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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.'"
Tell me about you to build a cognitive model in a fantastically much more straightforward and transparent way than you could do before.
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.
"She helped my uncle Jack off a horse"
Mushroom mushroom!
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
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
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.
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