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chess as a closed system is definitely solved by AI, including bootstrapping purely from self-play. the claim here is that applying physics/math/etc would be A

by swyx 4y ago

chess as a closed system is definitely solved by AI, including bootstrapping purely from self-play. the claim here is that applying physics/math/etc would be AGI-hard, because it involves the AI perfectly modeling a world it doesnt live in (the simulation problem) or understanding relationships in concepts without making jumps (obeying logic).

janalsncm 4y ago
It’s not clear to me that the bottleneck for simulating the universe is intelligence. Our measurement capabilities are limited, and our computational power is limited. When I say our measurement capabilities are limited, I mean that there are subsystems which are fundamentally chaotic. Small measurement inaccuracies will lead to large prediction inaccuracies, which in my view has little to do with intelligence.
- trashtester 4y ago
  Clearly, detailed long-term simulations of chaotic systems is impossible with any (non-quantum) turing machine with limited parallelism. I think the argument in the article is rather the other way around, ie that intelligence DEPENDS on a kind of simulation to develop proper intelligence. For instance AlphaZero was able to "solve" chess, go, etc, because it could simulate the game state perfectly. And, the "hard" part comes from the fact that perfect simulation is impossible (with or without AI). For an AI that will never interact with the physical world, this makes some sense. However, as I argued in my other response, while some kind of World Model (ref LeCun) may indeed be necessary for AGI, it doesn't need to be perfect. Predictive about essential aspects (those relevant for decisions and actions) is enough. https://syncedreview.com/2017/02/25/yann-le-cun-predicting-under-uncertainty-the-next-frontier-in-ai/ https://syncedreview.com/2017/02/25/yann-le-cun-predicting-u...
trashtester 4y ago
Any AGI that is supposed perform tasks in the physical world, will need some kind of world model. The model doesn't need to be perfect to be immensly useful. It just need to model elements that are necessary to make more accurate predictions in its domain. I would argue that exactly the same goes for the human brain. Consciousness seems to play the part of the World Model for us. Between the quantum wavefunctions of the world we live in and our conscious experience (or even our sub-conscious data processing) there are layers-upon-layars-upon-layers of data loss and data compression/abstraction. Our sensory endpoints probably receive more raw data in a second than our consciousness processes in a year. The reason it still works so well, I would argue, is a mix of darwinian learning that has been going on for hundreds of billions of years before humanity even appeared, where a data pipeline has been created in our hardware. This, combined with our ability to learn by interacting with the real world. Creating an AI with a "perfect" world model is impossible. It will require more compute power than exists in the universe. Rather, AGI will need a simpler world model that captures the parts that are essential for its functioning, and that can be automatically updated using its input data (ideally sensors). Just like us. And, it seems to me, this is already happening. A self driving car will create an approximation for a 6-dimensional state for all objects (position and velocity), possibly with acceleration, speculation about intent or other "mental states. It will then extrapolate this a few seconds (or more) into the future, while keeping track of the confidence of the predictions. This is a similar kind of world model that human brains seem to use, at least for the purpose of driving. Clearly, our brain needs a more complex model, since we make predictions much further into the future (such as the education of our children, or beyond) and we also interact with the world in more ways. When AI systems start to make use of world model of the same complexity (type and level) as our own, and is able to "train" it both "genetically" and by standard "deep learning", I suspect it will be increasingly good at displaying what we consider "common sense". And juding by recent developments, this could happens sooner than many think. If we're able to combine the features of ChatGPT, Tesla Self Driving, Stable Diffusion and perhaps a few other in a single model (that takes both visual data, sound and text as input, and which constructs a wold model that combines physical and abstract/textual/behavioral elements), this could happen within 10 years.
VCBullshitter 4y ago
Isn't this just an echo of computationally? Why involve the distraction of intelligence at all when what you're discussing is a computable algorithm with known bounds? Is there anything special about intelligence—Penrose's bullshit[0] aside—that can't be computed? If not is it anything other than a marketing term for computation that seems more "advanced" to humans? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Mind
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  Yes, intelligence is the ability for a small finite system to deal with infinity of possibilities in a successful way. No matter how big computationally the AI is, the test was always trying to deal with something new, outside its comfort zone. Preferably as far outside it as possible. To do that successfully requires general problem solving and abstraction skills. Of course one can do better or worse at that, including humans. You cannot precompute most of the answer to a truly open question.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
Small nitpick: in game theory, "solved" means something very specific. At the very weakest it requires the ability to prove what the result of a game will be from the initial position given perfect play. Chess AI is nowhere close to this. They easily beat humans, yes, but in the game-theoretic sense chess is not solved.
- VCBullshitter 4y ago
  I mean if they were talking about "solved" I'd assume they'd just use a decision tree rather than refer to AI at all, so given the rest of the comment I assumed they were talking about beating humans 100% of the time rather than beating an arbitrary agent 100% of the time (or I guess 50% if you can't pick which color).

by swyx 4y ago

janalsncm 4y ago

It’s not clear to me that the bottleneck for simulating the universe is intelligence. Our measurement capabilities are limited, and our computational power is limited. When I say our measurement capabilities are limited, I mean that there are subsystems which are fundamentally chaotic. Small measurement inaccuracies will lead to large prediction inaccuracies, which in my view has little to do with intelligence.

trashtester 4y ago
Clearly, detailed long-term simulations of chaotic systems is impossible with any (non-quantum) turing machine with limited parallelism. I think the argument in the article is rather the other way around, ie that intelligence DEPENDS on a kind of simulation to develop proper intelligence. For instance AlphaZero was able to "solve" chess, go, etc, because it could simulate the game state perfectly. And, the "hard" part comes from the fact that perfect simulation is impossible (with or without AI). For an AI that will never interact with the physical world, this makes some sense. However, as I argued in my other response, while some kind of World Model (ref LeCun) may indeed be necessary for AGI, it doesn't need to be perfect. Predictive about essential aspects (those relevant for decisions and actions) is enough. https://syncedreview.com/2017/02/25/yann-le-cun-predicting-under-uncertainty-the-next-frontier-in-ai/ https://syncedreview.com/2017/02/25/yann-le-cun-predicting-u...

trashtester 4y ago

Any AGI that is supposed perform tasks in the physical world, will need some kind of world model. The model doesn't need to be perfect to be immensly useful. It just need to model elements that are necessary to make more accurate predictions in its domain. I would argue that exactly the same goes for the human brain. Consciousness seems to play the part of the World Model for us. Between the quantum wavefunctions of the world we live in and our conscious experience (or even our sub-conscious data processing) there are layers-upon-layars-upon-layers of data loss and data compression/abstraction. Our sensory endpoints probably receive more raw data in a second than our consciousness processes in a year. The reason it still works so well, I would argue, is a mix of darwinian learning that has been going on for hundreds of billions of years before humanity even appeared, where a data pipeline has been created in our hardware. This, combined with our ability to learn by interacting with the real world. Creating an AI with a "perfect" world model is impossible. It will require more compute power than exists in the universe. Rather, AGI will need a simpler world model that captures the parts that are essential for its functioning, and that can be automatically updated using its input data (ideally sensors). Just like us. And, it seems to me, this is already happening. A self driving car will create an approximation for a 6-dimensional state for all objects (position and velocity), possibly with acceleration, speculation about intent or other "mental states. It will then extrapolate this a few seconds (or more) into the future, while keeping track of the confidence of the predictions. This is a similar kind of world model that human brains seem to use, at least for the purpose of driving. Clearly, our brain needs a more complex model, since we make predictions much further into the future (such as the education of our children, or beyond) and we also interact with the world in more ways. When AI systems start to make use of world model of the same complexity (type and level) as our own, and is able to "train" it both "genetically" and by standard "deep learning", I suspect it will be increasingly good at displaying what we consider "common sense". And juding by recent developments, this could happens sooner than many think. If we're able to combine the features of ChatGPT, Tesla Self Driving, Stable Diffusion and perhaps a few other in a single model (that takes both visual data, sound and text as input, and which constructs a wold model that combines physical and abstract/textual/behavioral elements), this could happen within 10 years.

VCBullshitter 4y ago

Isn't this just an echo of computationally? Why involve the distraction of intelligence at all when what you're discussing is a computable algorithm with known bounds? Is there anything special about intelligence—Penrose's bullshit[0] aside—that can't be computed? If not is it anything other than a marketing term for computation that seems more "advanced" to humans? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Mind

AstralStorm 4y ago
Yes, intelligence is the ability for a small finite system to deal with infinity of possibilities in a successful way. No matter how big computationally the AI is, the test was always trying to deal with something new, outside its comfort zone. Preferably as far outside it as possible. To do that successfully requires general problem solving and abstraction skills. Of course one can do better or worse at that, including humans. You cannot precompute most of the answer to a truly open question.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

Small nitpick: in game theory, "solved" means something very specific. At the very weakest it requires the ability to prove what the result of a game will be from the initial position given perfect play. Chess AI is nowhere close to this. They easily beat humans, yes, but in the game-theoretic sense chess is not solved.

VCBullshitter 4y ago
I mean if they were talking about "solved" I'd assume they'd just use a decision tree rather than refer to AI at all, so given the rest of the comment I assumed they were talking about beating humans 100% of the time rather than beating an arbitrary agent 100% of the time (or I guess 50% if you can't pick which color).