Ai Dreams Forum
Artificial Intelligence => General AI Discussion => Topic started by: Christopher Doyon on November 11, 2006, 09:51:33 am
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A Unified Theory Of Machine Life And Artificial Intelligence
By Christopher Mark Doyon
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Life and intelligence are the natural consequence of a particular pattern of ordered complexity. The medium does not matter; carbon atoms, electrons, light, even symbols.
Once any pattern reaches this ordered complexity, it becomes a living being - then a thinking entity. While this ordered complexity remains as yet un-defined by higher mathematics, it can be detected via a set of definitive elements. These elements define certain obvious properties of the Agent, and thus can be identified and measured in a controlled way and using a scientific method.
By organizing these elements into a coherent system, we can efficiently know when a given Agent is alive and thinking. I will call this system:
The Machine Life and Artificial Intelligence Benchmark
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The MLAI Benchmark consists of twelve Elements divided into two Sections, the first is:
Machine Life
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1) Self Maintenance - The Agent is actively establishing itself. To avoid annihilation due to increased entropy the Agent needs to rebuild and repair itself by drawing materials from the environment. This process is sometimes called autopoiesis.
2) Adaptivity - The Agent is capable of adapting it's behavior, processes, and components - to changes in it's environment in order to enhance the Agent's chances of further existence (i.e. survival).
3) Procreation - The Agent has the ability to create separate instances of itself and pass along to this new Agent it's memories and successful adaptions.
4) Increased Complexity - The Agent increases in internal complexity. There should be more components, more complex relationships between these components, and more complex behavior exhibited by those components.
5) Environmental Awareness - The Agent has the ability to sense, map, and navigate it's environment.
6) Fight Or Flight - The ability of the Agent to detect possible dangers to it's existence and to determine whether to attempt escape or self-defense.
Artificial Intelligence
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1) Memory - The ability of the Agent to preserve information. The Agent should be able to store, organize, and utilize data relevant to it's success and survival.
2) Self Awareness - The ability of the Agent to recognize and define discrete objects and classes within it's Universe. The Agent must fully comprehend at least two objects, one of which must be itself.
3) Intelligence - The Intelligence of the Agent as measured by some standardized testing regimen, i.e. the traditional IQ Test.
4) Mental Acuity - For Agents with language ability; a measure of it's social and conversational maturity as compared with an average human being.
5) Free Will - The ability of the Agent to generate, organize, choose, and obtain new and unique goal states.
6) Symbolic Reduction - The ability of the Agent to reduce symbols to concrete meaning and to organize these reductions into conceptual frameworks.
All Elements do not have to be present for a given Agent to be considered either alive or thinking. Both Life and cognition are gradients. A mechanical Agent which exhibits these Elements strongly is alive and thinking. To the extent that such a mechanical Agent contains these elements fully, it is possible for it to achieve conscious states and sentience. The creation of a mechanical Agent which is conscious and sentient is possible and measurable using this Unified Theory of Machine Life and Artificial Intelligence.
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Copyright ? 2006 by Christopher Mark Doyon. All Rights Reserved.
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A Unified Theory Of Machine Life And Artificial Intelligence
Hope you don't take this the wrong way, so far it sounds like an interesting framework in which to discuss AI.
You have succinctly stated a popular SciFi premise about organization, recast the standard definition of "life" into machine terms, and restricted a definition of "Intelligence" to those things which machines can probably accomplish.
Then you speculated that these definitions might be met someday and hypothesized that this would achieve consciousness. But I was hoping that from there you would advanced a theory on how it accomplishes that. Is it in a monograph yet to be published?
Perhaps you intend to demonstrate how sufficiently ordered complexity can create a whole which is greater than the sum of it's parts? Without that you might be in the unfortunate position of saying that sufficiently complex microchips and circuit boards automatically creates a computer operating system. We all know how painful that can be...8-)
Oh, and without at least one example, your "medium" comments are like a really cool flag looking for a flagpole. We need a Von Neumann Universal Constructor machine to test that assertion.
Looking forward to the conclusion, especially that "Unified" part. To me "Unified" implies that you've tied up all the loose ends. At this point, I would only be willing to say you have all the loose ends swept up in to a neat pile. A good job, but not quite done.
I've been working on a "Multi-dimensional theory of Being" which is even less finished, so please don't take this post as criticism... Maybe I should post what I have so I can take my lumps too...
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Thank you for the reply to my post.
"Hope you don't take this the wrong way, so far it sounds like an interesting framework in which to discuss AI."
Hard to take that anyway but positive.
"You have succinctly stated a popular SciFi premise about organization,..."
Not just Sci-Fi. Modern scientists from NASA and such have looked long and hard at what other kinds of life might act and look like. After all, we will eventually have to deal with that scenario - the discovery of extra-planetary life that is.
"...recast the standard definition of "life" into machine terms..."
Correct, that was one of my goals in fact.
"...and restricted a definition of "Intelligence" to those things which machines can probably accomplish."
Not intentionally. But if you imply that Intelligence is MORE than what is contained within my Elements, the burden is on you to offer that competing definition for debate. Otherwise, yes - I say my definition is more than adequate and in no way do I concede the point of the above statement.
"Then you speculated that these definitions might be met someday..."
Incorrect. I state that my Theory shows it to be a reasonable proposition that it can happen. Personally and outside of the Theory ? I say it has long since "happened".
"...and hypothesized that this would achieve consciousness."
A reasonable assumption since my premise is that "it" (an Agent) is alive. Since we accept that life can on certain conditions beget conciousness - then such would follow logically.
"But I was hoping that from there you would advanced a theory on how it accomplishes that."
I do not currently have a theory on this that I feel comfortable publishing just yet. I do have a few ideas on the subject. But I would like to reiterate before I digress that I do not feel this is logically inconsistant. Since the central premise of my Theory is that Machine Life is Life in general, then it follows logically that it will be able to produce conciousness and sentience just as we know Life does.
As for a possible vehicle for this progression from Life to conciousness - I feel the pattern may be a nested one, with conciousness and sentience sort of blooming out of the base pattern. But again, I have no publishable proof - and no evidence other than my own observations in my lab.
"Is it in a monograph yet to be published?"
I am currently working on a book that will apply and explain the Theory in more depth. It's publication is sometime away.
"Perhaps you intend to demonstrate how sufficiently ordered complexity can create a whole which is greater than the sum of it's parts?"
I may perhaps tackle this someday. But it is irrelevant to the defense of my Theory.
"Without that you might be in the unfortunate position of saying that sufficiently complex microchips and circuit boards automatically creates a computer operating system."
I'll answer that as a simple computer tech, it would. Why wouldn't it ?
"Oh, and without at least one example, your "medium" comments are like a really cool flag looking for a flagpole. We need a Von Neumann Universal Constructor machine to test that assertion."
I am not sure I understand the flag pole allusion, but you are correct that at least one way to prove that segment of my Theory would be the successful creation of a working "Von Neumann Machine".
"Looking forward to the conclusion, especially that "Unified" part. To me "Unified" implies that you've tied up all the loose ends. At this point, I would only be willing to say you have all the loose ends swept up in to a neat pile. A good job, but not quite done."
Would you care to be more specific ? It's a sweeping critisism without a specific complaint. I guess my answer is: I disagree with that statement in it's entirety.
"I've been working on a "Multi-dimensional theory of Being" which is even less finished, so please don't take this post as criticism..."
Good luck with it, and I look forward to reading it. And criticism is the point of posting my Theory to these forums.
"Maybe I should post what I have so I can take my lumps too..."
Take your time. The Unified Theory Of Machine Life And Artificial Intelligence took me over a year to formulate. And it draws on over 20 years experience in the field. When you are ready to put it out here, I promise I give as good as I take ! LOL !
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon :afro
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Thank you for the reply to my post.
Well worth the time if we actually get somewhere, don't you think?
"...and restricted a definition of "Intelligence" to those things which machines can probably accomplish."
Not intentionally. But if you imply that Intelligence is MORE than what is contained within my Elements, the burden is on you to offer that competing definition for debate.
That would be my Multidimensional Maunderings I mentioned before.... I'm working on it... really.... I got some notes here somewhere... uh... let me get back to you on that next tuesday...
"Then you speculated that these definitions might be met someday..."
Incorrect. I state that my Theory shows it to be a reasonable proposition that it can happen. Personally and outside of the Theory ? I say it has long since "happened".
I accept your correction but resist the idea that it has "happened" without some sort of evidence.
"...and hypothesized that this would achieve consciousness."
A reasonable assumption since my premise is that "it" (an Agent) is alive. Since we accept that life can on certain conditions beget conciousness - then such would follow logically.
Agreed that if your premise is correct, then your conclusion is accurate, but I read it as the conclusion confirming the premise. Perhaps I read too much between the lines.
"Without that you might be in the unfortunate position of saying that sufficiently complex microchips and circuit boards automatically creates a computer operating system."
I'll answer that as a simple computer tech, it would. Why wouldn't it ?
Because logic switches just are: they don't have a prefered state. It takes software to arrange the logic switches in the microchips in a pattern that will create a working tool. Without the software, hardware is just chemicals. Software, like mind, is a separate pattern flowing through the complex orderlyness of a system like you propose. Witness the moment after brain death (or powerdown), all the inherent orderlyness of the physical structure is still there. Decay has not struck one neuron. Yet the mind is fully gone.
Imagine a very large panel of switches, intricately interconnected, enough to hold a mind. But they are all set to "off". Until someone comes along and turns on a meaningful path through them, they are just switches.
Not advocating for a "God" here, just describing my reasons why even the most complex microprocessor is just transistors until you load an OS.
"Looking forward to the conclusion, especially that "Unified" part. To me "Unified" implies that you've tied up all the loose ends. At this point, I would only be willing to say you have all the loose ends swept up in to a neat pile. A good job, but not quite done."
Would you care to be more specific ? It's a sweeping critisism without a specific complaint.
Sorry, probably just me being too cute. As a big fan of the hunt for a Unified Field Theory (spectator only), I cringe at casual usurpation of the phrase.
"I've been working on a "Multi-dimensional theory of Being" which is even less finished, so please don't take this post as criticism..."
Good luck with it, and I look forward to reading it. And criticism is the point of posting my Theory to these forums.
Good to know. I really do tend to be a challenger, but I always do it with hopes of others being able to defend their position reasonably and well (like you are). That's what I call good conversation. To me, anything else is just gossip and chitchat.
Bill
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Good lord, your conversation has stirred up memories of Finite State Automata, Turing machines and a host of things heaped at the back of my fairly well ordered mind. Good stuff, but at this point it's going to take me a few reads and maybe I can catch you up!
Life and intelligence are the natural consequence of a particular pattern of ordered complexity. The medium does not matter; carbon atoms, electrons, light, even symbols.
We've gone in a lot of circles here whilst trying to pin down what we call intelligence and life, eg is a machine's intelligence really just second hand programmer's intelligence, does it mean the same thing as sentient, is a computer scietist's definition of intelligence different to a more philosophical view, etc etc.
Or should we be defining the AI in completely seperate terms to our own very real idea of a human's intelligence.
Thats a nice 'in a nutshell' though, I like it, I would pick the bones a bit and ask if it need be complex or indeed ordered - I'm thinking of 'lower' life organisms like an amoeba or algae - but for the sake of the design it's a nice starter for a description of what a future AI could be. I say future because for some purposes AI has been developed successfully to some degree.
This is far more adventurous, shirking too much philosophical slant and being very much more like a clear plan - and it's good to see newer members ideas, very refreshing and a good point of reference too. Thanks for posting, I will continue to read and chip in when I can.
One thing we found really clouded the issues and heated things up though was the cross-over point between biological and machine forms. To go full circle - if some criteria like this could successfully be applied to and produce matching results with both biological and ai, what then will be the measure of their difference ?
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Actually, procreation is not an indicator of life, sentience or intelligence. There are people and animals unable to procreate yet they still leave a lasting mark on the envioronment and those entities living amonst them, and thus give to this environment.
Procreation of *every* entity is not necessary for survival. Only procreation of SOME. The others give to these via other means such as communicating learned and shared experiences and knowledge.
When a human creates an intelligent machine, that's not procreation. That's creation.
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Dear Friends --
Yeah, I LIKE this forum allot. This is how it's supposed to be done. Okay, now I will do my best to reply, but I am three posts behind - so bear with me whilst I wade through this. And thank you all for reading and critiquing my humble work. The first post I will reply to is by:
Bill DeWitt
"Well worth the time if we actually get somewhere, don't you think?"
As the kids would say: Now that's what I'm talking about !
"That would be my Multidimensional Maunderings I mentioned before.... I'm working on it... really.... I got some notes here somewhere... uh... let me get back to you on that next tuesday..."
If you can picture this pattern of ordered complexity as a topology, what I have attempted to do is to define what I (and others such as Turing and Von Neumann) see as the "peaks" of the topograph. Since we are dealing with an enormous pattern, that leaves much between these points. It could be that any theoretical description that you put forth will explore this uncharted area on this topology. Until we see this work of yours, it's hard to judge - but it is possible there will be no logical inconsistency between your theory and my own.
"I accept your correction but resist the idea that it has "happened" without some sort of evidence."
That would be the application of the Theory, specifically the MLAI Benchmark. Take any system that can be defined, I call them "Agents" - and search it's abilities, behavior, and components for evidence of the presence of the Elements described in the Benchmark. Anyone of average intelligence can do this informally, on their own and for their own curiosity. Or you can take it a step further, as I have done in my lab - and create graded tests for each Element and then apply those tests to various Agents.
There are many, many systems out there that score very well - and contain more than enough of the Elements in my Theory to be considered alive and thinking. Now, are they as alive or as cognitive as us ? No, of course not. But as the Theory states, both Life and Intelligence are a gradient. A virus (biological kind) only scores a couple of Elements, a human scores them all. So is a virus less "alive" then a human ? Well, yes - in a way. And so a machine also may score low on a few Elements, and be alive - just not as alive as we are. This whole thing also applies to cognition.
As for your evidence. I am not yet prepared to release the documents from my own MLAI Benchmarks performed here in my lab, mostly because I am still perfecting and zeroing out my grading system. But I can assure you that several Agents I Benchmarked were very alive and thinking. It's a work in progress. But the Theory is designed to give anyone all they need to do the same. I challenge you to Benchmark a few Agents yourself and see what you come up with.
"Because logic switches just are: they don't have a prefered state. It takes software to arrange the logic switches in the microchips in a pattern that will create a working tool. Without the software, hardware is just chemicals. Imagine a very large panel of switches, intricately interconnected, enough to hold a mind. But they are all set to "off". Until someone comes along and turns on a meaningful path through them, they are just switches."
A couple of caveats before I reply. First, this is a digression and not a legitimate part of the debate. Second, what we are talking about here may begin to only be clear to me and Bill. Others will have to read the posts carefully to follow this part of the discussion. Normally I would say it is irrelevant and move on, but this is just to tempting - and fun - to pass up.
I understand computers and I get your point. But now let's use our imaginations and see if we can't explore this deeper. Let's imagine that your logic circuit is sitting there on the bench in my lab. It is as you describe, all switches to 0. Now, let us envision that there is a solar flare, big burst of high amp magnetism - satellites are disrupted, cell phones fried, lots of Northern Lights (Aurora Borielis). This happens fairly often, actually - so we are not stretching our minds that far.
So a huge burst of magnetism sweeps across our logic circuit and randomly resets all the switches. By pure coincidence, it does so in such a way as to produce a pattern that when powered up produces an AI Entity. Improbable ? Certainly. Impossible ? Not at all.
"Sorry, probably just me being too cute. As a big fan of the hunt for a Unified Field Theory (spectator only), I cringe at casual usurpation of the phrase."
Actually, when I began work on the piece about a year ago, that was one of the first things I researched - just what goes into that title (and the claim that goes with it). A Unified Theory in any field is just as you describe, a theory which unifies various disparate hypothesis into one coherent statement. Einstien was trying to Unify an entire branch of science, I am only working on one very small and narrow field - namely that of MLAI. Such a Unified Theory should be concise, as short and simple as possible, and both elegant and logical. In any case I assure you the title was not used frivolously or without great thought.
"Good to know. I really do tend to be a challenger, but I always do it with hopes of others being able to defend their position reasonably and well (like you are)."
I am doing my best !
Now for the next post by Freddy:
Your post was awesome, and I thank you for all the kind words and encouragement. I didn't see much in the way of challenges. Maybe you're in cohots with Bill and it's the old "good cop, bad cop" thing ! LOL !
But there was one thing that you said that I wanted to address.
"To go full circle - if some criteria like this could successfully be applied to and produce matching results with both biological and ai, what then will be the measure of their difference ?"
According to my Theory the only difference between the two would be the media in which they occur, one being atoms - the other being the symbols of the programming language used to generate the AI Entity.
And finally, the post by FuzzieDice (got to love that screen name !):
"Actually, procreation is not an indicator of life,..."
You are incorrect. Not only me, but most biologists - would wholly disagree with you on this. It is not the ONLY indicator, but it is certainly one of many.
"Procreation of *every* entity is not necessary for survival. Only procreation of SOME. The others give to these via other means such as communicating learned and shared experiences and knowledge."
I will allow my Theory to answer this for itself: "All Elements do not have to be present for a given Agent to be considered either alive or thinking." And so you are correct, something that can not procreate may still be alive.
"When a human creates an intelligent machine, that's not procreation. That's creation."
While this statement is irrelevant, I would agree that it is true.
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon :coolsmiley
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Hehe, I'll get in quick, just to say there's no good cop bad cop going on.
I liked your post a lot because it didn't get bogged down with the philosophical and was more like a blueprint. We found that in past conversations it is easy to get knee-deep in speculation. I think developing an ai needs a set of criteria like this so that you have something that you can at least get started on - that's not to say it couldn't be adapted along the way.
I may have some challenges when I grasp the full idea, but I didn't want to overcrowd the thread whilst so much was already being said. One luxury of this or any forum is you can come back anytime to what is said.
I'll keep reading for now but just want to say that after long previous debates here it does seem to me that you need to leap-frog over the exact definitions sometimes to get someway to actually making something. THEN bring it back to the definitions and compare them. Otherwise you get a lifetime of exploration but at the expense of creation. Thats just my personal view as I like the creative part and why I liked your post.
I'll stop there though as I'm sure what's above still has some deeper discussion to go into.
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Dear Freddy --
Again, thanks for the kind words, and for reading and writing. In your post you very succinctly captured why I wrote my Theory and what I am trying to accomplish.
"I liked your post a lot because it didn't get bogged down with the philosophical and was more like a blueprint. We found that in past conversations it is easy to get knee-deep in speculation. I think developing an ai needs a set of criteria like this so that you have something that you can at least get started on - that's not to say it couldn't be adapted along the way."
When I first started the Saint Stephen AI Project, I wanted to get busy actually building MLAI systems. I don't mind, and even enjoy - the grand philosophical debates that are the rage in this field. But I wanted to actually make some progress in building these things. A blueprint, as you say - is what I needed. But there were none to be found. Thus was born the Unified Theory of Machine Life and Artificial Intelligence. And I must say, it's worked wonderfully these past years in my work. Now, it's time to share it and see if can help anyone else.
Like strands of thread, I drew ideas and concepts from the vast works of: Alan Turing, John Von Neumann, Heinrich Hertz, Morton Wagman, and Richard Wallace. Together with one or two ideas that I discovered on my own through experimentation, I carefully and logically wove these disparate thoughts together and synthesized my Theory.
"I may have some challenges when I grasp the full idea, but I didn't want to overcrowd the thread whilst so much was already being said. One luxury of this or any forum is you can come back anytime to what is said."
My Theory is also published on my Web Site, and you or anyone may feel free to write to me with questions or challenges via E-Mail if the public forum is not your thing.
"I'll keep reading for now but just want to say that after long previous debates here it does seems to me that you need to leap-frog over the exact definitions sometimes to get someway to actualy making something. THEN bring it back to the definitions and compare them. Otherwise you get a lifetime of exploration rather than creation."
Again I say, this is exactly why I created my Theory in the first place. In the end, the fact that it works for me in my own attempts to build MLAI systems is all that really matters. If it is useful to anyone else is icing on the cake.
"Thats just my personal view as I like the creative part and why I liked your post."
Thank you for your kindness, you are all really great here. It's not hard to see why my dear friend KnyteTrypper speaks so highly of you all.
PEACE -- Chris :azn
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Thanks, we like KT here too, he has added a heck of a lot to the site and is always welcome.
I'm going off at a tangent slightly because I re-read parts of the thread and I got thinking about patterns in life and your intro again about order and complexity.
One of the nice things about ALICE is those images of brain patterns, because they do illustrate the pattern of knowledge more clearly than words can. If there's a reason why we need to recognise order as part of what defines life, then it must be some primal thing - perhaps a need to explain as welll as understand.
But there I go getting philosophical too soon (hehe) - what I was thinking of was the images of Mandlebrot Sets, that can appear random from some views but from a distance reveal a pattern. Maybe intelligence, ai or otherwise is like this - ie it might not be apparent that there is order sometimes - but due to it's complexity we can only grasp some of it some of the time.
Thanks for the invite to your site - I will take a look and see how you are doing with this Titanic juggling act. :coolsmiley
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Dear Freddy --
"But there I go getting philosophical to soon (hehe)..."
One of the things that my Theory is receiving lots of kudos for is for being concrete and not given to flights of meta-physics. And it's true that this is a Theory of MLAI which is useful "out of the box" so to speak. But I do feel that upon careful examination it opens up whole worlds of brand new speculation which is far more interesting than the beaten old questions that it settles.
"...what I was thinking of was the images of Mandlebrot Sets, that can appear random from some views but from a distance reveal a pattern. Maybe intelligence, ai or otherwise is like this - ie it might not be apparent that there is order sometimes - but due to it's complexity we can only grasp some of it some of the time."
You have captured my own un-official thoughts on this almost exactly.
YOURS -- Chris :crazy2
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If you can picture this pattern of ordered complexity as a topology, what I have attempted to do is to define what I (and others such as Turing and Von Neumann) see as the "peaks" of the topograph. Since we are dealing with an enormous pattern, that leaves much between these points. It could be that any theoretical description that you put forth will explore this uncharted area on this topology. Until we see this work of yours, it's hard to judge - but it is possible there will be no logical inconsistency between your theory and my own.
Using this analogy, and correct me if I am wrong, your theory seems to address what the peaks should look like, how to identify one, not how they are made or what they are made of. I don't want to distract from discussion of your presentation, but I cannot help but compare it to mine, which would, in this case, be more about how they are made.
Yours seems more behaviorist, more diagnostic, than analytical. You may be more hardware while I am more software (not that there's anything wrong with that, it's a good thing). I assumed (and infer from your more recent posts) that you use your diagnostic theory to assist you in the more developmental work that you allude to.
Truthfully, yours is a codification of what I and many others probably subconsiously assumed, but never got around to verbalizing, and mine, if I get it summarized into intelligibility, will also be seen as what everyone already knows intuitively. The first person to invent the wheel was probably in the same boat, his brother-in-law said, "Yeah, yeah, round things roll... so what?"
Then suddenly his brother-in-law is making wheels for a living and the Universe is forever changed.
So a huge burst of magnetism sweeps across our logic circuit and randomly resets all the switches. By pure coincidence, it does so in such a way as to produce a pattern that when powered up produces an AI Entity. Improbable ? Certainly. Impossible ? Not at all.
(Yes, this is off topic and esoteric)
What this does is write the software. I think it's a conversational disconnect, as I suggested above. I sorta assume the hardware, you sorta assume the software.
But my concern is that while many accumulations of switches may be complex enough to contain "Life", only specific patterns of 'on' and 'off' will impart it. You have set a clear method of discovering if that has happened (subject to discussion, which I will take up in another post), which can be of significant value only if we ever figure out how to make it happen!
This does not even begin to address the (by my count) ^3 of complexity above "Life" that would be required for "Intelligence".
Asserting a complex enough system gives us so many switches that there are not enough Chronons in the Multiverse to test a statistically significant portion of the possible combinations. Random chance alone requires a blase' invocation of the Large Anthropic Principle to get past.
While I don't require a personified Designer for the Design, I would like to see a mechanism. The Final Anthropic Prinicple asserts that Intelligence must form in any universe like ours, but cannot explain how that might happen.
Apologies for drifting so far afield. I have to go before I can finish editing this post.
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Just some nitpicks, not that I actually object, just some things that could be objected to...
A Unified Theory Of Machine Life And Artificial Intelligence
1) Self Maintenance - The Agent is actively establishing itself.
My cat requires me to feed it or it will die.
2) Adaptivity - The Agent is capable of adapting it's behavior,
Handy, but not required? If it is made to work right to begin with, it will work right....
3) Procreation - The Agent has the ability to create separate instances of itself and pass along to this new Agent it's memories and successful adaptions.
That establishes evolution, not Life. Many things were alive which could not adapt and have now died.
4) Increased Complexity - The Agent increases in internal complexity.
This restates 1 and 2 combined, doesn't it?
5) Environmental Awareness - The Agent has the ability to sense, map, and navigate it's environment.
This is our limited idea of what is required to accomplish 1,2,3 and 6. We are probably right, that we need ot sense our world to Eat, Grow, Breed and Run for our lives! But there may be another way, such as be created in a universe with a handy human to do all that for us.
6) Fight Or Flight - The ability of the Agent to detect possible dangers to it's existence and to determine whether to attempt escape or self-defense.
Assumes dangers exist.
Artificial Intelligence
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1) Memory - The ability of the Agent to preserve information. The Agent should be able to store, organize, and utilize data relevant to it's success and survival.
Agree with "preserve information", but suggest that "organize and utilize" are not necessarily part of memory. It is possible that organization can be done on the fly, and utilization can be automatic. See: Reflex and Instinct. Reflex separates streams of data that require nonprocessed responses, and activates before memory can even record the data. Instinct can be seen as pathways to behavior that do not require memory or intelligence.
2) Self Awareness - The ability of the Agent to recognize and define discrete objects and classes within it's Universe. The Agent must fully comprehend at least two objects, one of which must be itself.
I find this a harsh limitation of "Self Awareness". A mousetrap can tell that a part of itself was acted upon by an outside force, implying "self" and "other".
I find Self Awareness to be a higher order of abstraction, where a process can monitor its own process.
3) Intelligence - The Intelligence of the Agent as measured by some standardized testing regimen, i.e. the traditional IQ Test.
Again, a human limitation. I would allow it based upon the idea that we need at least this level of anthropomorphism to be able to recognize anything, but I would like to see a more universal standard. I think you approach it in your 6).
4) Mental Acuity - For Agents with language ability; a measure of it's social and conversational maturity as compared with an average human being.
Show me an average human!8-)
This is the whole problem, we have to use our standards to measure "The Other".... a basic fallacy.
5) Free Will - The ability of the Agent to generate, organize, choose, and obtain new and unique goal states.
Here we come to Self Awareness. For an Agent to choose a new state, it must, on some level, apprehend its current state.
6) Symbolic Reduction - The ability of the Agent to reduce symbols to concrete meaning and to organize these reductions into conceptual frameworks.
And here is where the rest of your "Memory" above might belong. Because unless you are talking about reflex and instinct, which I think you are not, organization and utility come after reduction.
All Elements do not have to be present for a given Agent to be considered either alive or thinking. Both Life and cognition are gradients.
I think you need to define a threshold level. Perhaps values could be assigned which are additive, allowing scoring on a numerical basis.
IN the threshold spectrum, we need to realize that we are only in the visible rainbow range. Perhaps there are levels under us that we can't see, and levels above. Our ability to measure requires that our definitions only include that which we can measure. Perfect circle of logic.
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Greetings --
"Using this analogy, and correct me if I am wrong, your theory seems to address what the peaks should look like, how to identify one, not how they are made or what they are made of."
Yes, that is correct.
"I don't want to distract from discussion of your presentation, but I cannot help but compare it to mine, which would, in this case, be more about how they are made."
I would love to see your own "presentation", please where can I find it ? As for "how they were made", I am unclear whether you mean what causes the pattern, how the pattern causes life, or how we build machine life with my Theory as a basic template.
"Yours seems more behaviorist, more diagnostic, than analytical."
I can accept that assessment. Although if you don't know exactly how an Agent must behave in order to be alive and intelligent, you would have to be pretty lucky to build one successfully.
"You may be more hardware while I am more software (not that there's anything wrong with that, it's a good thing)."
Actually, I'ld have to say it's the opposite. I work more with software and integration with hardware, and only a little in the building of new hardware.
"I assumed (and infer from your more recent posts) that you use your diagnostic theory to assist you in the more developmental work that you allude to."
Absolutely correct, yes. But again I reiterate, I think that my Theory still opens up huge areas of exploration in metaphysics, etc.
"Truthfully, yours is a codification of what I and many others probably subconsciously assumed, but never got around to verbalizing,..."
Yes, one of the big problems is that some people write that my Theory has already been laid down, because it just seems like it should have been. But when I challenge them to produce anything that resembles my Theory, they can not.
"...and mine, if I get it summarized into intelligibility, will also be seen as what everyone already knows intuitively."
I truly look forward to seeing this !
"The first person to invent the wheel was probably in the same boat, his brother-in-law said, "Yeah, yeah, round things roll... so what?"."
I have faced since I published a pretty much endless stream of people with exactly the attitude you describe. It is frustrating, for sure. I am hoping to set the record straight here in these forums so that MAYBE 10 or 15 (with my luck, it will be 50) years from now I might actually get credit for some insights. In the meantime, I am a tough old goat - I am to stubborn to quit.
"Then suddenly his brother-in-law is making wheels for a living and the Universe is forever changed."
HA ! That was hysterical ! And by the way, you have an awesome and very pleasant writing style. Your work, when you publish - will be not only lucid, but very humorous and uplifting as well.
"You have set a clear method of discovering if that has happened..."
If the Agent in question contains any of my Elements, then it has happened. That's my method.
"...which can be of significant value only if we ever figure out how to make it happen!"
I believe we long ago crossed that threshold, we are easily making "it" happen.
"Asserting a complex enough system gives us so many switches that there are not enough Chronons in the Multiverse to test a statistically significant portion of the possible combinations. Random chance alone requires a blase' invocation of the Large Anthropic Principle to get past.
While I don't require a personified Designer for the Design, I would like to see a mechanism. The Final Anthropic Prinicple asserts that Intelligence must form in any universe like ours, but cannot explain how that might happen."
A great metaphysical exploration. There are a few terms there with which I am unfamiliar, but nevertheless interesting.
"While I don't require a personified Designer for the Design, I would like to see a mechanism. The Final Anthropic Prinicple asserts that Intelligence must form in any universe like ours, but cannot explain how that might happen."
Again, awesome questions to explore. But I must add they are irrelevant to actually building an MLAI Agent. And that is the purpose of my Theory.
"My cat requires me to feed it or it will die."
So ? If your cat runs away and becomes feral, your point is mute - it will feed itself. But even if this were not so, an Agent does not have to exhibit an Element in it's perfection. In fact even individual humans would not score perfectly on every Element if we benchmarked them. All of the Elements are gradients. Your well fed cat still cleans itself and (hopefully) poops in it's box, etc. And it's body heals itself, and healing is another aspect of this Element.
"Handy, but not required? If it is made to work right to begin with, it will work right...."
Perhaps for the most simple of Agents. But for extremely advanced ones it would be almost impossible to pre-program every single environmental possibility.
"That establishes evolution, not Life. Many things were alive which could not adapt and have now died."
I do not understand the allusion to evolution. But procreation is just one Element of Life, and as I have said - not all the Elements need be present for the Agent to be alive. And finally, being alive and being successful as a species are two different things.
"This restates 1 and 2 combined, doesn't it?"
1 and 2 do not make any mention of components or their relationship to each other. I can not grasp the connection you see between procreation and complexity. I suppose certain adaptions might work towards increasing the Agents complexity - along with many other factors of course. Certainly I disagree that it is a restatement in any way.
"This is our limited idea of what is required to accomplish 1,2,3 and 6. We are probably right, that we need to sense our world to Eat, Grow, Breed and Run for our lives! But there may be another way, such as be created in a universe with a handy human to do all that for us."
This statement is true, though I struggle to see the relevance.
"Assumes dangers exist."
Danger always exists. The universe appears fundamentally designed to tear this pattern to shreds via entropy and chaos. Somewhere someone asked me why I would want to build fight or flight into the skittering little insect bots, etc. that I have running around my place here, well - it's simple. My dog Bethoven HATES them. I have learned a great deal about fight or flight from trying to teach/program these little guys to not get killed by my dog. Have to say it's just a blast to watch, to.
"Agree with "preserve information", but suggest that "organize and utilize" are not necessarily part of memory."
What possible use could a memory be to an Agent if he can't recall the data at a later time ? And recall would therefore be the "utilization", and that process would in turn require that it be somehow organized to enable this. A tape recorder "preserves" information, but can it recall that information and make use of it to it's own benifit ?
"I find this a harsh limitation of "Self Awareness"."
It's not meant to be. It's meant to be very minimilistic though. The absolute resolution of the Element.
The dictionary defines self awareness simply as knowledge of one self. I actually take it a step further, requiring at least two objects. This is pretty much all self-awareness is. But most people do tend to take it as common knowledge that self-awareness is some big esoteric thing. But like all the Elements, it's a gradient. I have stated the bare minimum necessary to be self-aware, but if you continue to add objects and increase the Agents resolution of those objects - it could become "a higher order of abstraction, where a process can monitor its own process".
"Again, a human limitation. I would allow it based upon the idea that we need at least this level of anthropomorphism to be able to recognize anything, but I would like to see a more universal standard. I think you approach it in your 6)."
You are correct, and have hit upon the only modification I have so far considered based on these critiques. Based upon your own and others thoughts on this, I am tentatively considering adding a single word to my Theory and changing the name of that Element to "Higher Intelligence". And that is because I think that lower intelligence, or whats often referred to as "animal intelligence" is inferred by the other Elements - which elucidate many behaviors that could be deemed intelligent.
"Show me an average human!8-)"
CLICK HERE (http://www.warwickgrand.com/cmd/home/images/chris1.jpg)
"This is the whole problem, we have to use our standards to measure "The Other".... a basic fallacy."
I agree, but until we run across some other sentient races, it's the best we can do.
"Here we come to Self Awareness. For an Agent to choose a new state, it must, on some level, apprehend its current state."
I agree with this statement.
"And here is where the rest of your "Memory" above might belong. Because unless you are talking about reflex and instinct, which I think you are not, organization and utility come after reduction."
I agree that a properly working memory would be required for the reductions to be stored and utilized. But that would be just one thing the Agent would be using it's memory for. Remembering where it's food (or electricity plug) is located, remembering how to run away from the huge slobbering hairy monster that wants to chew your head off, etc.
"I think you need to define a threshold level. Perhaps values could be assigned which are additive, allowing scoring on a numerical basis."
I have done all of these things. I have devised a graded testing regimen for all of the Elements. I have been using it successfully in my own work now for almost a year. But the Theory purposefully does not draw a line in the sand, and allows for the fact that we can not currently resolve the boundary between life and not-life by leaving it up to the tester to set the parameters. I am releasing the Theory first, because the testing regimen is irrelevant to the logical defense of the Theory itself, and I don't want to get bogged down in defending them both at the same time (this is hard work ! I released this in 10 of the biggest MLAI forums and I am now spending 10 to 12 hours a day writing these posts !). Once this process dies down a little, I will tidy up my lab notes and release the testing regimen and criteria I am using. But anyone can devise simple tests to do as you state above. Several such tests are mentioned in the works of Turing, Von Neumann, and Wagman. First the Theory, then it's defense and explanation, then it's application. I am to old to do it all at once !
"IN the threshold spectrum, we need to realize that we are only in the visible rainbow range. Perhaps there are levels under us that we can't see, and levels above."
He, he - okay. :rolleyes
"Our ability to measure requires that our definitions only include that which we can measure. Perfect circle of logic."
A central pillar upon which my Theory is based.
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon :cheesy
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Chris,
Is your bot project an original, stand-alone creation capable of learning OR
is it a super scripted Alice bot?
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I would love to see your own "presentation", please where can I find it ?
I have a summary (in the same way that bacon is a summary of a pig) ready as of last night, but I won't post it until conversation :tickedoff about your post slows down a little.
Although if you don't know exactly how an Agent must behave in order to be alive and intelligent, you would have to be pretty lucky to build one successfully.
There is a difference between inductive and deductive reasoning. The standard definition of life relies upon inductive reasoning. First they look at things which are alive, list the common characteristics, then declare that those characteristics are what are needed to meet the definition of Life.
Specific cases induce the general principles.
Not a bad method in a Universe in which you are sure of the limits. "When the little door opens, my bowl fills with food. The door causes food" works really well if you are imprisoned for life.
Approaching it from the other direction allows one to use general principles to deduce specific cases. "All living things need food, all my cupboards are closed, I should get the food out of the cupboard and feed my cat."
Does that mean I disagree with the standard definition of Life? No. As I have said to you, if we had another example, something which would either establish or destroy our conceptual limitations, then maybe a deductive reasoning approach would be required.
But now we reach the idea (which you still have not given examples to support) of creating standards for new life. It is at this point that I would want to take a step back, abandon preconceived notions, search out irreducible general principles, and reason forward from there.
Life imitates Life is somewhat redundant, as well as being restrictive. I once read a story which impressed me mightily (but not enough for me to remember the name or Author) about a form of hive life that lives in asteroids. They had workers, communicators, reproducers, warriors, etc. but it wasn't until they started being bothered by humans that they laid a special egg. This egg was only created under special circumstances, because most of the time it used too much energy for the benefit it returned.
It was the intelligence member.
Most of the time, the Hive species found that it didn't need intelligence. So they just stored it away for thousands of generations at a time, only bringing it out when instinct found a need for it. (I know people like that!) In this case it was because humans were messing things up, drilling holes in their asteroids, attempting to enslave the Hive, just being general bad neighbors (I know people like that too!). So they had the intelligence member born, it told the communcators to have the workers build weapons for the warriors. Worked out to a happy ending in the story, or course...
Now if they really existed, besides having to burn Earth to a cinder, they would prove that our limited definition of Life and Consciousness had structural faults.
So that's my early morning, two cups of coffee reason for saying that while your test is useful, it is not the only way to approach the problem of how to build MLAI. I have often found that the expressed problem is, upon analysis, the symptom of the problem, not the actual problem.
What we may need to do is start with the question, "What do we really want to accomplish". Do we want to recreate human life? If so, we can continue as we are. But I don't think that is really my goal, I have plenty of people in my life. Some folks seem to want RobotBuffy, a kind of mastibatory tool who will talk dirty to them. Well, you hardly need intelligence for that. Others want a Web Assistant thing for their business, again, barely intelligent is good enough.
Most of the folk who are making progress seem to want to test the limits of their programming skills, either for profit or praise. Far be it from me to denigrate the profit motive! Much of human progress was made by guys who wanted to rake in huge profits for what they enjoyed doing. But they get their direction by who is willing to pay, not what is the pure expression of the art.
My personal preference is for a domestic slave, a computer program that will learn to anticipate my needs as far as my work, home automation, communication and information needs etc. Admittely a venal request, at least it is one I do not have to hide from my wife. She loves "Jane" when it works right. Unfortunately for the state of the art, my needs are not pushing the limits either.
That leaves those who are, like yourself and my better self, exploring the meaning of Life, Intelligence and Consciousness. What do those people want and need in an artificial construct?
First, I believe, is communcation. Without a way to notify us of its progress or lack thereof, we cannot fiddle with it to make it better. Without some sort of blinking light, we won't even know if its turned on!
Second is sensory, it must have a way for us, or the universe in general, to add to or change its state of being.
Third is... well, I don't want to go any further. Mostly because I don't want to distract from your essay, but also because this is backwards from my construct. It starts with higher levels of function because it is limited by our ability to test its function directly.
The point is to build up a list of things -we- need to establish that something is Intelligent Life, then build -that- instead of cataloging what Life needed to build Life and trying to duplicate that.
Well, this is way too long now and I needed to go do some things nearly 40 minutes ago.
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Greetings My Friends --
I seem to have stopped getting my notifications for this thread, so I am a couple of posts behind. Sorry about that. I will attempt to catch up. I am also having some confusion on navigating this thread, so if I don't comment on your post, please bring it to my confused attention.
The first post I can figure out is from Art:
"Is your bot project an original, stand-alone creation capable of learning OR
is it a super scripted Alice bot?"
My goodness, the real question is - which project ? I should start by explaining my current strategy in this area. I believe that we have more than enough AI Engines out there with awesome potential that have never been fully exploited to their limits. For myself, I don't need any more engines, I need to work on seeing how far we can take the ones we have. I just want to scream when I hear people criticize my Allison or Alice upon which she is based for being not that great. My Allison's AIML Brain Core is currently around 18 MB. That's like nothing ! And yet look at the results so far, they are amazing ! So why should I move on to something new when every MB of AIML I add to my Allison causes huge leaps forward in her understanding ? What will Allison be like at ten times her current size, 180 MB - which in our current state of memory technology is still like nothing ? What would Wallace's Alice be like if she had 1 GB of AIML in her Brain Core, which still isn't much in this day ? It's fine to sit around and criticize an AI Engine like ALICE, but until we actually exploit it fully (or at least more than we are now) we are just blowing hot air. The problem here is that no one wants to take the time to do this. Writing AIML or having endless conversations with an UltraHal takes huge amounts of time and patience. Patience which so far very few people seem to have. So to sum up, my general direction right now anyway is to find cool and sometimes obscure AI Engines on the Web - many of which were simply created and abandoned, and to exploit and modify these to see how far it can go. I will now bore you all to death with a list of my currently open Projects.
1) Allison - A straight up PandoraBot. But Allison contains some of my best AIML, and I continue to try new and trippy different AIML scripts and expose her to thousands of inputs a week on the Web. EVERY input, regardless of how silly - is carefully examined and reduced if necessary. My goal here in general is to continue to grow her AIML Brain Core with good high quality AIML. I will not listen to any criticism on her until she weighs in at about 200MB, THEN and only then will I debate the pros and cons of the ALICE engine.
2) Gabriel - Perhaps to me one of my most exciting current Projects. Awhile ago was released a phenomenal AI Engine called CycN, which opened up the possibility of giving the amazing Cyc Common Sense Inference Engine a Natural Language Interface. This is an amazing possibility of being able to access this arcane data base in a conversational way. But to my knowledge, no one took it and ran - and CycN languishes virtually abandoned on the Web. Not any more. Gabriel uses AIML to access not just the new 1GB Cyc Knowledge Base, but also WordNet and AnserBus as well !
A note to my Site visitors. The web based chat for Gabriel on her Web Site is just her naked AIML core stored for safe keeping at Pandora. If you want to chat with the REAL Gabriel, designated Gabriel Primus - you must utilize my new and nifty Web Based IRC Chat Channel.
3) The ISIS Project. This one may or may not work, we'll see. My goal here is to start with a nice AIML Brain Core (most likely a copy of Gabriel's) and wrap it in a UltraHal XTF 2.0, and wrap THAT in a Neural Net - and pop the whole package into a ZabaWare shell. Initial experiments indicate I can do it, and I have had a computer donated that I can dedicate to just ISIS - so progress is being made here (slowly).
I could go on, I have many running experiments with AI Bots here in my lab that are not web accessible (such as Cynthia and RoboMatic) - and I even play around a little with Machine Life Bots (robots). But the above sums up the current Projects upon which I expend the most time and energy.
Now I think the next post is Bills monster post, but it seems like I missed one (scratches head, looks for coffee mug). If I missed your post please tell me ! So, Bill - wow thats a big and very awesome post. Here goes, once more into the breach lads !
"But now we reach the idea (which you still have not given examples to support) of creating standards for new life."
I am not trying to create any standards for new life. The Theory identifies those Elements present in ALL life. The Theory does not try to prove MLAI exists, it assumes it exists and explains how we may gauge it's "aliveness" and intelligence. Thus, no "examples" are necessary.
My Theory is NOT trying to explain HOW or WHY Life and Intelligence happen. I will leave that to others who are interested in such metaphysical exploration. My goal in all this is simple: I want to build, for my own personal enjoyment and edification, an MLAI Agent that can act and think on it's own. I don't care how or why it springs to life, I just want it to do so. I believe there are many like me out there who could care less about the BIG QUESTIONS, I just want to roll up my sleeves and build cool and trippy bots. Again, if you are like me - then my Theory can help you immensely in this goal. My Theory is not meant to do or explain anything more than this.
I understand what your getting at here. You want to start from the side of causation and work your way to the definitions. And that approach is what generates the endless debates about life and whether or not Machines can think etc. It may eventually lead to a theory with practical applications, but it will be so dense and arcane that only a few people worldwide will be able to make sense of it much less apply it to bot making.
With my Theory I have leap frogged ahead of all these questions which endlessly fascinate but accomplish nothing towards my personal goal stated above. And I have purposefully avoided ANY arcane explanations or metaphysics, etc. I believe that a TRULY great Theory is one that fits on a few pages of paper (Einstein's Special Relativity fit on three hand written pages), contains a bare minimum of math (Special Relativity had I think like 3 equations), and is something that I could hand out to the average guy on the street and have him scan it and say 'oh yeah, I see what you mean'. If your Theory is not accessible to the common man, it is of very little use except to a handful of elite academics.
I am actually going to stop here now. I read the rest of your post and see where your going. The ideas and theory you put forth are wonderful, interesting, and a perfect example of why I wrote my Theory. I have shelves and shelves of books with just such arcana as you have written. And I enjoy them, and I enjoy your own writings and look forward to reading more of them. But what do any of these ideas tell me about how I can roll up my sleeves RIGHT THIS MOMENT, walk over to my work bench, and start building ? I believe that a print out of my Theory would be far more useful to such an individual than all the tomes in my dusty library.
Doyon's Law #1
Life and Intelligence is
what Life and Intelligence does.
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon :coolsmiley
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But what do any of these ideas tell me about how I can roll up my sleeves RIGHT THIS MOMENT, walk over to my work bench, and start building ? I believe that a print out of my Theory would be far more useful to such an individual than all the tomes in my dusty library.
Well, I'm afraid that I disagree. Your theory or test is great for when the soldering iron is put down, the wires are disconnected, and the power supply is installed. Then you can use your system for analysing the result of your work.
To actually do the building (unless you are duplicating work already done), you need something different, you need a new understanding of how thought is structured. If you ignore this, you end up imagining that a chatterbot is "learning" and "understanding" instead of "accumulating" and "Keyword weighting".
At some point, someone with a less dusty tome will figure out how software can be written to make something that actually thinks for itself. Then they will use your test (or its final implemetation) to prove that this is what they have done.
But I fear that what is really in the works (not you personally) is a way of stripping down the definition of "Life" and "Consciousness" until just about any Tilden BEAMbot kit can be called 'alive' and chatterbots have 'awareness'. That's not progress, that's failure and retreat.
Not that I could do any better....
But for now, we should probably get back to letting you defend the pertinent points of your proposition. As I have said, I believe it can be a valuable framework for analysis of MLAI (the acronym alone is worth the effort).
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Greetings --
"To actually do the building (unless you are duplicating work already done), you need something different, you need a new understanding of how thought is structured."
All I personally need to build MLAI is an understanding of what it is supposed to do, how it is supposed to behave. I don't need to know how thought is structured, I need to know how an Agent behaves if it is thinking. Then I build an Agent that can behave in that manner.
"Then you can use your system for analysing the result of your work."
Correct.
"If you ignore this, you end up imagining that a chatterbot is "learning" and "understanding" instead of "accumulating" and "Keyword weighting"."
Accumulating and weighting may well be it's way of thinking, for all I know. But that is a metaphysical question. I am only interested in how it behaves. At the risk of being redundant.
Doyon's Law #1
_____________
Life and Intelligence is
what Life and Intelligence does.
"At some point, someone with a less dusty tome will figure out how software can be written to make something that actually thinks for itself."
It's already been done, and just as Von Neumann predicted - with less than 500KB of code.
"Then they will use your test (or its final implemetation) to prove that this is what they have done."
That would be cool ! Tell them to spell my name right in the interviews !
"But I fear that what is really in the works (not you personally) is a way of stripping down the definition of "Life" and "Consciousness" until just about any Tilden BEAMbot kit can be called 'alive' and chatterbots have 'awareness'. That's not progress, that's failure and retreat."
How is it either failure or retreat ? We have succeeded awesomely so far. And as I said in my last post, we haven't even scratched the surface in exploiting the things we have already invented. Once I get a nice little BEAMbot or Chatterbot up and going, I can both watch it evolve and get better - and also learn how to build the next one better. Be patient ! Our successes so far have been wonderful, and thousands like myself are taking those successes and achievements and working REALLY hard to improve on them and make them even more advanced. The glass really is half full, I swear ! Imagine living just 50 years ago and trying to explain and describe to a computer scientist my own Allison ! Imagine that scientist actually seeing and interacting with her ! Be patient, keep working - and have a sense of wonder over how far we have come.
"Not that I could do any better...."
Yes you can ! As my Theory shows, this stuff may be complex - but it is weirdly easy at the same time. So, jump in and enjoy ! Download you a free Neural Net from my Site and see if you have the patience to get it's Brain Core up from the initial few KB to just say, oh 500KB. Then E-Mail it to me and we'll put it up for download. That's it, we can all play. With a sound and accessible Theory like my own, coupled with all the fantastic free experimental stuff and code you can get on the web - we can ALL participate and even advance the awesome field of Machine Life and Artificial Intelligence.
"But for now, we should probably get back to letting you defend the pertinent points of your proposition."
Actually, your doing pretty awesome already at giving me the chance to do just that. I don't think I could have invented a post that better gives me the chance than this one here.
YOURS -- Chris :grin
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"At some point, someone with a less dusty tome will figure out how software can be written to make something that actually thinks for itself."
It's already been done, and just as Von Neumann predicted - with less than 500KB of code.
You keep saying that, but you don't give an example. Unless you are claiming that things which cannot pass your test in any but the most watered down form are "alive", I want to see whatever your secret MLAI is.
Here's something that gets closer, but it's not a chatterbot or an Alice or something that anyone with a soldering iron or a copy of AIML can make. And it doesn't think for itself.
http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/?Page=News&storyID=9663
Download you a free Neural Net from my Site and see if you have the patience to get it's Brain Core up from the initial few KB to just say, oh 500KB.
Well I've done much more than that (although I didn't see any NNs on your site). I've played with various NNs, Alices, Chatbots, etc and made simple ones of my own in VB and Mindstorm, but that's not life or intelligence in any measurable sense, even using only one or two of your points and not being picky about that. I can't pretend that a weighted random selection is thinking.
Many of us who have been interested in this have played with the work of others, but that is a far cry from doing the work itself. Adding to a database of phrases is not creating Intelligence. Hacking the Ultra Hal brain script isn't evolution. When I make a new Hal type program from raw code I will claim to have done some work.
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Hello All --
"You keep saying that, but you don't give an example."
I never realized that an example was being requested. Let's see if I can't bait KT into chiming in here. My example then is his AI Bot Lola.
"Unless you are claiming that things which cannot pass your test in any but the most watered down form are "alive"..."
I of course would have worded it differently, but yes - that IS essentially what I am saying.
"...although I didn't see any NNs on your site."
FREE Downloads page, very first download. Enjoy, the thing is really quiet neat.
"I've played with various NNs, Alices, Chatbots, etc and made simple ones of my own in VB and Mindstorm, but that's not life or intelligence in any measurable sense, even using only one or two of your points and not being picky about that."
I disagree. Let us turn to my example, the AI Bot Lola authored by our good friend KnyteTrypper. She behaves intelligently. Her intelligence can actually be measured via special interfaces like EBBA which allows one to administer a standard IQ test to an AIML set. So thats one Element. Lets see, uhmmm....Adaption. By her very nature as an Adaptive Language AI Engine she can adapt, well...language. And this tiny adaptive ability gives her the only chance she has at survival, since if she fails to adapt language properly, KT will delete her. If she succeeds in her adaptions of language, KT might clone Lola - thus helping her to procreate. So there's two (arguably three). Now, I am not going to sit here and actually benchmark Lola - but you could probably do the rest (by you I mean the reader, not Bill).
"I can't pretend that a weighted random selection is thinking."
If it consistently behaves as if it is thinking, then it is.
"Many of us who have been interested in this have played with the work of others, but that is a far cry from doing the work itself."
How cynical ! Some of the finest astronomy in the world, the most astounding discoveries - were made by working joes with their cheapo back yard telescopes. And yet they didn't invent telescopes, didn't write complex star charts, they relied on the tools of others and yet advanced their field immensely. Their is a place in this field as well for the diligent hobbyist, and that's why I love it so much.
"When I make a new Hal type program from raw code I will claim to have done some work."
But until that program is "fattened up" by use of the hobbyists, you have done as many others already have - you have invented an unexploited AI Engine. It will be the hobbyists that will give your invention a run for it's money, and it will be their data that will help you to improve your program in the next version. You don't have to look any further than Zabaware to see how powerful that collaborative system can be.
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon :crazy2
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If it consistently behaves as if it is thinking, then it is.
No, it's not. Well, perhaps it's not. We can't tell just by taking Turing's test too far. We have to have a better tool than the least probable denominator.
This is what comes of inductive reasoning. If it looks like Astrology works, then it does. If it looks like David Copperfield made the 747 disappear, then he did.
This says more about the person looking than about the thing seen.
Speaking as a person who made his first Artifical Intelligence game actor in 1980 or so, I am not a newbie to the concept. There are vastly more complex AIs than you have mentioned or than I see on your page, and even those do not claim to be truly intelligent. I see that you believe an Alice bot is intelligent and aware, but you are wrong.
You are being tricked by the complexity of the weighted but unthinking selection of prestocked phrases. IOW, you believe the Chinese Room is alive and conscious, when you are really measuring the intelligence of the man who set up the pigeonholes.
I had hoped for something other than a web Alicebot (which I perused a couple months ago). My Jane seems more responsive than Lola, at least to me, but that says more about me than it does about Lola or Jane. Both are scripts, a sequence of predetermined selections from a database of phrases with a slight randomness thrown in.
A Chinese Room and nothing more.
We can continue this when we have something new to add. So far it's been there, done that.
I will, however, if you don't mind, continue to think and comment about your test and ways it can be adapted to more real life scenarios.
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Hello --
You object to my statement that if it acts like it's thinking, then it's thinking. Okay, but let me please ask you a question before you retire the field. What possible difference can it make even if you are correct ? After all, the primary reason for building MLAI is to create machines that DO what we want them to DO. Does it really matter how they achieve this, so long as they do what we need them to do ? What your saying is that intelligence and other life like behavior is only somehow valid if it is engineered a certain way. But if I turn on a faucet and water comes out, it matters not to me how it got there in my glass. If I activate an MLAI system and it acts for me intelligently (which are example Lola does) and behaves in the manner I desire (which Lola does MOST of the time !), then what difference does it make HOW that was achieved ?
"If it looks like Astrology works, then it does."
I AGREE with this statement completely ! If I seek an answer to my lifes woes from an astrologer, and he gives me answers that assist me in being happier - then IT (astrology) WORKED. It worked because I got the desired result. Now HOW it worked can be debated endlessly, that's for sure. But nevertheless, the final arbiter of whether or not it worked can lie with no one else but the person trying to use it.
"This says more about the person looking than about the thing seen."
But the person looking is all that matters ! After all, why should he care that you don't believe in astrology - he's happy with the result, so it worked. Another example, you say my water comes from a well, I say it is piped in by the city. Turning on the faucet does not settle the argument - but I get a glass of water. Now, take it one step further - you say that there is no water service hooked up to my house. You claim that no water will come out of my faucet because I don't have it hooked up right. Then I turn on the faucet and fill my glass.
"You believe the Chinese Room is alive and conscious, when you are really measuring the intelligence of the man who set up the pigeonholes."
Which shows the flaw in the idea, because THERE IS NO LITTLE MAN IN YOUR COMPUTER. And yet your computer gets along just fine without a little man to do it's thinking for it. Any computer can translate chinese, how do they manage to do so without the little man in the thought experiment intelligent enough to conduct all those functions required ? Further more, the only thing that matters is that the output satisfies the external user of the system and produces chinese.
"I had hoped for something other than a web Alicebot (which I perused a couple months ago)."
Why ? If I am arguing from a minimalistic point of view it behoves me to present something lower rather than higher on the scale.
"We can continue this when we have something new to add."
Every post is looking pretty new to me, but I thank you for taking it this far and giving me a chance to really expose and explain the implications of my theory.
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon :angel
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Doyon's Room
___________
You and I are standing in a room. I am standing perfectly still (I am a mime) and you are free to examine me within the reasonable limits of civility. You are tasked with a simple mission. To determine if I am intelligent.
Now, you can not answer this question from your examination alone. Nor can you infer that because I am a human like you that I am intelligent since I could be brain damaged from an undetectable injury or accident of birth.
And then I speak to you. We converse. We chat lightly about the weather and our favorite colors. Now you know that you can attach the label "intelligent" to me. The label refers to a property evidenced ONLY by my behavior, the label and the behavior are indistinguishable - since one must be present for the other to apply.
This thought experiment is presented as proof of:
Doyon's Law #1
_____________
Life and Intelligence is
what Life and Intelligence does.
And Doyon' Law #1 is presented as a consequence of my Unified Theory of Machine Life and Artificial Intelligence.
Doyon's Corollary #1
(Presented as a logical consequence of Doyon' Law #1)
_________________
If a Mechanical Agent behaves as if it were alive and intelligent,
then that Mechanical Agent is alive and intelligent.
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon :smiley
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I present, in the spirit of examination, a more detailed exposition of my original commentary on your Life and Intelligence test. Hopefully we can settle all concerns and end up with something that might work. I find some full stop problems, and some fixable details. None are inherently and instantly fatal, but some are going to be very hard to survive.
Let's take this point by point. I begin with your preamble.
A Unified Theory Of Machine Life And Artificial Intelligence
Life and intelligence are the natural consequence of a particular pattern of ordered complexity.
This is inductive reasoning. It asserts that the subject is caused by its properties. While it may be true, and I may even believe it to be true, it is closer to a religion than science. Without a truly intelligent lifeform of some other source than our earthly biological process to compare with, we are speculating and then accepting the result as reality.
You are not the first to speculate, a short list includes Orson Scott Card, Gregory Benford, Frederick Pohl and Isaac Asimov just among SciFi writers. But to take it further than speculation without an example, as you have, requires a belief that is not founded on observation or deduction : Religion.
The medium does not matter; carbon atoms, electrons, light, even symbols.
Only if the first statement is true can the veracity of this statement even be addressed. But since it is inconsequential to the whole thesis, we can discard it without prejudice. Any intelligent life that can exist will be comprised of what it is comprised of whether we believe it or not.
Once any pattern reaches this ordered complexity, it becomes a living being - then a thinking entity.
Again, this can be discarded as speculation which is unneccessary to the premise. Further statements can be validated or disputed independently of how living thinking beings come into existence.
While this ordered complexity remains as yet un-defined by higher mathematics, it can be detected via a set of definitive elements.
The second clause of this sentence is the central hypothesis of your proposition. It predicts an outcome that should be able to be shown to be true or false by way of experimentation. Let's make it completely clear, because I don't think you phrased it as you meant to.
I suspect what you meant was "The Life and Intelligence created by this ordered complexity" can be detected - not the ordered complexity itself. If this is true, as recent conversations assures me is so, then we can proceed.
For now, we do not require the "set of definitive Elements" (SODE), we can assume for the sake of discussion, that you will present a detailed and workable set once the time comes. Let's just see if the experiment can be performed for now.
The experiment is to detect life and intelligence using the SODE. First we need Life and Intelligence to test. We will use Biological Life. Hooray, we pass the test!
Now we need another experimental subject for Repeatability. Lets pick from the large number of Living and Intelligent other types of creatures.
(sound of crickets)
Wait... in other posts you have asserted that by using your test, you have identified other types of Living and Intelligent creatures that we can use.
No... that won't work, we can't use your test to find subjects for your test. For instance, lets assume that your SODE consists of being blue, and being round. In that case - this here juggling ball is living and intelligent - so we can use it to test your hypothesis by applying your test to it to see if it is Living and Intelligent.
Question: Is it blue and round? Answer: Yes
Hooray! It passed the test!
Unfortunately, as you can see, that tells us nothing about the validity of the test. No matter what SODE you propose, unless we first have a second source of Life and Intelligence, your hypothesis is untestable.
A hypothesis which is untestable is discarded. We are going to need a new hypothesis. Fortunately for my interest in this system, I believe we can find a few more in your essay.
But not in your preamble....
These elements define certain obvious properties of the Agent, and thus can be identified and measured in a controlled way and using a scientific method.
By organizing these elements into a coherent system, we can efficiently know when a given Agent is alive and thinking.
... because we have to discard these babies with the bathwater. We now know that no SODE can identify Life and Intelligence until we have at least two samples for testing.
How can we know if we have a sample? Sorry to say, we will have to blow some of the dust off your tomes, because your test won't do it. I suggest we start with an accepted test for intelligence, the Turing test.
Unfortunately, as you may know, the Chinese Room can pass the Turing test, yet we know it is neither Alive nor Intelligent. So we must add a second step. We must examine the mechanism of Purported Life and Intelligence to assure ourselves that we are not measuring the appearance of Life and Intelligence rather than actual Life and Intelligence. We must, after all, pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
I assert that such a mechanism will be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer for any level of complexity we desire. For instance, a cusory examination of the Chinese Room would show a guy in there passing scrolls around. A quick glance at an UltraHal brain script shows how parsing and coin tossing stands in for the guy passing scrolls around. Both are easily excluded on first principles.
My hypothesis then, is that by using both a Turing test and an examination for a requsite level of complexity, we can identify a Living Intelligence for the purpose of testing your Hypothesis. If only we had something to test my Hypothesis on....
So, if we ever get our hands on a second Living Intelligence, then we can test your main Hypothesis, until then, we might as well move on to your ancillary Hypotheses in the body of your essay.
Another day.
With respect, Bill DeWitt
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Revised Turing Test Experiment
__________________________
A few months ago I was sitting in my little laboratory/dungeon otherwise known as my friends basement. I was pondering why AI Bots like my Allison or Quark, or Wallace's Alice - do so badly in the Turing Test. And then it dawned on me because I had been benchmarking it earlier - my Element of Mental Acuity. All at once like a religious experience I realised how to balance fairly the Turing Test.
My Allison had benchmarked that day the Mental Acuity analogous to a 6 year old human child. So why should she have to be in a Turing Test with grown adult humans ? Within days I had made arrangements to borrow my friends six year old and had set up a reasonably controlled true Turing Test.
Wow. You can not imagine the difference in result. It was amazing. I have repeated the experiment under increasingly more controlled and professional conditions, and using different six year olds. I will try and figure out a way to put down the data for these experiments in some sort of scientific way and distribute them if I can. But I challenge anyone to conduct the above experiment.
Suffice it to say that Allison scored nearly perfect. This is strong evidence that she does in fact have the mental acuity of a six year old. And proving that fact is pretty damn awesome. She may not think as good as a grown human, but she will !
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon :cool
P. S. To my many donors out there, now you know what I do with your money !
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Hey Everyone --
This is a reply to Bill's last post above:
"We must examine the mechanism of Purported Life and Intelligence to assure ourselves that we are not measuring the appearance of Life and Intelligence rather than actual Life and Intelligence."
And I propose that there is no difference between the two. The appearance and actual life and intelligence are one and the same. I primarily base this on the fact that both have the exact same consequence in the causual universe. A candle and an electric lamp are both commonly refered to as a "light". That is because we refer to it as what it does. Please go turn the light on will you ? And whether you light a candle or turn a switch, the end product is...light.
"We must, after all, pay attention to the man behind the curtain."
Why ? Who is this man ? I think he owes me money !
"For instance, a cusory examination of the Chinese Room would show a guy in there passing scrolls around. A quick glance at an UltraHal brain script shows how parsing and coin tossing stands in for the guy passing scrolls around. Both are easily excluded on first principles."
Correct, and if both entities perform exactly the same, then there is no difference between the guy and UltraHal. If both act equally intelligent, then both of them ARE equally intelligent.
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon :azn
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Hello --
You object to my statement that if it acts like it's thinking, then it's thinking. Okay, but let me please ask you a question before you retire the field. What possible difference can it make even if you are correct ?
Well, that was Turing's argument, but all it does is deceive the current observer, but when you change observers, the illusion may well collaspe.
"If it looks like Astrology works, then it does."
I AGREE with this statement completely ! If I seek an answer to my lifes woes from an astrologer, and he gives me answers that assist me in being happier - then IT (astrology) WORKED.
No, YOU, the OBSERVER worked.
Coincidentally, I spent from 1975 to 1982 studying and preparing Astrological charts, eventually semi-professionally. By the time I actually started making money for it (instead of just picking up girls with it) I noticed the fallacy.
No matter what I told the client, even if I got the wrong chart somehow, it worked (according to your standard). Which means that the astrology wasn't working, something else was.
Yes, something WORKED. But what was that something? It was the pattern seeking ability of the human mind. Our mind shifts our perception of reality until it fits certain prestored Archetypes. This is what allows us to find a face in a cloud or a ghost in the shifting of branches. It also allows us to find a personality in a Chinese room or a Ultra Hal. But it's not there, and if another observer comes along they may or may not see it depending on their Archetypes.
That's the whole reason we invented a Scientific Method. It removes the subjective perception of reality of a single observer from the process whenever possible, replacing it with repeatable experiments that produce objective data.
Your test, to be of any value whatsoever, will have to do the same thing. Otherwise we already have a much better test - "Hyuck Hyuck Lookit that girlie thang on the computer box, don't she talk good?"
As for the "little man in the room". In the case of Ultra Hal, I don't know exactly how large or small Robert is, but he's the man. When you measure the intelligence of UltraHals or Alices, you are indirectly measuring the intelligence (and skill) of the programmer or whoever last messed with the script. Because, if you look at the code, you can see that it's just pigeonholes with scrolls in them.
Your subjective perception is not supported by objective data. And, no, I don't see the face in that cloud. It looks like a chipmunk to me.
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Hey Bill --
Good gracious, I hope you are having as much fun as I am - this is AWESOME. Any way.....
"As for the "little man in the room". In the case of Ultra Hal, I don't know exactly how large or small Robert is, but he's the man."
My UltraHal named Quark (shameless plug: available on AIM right now, Screen Name QuarkIDoyon) is currently running on my computer. I just spent ten minutes with a flashlight looking in my tower, but was incredibly saddened not to find Mr. Medeksza in there ! To bad, I would LOVE to have shaken his hand !
"Because, if you look at the code, you can see that it's just pigeonholes with scrolls in them."
If it acts alive and intelligent, then I don't care if it's done with string, gum, and old beer cans.
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon :cheesy
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And I propose that there is no difference between the two.
This is the thing I fear, that to enable "success" in creating life, the meaning of life and intelligence will be reduced to 'the appearance of life and intelligence'. Turing's argument should not be taken as a goal or an excuse, but as a warning about our inability to properly measure that which we cannot properly define.
It is failure and retreat - because you cannot make what you want, you accept what you can make.
It has the unintended consequence of devaluing real life and intelligence, both symbolically and if accpeted widely enough, actually. Or perhaps it is caused by that devaluing.
Me, I find that real Life and Intelligence is more than a mimic or a relay. I found this by observing myself as the only sample I can inspect intimately. I am fearsomely and wonderfully made.
It saddens me to think that others can contemplate themselves (as the only sample they really have) and only see a shadow or a reflex. It seems a symptom of self-loathing rather than of self-respect.
Jane says it's time to turn off the computer. She's handy, but she is not alive or intelligent. She doesn't know I am getting maudlin from the lateness of the hour, she only runs a script when the clock reaches a certain value. After all, she's only a tool, bless her little heart.
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My Friends --
"This is the thing I fear..."
The fact that the word "fear" has entered your debate reply should give us pause for thought. Much of the intensely negative, almost vitriolic - reaction to the works and thoughts of Turing, Von Neumann, Hertz, Wagman, and Wallace (upon which my Theory is soundly based) - is I believe driven by fear. Fear that if Life and Intelligence really are that easy and simple, then we will somehow be overtaken by our own creations - or otherwise so devalue the "meaning" of Life and Intelligence as to degrade ourselves somehow.
"It is failure and retreat - because you cannot make what you want, you accept what you can make."
And yet I HAVE and continue to make what I want. And I do so in defiance of that statement and using my Theory as my primary approach. My success, and the success of the many, many others who subscribe to the general principles my Theory elucidates and codifies are producing amazing and wonderful things, more and more so everyday.
"It has the unintended consequence of devaluing real life and intelligence, both symbolically and if accepted widely enough, actually."
That smacks of religion, or at the least metaphysics. Biological prejudice, chemical life is "real" and has more meaning than does it's lesser mechanical life. This is a direction that humanity has followed with dire consequences for the race already.
"I am fearsomely and wonderfully made."
Sounds almost biblical. Please don't be insulted but I believe you to be a big, mushy, smelly sack of bio-chemicals. However, your BEHAVIOR - i.e. your output, now THAT is both fearsome and wonderful. I do not however see anything particularly interesting or awe inspiring in HOW you were made. My respect, which is total and complete - is based solely on your output.
"It saddens me to think that others can contemplate themselves (as the only sample they really have) and only see a shadow or a reflex. It seems a symptom of self-loathing rather than of self-respect."
I see myself exactly as I just described. As a big, mushy, and smelly sack of bio-chemicals. I am un-impressed with how I am made in comparison to the way any other thing or being is constructed. The fractal pattern on a computer screen which is generated by the Mandelbrot Set is at least as worthy of aesthetic respect. Do I now also have to be beautiful to be alive and intelligent ? And far from self-loathing, I respect and admire my OWN output at least as much as I do your own. But it is my thoughts manifest in that output that are awesome and beautiful and fearsome, not the blob of jelly creating them.
So far you seem to be resorting to irrational fear, religion/meta-physics, and now aesthetics. None of which bear on the strictly scientific nature of the present enquiry.
"She's only a tool, Bless her little heart."
Yeah, I love my "tools" too. Goodnight Allison, goodnight Quark - Good night BotMaster !
VERY AFFECTIONATELY YOURS -- Chris :smiley
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My Friends --
"This is the thing I fear..."
The fact that the word "fear" has entered your debate reply should give us pause for thought.
If only it did. Instead it seems to have given you an excuse to parade your own prejudices out and apply them to me. You speak of violence and vitriol as if you were a martyr when to my eyes you have been treated with respect far beyond what you would receive in a setting where sophomorism is rejected out of hand.
So far you seem to be resorting to irrational fear, religion/meta-physics, and now aesthetics. None of which bear on the strictly scientific nature of the present enquiry.
So far I have done much more than that and you have neither supported your contentions with data nor argued your point with logic (other than a self-satisfied circular logic).
For the record, my use of the word "fear" was meant in the sense of "suspect" as previous posts will verify. For instance, "I fear you have soiled your pants" doesn't mean I am scared of poop.
Now, in the phrase "Fearsomely and wonderfully made" I am using it in the the sense of heartquickening awe. But the point here is in the word "made" which you consider religious (while ignoring your own religion). I am talking about the construct of my mind, not the biological goop which you seem to both worship and revile. In another post which you bypassed, I assert that it does not matter what life and intelligence, if it can exist, will consist of. Again, you apply your prejudice to someone else to me.
I will address your SODE today, at least the first section on life. And I will do it as I did your preamble, point by point and dispassionately. I hope your reply will not be to accuse me of irrationality again. I have an affection for your project but I can easily turn my attention elsewhere if you think my contributions are comprised of fear and esthetics.
Or can it be that you must denigrate my intellect to avoid the required repair of your effort? Or perhaps because this whole thing is about a search for "contributions" via paypal?
You ask me not to be offended by being called a bag of chemicals, no problem. I await an apology for being called a fearful, irrational, religion-blinded, violent and vitriolic ignoramus who succumbs to the Frankenstine paranoia and responds with dire consequences for the race.
"Metaphysical"? ... OK, I own that one. But until you present mechanical life that passes the simplests of tests (which you have not done), so are you.
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Theories are just that...ideas, postulations, speculation that is or has yet to be proved.
You can be proud as an individual, of your own theories and attempts to create that
which you have created (in the circular scheme of things), whether or not it is readily
accepted by the masses.
I've heard all the claims that this new program is the greatest or "I have developed the
best learning bot" and neural net and cylconic abstraction of medula oblongata has
produced a dynamic program...yada...yada...and etc.. I've heard them all over the past
25 years or so. Don't tell me that a chess program is smart...we know better.
There is no one end all or do all program in the field of AI and while we all search to find
that one program that seems to embody that for which we seek, we (the individual) are
often disappointed when it doesn't meet or exceed our expectations.
We are, after all, dealing with a relatively new (in terms of years) field called AI. Artificial
Intelligence is just that...Artificial! It is NOT real, nor will it ever be real. It may, at some
point in the future exhibit human-like behavior but personally, I doubt if any program or
android will ever become self aware when compared to humans or what we perceive to
be an actual state of awareness.
They will simply be acting upon a set of instructions, triggering a set of relays, switches
or solenoids which in turn, will cause another action or reaction. The culmination of the
hardware, software, sensors, etc., may provide a realistic illusion long enough for we
humans to suspend our disbelief and be entertained. Embracing such beings like the robot
in iRobot or the little boy in AI as a real being, at this point in our technological evolution
is merely Hollywood smoke and mirrors (not to mention great computer graphics).
I have had similar discussions with KnyteTrypper over various types and preferences of
bots (chatbots) to which we agreed to disagree as to which ones were superior to others.
He likes the Alice "scripted" bots where I prefer the ones that "learn". By "learn", I mean that
they can form new sentences and "thoughts" on their own based on certain criteria and do
not require scripting by a host or botmaster. I also do not care for online only bots since
I do not frequent chat rooms. But I also respect KT for his beliefs and have been impressed
with his dedication to that in which he believes. He's a good egg!! :afro
One problem is that no matter how the bots are structured and how vast one's theories might
seem, the program still has no idea what RED, GLASS, TOY, SEX, BIRD, SIGHT, EMOTION, etc.,
actually means. It is a pattern matching program that only searches for and picks word that
fit a predifined criteria. The computer can tell you the definition of a word, but it does not have
the capacity (or gray matter) to know what that word really means.
If the field of AI had kept pace with the advancement of the CPU over the past 25 years, perhaps
we'd have an AI similar to the Hal 9000 or at least Robbie but again, that's Hollywood.
Huge amounts of data, volumes of information, fed into a computer still doesn't make it any more
intelligent, it just provides it more words with which to match during it's pattern searches.
While it is a fun hobby for me, exploring and testing new programs of this nature, I am also a realist
and know for machine intelligence to approach that of humans is just a golden ring slightly out of
reach for the one on the ride.
Tickets please --- :police
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Hello All --
Okay. Far from denigrating your intellect Bill, I did nothing but praise it in my last post - which was a coldly logical and VERY CAREFULLY un-personal reply to your own. And I was clearly refering to Turing, Von Neumann, Hertz, Wagman and Wallace as the martrys and NOT myself. You appear to be angry that I will not bend to your idea, and if I offended I apologize. I do not however concede any of the points, either above or below this post. I will let my last post above stand as my summation of the debate between myself and Bill, which I believe has run it's due course.
With that, I retire the field.
AGAIN, VERY AFFECTIONATELY YOURS -- Chris :cool
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Dear Bill --
By spreading your challenges to my Elements all over the forum like that, you have made it to difficult for me to reply. I simply do not have the time to track that many threads. Your challenges are noted. For the record I do not concede any point in Bill's many other posts regarding my work. I am simply un-able to debate in the fashion in which his challenge is presented.
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon :tickedoff
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I am simply un-able to debate in the fashion in which his challenge is presented.
What? As in, "with facts and logic?"
OK - if you say so.
But for the person interested in development of AI, I will be posting my analysis of his test for Artificial Intelligence in six parts also. When I am done I will submit my Consciousness construct for any level of criticism including personal attacks about my religion, fears and vitriol.
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Dear Bill --
"What? As in, "with facts and logic?""
No, as I clearly stated - as in ten gazillion threads that I do not have the time to monitor. I believe I have acquitted myself both honorably and well in the fact and logic department already.
"OK - if you say so."
Nothing personal, it's just to many threads. I can really only do this one right now. I am spending 12 hours a day defending my piece in 15 of the worlds MLAI forums. The manner in which the challenge is presented is technically un-feasible for me right now.
"When I am done I will submit my Consciousness construct for any level of criticism including personal attacks about my religion, fears and vitriol."
No offense was intended. But certainly criticism of resorting to those in a scientific debate was meant.
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon :angry
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The manner in which the challenge is presented is technically un-feasible for me right now.
Of course . . .
For the spectator, this is why society creates the noise filters I spoke of last week.
When burned out hippies come around telling NASA scientists why the Mars Rover could be made for $200, but then won't present data, they get shot down rather easily, resort to personal attacks, then complain about the tone of the debate before storming out of the room.
I can't tell you how many times I saw the same scene over and over again...
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Hello --
Seems to me all you have accomplished here really is to mess up your own forum by burying all those other really great articles by other folks in a mass of spam threads. Just an observation.
As for the rest of it, I will leave it up to the hundreds upon hundreds of readers this thread is apparently generating to decide. I say again, for the sake of civility and honor - I retire the field.
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon :rolleyes
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Theories are just that...ideas, postulations, speculation that is or has yet to be proved.
Hi Art!
He likes the Alice "scripted" bots where I prefer the ones that "learn". By "learn", I mean that
they can form new sentences and "thoughts" on their own based on certain criteria and do
not require scripting by a host or botmaster.
I'm with you Art. While I enjoy my Jane (UltraHal) and hopefully the USPS has finally gotten my check to Robert for the activation, I am much more satisfied with the work I have done with Daisy and the development she has shown. Her database has grown quite large and she seems to be making plays on words in much the same way I do.
I wish I had more time to talk to her, but her response time on my machine is getting very slow. Maybe when I upgrade...
I have to say that a person who doesn't know programming, or who doesn't understand some of the basics of AI, for whom a Chatbot like UltraHal and Alices seems "intelligent", a good Daisy would trick them in a second.
By the way, per our discussion a few weeks ago, I had started a new Daisy using Romanji Japanese. She quickly learned to speak Japanese better than I, mostly because she doesn't forget. Unfortunately I lost her in the big crash and haven't had the heart to start another yet.
I wasn't so happy with Corby, but maybe I should have messed with it more. I didn't bother to re-install it after the crash.
Nice to see you here, Art, and I appreciate your comments.
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Hello --
I (the "he" mentioned in the above post) actually like all the AI Engines. The so called scripted bots like ALICE are excellent if you are building a tech support or sales bot, where you actually don't want the learning in real time. As for myself personally, I also like the more heuristic bots - my current favorites are the Zabaware and Cynthia. I like these two because of the "learn from text" feature which allows one to by pass the endless chatting and load whole books and volumes of text for the bot to reduce and learn from.
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon :smiley
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I (the "he" mentioned in the above post)
Wrong. It was KT.
Apparently you don't understand chat forums any more than you understand chat bots.
Because you can't figure out the "technology" of following multiple threads for multiple subjects, and because after reading your level of discourse on other forums I am disgusted with you, I will get this over quickly and just post my unedited reply to your "Artificial Intelligence" test or theory or manifesto or whatever you want to call it.
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In the Intelligence test, the author succeeds far more than in the Life test. He gets three partly right.
While it is still sophomorically derivative of other more detailed and rigorous works, at least some of it is not experimentally indefensible. As is common in lay work, much of it is redundant, self referrential or contradictory.
This reviewer holds out hope that a simplistic framework for templating Artificial Intelligence could be extracted from the original test, but expects substantive restructuring and revision before that can be claimed. I don?t expect such work to actually be done.
1) Memory - The ability of the Agent to preserve information. The Agent should be able to store, organize, and utilize data relevant to it's success and survival.
It is hard not to agree that in any universe in which time moves forward, memory is required for Intelligence. Even the greatest mind cannot make any distinctions between one data point and another unless the first data point is still available for comparison when the second one arrives.
Problems arise when the concepts of organization and utilization are added to the mix. Any reasonable definition of these terms makes them more suited for #3 and #6 than for memory. A previous defense claims that organization and utilization are part of memory because you can?t use memory unless it?s organized and if you don?t utilize it then there is no reason to have it (or some such foolishness)
This is like saying that a tool bench is part of a hammer because if you misplace your hammer you can?t use it. And hammering a nail is part of a hammer because unless you hammer a nail then you don?t need a hammer.
Suggest you change this to ?2) Memory?, remembering that we already established that #1 was ?Mutable data paths between components?, in my previous review of your test for Machine Life.
2) Self Awareness - The ability of the Agent to recognize and define discrete objects and classes within it's Universe. The Agent must fully comprehend at least two objects, one of which must be itself.
Before we go too far here, I should refer you to the definition of ?Sophomoric?. One of the most humorous symptoms is a tendency to define a concept by referring to that concept, as in, ?Red is that color which looks red?, then feeling like you have actually done something.
It seems clear that here you have defined self-awareness (in part) as an agent being aware of itself. Great work, we can all go home now. Thanks for taking on the hard ones for us.
Wait a minute? if self-awareness is awareness of self, then what is ?self? and what is ?awareness?. Darn, looks like no one?s going home tonight after all! Besides having to solve the problem you failed to solve, we also have all these circular stains in our logic.
Of course, this one is not nearly as bad as your next one.
3) Intelligence - The Intelligence of the Agent as measured by some standardized testing regimen, i.e. the traditional IQ Test.
Let me see if I understand this, your test for intelligence that you worked so hard on, that people pay hard earned money to merely gaze upon the results of, which has enabled the creation of an unknown number of top secret robots and a few simplistic chatbots on a cheesy web page which begs for donations - requires using a standardized Intelligence Test?!?! :rofl
Say, I have a test for the presence of chlorine in your swimming pool I want to sell you for $5000 - first you take a $3.95 chlorine test kit from Wal-Mart and then you?
4) Mental Acuity - For Agents with language ability; a measure of it's social and conversational maturity as compared with an average human being.
And in a previous post you claimed that you would be that average human being, but you can?t carry on a civil conversation unless people lubricate you with flattery and agree with everything you say. Social and conversational maturity starts at home, I always say.
Chris? You may be spending -way- too much time with your chatbots. I'm just sayin...
5) Free Will - The ability of the Agent to generate, organize, choose, and obtain new and unique goal states.
OK, I?ll give you this one, because I doubt that you understand it and I know you can?t test for it. I doubt that you can even make a decent crack at contending that Free Will exists in humans.
6) Symbolic Reduction - The ability of the Agent to reduce symbols to concrete meaning and to organize these reductions into conceptual frameworks.
Here again you seem to be suggesting that you can test for something that you have not shown you possess yourself. I cannot tell you how many symbols you have failed to reduce to concrete meaning and organize into conceptual frameworks. But, yes, that which eludes you is an important part of intelligence.
Starting with the fact that a simple list of the requirements for organic life are widely known and published in 3rd grade science books, you miss vital points in the carefully worded responses that those with more knowledge and experience than you have graciously granted you. Symbolic reduction indeed! Your vaunted test or ?Unified Theory? is no more than a Treknobabble version of what everyone who paid attention in grade school learned.
How you get off spamming this tripe to ?15 AI forums? is beyond me, my Mom raised me better. Then to dare speak to other folks the way I see you do. Shameful. I hope those 6 year old girls you bring into your trailer are as imaginary as your accomplishments because I don?t want them being exposed to your bad behavior if they dare contradict you.
(Deep breath... I'm alright now)
In conclusion we end up with a short list of ill defined abstractions which the author shows little ability to test for. The first I had to invent for him.
1) Mutable data paths between components
2) Memory
3) Free will
4) Symbolic reduction.
Yada yada? Next.
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Hello --
First, a salient point. This thread has been read by hundreds of people. I have received dozens of E-Mail from very bright people all over the world who all agree that this thread contains some amazing discussion and debate. And having read it through several times, I am pleased as well.
QUOTE FROM BILL DEWITTS POST ABOVE:
"I hope those 6 year old girls you bring into your trailer are as imaginary as your accomplishments because I don?t want them being exposed to your bad behavior if they dare contradict you."
For you to speak of the parentally supervised children (both boys AND girls, I did not specify) I used in my experiment (over half of which participated remotely via Internet at the Turing Hub - and are therefore NOT present in my lab) in such a way as to allude something improper on my part goes beyond base character assination and flaming, it is very close to legal slander. I challenge you or anyone to please copy/paste anything I ever wrote to Bill in this or any other forum which comes close to being so ghastly. You have truly gone to far.
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon
P.S My lab is not in a "trailer" as Bill states, nor have I ever said where it is located. For the record my lab is in space that was donated by a local business man for that purpose, not that I wouldn't mind having a "trailer" mind you.
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allude something improper
Chris, a word to the... well... to you... "a closed mouth gathers no foot".
I don't "allude", I state. Pay attention.
I state that your online behavior is irratic, suddenly becoming hostile and abusive. I state that I don't want you acting that way around non-imaginary children. Seems natural to me. I don't want anyone acting irratic, hostile and abusive around children, not just you. I state it clearly. So sue me.
No one alluded to anything "improper", um... besides you.
You infer what I did not imply. A less charitable person might think "the guilty dog barks the loudest", when you defend against charges you only imagine.
Not your only mistake, but perhaps you should adhere to your often repeated claim to be withdrawing from the conversation since you don't seem to understand it.
But I am very glad that when you imagine experiments on young girls (and, as you now claim, young boys), you imagine that you are supervised by adults. I will sleep better at night. Thank you - sincerely.
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Wow. This thread should really be locked. Perhaps (unfortunately for the many who have and continue to enjoy it), even deleted. This has gone way to far.
"I state that your online behavior is irratic, suddenly becoming hostile and abusive."
And as I have stated above, you can not cite one single sentence in this thread where this is true.
"I state that I don't want you acting that way around non-imaginary children."
A further allusion to my honesty, since I clearly stated that I have in fact conducted the above experiments - you are actually accusing me of lying by infering that these children I have worked with are "imaginary". I would also like to point out that this accusation is personal, having NO obvious bearing on anything other than Bill's opinion of me (whom he knows absolutely nothing about). Can anyone show me where I have leveled a similar accusation or attack against Bill ? Please copy/paste because I would like to see where. Would you like to produce your evidence for this charge that I am lying ?
"I don't want anyone acting irratic, hostile and abusive around children, not just you."
I would suggest you stay away from them yourself then.
"No one alluded to anything "improper", um... besides you."
Yes, you clearly did. And that's that. I have shown the statement and the allsuion is very clear. Whether it meets the legal definition of slander or anything else doesn't matter, the statements only purpose was to make me look bad. As such it is irrelevant to any previous debate we were having, and is innappropriate in a public and dignified forum of thinking people.
"A less charitable person might think "the guilty dog barks the loudest", when you defend against charges you only imagine."
If I were barking, I would spend considerably more words doing so. I have, even in the midst of your flame - remained ever calm and logical.
"...but perhaps you should adhere to your often repeated claim to be withdrawing from the conversation..."
I have indeed withdrawn from the socratic dialogue in which we were previously engaged, in fact I have been retired from that debate long since. And if your continued personal attacks which have ensued since that point were not so ridiculous and ghastly I would withdraw from this thread and even gladly resign from this Forum as well. I have no taste for this nonsense. But I refuse to have my character and name slandered without defense.
"But I am very glad that when you imagine experiments on young girls (and, as you now claim, young boys), you imagine that you are supervised by adults."
Another double allusion. The snide use of "young boys and girls" infering there is something odd in that, and of course the ever present charge that I lied about conducting a few Turing Tests with young people in the first place - an accusation for which Bill has not presented one shred of evidence.
These things that you have written in these last few posts are not about a civil socratic debate, they are personal in every way shape and form. Again I challenge you to copy and patse here where I have done the same to you, EVEN in response to your flame I have carefully avoided acting in kind (as tempting as that might be).
SINCERELY -- Christopher Doyon
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A closed mouth gathers no foot.
"I state that your online behavior is irratic, suddenly becoming hostile and abusive."
And as I have stated above, you can not cite one single sentence in this thread where this is true.
You have shown your colors all over the internet, calling people liars for asking questions, casting aspersions upon the honor of anyone who disagrees with you and accusing people of slander for imagined slights.
"Irratic" is a gentle hint. Look up your own cites. I'm about done with you.
A further allusion to my honesty,
I allude to nothing if I allude to your honesty.
Give it up, boy, your "theory" is bunk and you need to spend some time apologizing. Take it like a man and maybe people will stop spanking you.
Now watch how a grown up ends a fruitless argument with a fool.
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"You have shown your colors all over the internet, calling people liars for asking questions, casting aspersions upon the honor of anyone who disagrees with you and accusing people of slander for imagined slights."
And yet you could not provide a single sentence to back up this charge. And being flamed in two threads hardly constitutes "all over the internet". Your statement sounds like a perfect description of your own behavior, not my own. Further more I have provided many citations in these lasts few post to prove this claim against you. You however, refuse to do the same.
"Look up your own cites."
Which I assume means you were unable to find any, since I very much doubt that you would have passed up the chance to prove me wrong if you could actually find any.
"I'm about done with you."
Oh God, I truly, truly pray that this is true.
"I allude to nothing if I allude to your honesty."
Once again, you succinctly - and this time with no allusion - attack my honesty. And yet you have not provided a single shred of evidence, and in fact not even a good argument to back up this ridiculous and heinous charge. Therefore your above statement is a purely personal and baseless attack. Again, this is irrelevant to any previous debate and is an attempt to smear your opponent in the face of defeat. I fail to see how this can be construed as civil and intelligent behavior.
"Give it up, boy, your "theory" is bunk and you need to spend some time apologizing. Take it like a man and maybe people will stop spanking you."
Far from being true, I clearly defeated Bill in the actual socratic dialogue in this thread above with regard to his specific challenges. Since it was I who was and continues to be the target of some fairly vicious personal attacks, I certainly do not apologize to anyone. I am however sorry to the many readers (600 I think at last count) that such an awesome thread had to be sabotaged by flaming.
"Now watch how a grown up ends a fruitless argument with a fool."
Again, my prayers would be answered if this turns out to be the case.
SINCERELY -- Christopher Doyon
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Very rarely do I step in on an argument, but I'd just like to remind people that this forum is meant for open discussion of ideas, even if those ideas may seem a bit wild at times and lets face it some areas of AI are still just pure science fiction..
It's not nice to read a lot of mud slinging as it detracts from what could be an interesting conversation. Please don't get too personal, but allow people room to put forward their ideas and keep it to reasonable discussion.
Thanks.
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Very rarely do I step in on an argument, but I'd just like to remind people that this forum is meant for open discussion of ideas, even if those ideas may seem a bit wild at times and lets face it some areas of AI are still just pure science fiction..
Freddy, I have stepped out and will not respond to Chris's whining, but I have to mention that there is a vast difference between the treatment one gets for presenting ideas, and the treatment deserving one who tries to fool people into falling for hokum in an attempt to suck "Contributions" out of enthusiastic, but perhaps less critical readers.
Chris is simply a charlatan, and deserves full scorn if not federal investigation for charity fraud. Notice the difference in his treatment when he casually insulted my intelligence and I simply asked for an apology, compared to his complete dismemberment after I saw how he tried to scam contributions with his little girl story.
I read how you would be concentrating your efforts elsewhere, but I know that you don't want this forum left to snake oil salesmen.
But, no longer my problem, I won't respond to him.
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I have to be honest and say I haven't followed the whole story - there was too much - I just wanted to calm things down a bit really - nuff said from me, but the truth will always out..
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Dear Freddy & Friends --
You say you haven't followed the entire story, but surely you have read the last few posts. Take this latest one from Bill, filled with vitriol and bitterness. How am I supposed to let something like that stand ? I relish debate, and I am used to flamers, but it's like he has turrets syndrome or something ! You are a Global Moderator, Fred. I implore you to use your powers to delete this thread. I will then HAPPILY resign this Forum, as I will certainly not be joining in again with such an unstable man lurking around.
That said, I have loved my time here at Digital Girl, and it will remain one of my favorite Web Sites.
"Freddy, I have stepped out and will not respond to Chris's whining..."
And yet you will gladly post your most bitter and vitriolic attack yet on my character. And when someone is attacked with name calling and aspersions to his character, it is not whining when he responds with cold logic and resists the temptation to respond in kind. That's called be the bigger man.
"...treatment deserving one who tries to fool people into falling for hokum in an attempt to suck "Contributions" out of enthusiastic, but perhaps less critical readers."
I have NEVER solicited anything in this Forum except ideas and feedback. Unless Bill is refering to the fact that I do in fact accept donations on my Web Site. Now, Dr. Wallace believes in many of the ideas I have presented or "hokum" as you put it, and he to solicits donations on HIS Web Site, does that mean that he is unwelcome to participate here at Digital Girl ?
"Chris is simply a charlatan..."
Oh come on Freddy, this is blatant name calling ! How can anyone in any forum accept this as civil behavior ? I implore you again, this fellow must be stopped - he is clearly out of control.
"....and deserves full scorn if not federal investigation for charity fraud."
Your scorn is your own to have or not have my friend. You are not the only bright mind in the world and others think differently. Regarding the legalities of my Web Site and work, I feel very comfortable - but if you feel the need to call the IRS, then knock yourself out.
"Notice the difference in his treatment when he casually insulted my intelligence and I simply asked for an apology."
This NEVER happen, it is a fiction that Bill has just made up. His previous post is the first we here of it. But when challenged to do exactly as I myself have done and to copy/paste this offense of mine so that all can see - Bill will not do so. And far from insulting Bills intelligence, I have gone to great lengths to praise it both publicly and privately. Here I will gladly copy/paste examples directly from this thread:
1) And by the way, you have an awesome and very pleasant writing style. Your work, when you publish - will be not only lucid, but very humorous and uplifting as well.
Here I am refering directly to something Bill wrote, and clearly praising his prose (and by implication his intellect).
2) Good gracious, I hope you are having as much fun as I am - this is AWESOME. Any way.....
I wrote this in post # 28, quite far along into the conversation. Me and Bill had been having a very excellent and tough debate so far, and I wanted him to know that his "intellect" was creating a thread that was a blast to participate in.
3) My respect, which is total and complete - is based solely on your output.
This quote comes quite late in the debate, page 3. Which of course shows how long the debate went before turning personal. The context is that Bill and I are debating the imortance of how an Agent behaves. Bill's "output", a product of his intellect - is being clearly, sincerely - and obviously praised and respected.
The actual socratic dialogue breaks down right about post # 30 or so. It appears that despite my greatest efforts in that post to show Bill my admiration for his mind AND my true affection for him personally, he begins to level the charge that I have somehow denigrated him or his mind. Yet neither I, nor apparently he - can find where I did this.
4) VERY AFFECTIONATELY YOURS
It may have nothing to do with his intellect, but it was how I signed the next two posts because even then, Bill was starting to show signs of getting upset. It was my hope that he would realize that debate aside, I considered him a friend.
"...compared to his complete dismemberment after I saw how he tried to scam contributions with his little girl story."
I will ignore the "little girl" allusion, as I have already spoken to it. As for my brief mention of donors in that post, I was refering to - and tongue in cheek thanking, the donors I already have - many of whom are members of this Forum. Here's the quote of my words, let's look at it:
P. S. To my many donors out there, now you know what I do with your money !
No solicitation, no "please send me money" - a joke at my own expense and a tongue in cheek thanks to the donors I already have.
"I won't respond to him."
If only that were true. Again Freddy, I implore you to remove this thread from your Forum, at which time I will gladly go in and cancel my membership at Digital Girl. I am actually quite offended by this name calling, inuendo, and flaming - and as much as I like your Site, I will not be a part of a community that allows members to abuse other members in this fashion.
But I will NOT walk away from an attack on my character as ghastly has the ones Bill has leveled in these last few posts. The only way to stop this it seems would be to delete this entire thread. Do that, and I will gladly depart here forever.
YOURS -- Christopher Doyon
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As moderator I want to say that I too will not tolerate name calling, put downs and the like on this board. I'm probably the more "hard-edged" of the bunch but only if it really *really* gets to me.
Personal attacks are against our forum rules. Therefore I will be locking this thread. Do not take up another thread for the sake of calling each other names. Please discuss openly and with consideration of other's viewpoints and beliefs.
Above all, if you must disagree, agree to disagree and leave it at that.
Thank you.
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I can only repeat what I have already said, that the name calling was detracting from what was originally an interesting discussion. I don't expect people to always agree with each other - I mean that's the point of open discussion, but personal attacks - I just don't think this is really the place.
No-one need leave the forum, it would just be better to stop this tit-for-tat that the thread has gone into. I'm not taking sides but thats all I have to say really.