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I've thought about this a lot. I'm no philosopher or AI researcher, so I'm just spitballing... but if I were to try my hand at it, I think I'd like to start fro

I've thought about this a lot. I'm no philosopher or AI researcher, so I'm just spitballing... but if I were to try my hand at it, I think I'd like to start from "principles" and let systems evolve or at least be discoverable over time Principles would be things like self-preservation, food, shelter and procreating, communication and memory through a risk-reward calculation prism. Maybe establishing what is "known" vs what is "unknown" is a key component here too, but not in such a binary way. "Memory" can mean many things, but if you codify it as a function of some type of subject performing some type of action leading to some outcome with some ascribed "risk-reward" profile compared to the value obtained from empirical testing that spans from very negative to very positive, it seems both wide encompassing and generally useful, both to the individual and to the collective. From there you derive the need to connect with others, disputes over resources, the need to take risks, explore the unknown, share what we've learned, refine risk-rewards, etc. You can guide the civilization to discover certain technologies or inventions or locations we've defined ex ante as their godlike DM which is a bit like cheating because it puts their development "on rails" but also makes it more useful, interesting and relatable. It sounds computationally prohibitive, but the game doesn't need to play out in real time anyway... I just think that you can describe a lot of the human condition in terms of "life", "liberty", "love/connection" and "greed". Looking at the video in the repo, I don't like how this throws "cultures", "memes" and "religion" into the mix instead of letting them be an emergence from the need to communicate and share the belief systems that emerge from our collective memories. Because it seems like a distinction without a difference for the purposes of analyzing this. Also "taxes are high!" without the underlying "I don't have enough resources to get by" seems too much like a mechanical turk

grugagag 2y ago
Many of these projects are inch deep into intelligence and miles deep into the current technology. Some things will see tremendous benefits but as far as artificial intelligence we’re not there yet. Im thinking gaming will benefit a lot from these..
- farias0 2y ago
  You mean we're not there in simulating an actual human brain? Sure. But we're seeing AI work like a human well enough to be useful, isn't that the point?
  - grugagag 2y ago
    Not if we’re pretending it is any inteligent. Other than that I’m all in for new utility to come out from it. But I do see a lot of tangents off technology with claims to something it is not. I have no problem of calling that out. Why do you mind? Just ignore me if Im holding your enthusiasm back, there’s plenty of sources to provide that for you.
    - ekianjo 2y ago
      > Not if we’re pretending it is any inteligent. We have been shifting the definition of what it means to be intelligent every 3 months following the advances of LLM...
      - mistermann 2y ago
        There's also this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-world_assumption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-world_assumption I wonder, once LLM's exceed Humans beyond some substantial threshold, will it crack the simulation allowing us to get back in the game again.
        grugagag 2y ago
        Crack what simulation exactly? You can get back into the game right now, armed with these tools such as LLMs, ML and so on.
        mistermann 2y ago
        Culture, memetics, consciousness, etc. Indeed, but simply using them is not enough.
jsemrau 2y ago
Memory is really interesting. For example, if you play 100,000 rounds of 5x5 Tic Tac Toe. Do you really need to remember game 51247 or do you recognize and remember a winning pattern? In Reinforcement Learning you would based on each win revise the policy. How would that work for genAI?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
fragmede 2y ago
So a modernized version of Spore.
- airstrike 2y ago
  Basically what we all wished Spore had been ;-)
shagie 2y ago
Evolve is another beast... but for the: "I've thought about this a lot. I'm no philosopher or AI researcher, so I'm just spitballing... but if I were to try my hand at it, I think I'd like to start from "principles" and let systems evolve or at least be discoverable over time" part, hunt up a copy of "The Society of Mind" by Minsky who was both and wrote about that idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind > The work, which first appeared in 1986, was the first comprehensive description of Minsky's "society of mind" theory, which he began developing in the early 1970s. It is composed of 270 self-contained essays which are divided into 30 general chapters. The book was also made into a CD-ROM version. > In the process of explaining the society of mind, Minsky introduces a wide range of ideas and concepts. He develops theories about how processes such as language, memory, and learning work, and also covers concepts such as consciousness, the sense of self, and free will; because of this, many view The Society of Mind as a work of philosophy. > The book was not written to prove anything specific about AI or cognitive science, and does not reference physical brain structures. Instead, it is a collection of ideas about how the mind and thinking work on the conceptual level. Its very approachable as a layperson in that part of the field of AI.
- bbor 2y ago
  Wow, you are maybe the first person I’ve seen cite Minsky on HN, which is surprising since he’s arguably the most influential AI researcher of all time, maybe short of Turing or Pearl. To add on to the endorsement: the cover of the book is downright gorgeous, in a retro-computing way https://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/cvr9780671657130_9780671657130_hr.jpg https://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/cvr9780671...
  - shagie 2y ago
    I've tangentially mentioned it before though I don't think directly (it has influenced my theory of humor). Mentions of it show up occasionally, though it seems to be more of a trickle than an avalanche of mention. Much more so back when AI alignment was more in the news. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22Society%20of%20Mind%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Part of it, I suspect, is that it is a book book from the 80s and didn't really make any transition into digital. The people who are familiar with it are ones who bought computer books in the late 80s and early 90s. Similarly, "A Pattern Language" being a book from the time past that is accessible for a lay person in the field - though more in a tangental way. "A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction" was the influence behind "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" - though I believe the problem with Design Patterns is that it was seen more as a prescriptive rather than descriptive guide. Reading "A Pattern Language" can help understand what the GoF were trying to accomplish. ... And as an aside, and I also believe that it has some good advice for the setup of home offices and workplaces. As much as I love the convince of modern online book shopping and the amount of information available when searching, the "browsing books" in a book store for "oh, this looks interesting" and then buying it and reading it, I feel has largely been lost to the past decades.
BlueTemplar 2y ago
Huh, so the video actually works ? It just shows up «No video with supported format and MIME type found.» for me... Yeah, memes and genes are both memory, though at different timescales.
- airstrike 2y ago
  It works on some browsers. I'm normally on Firefox but had to dust off Safari to watch it. Crazy I still have to do this in 2024...

grugagag 2y ago

Many of these projects are inch deep into intelligence and miles deep into the current technology. Some things will see tremendous benefits but as far as artificial intelligence we’re not there yet. Im thinking gaming will benefit a lot from these..

farias0 2y ago
You mean we're not there in simulating an actual human brain? Sure. But we're seeing AI work like a human well enough to be useful, isn't that the point?
- grugagag 2y ago
  Not if we’re pretending it is any inteligent. Other than that I’m all in for new utility to come out from it. But I do see a lot of tangents off technology with claims to something it is not. I have no problem of calling that out. Why do you mind? Just ignore me if Im holding your enthusiasm back, there’s plenty of sources to provide that for you.
  - ekianjo 2y ago
    > Not if we’re pretending it is any inteligent. We have been shifting the definition of what it means to be intelligent every 3 months following the advances of LLM...
    - mistermann 2y ago
      There's also this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-world_assumption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-world_assumption I wonder, once LLM's exceed Humans beyond some substantial threshold, will it crack the simulation allowing us to get back in the game again.
      - grugagag 2y ago
        Crack what simulation exactly? You can get back into the game right now, armed with these tools such as LLMs, ML and so on.
        mistermann 2y ago
        Culture, memetics, consciousness, etc. Indeed, but simply using them is not enough.

jsemrau 2y ago

Memory is really interesting. For example, if you play 100,000 rounds of 5x5 Tic Tac Toe. Do you really need to remember game 51247 or do you recognize and remember a winning pattern? In Reinforcement Learning you would based on each win revise the policy. How would that work for genAI?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

fragmede 2y ago

So a modernized version of Spore.

airstrike 2y ago
Basically what we all wished Spore had been ;-)

shagie 2y ago

Evolve is another beast... but for the: "I've thought about this a lot. I'm no philosopher or AI researcher, so I'm just spitballing... but if I were to try my hand at it, I think I'd like to start from "principles" and let systems evolve or at least be discoverable over time" part, hunt up a copy of "The Society of Mind" by Minsky who was both and wrote about that idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind > The work, which first appeared in 1986, was the first comprehensive description of Minsky's "society of mind" theory, which he began developing in the early 1970s. It is composed of 270 self-contained essays which are divided into 30 general chapters. The book was also made into a CD-ROM version. > In the process of explaining the society of mind, Minsky introduces a wide range of ideas and concepts. He develops theories about how processes such as language, memory, and learning work, and also covers concepts such as consciousness, the sense of self, and free will; because of this, many view The Society of Mind as a work of philosophy. > The book was not written to prove anything specific about AI or cognitive science, and does not reference physical brain structures. Instead, it is a collection of ideas about how the mind and thinking work on the conceptual level. Its very approachable as a layperson in that part of the field of AI.

bbor 2y ago
Wow, you are maybe the first person I’ve seen cite Minsky on HN, which is surprising since he’s arguably the most influential AI researcher of all time, maybe short of Turing or Pearl. To add on to the endorsement: the cover of the book is downright gorgeous, in a retro-computing way https://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/cvr9780671657130_9780671657130_hr.jpg https://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/cvr9780671...
- shagie 2y ago
  I've tangentially mentioned it before though I don't think directly (it has influenced my theory of humor). Mentions of it show up occasionally, though it seems to be more of a trickle than an avalanche of mention. Much more so back when AI alignment was more in the news. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22Society%20of%20Mind%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Part of it, I suspect, is that it is a book book from the 80s and didn't really make any transition into digital. The people who are familiar with it are ones who bought computer books in the late 80s and early 90s. Similarly, "A Pattern Language" being a book from the time past that is accessible for a lay person in the field - though more in a tangental way. "A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction" was the influence behind "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" - though I believe the problem with Design Patterns is that it was seen more as a prescriptive rather than descriptive guide. Reading "A Pattern Language" can help understand what the GoF were trying to accomplish. ... And as an aside, and I also believe that it has some good advice for the setup of home offices and workplaces. As much as I love the convince of modern online book shopping and the amount of information available when searching, the "browsing books" in a book store for "oh, this looks interesting" and then buying it and reading it, I feel has largely been lost to the past decades.

BlueTemplar 2y ago

Huh, so the video actually works ? It just shows up «No video with supported format and MIME type found.» for me... Yeah, memes and genes are both memory, though at different timescales.

airstrike 2y ago
It works on some browsers. I'm normally on Firefox but had to dust off Safari to watch it. Crazy I still have to do this in 2024...