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It's great that they're tackling this, but I'm concerned that this take on AI will be quickly superseded by coming advances. As a particular point, they are tr

It's great that they're tackling this, but I'm concerned that this take on AI will be quickly superseded by coming advances. As a particular point, they are treating embodiment and learning from direct experience as a significant distinction between AI and humans: > 31. However, even as AI processes and simulates certain expressions of intelligence, it remains fundamentally confined to a logical-mathematical framework, which imposes inherent limitations. Human intelligence, in contrast, develops organically throughout the person’s physical and psychological growth, shaped by a myriad of lived experiences in the flesh. Although advanced AI systems can “learn” through processes such as machine learning, this sort of training is fundamentally different from the developmental growth of human intelligence, which is shaped by embodied experiences, including sensory input, emotional responses, social interactions, and the unique context of each moment. These elements shape and form individuals within their personal history.In contrast, AI, lacking a physical body, relies on computational reasoning and learning based on vast datasets that include recorded human experiences and knowledge. But there's nothing about AI in general that limits it to learning only from prior data, and we're already seeing robots such as Boston Dynamics's Spot learning to navigate and act in novel environments. We're probably still far from passing Steve Wozniak's Coffee Test, but we're advancing towards it, and for a take that's supposed to be based on philosophy/theology, I would have hoped that they go a bit beyond the current state of the art.

throw310822 2y ago
> We're probably still far from passing Steve Wozniak's Coffee Test Do you think? At this point I have the impression it's just a problem of dexterity and speed. Understanding, planning and navigation seem basically solved.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  Is this spoken from experience? My experience in robotics tells me otherwise. It's not so much the issue with repeatability (though that is significant), it is moreso the issue with handling novelty. I do not believe there exists a system, which if given sufficient time (to negate speed), and a perfect inverse/forward kinematics sovler, could walk into my house and make coffee. There's too many challenges of the kind "Seek information about ... " and "adapt a multi-step process to overcome ... ". One industrial process that is only now being automated is connected trailers to trucks. They have to connect a hose and a few lines. Two companies are struggling with this even now. (outrider and isee). Both well funded and staffed by intelligent folks, and have to coax a robotic arm into connecting a hose that we all know is there, but not where, to a port that we all know is there, but might be different than expected.
  - throw310822 2y ago
    I was not thinking (much) about robotics but rather about a ChatGPT-style LLM processing video or frames and asked to navigate a random environment and find a way to make coffee. I didn't try but it doesn't sound far from their current capabilities. Then of course the manipulation of objects is still tricky and needs improvements, but the "general intelligence" needed to adapt to a novel environment is already there.
    - jvanderbot 2y ago
      Well, then you weren't thinking about the Wozniak coffee test. > "The Coffee Test has been proposed, and is attributed to Steve Wozniak, one of the founders of Apple Computers. According to Steve, this test would require a robot, not a computer screen. The robot would need to locate the kitchen and brew a pot of coffee in a random house that it had never seen before. And more specifically, I disagree that such a system would work just from video frames. The issue isn't so much "Coming up with text that sounds right", it's more about state and environment representation, novelty, planning multi-step processes, and so on. A good test of if this were easy, is can it be done in game engines, which negate all the speed / repeatability / controls complexity almost entirely. Plug an LLM into a game engine with a hovering arm that can grab and place and push buttons, and have it "make coffee" in procedural generated kitchens, coffee makers, etc. Bonus points for using POV imagery, bonus points for using bags of grains that might be coffee but might not. Similar weight, feel, placement. Hell my coffee, coca, sugar, and flour are right next to each other. That would be a landmark top tier research accomplishment and top HN article for days (the real accomplishment!)
mistrial9 2y ago
> nothing about AI in general that limits it to learning only from prior data this has to be refined to make a reasonable statement.. as stated, cannot agree on the expansive word "nothing"
- falcor84 2y ago
  I was just referring to the fact that rather than only training an AI on priorly acquired data, we have various approaches to Online Machine Learning [0] whereby an AI system continues learning from the inputs that it gathers on its own. At this stage it's somewhat of an engineering (rather than pure science) question of how we choose to build future AI systems to make the most of incoming information. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_machine_learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_machine_learning
radlad 2y ago
> But there's nothing about AI in general that limits it to learning only from prior data Maybe not, but I don't think this is exactly what the piece said here: "AI, lacking a physical body, relies on computational reasoning and learning based on vast datasets that include recorded human experiences and knowledge." Do you think AI will soon get a physical body, and experience "sensory input, emotional responses, social interactions, and the unique context of each moment"?
- kouru225 2y ago
  All these words, “sensory input, emotional responses, social interactions, and the unique context of each moment” are all words that we’ve developed and yet have no full understanding of. In any philosophy paper they’d be challenged in a second.
  - radlad 2y ago
    > Sensory input refers to the information received by the body's senses, like sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, through sensory organs like the eyes, ears, skin, tongue, and nose, which is then transmitted to the brain as electrical signals for processing and interpretation; essentially, it's anything you perceive using your senses. Even if we are talking about the best cameras in the world, they pale in comparison to our eyes. To say nothing of touch, taste, and smell. Advances here look to be far-off. At the end of the day, a brain also processes information completely differently than LLMs. Anyone who says otherwise is both uneducated medically and thinks laughingly little of themselves. Let's say we have an AI which, through peripheral devices, can attain human-level sensory processing. Is it human yet? Can it understand mortality? How about morality? Does it experience pain? Is that something we want to build?
    - Eisenstein 2y ago
      So how much less of a human was Helen Keller?
      - radlad 2y ago
sdwr 2y ago
It was reaching for a great point about how intelligence requires comparison and scaffolding, and how we are nurturing the future, but then it fell into the Chinese Room trap.
TZubiri 2y ago
When the time comes where there's robots with independent batteries and that learn and think without an internet connection, we will worry about it then. But the current cycle is not about that type of intelligence or life at all, it's strictly about mathematical simulation of intelligence on multitenant systems with shared information and thought-processes alternated through time( training,reinforcement, labelling, inference, 3rd party microservices). I understand it is possible we will see a jump to a completely different type of AI, but we need to be very clear that this is not what's going on right now.

throw310822 2y ago

> We're probably still far from passing Steve Wozniak's Coffee Test Do you think? At this point I have the impression it's just a problem of dexterity and speed. Understanding, planning and navigation seem basically solved.

jvanderbot 2y ago
Is this spoken from experience? My experience in robotics tells me otherwise. It's not so much the issue with repeatability (though that is significant), it is moreso the issue with handling novelty. I do not believe there exists a system, which if given sufficient time (to negate speed), and a perfect inverse/forward kinematics sovler, could walk into my house and make coffee. There's too many challenges of the kind "Seek information about ... " and "adapt a multi-step process to overcome ... ". One industrial process that is only now being automated is connected trailers to trucks. They have to connect a hose and a few lines. Two companies are struggling with this even now. (outrider and isee). Both well funded and staffed by intelligent folks, and have to coax a robotic arm into connecting a hose that we all know is there, but not where, to a port that we all know is there, but might be different than expected.
- throw310822 2y ago
  I was not thinking (much) about robotics but rather about a ChatGPT-style LLM processing video or frames and asked to navigate a random environment and find a way to make coffee. I didn't try but it doesn't sound far from their current capabilities. Then of course the manipulation of objects is still tricky and needs improvements, but the "general intelligence" needed to adapt to a novel environment is already there.
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    Well, then you weren't thinking about the Wozniak coffee test. > "The Coffee Test has been proposed, and is attributed to Steve Wozniak, one of the founders of Apple Computers. According to Steve, this test would require a robot, not a computer screen. The robot would need to locate the kitchen and brew a pot of coffee in a random house that it had never seen before. And more specifically, I disagree that such a system would work just from video frames. The issue isn't so much "Coming up with text that sounds right", it's more about state and environment representation, novelty, planning multi-step processes, and so on. A good test of if this were easy, is can it be done in game engines, which negate all the speed / repeatability / controls complexity almost entirely. Plug an LLM into a game engine with a hovering arm that can grab and place and push buttons, and have it "make coffee" in procedural generated kitchens, coffee makers, etc. Bonus points for using POV imagery, bonus points for using bags of grains that might be coffee but might not. Similar weight, feel, placement. Hell my coffee, coca, sugar, and flour are right next to each other. That would be a landmark top tier research accomplishment and top HN article for days (the real accomplishment!)

mistrial9 2y ago

> nothing about AI in general that limits it to learning only from prior data this has to be refined to make a reasonable statement.. as stated, cannot agree on the expansive word "nothing"

falcor84 2y ago
I was just referring to the fact that rather than only training an AI on priorly acquired data, we have various approaches to Online Machine Learning [0] whereby an AI system continues learning from the inputs that it gathers on its own. At this stage it's somewhat of an engineering (rather than pure science) question of how we choose to build future AI systems to make the most of incoming information. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_machine_learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_machine_learning

radlad 2y ago

> But there's nothing about AI in general that limits it to learning only from prior data Maybe not, but I don't think this is exactly what the piece said here: "AI, lacking a physical body, relies on computational reasoning and learning based on vast datasets that include recorded human experiences and knowledge." Do you think AI will soon get a physical body, and experience "sensory input, emotional responses, social interactions, and the unique context of each moment"?

kouru225 2y ago
All these words, “sensory input, emotional responses, social interactions, and the unique context of each moment” are all words that we’ve developed and yet have no full understanding of. In any philosophy paper they’d be challenged in a second.
- radlad 2y ago
  > Sensory input refers to the information received by the body's senses, like sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, through sensory organs like the eyes, ears, skin, tongue, and nose, which is then transmitted to the brain as electrical signals for processing and interpretation; essentially, it's anything you perceive using your senses. Even if we are talking about the best cameras in the world, they pale in comparison to our eyes. To say nothing of touch, taste, and smell. Advances here look to be far-off. At the end of the day, a brain also processes information completely differently than LLMs. Anyone who says otherwise is both uneducated medically and thinks laughingly little of themselves. Let's say we have an AI which, through peripheral devices, can attain human-level sensory processing. Is it human yet? Can it understand mortality? How about morality? Does it experience pain? Is that something we want to build?
  - Eisenstein 2y ago
    So how much less of a human was Helen Keller?
    - radlad 2y ago

sdwr 2y ago

It was reaching for a great point about how intelligence requires comparison and scaffolding, and how we are nurturing the future, but then it fell into the Chinese Room trap.

TZubiri 2y ago

When the time comes where there's robots with independent batteries and that learn and think without an internet connection, we will worry about it then. But the current cycle is not about that type of intelligence or life at all, it's strictly about mathematical simulation of intelligence on multitenant systems with shared information and thought-processes alternated through time( training,reinforcement, labelling, inference, 3rd party microservices). I understand it is possible we will see a jump to a completely different type of AI, but we need to be very clear that this is not what's going on right now.