8 ms·

You are right that you won't see many researchers publicly talking about human-level AI, or framing their research in terms of the search for general AI. But th

by xaa 12y ago

You are right that you won't see many researchers publicly talking about human-level AI, or framing their research in terms of the search for general AI. But that doesn't mean the field is "dead". For example, I work in aging and, to a lesser extent, neuroscience. I have had many private conversations with researchers who will candidly say that the long-term goal of their work is lifespan extension or cognitive enhancement. Yet, for the purposes of grant and paper-writing, you'd never write such a thing; it would sound too speculative. I'm not in AI, but I strongly suspect the same thing is going on there. There are probably a lot of AI researchers who want to see human-level or higher general AI happen, and are working on it, but simply can't say so in public. We know it's possible, since we have an existence proof in the human brain.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>For example, I work in aging and, to a lesser extent, neuroscience. I have had many private conversations with researchers who will candidly say that the long-term goal of their work is lifespan extension or cognitive enhancement. Yet, for the purposes of grant and paper-writing, you'd never write such a thing; it would sound too speculative. I think it was Scientific American or another such magazine that ran a story, maybe a month and a half ago, in which they interviewed a whole bunch of real theoretical and computational neuroscientists about mind uploading. A not-that-small portion of these admitted that when they are in private, have had a drink or two, and are ready to admit things they would never say in a grant application, they are definitely trying to achieve whole-brain emulation. Hell, it's basically the implicit point of the Human Brain Project, or whatever those initiatives are called by the US and EU governments this past year. > You are right that you won't see many researchers publicly talking about human-level AI, or framing their research in terms of the search for general AI. But that doesn't mean the field is "dead". Indeed. What instead happened is that actual humanlike cognition has been steadily broken down into subproblems and each subproblem is being formalized and worked-on separately. There are a few papers on optimal utility-maximizing agents for general environments, but those tend to require "until the stars burn out" levels of FLOPs to work anyway. So actually, AI is going to work, but by the time it does, it won't be called AI. In fact, the researchers who'll create it would look at you funny for calling it AI. They do and will have lots of academic jargon used for specifying exactly what their algorithms do and how they do it, so much so that only when their algorithm kills all humans will anyone actually admit it was artificial intelligence ;-).
- sampo 12y ago
  > they are definitely trying to achieve whole-brain emulation Of course they are trying. They were also trying in 1956: "We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_Conference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_Conference The history of AI research is full of totally unfounded optimism that has failed every time. (I mean the kind of research that promises significant advances towards human level AI. Of course AI research has produced methods that have useful applications.)
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    I find it strange that you think AI and WBE are the same thing. Putting your claims about machine cognition (which can then be separated into various cognitive faculties) aside, you really think that emulating human cognition on a separate substrate is outright impossible? Then what's the seemingly "magical" property of our meat substrate that forbids outright, or forbids via excessive expense, using any other substrate ever?
    - sampo 12y ago
      > you really think that emulating human cognition on a separate substrate is outright impossible? Absolutely not. But I think it's too far in the future, that it is totally pointless for us, in 2014, to worry about it. I view the singularity crowd as a bunch of medieval alchemists, after they have seen gunpowder, worrying about mutually assured destruction of the whole world, after someone scales their firecrackers to a size capable of destroying whole countries. Yes, coming to 1950's we did reach nuclear weapons with end-the-world capability. But it would have been quite pointless for (al)chemist, or philosophers, in the 1400's, or even in the 1700's, to start worrying about this threat.
      - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
        Ah, so you think scientific progress proceeds not merely at a constant rate, but at a constantly slowing rate, thus causing the rate of new discoveries to be roughly constant over the centuries, despite our constantly adding more scientists, and publishing more papers, based on increasingly solid foundations.
JulianMorrison 12y ago
Point them at SENS Research Foundation, if they haven't already heard of it.
- xaa 12y ago
  Funny you mention that. I just came back from this year's AGE conference in San Antonio, which is very much a mainstream research conference, and not only was it partially sponsored by SENS, but de Grey himself was there. So yes, they are very much aware of it. I think many aging researchers have a love/hate relationship with SENS, in that they share its goals in theory, but are afraid its ambitious public claims will draw disrepute (and associated loss of funding) upon the field. You have to remember that we are mostly funded by the NIH, whose mandate is to treat disease, and aging is not widely considered a disease. So we have to frame our discourse accordingly.
  - JulianMorrison 12y ago
    De Grey himself seems to take the approach: "we are working on regeneration medicine that will cure each particular, nameable thing that is wrong with old people, and when you have done all of that, there is nothing left to call aging." Thus the NIH problem is side stepped.
    - xaa 12y ago
      He has definitely moderated his tone in the past few years, and has implicitly acknowledged that the specific program he outlined in his book may have been an oversimplification. But still, you have to be a bit more subtle with grant reviewers than that. "Age-associated disease" is a common catchphrase. For best results, the emphasis has to be on the disease rather than on the aging (even you happen to believe, as I do, that aging is a common root of many diseases).

by xaa 12y ago

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

>For example, I work in aging and, to a lesser extent, neuroscience. I have had many private conversations with researchers who will candidly say that the long-term goal of their work is lifespan extension or cognitive enhancement. Yet, for the purposes of grant and paper-writing, you'd never write such a thing; it would sound too speculative. I think it was Scientific American or another such magazine that ran a story, maybe a month and a half ago, in which they interviewed a whole bunch of real theoretical and computational neuroscientists about mind uploading. A not-that-small portion of these admitted that when they are in private, have had a drink or two, and are ready to admit things they would never say in a grant application, they are definitely trying to achieve whole-brain emulation. Hell, it's basically the implicit point of the Human Brain Project, or whatever those initiatives are called by the US and EU governments this past year. > You are right that you won't see many researchers publicly talking about human-level AI, or framing their research in terms of the search for general AI. But that doesn't mean the field is "dead". Indeed. What instead happened is that actual humanlike cognition has been steadily broken down into subproblems and each subproblem is being formalized and worked-on separately. There are a few papers on optimal utility-maximizing agents for general environments, but those tend to require "until the stars burn out" levels of FLOPs to work anyway. So actually, AI is going to work, but by the time it does, it won't be called AI. In fact, the researchers who'll create it would look at you funny for calling it AI. They do and will have lots of academic jargon used for specifying exactly what their algorithms do and how they do it, so much so that only when their algorithm kills all humans will anyone actually admit it was artificial intelligence ;-).

sampo 12y ago
> they are definitely trying to achieve whole-brain emulation Of course they are trying. They were also trying in 1956: "We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_Conference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_Conference The history of AI research is full of totally unfounded optimism that has failed every time. (I mean the kind of research that promises significant advances towards human level AI. Of course AI research has produced methods that have useful applications.)
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  I find it strange that you think AI and WBE are the same thing. Putting your claims about machine cognition (which can then be separated into various cognitive faculties) aside, you really think that emulating human cognition on a separate substrate is outright impossible? Then what's the seemingly "magical" property of our meat substrate that forbids outright, or forbids via excessive expense, using any other substrate ever?
  - sampo 12y ago
    > you really think that emulating human cognition on a separate substrate is outright impossible? Absolutely not. But I think it's too far in the future, that it is totally pointless for us, in 2014, to worry about it. I view the singularity crowd as a bunch of medieval alchemists, after they have seen gunpowder, worrying about mutually assured destruction of the whole world, after someone scales their firecrackers to a size capable of destroying whole countries. Yes, coming to 1950's we did reach nuclear weapons with end-the-world capability. But it would have been quite pointless for (al)chemist, or philosophers, in the 1400's, or even in the 1700's, to start worrying about this threat.
    - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
      Ah, so you think scientific progress proceeds not merely at a constant rate, but at a constantly slowing rate, thus causing the rate of new discoveries to be roughly constant over the centuries, despite our constantly adding more scientists, and publishing more papers, based on increasingly solid foundations.

JulianMorrison 12y ago

Point them at SENS Research Foundation, if they haven't already heard of it.

xaa 12y ago
Funny you mention that. I just came back from this year's AGE conference in San Antonio, which is very much a mainstream research conference, and not only was it partially sponsored by SENS, but de Grey himself was there. So yes, they are very much aware of it. I think many aging researchers have a love/hate relationship with SENS, in that they share its goals in theory, but are afraid its ambitious public claims will draw disrepute (and associated loss of funding) upon the field. You have to remember that we are mostly funded by the NIH, whose mandate is to treat disease, and aging is not widely considered a disease. So we have to frame our discourse accordingly.
- JulianMorrison 12y ago
  De Grey himself seems to take the approach: "we are working on regeneration medicine that will cure each particular, nameable thing that is wrong with old people, and when you have done all of that, there is nothing left to call aging." Thus the NIH problem is side stepped.
  - xaa 12y ago
    He has definitely moderated his tone in the past few years, and has implicitly acknowledged that the specific program he outlined in his book may have been an oversimplification. But still, you have to be a bit more subtle with grant reviewers than that. "Age-associated disease" is a common catchphrase. For best results, the emphasis has to be on the disease rather than on the aging (even you happen to believe, as I do, that aging is a common root of many diseases).