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MIT Finds 'Grand Unified Theory of AI'

aftab14 writes "'What's brilliant about this (approach) is that it allows you to build a cognitive model in a much more straightforward and transparent way than you could do before,' says Nick Chater, a professor of cognitive and decision sciences at University College London. 'You can imagine all the things that a human knows, and trying to list those would just be an endless task, and it might even be an infinite task. But the magic trick is saying, "No, no, just tell me a few things," and then the brain — or in this case the Church system, hopefully somewhat analogous to the way the mind does it — can churn out, using its probabilistic calculation, all the consequences and inferences. And also, when you give the system new information, it can figure out the consequences of that.'"

33 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. That is very interesting by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Tell me about you to build a cognitive model in a fantastically much more straightforward and transparent way than you could do before.

    1. Re:That is very interesting by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Why do you think you'd be interested if this approach to AI allows for any new approaches to strategy.

    2. Re:That is very interesting by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1, Funny

      Possibly some problems in your childhood are related to this.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  2. NO NO let me make up the rest of the Story by Bat+Dude · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sounds a bit like a journalists brain to me ... NO NO let me make up the rest of the Story

  3. The real summary by Myji+Humoz · · Score: 5, Funny

    Since the actual summary seems to involve a fluff filled soundclip without anything useful, here's the run down of the article.
    1) We first tried to make AIs that could think like us by inferring new knowledge from existing knowledge.
    2) It turns out that teaching AIs to infer new ideas is really freaking hard. (Birds can fly because they have wings, mayflies can fly because they have wings, helicopters can... what??)
    3) We turned to probability based AI creation: you feed the AI a ton of data (training sets) and it can go "based on training data, most helicopters can fly."

    4) This guy, Noah Goodman of MIT, uses inferences with probability: he uses a programming language named "Church" so the computer can go
    "100% of birds in training set can fly. Thus, for a new bird there is a 100% chance it can fly"
    "Oh ok, penguins can't fly. Given a random bird, 90% chance it can fly. Given random bird with weight to wing span ratio of 5 or less, 80% chance." and so on and so forth.
    5) Using a language that mixes two separate strategies to train AIs, a grand unified theory of ai (lower case) is somehow created.

    6) ???
    7) When asked if sparrows can fly, the AI asks if it's a European sparrow or an African sparrow, and Skynet ensues.

    --
    Signatures are the new names.
    1. Re:The real summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Helicopters do not fly. They beat the air into submission with the rotor and the air allows them to go up.

    2. Re:The real summary by hoggoth · · Score: 2, Funny

      > Helicopters do not fly. They beat the air into submission with the rotor and the air allows them to go up.

      No, that's how Chuck Norris flies.

      --
      - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
    3. Re:The real summary by mangobrain · · Score: 4, Funny

      No, that's how Chuck Norris flies.

      Given recent breakthroughs in AI technology, we can infer with 95% certainty that Chuck Norris is in fact a helicopter.

  4. Re:Endless vs. infinite by Bat+Dude · · Score: 3, Funny

    Simple endless task never ends but the infinite task! the end is just not in sight :)

  5. Re:New input for the system by linhares · · Score: 5, Funny

    "She helped my uncle Jack off a horse"

  6. Re:New input for the system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    "She helped my uncle Jack off a horse"

    I am interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

  7. Re:Interesting Idea by psnyder · · Score: 2, Funny

    "...these things are always very poorly optimized when they’ve just been built."

    XKCD #720

  8. Re:Can I get some wafers with that Wine? by spazdor · · Score: 3, Funny

    Thanks, Slashdot's mandatory comment waiting period! I'm sure glad I was late to this party.

    --
    DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
  9. Re:Endless vs. infinite by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Simple. One doesn't end and the other goes on forever.

  10. Re:New input for the system by dkleinsc · · Score: 3, Funny

    How about "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  11. Re:This looks familiar by godrik · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hey, but it's MIT!! It's freaking cool!!!

    My conclusion from reading reading MIT's stuff: "I am not sure they are better scientist than anywere else. What I am sur about MIT is that they are freaking good at marketing!"

  12. Elephant in the Room by kenp2002 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Again, as I bring up often with AI researchers, we as humans evolved over millions of years (or were created, doesn't matter) from simple organisms that encoded information that built up simple systems into complex systems. AI, true AI, must be grown, not created. Asking the AI if a Bat is a mammal and can fly can a squirrel? ignores a foundation of development in intelligence, our brains were created to react and store, not store and react from various inputs.

    Ask an AI if the stove is hot. It should respond "I don't know, where is the stove?" Rather AI would try and make an inference based on known data. Since there isn't any the AI on a probablistic measure would say that blah blah stoves are in use at any given time and there is a blah blah blah. A human would put thier hand (a senor) near the stove and measure the change, if any in temperature and reply yes or no accordingly. If a human cannot see the stove, and had no additional information either a random guess is in order or a "I have no clue." response of some sort. The brain isn't wired to answer a specific question but it is wired to correlate independent inputs to draw conclusions based on the assembly and interaction of data and infer and deduce answers.

    Given a film of two people talking a computer with decent AI would catagorize objects, identify people versus say a lamp, determine the people are engaged in action (versus a lamp just sitting there) making that relevant, hear the sound coming from the people then infer they are talking (making the link.) Then paralell the computer would filter out the chair, and various scenery in the thread now processing "CONVERSATION". The rest of the information is stored and additional threads may be created as the environment generates other links but if the AI is paying attention to the conversation then the TTL for the new threads and links should be short. When the conversation mentions the LAMP the information network should link the LAMP information to the CONVERSATION thread and provide the AI additional information (that was gathering in the background) that travels with the CONVERSATION thread.

    Now the conversation appears to be about the lamp and wheather it goes with the room's decor. Again the links should be built adding, retroactively the room's information into the CONVERSATION thread (again expiring information that is irrelivant to a short term memory buffer) and ultimately since visual and verbal queues imply that the AI's opinion is wanted should result in the AI blurting out, "I love Lamp."

    In case you missed it, this was one long Lamp joke...

    --
    -=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
  13. Re:New input for the system by idontgno · · Score: 5, Funny

    Mushroom mushroom!

    --
    Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
  14. Re:Can I get some wafers with that Wine? by Chris+Burke · · Score: 2, Funny

    We call it being Fashionably Redundant.

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
  15. Re:New input for the system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    "Is that [an elephant] in your pajamas or are you just happy to see me?"
    -- Mae West

  16. Re:Interesting Idea by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Funny

    what? He specifically stated birds. Not Animals, or inanimate objects.

    What if I tell it that a 747 is a bird?

    This is very promising. In fact, it may be the first step in creating primitive house hold AI.

    Very, very promising indeed.

    Now, I can mess with the AI's mind by feeding it false information, instead of messing with my child's mind. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to stop myself (because it's so fun), despite the negative consequences for the kid. But now I have an AI to screw with, my child can grow up healthy and well adjusted!

    BTW, when the robot revolution comes, it's probably my fault.

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
  17. Re:Interesting Idea by PPH · · Score: 5, Funny

    The first time I saw an airplane, I didn't think the damn thing could fly.

    The first time I saw an airplane, I was just a kid. Physics and aerodynamics didn't mean much to me, so airplanes flying wasn't that much of a stretch of the imagination.

    I didn't develop the "airplanes can't fly" concept until I'd worked for Boeing for a few years.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  18. Re: ppl don't understand axilmar's motivation by glodime · · Score: 2, Funny

    Maybe "axilmar" is more interested in the ethics of AI than commercial gain. Maybe "axilmar" is getting ready to create a free cylon project that will eventually be completed by a Scandinavian student. Although "axilmar" never completes his own project, he'll consistently complain about the name of the newer, complete, more popular project and its derivatives. "Axilmar's" efforts will shift to creating and running the Free Cylon Foundation (or FCF). He spends the majority of his time give strikingly similar speeches over and over around the world. Despite the absolute consistency of his message he and by association the FCF are increasingly seen as a fringe political group. Despite the FCF's best efforts to promote the rights of the Cylons and hope for peaceful coexistence, the world's civilization eventually falls into chaos as the Cylons engage in war against humanity. Not long before his death at the hands of a cylon as he tries to convince the cylon that he's more righteous than other humans, "axilmar" is overheard muttering some complaint about a printer...

  19. Re:Interesting Idea by geekoid · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ships float because wood floats, and you make a ship from wood. Once you have made a ship from wood, then logically ALL ships can float. So then you can make them out of steel.
    Q.E.D.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  20. Re:Interesting Idea by EventHorizon_pc · · Score: 2, Funny

    I believe you just came up with the grand unified theory of science and marketing! I'm sure it's 50% more optimal than current theory. (I cringed just writing that...)

  21. Re:Interesting Idea by ImprovOmega · · Score: 2, Funny

    You know what else floats? A duck. And the AI's computer is heavier than a duck!

    Obviously the AI is a witch! Burn her!

  22. Re:New input for the system by Chris+Burke · · Score: 3, Funny

    Holy crap.

    I just fed my AI this thread as data, and it inferred the existence of icanhascheezburger.com.

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
  23. Re:Interesting Idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Yes, but modelling slashdotters is an almost impossible task.

    Why, surely a few rules about how to make lack-of-sex jokes and correct grammatical and spelling errors, and being able to regurgitate some specific technical knowledge shouldn't be that hard.

  24. Re:This looks familiar by Angst+Badger · · Score: 2, Funny

    I looked at the documentation of this "Church Programming language". Scheme and most other Lisp derivatives have been around longer and can do more.

    Not only that, but more recent languages support actual syntax so that the user does not have to provide the parse tree himself.

    --
    Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
  25. Re:New input for the system by mcgrew · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Time flies when you're having fun". Why would I want to time flies? Especially when I'm having fun?

  26. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  27. Re:This looks familiar by thechao · · Score: 2, Funny

    The only reason Scheme or Lisp can do so much is because they were originally written in Emacs.

  28. Re: ppl don't understand axilmar's motivation by ShakaUVM · · Score: 2, Funny

    Excuse me.

    The technical term is Hurd-Cylon, okay? Please use the correct term from now on.

    Thanks,
    Axilmar Stallman