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The Global Project to Make a General Robotic Brain

70 points by T-A 3y ago

random3 3y ago
IEEE Spectrum has a fancy new look, clean nice, maybe fonts adjusted for people that don't like to wear their glasses. Overall good. However, the link highlighting with a red underline looks like a MS Word document with lots of typos or like my literature tests in primary school.
lallysingh 3y ago
I do wonder about automation in training. Build 50 robots and have them execute in parallel, then reconcile. Or train in a VR system.
- jamilton 3y ago
  My layman understanding is 1. big, practical size robotic arms are expensive and 2. also very slow, making real training expensive and time consuming. And 3, simulations aren't high-fidelity enough to be fully sufficient for training, but they definitely can help.
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    Tbf, this is Google we're talking about. They routinely pay a single developer more per year than a few of these would cost to produce. They could make hundreds without a second thought.
    - lallysingh 3y ago
      And make the simulator more realistic
huppeldepup 3y ago
I'd like you to view this demo from 1974 that showcases the then current state of research in AI. Then reflect that the research presented in the link is 50 years later. https://youtu.be/03p2CADwGF8?t=1668 https://youtu.be/03p2CADwGF8?t=1668
- neom 3y ago
  I wasn't aware of this, but from wikip: "In 1973, professor Sir James Lighthill was asked by the UK Parliament to evaluate the state of AI research in the United Kingdom. His report, now called the Lighthill report, criticized the utter failure of AI to achieve its "grandiose objectives". He concluded that nothing being done in AI could not be done in other sciences. He specifically mentioned the problem of "combinatorial explosion" or "intractability", which implied that many of AI's most successful algorithms would grind to a halt on real world problems and were only suitable for solving "toy" versions. The report was contested in a debate broadcast in the BBC "Controversy" series in 1973. The debate "The general purpose robot is a mirage" from the Royal Institution was Lighthill versus the team of Donald Michie, John McCarthy and Richard Gregory. McCarthy later wrote that "the combinatorial explosion problem has been recognized in AI from the beginning". The report led to the complete dismantling of AI research in the UK. AI research continued in only a few universities (Edinburgh, Essex and Sussex). Research would not revive on a large scale until 1983, when Alvey (a research project of the British Government) began to fund AI again from a war chest of £350 million in response to the Japanese Fifth Generation Project (see below). Alvey had a number of UK-only requirements which did not sit well internationally, especially with US partners, and lost Phase 2 funding." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter Seems this is the report if anyone is curious to read it: https://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/events/lighthill1973/lighthill.pdf https://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/events/lighthill1973/lighthill.pdf
  - huppeldepup 3y ago
    Thank you for taking the effort to look this up. The other commenters missed my intent but you picked it right out.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
    That prancing moron, Lighthill, is the reason why the UK has no robotics industry to speak of today. And the instigator of the first AI winter to boot, as you have found out. Curse that bloody idiot.
- T-A 3y ago
sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
While this is pretty cool I believe generalist robots will not have a fraction of the skills an average human has , at least not within a realistically foreseeable timeframe, let’s say within this century. IMO a much more desirable route would be to build a number of specialist robots that do all the things humans really don’t want to do. Even that seems really hard to do - at least I haven’t seen a robot that is able to vacuum a house really well. I saw some versions at friends places but they were more like gimmicks - took really long to setup, basically nothing was allowed to be on the floor, generic rectangular room setup required and they didn’t last more than two years or so. I think all of them went back to vacuuming themselves or employing a human to do it (the second option is vastly more efficient than the robot and much cheaper too) Maybe I am missing something, but a really versatile, robust, and cheap vacuuming robot would be an actual improvement to life quality for a lot of people. The research is very interesting though of course and much better this than no research in that direction at all.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pixl97 3y ago
  So most the specialist problems we've had that were not 'generalist hard' we've already mostly solved with machines that we don't consider complex robots. It shape of the robot isn't the issue, the problem space of reality is. A roomba can suck stuff off a floor, it has a much harder time dealing with (or even identifying) a sock that needs moved out of the way first. To do that for all the different objects that could show up in front of you, you need a general purpose AI.
- dsign 3y ago
  > While this is pretty cool I believe generalist robots will not have a fraction of the skills an average human has , at least not within a realistically foreseeable timeframe, let’s say within this century. I'm pretty sure they will be flipping burgers by the 2040s, if not before, and doing everything else needed to efficiently make a (big) percentage of people jobless in first-world economies. Though, not in parts of the world where electricity regularly in the wire is still rare...because those problems don't solve themselves in a few short decades. Now, we both are cynics and should go for a beer together. Who knows, maybe we will come up with a more catastrophic and highly probable scenario that combines your outlook with mine...

70 points by T-A 3y ago

IEEE Spectrum has a fancy new look, clean nice, maybe fonts adjusted for people that don't like to wear their glasses. Overall good. However, the link highlighting with a red underline looks like a MS Word document with lots of typos or like my literature tests in primary school.

lallysingh 3y ago

I do wonder about automation in training. Build 50 robots and have them execute in parallel, then reconcile. Or train in a VR system.

jamilton 3y ago
My layman understanding is 1. big, practical size robotic arms are expensive and 2. also very slow, making real training expensive and time consuming. And 3, simulations aren't high-fidelity enough to be fully sufficient for training, but they definitely can help.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Tbf, this is Google we're talking about. They routinely pay a single developer more per year than a few of these would cost to produce. They could make hundreds without a second thought.
  - lallysingh 3y ago
    And make the simulator more realistic

huppeldepup 3y ago

I'd like you to view this demo from 1974 that showcases the then current state of research in AI. Then reflect that the research presented in the link is 50 years later. https://youtu.be/03p2CADwGF8?t=1668 https://youtu.be/03p2CADwGF8?t=1668

neom 3y ago
I wasn't aware of this, but from wikip: "In 1973, professor Sir James Lighthill was asked by the UK Parliament to evaluate the state of AI research in the United Kingdom. His report, now called the Lighthill report, criticized the utter failure of AI to achieve its "grandiose objectives". He concluded that nothing being done in AI could not be done in other sciences. He specifically mentioned the problem of "combinatorial explosion" or "intractability", which implied that many of AI's most successful algorithms would grind to a halt on real world problems and were only suitable for solving "toy" versions. The report was contested in a debate broadcast in the BBC "Controversy" series in 1973. The debate "The general purpose robot is a mirage" from the Royal Institution was Lighthill versus the team of Donald Michie, John McCarthy and Richard Gregory. McCarthy later wrote that "the combinatorial explosion problem has been recognized in AI from the beginning". The report led to the complete dismantling of AI research in the UK. AI research continued in only a few universities (Edinburgh, Essex and Sussex). Research would not revive on a large scale until 1983, when Alvey (a research project of the British Government) began to fund AI again from a war chest of £350 million in response to the Japanese Fifth Generation Project (see below). Alvey had a number of UK-only requirements which did not sit well internationally, especially with US partners, and lost Phase 2 funding." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter Seems this is the report if anyone is curious to read it: https://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/events/lighthill1973/lighthill.pdf https://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/events/lighthill1973/lighthill.pdf
- huppeldepup 3y ago
  Thank you for taking the effort to look this up. The other commenters missed my intent but you picked it right out.
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
  That prancing moron, Lighthill, is the reason why the UK has no robotics industry to speak of today. And the instigator of the first AI winter to boot, as you have found out. Curse that bloody idiot.
T-A 3y ago

sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago

While this is pretty cool I believe generalist robots will not have a fraction of the skills an average human has , at least not within a realistically foreseeable timeframe, let’s say within this century. IMO a much more desirable route would be to build a number of specialist robots that do all the things humans really don’t want to do. Even that seems really hard to do - at least I haven’t seen a robot that is able to vacuum a house really well. I saw some versions at friends places but they were more like gimmicks - took really long to setup, basically nothing was allowed to be on the floor, generic rectangular room setup required and they didn’t last more than two years or so. I think all of them went back to vacuuming themselves or employing a human to do it (the second option is vastly more efficient than the robot and much cheaper too) Maybe I am missing something, but a really versatile, robust, and cheap vacuuming robot would be an actual improvement to life quality for a lot of people. The research is very interesting though of course and much better this than no research in that direction at all.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pixl97 3y ago
So most the specialist problems we've had that were not 'generalist hard' we've already mostly solved with machines that we don't consider complex robots. It shape of the robot isn't the issue, the problem space of reality is. A roomba can suck stuff off a floor, it has a much harder time dealing with (or even identifying) a sock that needs moved out of the way first. To do that for all the different objects that could show up in front of you, you need a general purpose AI.
dsign 3y ago
> While this is pretty cool I believe generalist robots will not have a fraction of the skills an average human has , at least not within a realistically foreseeable timeframe, let’s say within this century. I'm pretty sure they will be flipping burgers by the 2040s, if not before, and doing everything else needed to efficiently make a (big) percentage of people jobless in first-world economies. Though, not in parts of the world where electricity regularly in the wire is still rare...because those problems don't solve themselves in a few short decades. Now, we both are cynics and should go for a beer together. Who knows, maybe we will come up with a more catastrophic and highly probable scenario that combines your outlook with mine...