5 ms·

A child picks up an apple but doesn't know what an apple "is". It doesn't even have the vocabulary to describe it. As adults we know what an apple is because w

A child picks up an apple but doesn't know what an apple "is". It doesn't even have the vocabulary to describe it. As adults we know what an apple is because we understand it as a concept, the ideal "apple", and can manipulate the concept into areas way outside the original concept (say, the phrase "apple of my eye").

sildur 7y ago
Yes, but you did not manipulate the concept. You did not invent that phrase, but simply learned its meaning. A machine can do that.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bildung 7y ago
  Every child reinvents the concept. It wasn't there on birth, and the word and phrases didn't contain it. That's a bit difficult topic to wrap ones head around, but it is critically important to differ between signified (the concept) and signifier (the words etc.). The child develops concepts and is able to create and evaluate inferences, and thus able to understand metaphors etc. The concept is what most AI approaches lack. Googles image search can identify apples, and cherries, and probably can categorize both as fruits, but it can't infer that this probably contains seeds, is a living being etc.
  - simonh 7y ago
    Or even that it is a three dimensional object, or what that means.
  - mrd999 7y ago
    You're the only person who mentioned metaphors here. My intuition tells me metaphors will be key to developing AGI. Metaphors literally generalize; they predict; they organize and catalogue. Formation, testing, and introspection of metaphors seems to be a way forward.
    - jimsmart 7y ago
      Related: Martin Hilpert has an excellent lecture/video on metaphor, as part of his Cognitive Linguistics course. Well worth a watch if this is a topic that interests you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0BYLpwSM6E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0BYLpwSM6E
    - bildung 7y ago
      If you are interested in this direction of research: There is a big body of work regarding human cognitive processes and the role of metaphor. I would suggest "Philosophy in the flesh" by Lakoff and Johnson. A hefty work, but that was one of the publications that fundamentally changed my perspective on the human mind. The concept of embodied reasoning was eye-opening for me. As I have an academic background in learning theory and developmental psychology, I'm pretty pessimistic about the current AI trend, autonomous driving etc. Most smart people in the field are chasing what are effectively more efficient regression functions for over 60 years now, and I almost never stumble upon approaches that have looked at what we know about actual human learning processes, development of the self etc. Moravec's paradox[1] IMO should have been an inflection point for AI research. This is the level of problems AI research has to tackle if it ever wants to create AGI. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox
stestagg 7y ago
A child comes pre-programmed to put things in their mouth. They also have very sophisticated reward functions built-in that identify tasty sugars entering their mouth. Very quickly (assuming said child doesn't eat something too bad), in the absence of an external oracle, the child learns a very productive mental model of what an apple is. This type of feedback loop seems eminently translatable to machine learning, assuming we can encode the concept space in a way that allows the model to be encoded and trained in a reasonable set of constraints
- simonh 7y ago
  Right, but that’s actually just a tiny part of the puzzle. The cognitive machinery that knows about edibility, deco possibility (how objects can be decomposed into parts and have internal structure), compost leaves properties (how the parts of an Apple contribute to its attributes as a whole), it’s relationship and interactions with other objects in the environment. All of that cognitive architecture might be a target for your feedback loop, but isn’t a solver and won’t work like a solver.
chongli 7y ago
The child does know that the apple is a thing though. That it’s a separate object that can be carried around. Computer vision ML systems don’t even know that! All they know is how to recognize a common pattern on a pixel grid, after seeing a large number of examples, and then draw a box around it. The fact that a child has a body and can manipulate the world with all 5 senses working in concert should not be underestimated.

sildur 7y ago

Yes, but you did not manipulate the concept. You did not invent that phrase, but simply learned its meaning. A machine can do that.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bildung 7y ago
Every child reinvents the concept. It wasn't there on birth, and the word and phrases didn't contain it. That's a bit difficult topic to wrap ones head around, but it is critically important to differ between signified (the concept) and signifier (the words etc.). The child develops concepts and is able to create and evaluate inferences, and thus able to understand metaphors etc. The concept is what most AI approaches lack. Googles image search can identify apples, and cherries, and probably can categorize both as fruits, but it can't infer that this probably contains seeds, is a living being etc.
- simonh 7y ago
  Or even that it is a three dimensional object, or what that means.
- mrd999 7y ago
  You're the only person who mentioned metaphors here. My intuition tells me metaphors will be key to developing AGI. Metaphors literally generalize; they predict; they organize and catalogue. Formation, testing, and introspection of metaphors seems to be a way forward.
  - jimsmart 7y ago
    Related: Martin Hilpert has an excellent lecture/video on metaphor, as part of his Cognitive Linguistics course. Well worth a watch if this is a topic that interests you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0BYLpwSM6E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0BYLpwSM6E
  - bildung 7y ago
    If you are interested in this direction of research: There is a big body of work regarding human cognitive processes and the role of metaphor. I would suggest "Philosophy in the flesh" by Lakoff and Johnson. A hefty work, but that was one of the publications that fundamentally changed my perspective on the human mind. The concept of embodied reasoning was eye-opening for me. As I have an academic background in learning theory and developmental psychology, I'm pretty pessimistic about the current AI trend, autonomous driving etc. Most smart people in the field are chasing what are effectively more efficient regression functions for over 60 years now, and I almost never stumble upon approaches that have looked at what we know about actual human learning processes, development of the self etc. Moravec's paradox[1] IMO should have been an inflection point for AI research. This is the level of problems AI research has to tackle if it ever wants to create AGI. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox

stestagg 7y ago

A child comes pre-programmed to put things in their mouth. They also have very sophisticated reward functions built-in that identify tasty sugars entering their mouth. Very quickly (assuming said child doesn't eat something too bad), in the absence of an external oracle, the child learns a very productive mental model of what an apple is. This type of feedback loop seems eminently translatable to machine learning, assuming we can encode the concept space in a way that allows the model to be encoded and trained in a reasonable set of constraints

simonh 7y ago
Right, but that’s actually just a tiny part of the puzzle. The cognitive machinery that knows about edibility, deco possibility (how objects can be decomposed into parts and have internal structure), compost leaves properties (how the parts of an Apple contribute to its attributes as a whole), it’s relationship and interactions with other objects in the environment. All of that cognitive architecture might be a target for your feedback loop, but isn’t a solver and won’t work like a solver.

chongli 7y ago

The child does know that the apple is a thing though. That it’s a separate object that can be carried around. Computer vision ML systems don’t even know that! All they know is how to recognize a common pattern on a pixel grid, after seeing a large number of examples, and then draw a box around it. The fact that a child has a body and can manipulate the world with all 5 senses working in concert should not be underestimated.