4 ms·

The Robot and the Baby (2004)

25 points by bigdict 5y ago

dang 5y ago
A couple past threads: “The Robot and the Baby” by John McCarthy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6996391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6996391 - Jan 2014 (28 comments) John McCarthy: The Robot and the Baby - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3151892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3151892 - Oct 2011 (9 comments)
WalterGR 5y ago
John McCarthy talks a bit about it here: http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/robotandbaby.html http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/robotandbaby.html
mitchbob 5y ago
PDF version: http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/robotandbaby/robotandbaby.pdf http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/robotandbaby/robotandbaby.p...
dzdt 5y ago
Interesting that the story assumes a legible AI for the robot. If its behaviour was the result of a deep learning neural net, the story plot would necessarrily be quite different. There would be no talk of understanding the robot's calculations or tweaking the program parameters. From the perspective of today's AI efforts the programming in the story seems antiquated and unrealistic.
- paroneayea 5y ago
  Or the reverse: today's AI research is missing large components of what would be necessary to achieve sapience. A conversation with Gerald Sussman half a decade ago had a big influence on me in this area: https://dustycloud.org/blog/sussman-on-ai/ https://dustycloud.org/blog/sussman-on-ai/ I had some further conversations with Sussman and some other oldschool AI researchers from MIT later, the shortest summary of their comments would be that "We knew that neural nets could do this kind of thing, we didn't have the power to do it yet though. But an artificial intelligence system that can't explain why it's doing what it's doing doesn't seem very intelligent." Sussman and his students' work on propagators provide a very interesting alternative direction where explanations are a key part. And yes it's true, humans also construct imperfect versions of their own thinking. That's because these systems are combined: the fast gut-feel type neural-network'ish systems and the slower symbolic reasoning systems that are associated with language. And probably the right design combines both of these. A view into how this might work can be found by first reading Alexey Radul's dissertation on propagators: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/49525 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/49525 And then on top of that, Leilani Gilpin shows how propagators can be used to analyze neural network systems and create retroactive explanations for decisions that were made: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/lgilpin-PhD-EECS-Sept2020.pdf https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/lgilpin-PhD-EECS-...
deleted 5y ago
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25 points by bigdict 5y ago

dang 5y ago

A couple past threads: “The Robot and the Baby” by John McCarthy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6996391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6996391 - Jan 2014 (28 comments) John McCarthy: The Robot and the Baby - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3151892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3151892 - Oct 2011 (9 comments)

WalterGR 5y ago

John McCarthy talks a bit about it here: http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/robotandbaby.html http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/robotandbaby.html

mitchbob 5y ago

PDF version: http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/robotandbaby/robotandbaby.pdf http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/robotandbaby/robotandbaby.p...

dzdt 5y ago

Interesting that the story assumes a legible AI for the robot. If its behaviour was the result of a deep learning neural net, the story plot would necessarrily be quite different. There would be no talk of understanding the robot's calculations or tweaking the program parameters. From the perspective of today's AI efforts the programming in the story seems antiquated and unrealistic.

paroneayea 5y ago
Or the reverse: today's AI research is missing large components of what would be necessary to achieve sapience. A conversation with Gerald Sussman half a decade ago had a big influence on me in this area: https://dustycloud.org/blog/sussman-on-ai/ https://dustycloud.org/blog/sussman-on-ai/ I had some further conversations with Sussman and some other oldschool AI researchers from MIT later, the shortest summary of their comments would be that "We knew that neural nets could do this kind of thing, we didn't have the power to do it yet though. But an artificial intelligence system that can't explain why it's doing what it's doing doesn't seem very intelligent." Sussman and his students' work on propagators provide a very interesting alternative direction where explanations are a key part. And yes it's true, humans also construct imperfect versions of their own thinking. That's because these systems are combined: the fast gut-feel type neural-network'ish systems and the slower symbolic reasoning systems that are associated with language. And probably the right design combines both of these. A view into how this might work can be found by first reading Alexey Radul's dissertation on propagators: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/49525 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/49525 And then on top of that, Leilani Gilpin shows how propagators can be used to analyze neural network systems and create retroactive explanations for decisions that were made: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/lgilpin-PhD-EECS-Sept2020.pdf https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/lgilpin-PhD-EECS-...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]