5 ms·
> The field is now called AGI. No it's not.
by SeanLuke 14y ago
> The field is now called AGI.
No it's not.
- driax 14y agoCould you please stop doing that! If you don't know anything don't say anything. If you know that it truly isn't AGI (as you may do) say why!
- SeanLuke 14y agoAI has forever been filled with buzzwords and trendy absurdity. Most of this lies on the soft computing end of the field, where self-styled visionaries hold forth with holistic mumbo-jumbo while valuable work is done by reputable researchers elsewhere. AGI is one of those little goofy microtrends: so far as I can tell it's essentially a rebranding of Strong AI by soft computing reactionaries responding to AI getting dominated by domain specificity (otherwise known as "being successful"). To claim, as the grandparent appears to be doing, that AI is now properly called Artificial General Intelligence, is crackpottery at its finest. Wake me up when AGI even appears on the first results page of a Google search for "AGI".
- ilaksh 14y agoI'm talking about the efforts to really reproduce human-like intelligence. I'm not saying that AI isn't a field, I am saying if you want human-like intelligence, the AGI people are the most far along, or at least the most serious about it. Did you really look into AGI, for example the past conferences or those projects, and conclude that it is just invaluable holistic mumbo-jumbo? That is so unfair and inaccurate, I can't see how you can possibly be evaluating things rationally if you really came to that conclusion.
- confluence 14y agoI thoroughly agree - see my comment above. The Singularity and SENS peeps give me the exact same feeling - as does Noam Chomsky. All talk - no walk. I think it's fundamentally the difference between soft bullshit and hard calculations. Everyone can talk about AI, or linguistics, or statistics (or any complex field) in very general, undefined and bullshitty terms. But what we need, and what the machine learning guys are bringing is hard calculation - 1 + 1 = 2 or input data, get features and make decisions well above human abilities. My question to all the fringe folks: Where's the beef? What have they done? Where are the automatic cars built on Chomsky's theories? Where are the talking robots from the AGI? What methods have the SENS people got? Are the singularity folks just leeches off gullible rich people - selling them a future and taking their cash in the process without providing any real value?
- corporalagumbo 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky_bibliography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky_bibliography Chomsky's a pretty substantial walker.
- confluence 14y agoI think you mean talker. Walker would be things that actually did stuff - you know like search, translation, locomotion or prediction. That's a lot of words and a lot of books in a bunch of the soft sciences (linguistics and politics) which are highly susceptible to class A bullshit. All of that doesn't mean anything - no different from Richard Dawkins who irritates me in a similar fashion - I ask once again - where's the beef? > Every time I fire a linguist, the performance of the speech recognizer goes up. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Jelinek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Jelinek I still don't see Chomsky robots walking around, Chomsky translation translating my text to French or Chomsky AI driving cars. Nope - all Google/IBM/Microsoft/DARPA/Boston Dynamics/etc. AKA Hard science-engineers utilising statistics, not soft science blowhards. Only thing I see Chomsky doing is talk - a lot.
- cdavid 14y agoIf your definition of real science is something that has good prediction/application potential, that's a rather unusual definition of science. Are mathematicians, theoretical physicists all talk as well ?
- confluence 14y agoString theorists are bullshitty yes. Mathematicians aren't - you can prove their correctness over abstract planes and use them to for example run a hedge fund or a software company into trillions of revenue when making testable predictions in macro reality. Theoretical physicists that use mathematics to make testable predictions are too. You can use them to also make electric engines, statistical extractors and accurate physical simulations that are corroborated with empirical evidence. If the prediction is not testable, is unfalsifiable, is unreproducible, is not independent and is not supported by overwhelming evidence - it is bullshit - no ifs, buts or ands.
- ilaksh 14y agoWhat they are talking about is the idea of human-like general intelligence, and AI mostly doesn't try to do that anymore, although there are some people who are seriously trying and calling it AI and even a few who are sort of aware of what the AGI people are doing or have projects that are as sophisticated. But most of the researchers who are farthest along and most serious about it have been calling it AGI. Anyway, you have to at least include AGI if you are serious about human-like AIs.
- sown 14y ago> and AI mostly doesn't try to do that anymore, I think part of the problem is that we don't even know what AGI really is. How do you define conscience in a rigourous way. Doesn't mean it can't be done without such work but it just seems soooo undefined right now that people are suspicious if someone comes along and claims to have a partial solution. Do we even know what we're looking for? When we do know or have an idea, I am willing to imagine that we'd have more AI research in that area and the AGI would be taken more seriously.
- ilaksh 14y agoYou mean 'consciousness' which is actually mainly a philosophical distraction in common usage.. anyway there are a lot of good starting definitions for what AGI is, including a bit in my comment and also in the descriptions of the projects that I referred to.
- koningrobot 14y agoThe point of AI is not conscious machines but machines that can do useful things. Consciousness is not useful except to the extent that it helps a machine do useful things.
- xyzzy123 14y agoRight; as far as I know there is no serious research in AGI. AI is applied statistics, and anyone who doesn't have that point of view isn't producing results right now.
- krichman 14y agoThe parent post spent a lot of time to try and inform us, including multiple links. To post a dismissive comment in response, with no explanation whatsoever, is well beyond rude.
- sown 14y agoI think people are suspicious or dismissive of AGI, HTM, etc because...well...there doesn't seem to be anything really to it. People who know AI I've talked to in the know about HTM don't know anything about it or have mildly negative things to say. Ditto for AGI. It's a contentious topic and people just get defensive. Many of those links in grandparent post were from or about opencog. I can make long blog posts about opencog that refer to opencog as proof, too...but it wouldn't mean anything. Religious people do that sort of thing all the time. The proof would be in the pudding, right? So if AGI at least has some hypothesis, then it should be able to produce some results, right? I very much want AGI to happen. You want AGI to happen. Our interests are in agreement. However, there isn't really much proof about any current hypothesis, as far as I can tell, that can produce any real system. It's a dream so far. I don't mean it has to be a really solid understanding of conscience but it's so undefined, unknown area right now we can't even approach it. Instead of making long blog posts and replies to comments, and then get offended when people don't buy into it, the most people can do right now is to go investigate, hypothesize and try to build something.