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It can however only do one flavour of pattern matching whereas we combine our mental facilities dynamically. And to wnticipate your "well, that's nothing a comp

It can however only do one flavour of pattern matching whereas we combine our mental facilities dynamically. And to wnticipate your "well, that's nothing a computer can't do"... show me any work in the direction of serious AGI!

mindcrime 13y ago
Without an agreed upon definition of "in the direction of" and "AGI", it's hard to have a good conversation about this. For my purposes, I do consider Watson a step in that direction. How big of a step is certainly open to question, but I do believe it's a step nonetheless.
- wlievens 13y ago
  I don't. It's just our decade's version of deep blue. A pretty damn good calculator, but zero steps in the direction of a mind. It lacks 'common sense', for want of a better term.
  - mindcrime 13y ago
    IF we take it as given that an AGI must think exactly like a human, then I might say I agree with you. We aren't necessarily close to emulating a human being in software, and I'm actually doubtful we will for a VERY long time. BUT... if we only care about the outcome and the utility of the AGI, and don't expect it to be fully "human like" then I think that Watson (and Deep Blue, etc.) do represent steps on that road. You can probably guess that I lean towards the latter viewpoint. I fall back on the oldchestnut that "We didn't build airplanes that fly by flapping their wings like birds, but they fly nonetheless" as an analogy. We may not build machines that think like humans, but they will still be intelligent, nonetheless.
    - wlievens 13y ago
      > if we only care about the outcome and the utility of the AGI, and don't expect it to be fully "human like" I'm not even sure whether that's a meaningful distinction. Searle's Chinese Room et cetera. I'm with you in the wing analogy, I fully agree. I just don't think Watson or Deep Blue is a significant approach even in that direction. Human-like or not, we have certain expectations from our hypothetical AGI in terms of the kind of new problems it can solve without too much help. I guess what it mean is: I think it needs to be able to solve a problem it wasn't designed upfront to solve. No serious system I've ever seen attempts to do that.
      - mindcrime 13y ago
        I guess what it mean is: I think it needs to be able to solve a problem it wasn't designed upfront to solve. No serious system I've ever seen attempts to do that. Fair enough. :-)
      - mietek 13y ago
        The Chinese Room argument is unconvincing. The man in the room may not understand Chinese, but he is using a dictionary, which to a casual observer appears suspiciously thick. Just how thick would the dictionary need to be in order to provide a sensible response for all possible lines of enquiry? Searle's argument reduces a room which understands Chinese to a dictionary which understands Chinese. A strange loop indeed. With regard to serious systems attempting to solve AGI — are you aware of Jeff Hawkins' work on hierarchical temporal memory?
        wlievens 13y ago
        I'm not saying I necessarily support Searle's position. I do think it's an interesting thought experiment. To be honest, if it quacks and walks, I'm not one who'll be arguing that it isn't sapient. I haven't followed any recent research, sorry.
badmofo666 13y ago
Sounds like what you're talking about is decision theory. Or, when mixed with learning: reinforcement learning. The monte carlo AIXI approximation would be an example. But, it really only works well on small toy problems (I.e. problems where the agent has only a small number of available actions it can perform).
- wlievens 13y ago
  Thing is, humans come up with new "actions" all the time. If you drop that abstraction, and reduce our actions to "controlling information flow in our bodies" then the action space becomes unfathomably huge.

mindcrime 13y ago

Without an agreed upon definition of "in the direction of" and "AGI", it's hard to have a good conversation about this. For my purposes, I do consider Watson a step in that direction. How big of a step is certainly open to question, but I do believe it's a step nonetheless.

wlievens 13y ago
I don't. It's just our decade's version of deep blue. A pretty damn good calculator, but zero steps in the direction of a mind. It lacks 'common sense', for want of a better term.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  IF we take it as given that an AGI must think exactly like a human, then I might say I agree with you. We aren't necessarily close to emulating a human being in software, and I'm actually doubtful we will for a VERY long time. BUT... if we only care about the outcome and the utility of the AGI, and don't expect it to be fully "human like" then I think that Watson (and Deep Blue, etc.) do represent steps on that road. You can probably guess that I lean towards the latter viewpoint. I fall back on the oldchestnut that "We didn't build airplanes that fly by flapping their wings like birds, but they fly nonetheless" as an analogy. We may not build machines that think like humans, but they will still be intelligent, nonetheless.
  - wlievens 13y ago
    > if we only care about the outcome and the utility of the AGI, and don't expect it to be fully "human like" I'm not even sure whether that's a meaningful distinction. Searle's Chinese Room et cetera. I'm with you in the wing analogy, I fully agree. I just don't think Watson or Deep Blue is a significant approach even in that direction. Human-like or not, we have certain expectations from our hypothetical AGI in terms of the kind of new problems it can solve without too much help. I guess what it mean is: I think it needs to be able to solve a problem it wasn't designed upfront to solve. No serious system I've ever seen attempts to do that.
    - mindcrime 13y ago
      I guess what it mean is: I think it needs to be able to solve a problem it wasn't designed upfront to solve. No serious system I've ever seen attempts to do that. Fair enough. :-)
    - mietek 13y ago
      The Chinese Room argument is unconvincing. The man in the room may not understand Chinese, but he is using a dictionary, which to a casual observer appears suspiciously thick. Just how thick would the dictionary need to be in order to provide a sensible response for all possible lines of enquiry? Searle's argument reduces a room which understands Chinese to a dictionary which understands Chinese. A strange loop indeed. With regard to serious systems attempting to solve AGI — are you aware of Jeff Hawkins' work on hierarchical temporal memory?
      - wlievens 13y ago
        I'm not saying I necessarily support Searle's position. I do think it's an interesting thought experiment. To be honest, if it quacks and walks, I'm not one who'll be arguing that it isn't sapient. I haven't followed any recent research, sorry.

badmofo666 13y ago

Sounds like what you're talking about is decision theory. Or, when mixed with learning: reinforcement learning. The monte carlo AIXI approximation would be an example. But, it really only works well on small toy problems (I.e. problems where the agent has only a small number of available actions it can perform).

wlievens 13y ago
Thing is, humans come up with new "actions" all the time. If you drop that abstraction, and reduce our actions to "controlling information flow in our bodies" then the action space becomes unfathomably huge.