4 ms·

> Well, artificial intelligence is a slippery term. It could refer to just getting machines to do things that seem intelligent on the surface. But is "natural

> Well, artificial intelligence is a slippery term. It could refer to just getting machines to do things that seem intelligent on the surface. But is "natural intelligence" any different?

simonh 13y ago
Yes, because it is general purpose intelligence. Google Translate can't even play the simplest of games, let alone Chess or Jeopardy. Watson can't even begin to tackle translation or Chess. Deep Blue has absolutely no capability towards translation or playing Jeopardy. They are fixed-function, single-task algorithms optimized towards a single very tightly defined problem domain. That sort of research isn't going to get us to general purpose AI.
- stdbrouw 13y ago
  Isn't the brain itself a good mix of general-purpose and special-purpose intelligence?
  - arethuza 13y ago
    That sounds like Minsky's "Society of Mind": http://web.media.mit.edu/~push/ExaminingSOM.html http://web.media.mit.edu/~push/ExaminingSOM.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind
  - icot 13y ago
    This. And also, is it truly a general purpose intelligence, or a special-purpose one which evolved into general by just extending the domain of application? I'd say that most of what is considered intelligence comes from pattern matching plus inference; and there is a number of 'illusions' and cognitive biases that trick the mind because one of these processes fails. This may for example by finding patterns where there is none, which is quite normal.
- ivanca 13y ago
  Cats cannot play the simplest of games; does that mean that they do not have general purpose intelligence? And I do think this research is going to take us there; what is winning a game more than translating your enemy actions into yours? Like translating a face gesture on a poker game (or translating a word) into a action such as doubling inside the game (or a http response).
  - x3c 13y ago
    Cats have limited intelligence but general purpose intelligence. Compare a kitten to a computer with computing power but without intelligence. Now kitten to cat maturity gives the animal a wisdom and intelligence. That maturity is in nowhere similar to Watson as a pure hardware (kitten) to Watson with software of AI (cat).
  - Ygg2 13y ago
    Actually cats can play catch. So even by that definition they have some rudimentary intelligence. Cats aren't as intelligent as dogs, and they aren't social animals but they have some intelligence. They can learn on their own to navigate surroundings, move, catch prey and mate. I'd love to see Watson do any of these without pre programming.
    - bnegreve 13y ago
      I've seen some people talking about how they taught their robot to play ping ping, it's pretty amazing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH3bADiB7uQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH3bADiB7uQ Edit: The speaker was Jan Peters at ECML/PKDD13
    - catshirt 13y ago
      define "pre programming"? is a cat not pre-programmed to prey, mate, etc? also, by some of these definitions, sounds like my roomba approaches natural intelligence.
      - Ygg2 13y ago
        I doubt it is encoded much other than a set of few needs you need to fulfill. Keep in mind kittens pretty much suck at walking, balancing, but learn it eventually. They are not pre-programmed to fight no more they are pre-programmed to open doors. As for roomba, depends if you caught it fighting or mating with other roomba's ;)
- bnegreve 13y ago
  > Yes, because it is general purpose intelligence. Right, but playing jeopardy is far more general than instructing a computer to sort an array, so why do you think that we are on the wrong path?
  - simonh 13y ago
    I am sure basic algorithmic techniques like knowing how to sort an array are likely to be very useful when building an AI, or at least some forms of AI, but an array sorting algorithm is not itself a general purpose artificial intelligence and neither are Deep Blue, etc. As Hofstadter explains in the article, far better than I could, these applications are not contributing to progress in developing software that understands the data it is manipulating. I recommend reading the article, or even better GEB itself, it's very illuminating.
- chongli 13y ago
  You could run all of these programs on one computer. Comparing a person to a piece of software is apples to oranges. Build a computer big enough to run all of the software in the world (and all of the data, too) and compare those capabilities to a human.
- jkldotio 13y ago
  It's worth pointing out Google just bought the startup with the guys who wrote the "Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning" paper which is supposedly just an algorithm working on the raw pixels and then beating all other programs and half of the human experts.[1] [1] http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.5602v1.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.5602v1.pdf
- ximeng 13y ago
  A computer recently designed a published board game called Yavalath, by deciding whether randomly generated games are interesting or not. That algorithm wouldn't be difficult to integrate into Google if they decided to do it. As you add more and more capabilities to Google at a more abstract level (design something "fun" like here), it's closer and closer to general purpose AI. It's not just that, see also http://www.gamesbyangelina.org/ http://www.gamesbyangelina.org/ .
  - simonh 13y ago
    Did the algorithm decide what the characteristics of an interesting game are, or were they hard-coded? Could is analyze the interestingness of games generally? Could it analyze why some people like some games and other people don't? If it couldn't do these things, then it was in no way intelligent, because it was not analyzing at a conceptual level. Programs that simply optimize data towards a set of target characteristics are clever, but not intelligent. Hofstadter goes into this in the article. You're making exactly the same mistake those over-optimistic AI researchers made back in the 60s. They created some whiz-bang optimisation algorithms and thought general purpose AI must be just around the corner, but it turns out that actual conceptual analysis and reasoning is a completely different and fundamentally unrelated problem.
    - Houshalter 13y ago
      That's an arbitrary distinction. The goal might have been decided by human programmers, that doesn't mean the process isn't itself intelligent. You are right it is using a crude optimization process that is a lot weaker than human intelligence, but it's still "intelligent".
ibelong2u 13y ago
In my opinion, it's not. Natural intelligence is another way of saying that dynamics and interactions of millions of neurons in our brain is too complicated for us to understand. Our brain is just a complex machine, and the complexity at the level of its individual components is based on very fundamental laws of physics and chemistry. In that sense, you bring up an excellent question. I don't think there exists any unique "natural intelligence" which Hofstadter in the linked article is referring to. Watson is only different from "natural intelligence" in terms of complexity. Conway's Game of Life can perhaps be used as an analogy here. The uninitiated is likely to assume a very complex source code upon observing setups like 'spaceships' and 'glider guns'. However, it all is based on some very simple rules which can be easily implemented by a high school computer science student. I'd to extrapolate this logic towards the concept of 'life' itself. I feel that what we call life is just collective of natural processes too complicated for us to comprehend completely. Scientific research has allowed us to understand biological processes to some extend, but not enough to us to deduce the state of a living entity at t+1 by observing the state at t=0. The common assumption is that there is some independent/supernatural force (consciousness) which allows the living entity to 'chose' the new state at t+1 (free will). Watson appears to be "intelligently" making a chess move, but as Hofstadter points out, Watson is simply following a set of rules. We can independently calculate Watson's move since we know it's source code. My conjecture is that if we are theoretically able to capture the complete state of your brain cells at t=0, and understand how they work, I can theoretically calculate your chess play before you make it. For example, check out this White Blood Cell chasing and killing bacteria: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnlULOjUhSQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnlULOjUhSQ WBC appears to be a living entity, acting out of free will. But the reality is that, molecular composition of WBC is merely attracted to the chemical trail left behind the bacteria, which in turn is repelled by WBC. We do not consider a piece of rock rolling down the hill to be a living entity, because our understanding of physics allows us to calculate the state of a rock at t+1, given it's position a t=0.

> Well, artificial intelligence is a slippery term. It could refer to just getting machines to do things that seem intelligent on the surface. But is "natural intelligence" any different?

simonh 13y ago

Yes, because it is general purpose intelligence. Google Translate can't even play the simplest of games, let alone Chess or Jeopardy. Watson can't even begin to tackle translation or Chess. Deep Blue has absolutely no capability towards translation or playing Jeopardy. They are fixed-function, single-task algorithms optimized towards a single very tightly defined problem domain. That sort of research isn't going to get us to general purpose AI.

stdbrouw 13y ago
Isn't the brain itself a good mix of general-purpose and special-purpose intelligence?
- arethuza 13y ago
  That sounds like Minsky's "Society of Mind": http://web.media.mit.edu/~push/ExaminingSOM.html http://web.media.mit.edu/~push/ExaminingSOM.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind
- icot 13y ago
  This. And also, is it truly a general purpose intelligence, or a special-purpose one which evolved into general by just extending the domain of application? I'd say that most of what is considered intelligence comes from pattern matching plus inference; and there is a number of 'illusions' and cognitive biases that trick the mind because one of these processes fails. This may for example by finding patterns where there is none, which is quite normal.
ivanca 13y ago
Cats cannot play the simplest of games; does that mean that they do not have general purpose intelligence? And I do think this research is going to take us there; what is winning a game more than translating your enemy actions into yours? Like translating a face gesture on a poker game (or translating a word) into a action such as doubling inside the game (or a http response).
- x3c 13y ago
  Cats have limited intelligence but general purpose intelligence. Compare a kitten to a computer with computing power but without intelligence. Now kitten to cat maturity gives the animal a wisdom and intelligence. That maturity is in nowhere similar to Watson as a pure hardware (kitten) to Watson with software of AI (cat).
- Ygg2 13y ago
  Actually cats can play catch. So even by that definition they have some rudimentary intelligence. Cats aren't as intelligent as dogs, and they aren't social animals but they have some intelligence. They can learn on their own to navigate surroundings, move, catch prey and mate. I'd love to see Watson do any of these without pre programming.
  - bnegreve 13y ago
    I've seen some people talking about how they taught their robot to play ping ping, it's pretty amazing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH3bADiB7uQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH3bADiB7uQ Edit: The speaker was Jan Peters at ECML/PKDD13
  - catshirt 13y ago
    define "pre programming"? is a cat not pre-programmed to prey, mate, etc? also, by some of these definitions, sounds like my roomba approaches natural intelligence.
    - Ygg2 13y ago
      I doubt it is encoded much other than a set of few needs you need to fulfill. Keep in mind kittens pretty much suck at walking, balancing, but learn it eventually. They are not pre-programmed to fight no more they are pre-programmed to open doors. As for roomba, depends if you caught it fighting or mating with other roomba's ;)
bnegreve 13y ago
> Yes, because it is general purpose intelligence. Right, but playing jeopardy is far more general than instructing a computer to sort an array, so why do you think that we are on the wrong path?
- simonh 13y ago
  I am sure basic algorithmic techniques like knowing how to sort an array are likely to be very useful when building an AI, or at least some forms of AI, but an array sorting algorithm is not itself a general purpose artificial intelligence and neither are Deep Blue, etc. As Hofstadter explains in the article, far better than I could, these applications are not contributing to progress in developing software that understands the data it is manipulating. I recommend reading the article, or even better GEB itself, it's very illuminating.
chongli 13y ago
You could run all of these programs on one computer. Comparing a person to a piece of software is apples to oranges. Build a computer big enough to run all of the software in the world (and all of the data, too) and compare those capabilities to a human.
jkldotio 13y ago
It's worth pointing out Google just bought the startup with the guys who wrote the "Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning" paper which is supposedly just an algorithm working on the raw pixels and then beating all other programs and half of the human experts.[1] [1] http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.5602v1.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.5602v1.pdf
ximeng 13y ago
A computer recently designed a published board game called Yavalath, by deciding whether randomly generated games are interesting or not. That algorithm wouldn't be difficult to integrate into Google if they decided to do it. As you add more and more capabilities to Google at a more abstract level (design something "fun" like here), it's closer and closer to general purpose AI. It's not just that, see also http://www.gamesbyangelina.org/ http://www.gamesbyangelina.org/ .
- simonh 13y ago
  Did the algorithm decide what the characteristics of an interesting game are, or were they hard-coded? Could is analyze the interestingness of games generally? Could it analyze why some people like some games and other people don't? If it couldn't do these things, then it was in no way intelligent, because it was not analyzing at a conceptual level. Programs that simply optimize data towards a set of target characteristics are clever, but not intelligent. Hofstadter goes into this in the article. You're making exactly the same mistake those over-optimistic AI researchers made back in the 60s. They created some whiz-bang optimisation algorithms and thought general purpose AI must be just around the corner, but it turns out that actual conceptual analysis and reasoning is a completely different and fundamentally unrelated problem.
  - Houshalter 13y ago
    That's an arbitrary distinction. The goal might have been decided by human programmers, that doesn't mean the process isn't itself intelligent. You are right it is using a crude optimization process that is a lot weaker than human intelligence, but it's still "intelligent".

ibelong2u 13y ago

In my opinion, it's not. Natural intelligence is another way of saying that dynamics and interactions of millions of neurons in our brain is too complicated for us to understand. Our brain is just a complex machine, and the complexity at the level of its individual components is based on very fundamental laws of physics and chemistry. In that sense, you bring up an excellent question. I don't think there exists any unique "natural intelligence" which Hofstadter in the linked article is referring to. Watson is only different from "natural intelligence" in terms of complexity. Conway's Game of Life can perhaps be used as an analogy here. The uninitiated is likely to assume a very complex source code upon observing setups like 'spaceships' and 'glider guns'. However, it all is based on some very simple rules which can be easily implemented by a high school computer science student. I'd to extrapolate this logic towards the concept of 'life' itself. I feel that what we call life is just collective of natural processes too complicated for us to comprehend completely. Scientific research has allowed us to understand biological processes to some extend, but not enough to us to deduce the state of a living entity at t+1 by observing the state at t=0. The common assumption is that there is some independent/supernatural force (consciousness) which allows the living entity to 'chose' the new state at t+1 (free will). Watson appears to be "intelligently" making a chess move, but as Hofstadter points out, Watson is simply following a set of rules. We can independently calculate Watson's move since we know it's source code. My conjecture is that if we are theoretically able to capture the complete state of your brain cells at t=0, and understand how they work, I can theoretically calculate your chess play before you make it. For example, check out this White Blood Cell chasing and killing bacteria: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnlULOjUhSQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnlULOjUhSQ WBC appears to be a living entity, acting out of free will. But the reality is that, molecular composition of WBC is merely attracted to the chemical trail left behind the bacteria, which in turn is repelled by WBC. We do not consider a piece of rock rolling down the hill to be a living entity, because our understanding of physics allows us to calculate the state of a rock at t+1, given it's position a t=0.