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I dont think that AI will get close to the vision in GEB. As many said in this thread, what we have is more power and more data to solve narrow problems. One of

I dont think that AI will get close to the vision in GEB. As many said in this thread, what we have is more power and more data to solve narrow problems. One of the point of EGB is that perceived details may aggregate to something larger and form another pattern unrelated to what the algo what initially trained for. True AI will have to find a way around this. When I was working as an quantitative strategist in a trading firm, I alway made sure that my algos had a ''killswitch'' which required human intervention in case the market did not exibit usual patterns found in the training sets. Skin in the game is the best cure against techno-evengelical optimism. Also, I had the opportunity to practice zen meditation with a monk who had actual koan training. The idea that computer will replicate that process soon is ridiculous. Buddhist and asian philosophy are, at their cores, anti-aristotle. Who can make this into a AI now? https://aeon.co/essays/the-logic-of-buddhist-philosophy-goes-beyond-simple-truth https://aeon.co/essays/the-logic-of-buddhist-philosophy-goes...

tbalsam 6y ago
This feels a lot like the kind of "enlightened anti-'AI'" opinion that's more in vogue in some circles. I think if you're following the literature, there's a significant amount that's pointing to the above generalization capabilities that you're contending against because it may not seem likely from your personal experience. If you were to look at your arguments, I think you're extending the idea of expert systems from the 90's and so on and using that to paint a picture of the entire research field of deep learning process today. What we have has the capabilities to not be bound by those things, just the long bootstrapping process takes time. But we're getting closer year by year, and it's more and more exciting along that front as time goes along. As for experience, I am and have been a practicioner in this field for several years.
- jplr8922 6y ago
  Hm interesting, do you have an recent article to share?
  - tbalsam 6y ago
    I'm not sure in particular anything that would be useful beyond certain trends. Things like AlphaFoldv2 and some of the cooperative-competitive emergent RL strategies are interesting/important. You might find some of the concurrent work on open set/zero shot very interesting. I think it's an asymptotic approach on some degrees. Like you noted with meditation -- this is something very hard for a computer to achieve, for a computer has to have a demonstrable concept/actualized sense of self to be able to let go and connect to some of the more spiritual elements there. Conversely, if arguing from a non-materialistic manner, then you could also argue there's some sort of bridge there that could be crossed for that particular kind of connection. Materially, some kind of artistic manifold. But without some kind of spiritual connection, there may always be something missing there. However, we as humans on the interpreting end of things may make the spiritual connections ourselves, so some kind of manifold discovery may not need that kind of connection to properly function. And it may! Who knows? In the end, all in all -- I think a lot of it looks at the open-ended discovery-and-low-label-self-dermination-and-assignment, if you're looking at (what I'd personally consider to be) the most interesting research all rattling around in there. :))))
gameswithgo 6y ago
Do you believe the human brain has magic components? If not, why do you believe AI cannot one day replicate what the human brain does? Or do you mean that you think this is a long way off, or not achievable with current hardware and algorithms?
- jplr8922 6y ago
  What do you mean by ''magic components''? One of the core point of EGB is that human consciousness has a property of spotting ''unintended symbolic patterns'' created by an underlying system (ex: a piece of music written by Bach). EGB also touch the point that consciousness might itself be one of these pattern, overlying the mechanical biological machine which is the brain. '' the brain == consciousness '' is a risky statement, since consciousness also appears to act as an an intermediary between the ''outside'' reality and the brain (ex: placebo effect, being scared during a nightmare, being stressed after a nightmare, etc). Does the brain has magic components and can AI replicate it? If you write a pseudo-code program which replicates consciousness, will a brain appear? Programing languages are languages. Can languages replicate reality? I do not think so, and there is no ''magic'' in my opinion.
  - PixyMisa 6y ago
    "If you write a pseudo-code program which replicates consciousness, will a brain appear?" To quote Charles Babbage: I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
PixyMisa 6y ago
We don't need AI that meditates. It's pointless. We need AI that can spot a ball rolling out into the road and know that a child might be following after - and immediately figure out whether it's safer to brake or swerve.
- jplr8922 6y ago
  Hi PixyMisa, I will try to answer your both comments. I agree that an AI which can spot a rolling ball and know that a child might be following is a worthy goal. However AI discussed in EGB is able to do much more than that. We might not ''need'' AI that meditates, but can AI which does not can really be called AI? Or does our AI only needs to copy human behaviours which we currently understand as rational? Also regarding the pseudo-code vs brain statement, it was an attempt on my part to relate to what is called the hard problem of consciousness. The strictly materialistic view of the problem is not currently the best explanation we have, and is probably not the view of EGB.
jkhdigital 6y ago
> Skin in the game is the best cure against techno-evengelical optimism. I think it’s also a non-optional component of any general intelligence. Wrong predictions must be costly.

tbalsam 6y ago

This feels a lot like the kind of "enlightened anti-'AI'" opinion that's more in vogue in some circles. I think if you're following the literature, there's a significant amount that's pointing to the above generalization capabilities that you're contending against because it may not seem likely from your personal experience. If you were to look at your arguments, I think you're extending the idea of expert systems from the 90's and so on and using that to paint a picture of the entire research field of deep learning process today. What we have has the capabilities to not be bound by those things, just the long bootstrapping process takes time. But we're getting closer year by year, and it's more and more exciting along that front as time goes along. As for experience, I am and have been a practicioner in this field for several years.

jplr8922 6y ago
Hm interesting, do you have an recent article to share?
- tbalsam 6y ago
  I'm not sure in particular anything that would be useful beyond certain trends. Things like AlphaFoldv2 and some of the cooperative-competitive emergent RL strategies are interesting/important. You might find some of the concurrent work on open set/zero shot very interesting. I think it's an asymptotic approach on some degrees. Like you noted with meditation -- this is something very hard for a computer to achieve, for a computer has to have a demonstrable concept/actualized sense of self to be able to let go and connect to some of the more spiritual elements there. Conversely, if arguing from a non-materialistic manner, then you could also argue there's some sort of bridge there that could be crossed for that particular kind of connection. Materially, some kind of artistic manifold. But without some kind of spiritual connection, there may always be something missing there. However, we as humans on the interpreting end of things may make the spiritual connections ourselves, so some kind of manifold discovery may not need that kind of connection to properly function. And it may! Who knows? In the end, all in all -- I think a lot of it looks at the open-ended discovery-and-low-label-self-dermination-and-assignment, if you're looking at (what I'd personally consider to be) the most interesting research all rattling around in there. :))))

gameswithgo 6y ago

Do you believe the human brain has magic components? If not, why do you believe AI cannot one day replicate what the human brain does? Or do you mean that you think this is a long way off, or not achievable with current hardware and algorithms?

jplr8922 6y ago
What do you mean by ''magic components''? One of the core point of EGB is that human consciousness has a property of spotting ''unintended symbolic patterns'' created by an underlying system (ex: a piece of music written by Bach). EGB also touch the point that consciousness might itself be one of these pattern, overlying the mechanical biological machine which is the brain. '' the brain == consciousness '' is a risky statement, since consciousness also appears to act as an an intermediary between the ''outside'' reality and the brain (ex: placebo effect, being scared during a nightmare, being stressed after a nightmare, etc). Does the brain has magic components and can AI replicate it? If you write a pseudo-code program which replicates consciousness, will a brain appear? Programing languages are languages. Can languages replicate reality? I do not think so, and there is no ''magic'' in my opinion.
- PixyMisa 6y ago
  "If you write a pseudo-code program which replicates consciousness, will a brain appear?" To quote Charles Babbage: I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

PixyMisa 6y ago

We don't need AI that meditates. It's pointless. We need AI that can spot a ball rolling out into the road and know that a child might be following after - and immediately figure out whether it's safer to brake or swerve.

jplr8922 6y ago
Hi PixyMisa, I will try to answer your both comments. I agree that an AI which can spot a rolling ball and know that a child might be following is a worthy goal. However AI discussed in EGB is able to do much more than that. We might not ''need'' AI that meditates, but can AI which does not can really be called AI? Or does our AI only needs to copy human behaviours which we currently understand as rational? Also regarding the pseudo-code vs brain statement, it was an attempt on my part to relate to what is called the hard problem of consciousness. The strictly materialistic view of the problem is not currently the best explanation we have, and is probably not the view of EGB.

jkhdigital 6y ago

> Skin in the game is the best cure against techno-evengelical optimism. I think it’s also a non-optional component of any general intelligence. Wrong predictions must be costly.