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Ask Dr. Richard Wallace, Artificial Intelligence Researcher
Today's interview guest is Dr. Richard Wallace, creator of the Alicebot and AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language). Suggestion: look through some of the pages about Wallace in the first (Google search) link above before you start posting questions. Then, please, stick to the usual "one question per post." After this post has been up for around 24 hours, we'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to Wallace, and post his replies verbatim (except for minor HTML formatting) soon after he sends them to us.
Special Fun Interview Bonus:
There is a site, www.pandorabots.com, where you can make your own Alice-style bot. I created SlashWallace using (mostly) default information about Dr. Wallace that is already on pandorabots.com. It might be kind of fun to see how the bot's responses stack up against the answers from the real Dr. Wallace, eh?
It has come up in conversation that ALICE thinks intelligence to be an illusion. If this is so, why bother emulating human intelligence? Why not try to create a machine that is capable of reasoning at the expense of easy communication? ALICE is just an illusion, if a pretty sweet one. Note that this is from someone who spent 15 minutes last night arguing that the sky is in fact not blue at night, but black.
someone will ever come up with a definition for Consciousness that will appeal to everyone? Or are we doomed to attempt to simulate something we`ve not yet defined forever?
There seems to be (from a layman's point of view) a relatively big movement in the cognitive sciences claiming that human reason is inherently tied to perception and embodiment.
Particularly, this school claims that humans do not just base the basic structures of their logic on their sensorial perceptions (Damasio's "Descartes' Error"), but that they reuse the logic they develop to process perception, to process higher-level logic and language per se (Johnson and Lakoff's "Philosophy in the Flesh").
For example: the human mind, with complex instinctive and learned algorithms to deal with movement and position, would map causal reasoning to changes in movement and position and use the same algorithms (through the same hardware) to deal with it.
What would be the implications of such embodiment of reason on AI? Specifically, if a robot were given basic sensorial perceptions to approximate a human, motor ability, the logic to deal with these two, and the ability to map and reuse this logic for other purposes... would this make it better at "language AI" (approximate human processing of language)?
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
Should a fully AI system be able to use all Human-like stimulus and be able to react accordingly?
Most machine intelligence techniques I have come across (like neural nets, genetic algorithms and expert systems) require some for of training. A "reward algorithm", if you will, that reinforces certain behaviour mechanisms so that the system "trains" to do something you want.
I would assume that humans derive these training inputs much the same way, since pain receptors and pleasure sensations influence our behaviour much more than we would think at first.
The question is: For a "true" AI that mimics real intelligence as close as possible, what do you think would be used as training influences? Perhaps a neural net (or statistical analysis) could decide on which input should be used to train the system?
Are people worrying about moral ramifications, training an artificial Hitler, for example, or one with a God complex? (This last question is totally philosophical and I would be sincerely surprised if I ever see it affect me during my lifetime.)
Dr. Richard Wallace,
I have experimented both with Alice and the original Eliza (person-centered therapist emulator) written roughly some 35 years ago.
In conducted tests, Eliza was more believable than Alice in many aspects.
How exactly is the Alice AI core engine superior to one of Eliza which was written by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966?
Thanks.
Long form:
One of the classic bits of worry about AI, and about advanced computing systems in general, is that "computers will take over the world". That is, if we give computer systems motivations such as survival and growth, and the autonomy and judgement to fulfill those motivations, that they will do so without regard for us poor dumb humans -- and indeed see us as either an obstacle or an exploitable part of their environment. This is the premise behind numerous popular SF works, such as "Terminator" and "The Matrix": that the moral judgement of an AI is necessarily inhuman and without respect for humanity.
One response to this concern in SF (which in fact long pre-dates those works) is Asimov's "Laws of Robotics" -- the idea of designing AI systems (robots, in his case) such that respect for humans is one of their primary motivations. This seems to permit the robot to have moral judgement and autonomy without placing humans at risk.
The question of creating an AI system capable of moral judgement is both philosophically fascinating and evidently of survival interest to humanity. What kinds of design parameters -- motivations, "laws of robotics", and so forth -- do you think will be necessary as AI systems become more autonomous? How must AI morals differ from the morals that evolution (both genetic and cultural) has emplaced in humanity?
For that matter, we as humans feel morally obligated to one class of entities which we "create" -- our children. Recently, genetic science has brought to light an ethical quandary for many potential parents: whether it is right to attempt to create a genetically "optimized" child, or for that matter to abort a genetically "flawed" one. The argument on one side is that flawed persons have a right to exist, and that the quest to optimize humanity despises or disrespects what humanity is today. On the other side is the view that given the ability to create stronger, smarter, healthier children that we are morally amiss to refuse to take that step. Peter Singer in particular has become both famous and infamous over this matter.
Do you see the same quandary possible in the creation of AI systems? Positing the possibility of AI systems capable of suffering -- is it wrong to create one with this capacity? Given that the choice to create or not to create an AI does not involve the ethical hazards of abortion, eugenics, or euthanasia -- what obligations can we have towards our future AI creations in this regard?
Do you think we will eventually get to a point were an AI system is able to gather common sense knowledge from a giant corpus, such as the web? What are the problems we will have to solve?
it was curious that i found the inclusion of the Turing Test on your web-site, but i found no corresponding counter-balancing link to Searle's Chineese Room (Minds Brains and Programs).
.... The ...unless one accepts the idea that
however:
The Turing test enshrines the temptation to think that if something
behaves as if it had certain mental processes, then it must actually
have those mental processes. And this is part of the behaviourist's
mistaken assumption that in order to be scientific, psychology must
confine its study to externally observable behaviour. Paradoxically,
this residual behaviourism is tied to a residual dualism.
mind, they suppose, is something formal and abstract, not a part of
the wet slimy stuff in our heads.
the mind is completely independent of the brain or of any other
physically specific system, one could not possibly hope to create
minds just by designing programs. (Searle 1990a, p. 31)
the point of searle's chinese room is to see if 'understanding'
is involved in the process of computation. if you can 'process'
the symbols of the cards without understanding them (since you're
using a wordbook and a programme to do it) - by putting yourself
in the place of the computer, you yourself can ask yourself if
you required understanding to do it.
since Searle has generally debunked the Turing Test with the
Chineese Room -- and you post only the
Turing Test -- i'd like to ask you personally:
What is your own response to the Chineese
Room argument (or do you just ignore it)?
best regards,
john penner
As the field develops, however, what kind of crossover skills do you see as being necessary to success? Is a solid cognitive science/psychology background a must? What about something more low-level like neurobiology? What kind of mix of skills do you look for in the people you choose to work with?