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As someone who's a software engineer (not data scientist) but is interested in consciousness and by extension AGI and dabbled in some ML algorithms, I find it s

As someone who's a software engineer (not data scientist) but is interested in consciousness and by extension AGI and dabbled in some ML algorithms, I find it surprising how often I see the sentiments of AGI being possible or impossible using some sort of algorithm. Obviously I could be missing some great breadth and depth of research (there's definitely a lot I don't know) but from what I've read "we have no idea" is a pretty accurate description with how far we've come when it comes to consciousness, and I would imagine even less for the newer field of AI/AGI (consciousness has been around for a while P: and our theories have mostly sidestepped this real world phenomenon). > "The idea of using "rewards" as a learning mechanism and a path to actual cognition is just wrong, full stop." This to me is a huge red flag (mostly of ego/hubris). I think if we rephrased the goal to not talk about "AGI" and maybe around quantitative things like the things you've listed ("computational efficiency", likelihood of being stuck in local minimimas, etc) then I'd happily concede that we should be looking at "X" and not "Y" but unless I've missed something, again likely, when we're talking about AGI, we're talking about consciousness (epiphenomenon that come about through physical/deterministic interactions). A quick way to gut check myself here is twisting what you state is not a good place to start "ML/AI field... gets stuck in local minima" and ask myself is it possible that local minima (which we consider "bad" for current/traditional tasks) could be necessary for consciousness ? I think the widely accepted answer to this is currently "We don't know". If I think that achieving AGI is going to be similar to what the algorithms and architecture we currently use (where the likelihood of being stuck in a local minima is something we can look at) then sure, your opinions stand. But that is just a guess and unless I'm mistaken AGI hasn't been achieved because we don't know how to do it. This isn't to say that we should have 100% of the data before making strong judgements like this about a subject. It's just that the subject of "consciousness" is a big one (I'd say THE big one) so making such strong statements about something we know we don't know much about is interesting. <- this is where I get flashbacks to SE world where a missing piece of data can really throw you off or leads to wrong assumptions and when I think about consciousness we know we don't know a lot.

bra-ket 6y ago
My point was that RL/DL is being used like some kind of massive hammer to hit all the nails. Cognition requires different, specialized, energy-efficient tools. > consciousness All talk about this is premature and "pre-science", before we figure out more basic, fundamental things like object storage and recall from memory, object recognition from sensory input, concept representation and formation, the exact mechanism of "chunking" [1], "translational invariance" [2], generalization along concept hierarchy and different scales, representation of causal structures, proximity search and heuristics, innate coordinate system, innate "grammar". Even having a working, biologically-plausible model of navigation in 3d spaces by mice, without spending a ton of energy training the model, would be a good first step. In fact there is evidence that navigational capacity [3] is the basis of more abstract forms of thinking. On all of these things we have decades worth of research and widely published, fundamental, Nobel-winning discoveries which are almost completely ignored by the AI field stuck in its comfort zone. Saying "we have no idea" is just being lazy. Edit: As for OP's actual paper I think something like complex-valued RL [4] might bypass his main claims entirely. But my point is that RL itself is a dead end, trivializing the problem at hand. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology) [2] http://www.moreisdifferent.com/2017/09/hinton-whats-wrong-with-CNNs http://www.moreisdifferent.com/2017/09/hinton-whats-wrong-wi... [3] http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Grid_cells http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Grid_cells [4] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22complex-valued+reinforcement+learning%22&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22c...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
xvilka 6y ago
I think it will require at least a few more centuries to build AGI.
thomasfromcdnjs 6y ago
Stumbled upon this the other day, seems interesting ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Mind "Penrose argues that human consciousness is non-algorithmic, and thus is not capable of being modeled by a conventional Turing machine, which includes a digital computer. Penrose hypothesizes that quantum mechanics plays an essential role in the understanding of human consciousness. The collapse of the quantum wavefunction is seen as playing an important role in brain function."
- thechao 6y ago
  Penrose is a superlatively brilliant physicist, but his opinion on AI is the worst sort of woo. It’s little better than reading Chopra. His argument is most salient as an example of attempting to use authority in one field to garner authority in another.
nagaa 6y ago
I have learned to play piano and drive a car. IMO both of these took two completely different sets of systems and algorithms in order to accomplish the learning task. Nothing I learned from piano applies to driving and vice versa. The only thing in common is my brain. We want a computer though to apply those algorithms I learned driving and playing piano to golf and have it work. We will then have "AGI". Obviously that fails. Obviously.

bra-ket 6y ago

My point was that RL/DL is being used like some kind of massive hammer to hit all the nails. Cognition requires different, specialized, energy-efficient tools. > consciousness All talk about this is premature and "pre-science", before we figure out more basic, fundamental things like object storage and recall from memory, object recognition from sensory input, concept representation and formation, the exact mechanism of "chunking" [1], "translational invariance" [2], generalization along concept hierarchy and different scales, representation of causal structures, proximity search and heuristics, innate coordinate system, innate "grammar". Even having a working, biologically-plausible model of navigation in 3d spaces by mice, without spending a ton of energy training the model, would be a good first step. In fact there is evidence that navigational capacity [3] is the basis of more abstract forms of thinking. On all of these things we have decades worth of research and widely published, fundamental, Nobel-winning discoveries which are almost completely ignored by the AI field stuck in its comfort zone. Saying "we have no idea" is just being lazy. Edit: As for OP's actual paper I think something like complex-valued RL [4] might bypass his main claims entirely. But my point is that RL itself is a dead end, trivializing the problem at hand. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology) [2] http://www.moreisdifferent.com/2017/09/hinton-whats-wrong-with-CNNs http://www.moreisdifferent.com/2017/09/hinton-whats-wrong-wi... [3] http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Grid_cells http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Grid_cells [4] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22complex-valued+reinforcement+learning%22&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22c...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

xvilka 6y ago

I think it will require at least a few more centuries to build AGI.

thomasfromcdnjs 6y ago

Stumbled upon this the other day, seems interesting ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Mind "Penrose argues that human consciousness is non-algorithmic, and thus is not capable of being modeled by a conventional Turing machine, which includes a digital computer. Penrose hypothesizes that quantum mechanics plays an essential role in the understanding of human consciousness. The collapse of the quantum wavefunction is seen as playing an important role in brain function."

thechao 6y ago
Penrose is a superlatively brilliant physicist, but his opinion on AI is the worst sort of woo. It’s little better than reading Chopra. His argument is most salient as an example of attempting to use authority in one field to garner authority in another.

nagaa 6y ago

I have learned to play piano and drive a car. IMO both of these took two completely different sets of systems and algorithms in order to accomplish the learning task. Nothing I learned from piano applies to driving and vice versa. The only thing in common is my brain. We want a computer though to apply those algorithms I learned driving and playing piano to golf and have it work. We will then have "AGI". Obviously that fails. Obviously.