should I keep this door open for a while so the guy behind me gets through as well? Not to mention that people typically route plan at doorways. Doors are basically planning triggers more than many things.
    - username90 7y ago
      Horses don't plan though, and they are much better than computers at a lot of tasks. If we can make a computer as smart as a horse, then we can likely also make it as smart as a human by bolting some planning logic on top of that.
      - Mtinie 7y ago
        “Horses don’t plan though[...]” Can you expand on this statement? While I have no way to “debug” a horse’s brain in real-time, my experiences suggest they absolutely conduct complex decision-making while engaging in activities. Two examples which immediately come to mind where I believe I see evidence of “if this, then that” planning behavior: 1. Equestrian jumping events; horses often balk before a hurdle 2. Herds of wild horses reacting to perceived threats and then using topographic and geographic features to escape the situation.

visarga 7y ago

Board games have been solved. Now the big boys are working on Starcraft and Dota 2, and it takes a shitload of money to pay for the compute and simulation necessary to train them. No something you can do on the cheap.

toxik 7y ago
The next arena is multi task learning. Sure, I lose to specialized intelligences in each separate game, but I can beat the computer at basically every other game, including the game of coming up with new fun games.
marcusverus 7y ago
Deepmind's StarCraft AIs are already competing at the Grandmaster level[0], which is the highest tier of competitive play and represents the top 0.6 % of competitors. I am pleasantly surprised by how quickly they have been tackling big new decision spaces. [0]https://deepmind.com/blog/article/AlphaStar-Grandmaster-level-in-StarCraft-II-using-multi-agent-reinforcement-learning https://deepmind.com/blog/article/AlphaStar-Grandmaster-leve...

defterGoose 7y ago

Perhaps the first sentient program will be born in an MMORPG?

Animats 7y ago
Read "Three Laws Lethal", by Walton.
radicalbyte 7y ago
There's an entire Anime genre about that.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isekai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isekai
socceroos 7y ago
Ah, I knew anime would be useful someday
jack_pp 7y ago
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal https://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal
Izkata 7y ago
Just imagine all the exploits they'll find and abuse. OpenAI has already done some experiments here [0]. All the way down at the bottom, under the "surprising behaviors" heading, 3 of the 4 examples involve the AIs finding bugs in the simulation and using it to their advantage. The 4th isn't a bug exactly, but a (missing) edge case in their behavior not initially anticipated. [0] https://openai.com/blog/emergent-tool-use/ https://openai.com/blog/emergent-tool-use/