the article is self contradictory — it says "It actually self-determines what its own objective is," said Wissner-Gross. "This [artificial intelligence] does not require the explicit specification of a goal".
this is not true, because it then goes on to say, "trying to capture as many future histories as possible".
so there IS a goal — it maximizes the number of future states — exactly the same way a negaMax search can maximize the mobility paramater in a chess engine search.
in other words, this is a lot of hype — defining intelligence as maximization of finding states of less entropy (i.e. maximal future states), and running a classic negaSearch on that basis is what is going on here.
its a novel way to go about things, but redefining the terms doesnt actually make anything new in the sensation way this article claims.
it depends a lot on what you need to do — you can model and design something in a specialized app like ArchiCAD in 2 days what would take you 2 weeks in a generalized programme like AutoCAD.
if you were doing 3D animation, and needed procedural behaviours, particles, and vast datasets — Houdini is the top of the bunch for 3D Rendering and Animation.
personally, i'd like to string up by their toenails the person who ever invented the idea of daylight savings time — it should be abolished. it never should have existed in the first place.
When told the reason for daylight savings time, the Old Indian said, 'Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket.
comon - all of the U.K. is still on imperial and no plan to switch to metric - come to think of it - they still have a monarchy smack dab in the middle of their democracy - the british dont like change - and i dont think that'll change anytime soon..
also — old MIDI synthesizers can be hooked into modern interfaces — i use a 1988 ensoniq EPS to drive sounds generated in garageband on a macBook pro — the ensoniq still boots from a 3.5" floppy disk — that's a two decade usability window, and the audio from the macBook gets fed out to 1970's B&O amp.. three decades of electronics working together at any given moment on a daily basis.:-}
new digital audio to vintage audio gear is a marriage made in heaven. a simple wire from the back of any PC audio 1/8" > RCA line-in on an old 1970's solid-state block amp will sound better than (worse sounding) computer speakers you have to spend more on.
i use an old 1970's beomaster 2400 — a beautiful piece of audio technology as the primary system amp, and it still solidly drives a pair of pro speakers. kind of spoils you for when people use the current fashion of small IC chip-based generic amps which dont tend to carry the low-end the way the 1970's amps did with the 1/4" power-transistors bolted on to the heat-sinks — made to handle more bottom-end.
other good projects include hooking an iPod to an home-built FM transmitter, and tuning in the iPod with an old radio reciever (my parents had a 'Kuba Stereo Console' with the magic-eye tuning tube) — very cool when you can use that to tune in a newly programmed iPod-jukebox, and get the sound of all the compression and radio processing artifacts, playing out of a tube-driven speaker. once you've programmed with the modern methods, adapting them with line-level out makes it an easy project, and breathes new life into some good sounding amps.
the person asserting that a 40+ yr old programmer isnt relevant is probably talking about sweatshop conditions where pointy-haired bosses measure productivity by lines of code.
my mentor as a programmer was over 60 years old — and he had more experience and knowledge about not only how to code, but deeper insight at how to set things up so that they worked in the greater context, and showed me 'how to fish' — by building functions to test other functions. without his help and insight, it would have taken an order of magnitude to finish the project.
his vastly superior knowledge came with almost 40+ years of coding experience. it was often that a short quick reply from 'the master' would save what would have taken me weeks or even monsh as a younger programmer to figure out.
older coders have a huge amount of domain knowledge and experience that cheaper newer workers cant match.
the software company would be better off if they sacked msr V R Ferose, and retained some real talent.
we are quick to attribute a causal relationship: a certain anatomy causes genius; but this is, strictly speaking, an interpretation. we can not dismiss out of hand that a sense of genius works into a given environment, and moulds and forms the brain from habits that result from genius, rather than genius resulting from habits — the brain the enscribed result of the history of your thinking — the history of your perception of thoughts and mental effort (or lack thereof).
to quote nikola Tesla — "If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search.
I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labour. (Nikola Tesla, New York Times, October 19, 1931)
likewise msr torvalds — you advocate stable processors — elegance be damned. true enough, stability is paramount for reliability — but it is also important to not preserve a perverse or arcane standard.
knowing what features to consolidate and prune can save a great deal of useless backwards compatibility work, and save labour down the road.
two examples: i) we could do well to learn from the feat of the late s.jobs — where he was able to poll the developers about what APIs they were actually using — and prune out a bunch of dead CRUFT, and leave a core set of stable APIs (the now defunct CARBON) that would bridge developers — by tweaking a little code, they could gain the benefit of the new OSX architecture, while maintaining backwards compatibility. ii) the move from parallel printer, and PS2 style keyboard and mouse vs the move to USB — it was wise to eliminate multiple incompatible standards which were being used in wrong ways (parallel printer ports being used for ZIP drives!?!?) — total USB and elimination of legacy ports was a good call.
instead of MONOLITHIC & CRUFTY — lean and well-defined. please.
a lil context for the landlubbers out there — having gone sailing just yesterday (qc races, toronto harbour) on an alberg30 — and gone below decks (where the radio and power are kept) — everything that was on a shelf anywhere had been dumped back and forth.. bags, computers, boots and frying pans all being heaved to and fro as we had to tack the boat repeatedly.. the wind was moderate, we managed about 7knots and burried the rails. there was water flying everywhere.. if you had a cell phone or a GPS in your pocket, it would have been drenched — this was on a clearly beautiful day under typical conditions, not even any serious waves to consider.
bottom line — if your tech cant survive being tossed about like a salad with bags, shoes and frying pans while getting periodically doused with a bucket of water.. unless it is secured and installed right, it probably is pretty useless. the main radio is mounted on a bracket underside the main cabin.. and the control surfaces and antenea connectors have been routed through waterproof connectors.. which is a minimum to think it will work.
one must remember to consider these sorts of standard operating conditions when recommending sailing tech.
The key observation is that, in most things in life, the dynamic range between average quality and the best quality is, at most, two-to-one. For example, if you were in New York and compared the best taxi to an average taxi, you might get there 20 percent faster. In terms of computers, the best PC is perhaps 30 percent better than the average PC. There is not that much difference in magnitude. Rarely you find a difference of two-to-one. Pick anything.
But, in the field that I was interested in -- originally, hardware design -- I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1.
Given that, you're well advised to go after the cream of the cream. That's what we've done. You can then build a team that pursues the A+ players. A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. That's what I've tried to do.
it sounds like you're etching a field of micro-lenses (why do you call them anteneas??) - like grooves on a record, the angles of these grooves are tuned to have a slope which graduates across the array - directing the light in a way that finely matches a convex or concave pattern.
if this is the case, it sounds like much more would be possible - perhaps you could go on to simulate custom glass geometries by modulating the algorithm by which you apply the angles and spacing using some sort of stipplegen??
very cool work.. probably necessary to develop light-gates for optical computers..:-) the future is wide open on this one. john penner, toronto island.
Slashdot Mirror
the article is self contradictory — it says "It actually self-determines what its own objective is," said Wissner-Gross. "This [artificial intelligence] does not require the explicit specification of a goal".
this is not true, because it then goes on to say, "trying to capture as many future histories as possible".
so there IS a goal — it maximizes the number of future states — exactly the same way a negaMax search can maximize the mobility paramater in a chess engine search.
in other words, this is a lot of hype — defining intelligence as maximization of finding states of less entropy (i.e. maximal future states), and running a classic negaSearch on that basis is what is going on here.
its a novel way to go about things, but redefining the terms doesnt actually make anything new in the sensation way this article claims.
but you have to die — its the only way to live again!! :-)
safe passage — our cat, 'puck' goes today.. :-(
it depends a lot on what you need to do — you can model and design something in a specialized app like ArchiCAD in 2 days what would take you 2 weeks in a generalized programme like AutoCAD.
if you were doing 3D animation, and needed procedural behaviours, particles, and vast datasets — Houdini is the top of the bunch for 3D Rendering and Animation.
needs define software.
ArchiCAD (free trial, requires registration): http://www.graphisoft.com/support/archicad/downloads/
Houdini (Apprentice Free Version): http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_download&task=apprentice&Itemid=208
best regards from toronto island
jp
personally, i'd like to string up by their toenails the person who ever invented the idea of daylight savings time — it should be abolished. it never should have existed in the first place.
When told the reason for daylight savings time, the Old Indian said, 'Only the government would
believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket.
for years (since day1) — you can run iOS on mac OSX — you get an iPad or iPhone simulated on your screen.
just download the free XCode tools, and it includes the iOS simulator.
you mean like the iPad simulator that comes with the free XCode IDE for years..
life must be gettin pretty good now.. ;-)
keeping it simple is the hard part.
done it for ten years — love it, and feel better all the time.
(yes, summer AND winter)
j
how about the 'play with your kids app'??
like peek-a-boo, and pass the ball, and ride the horsey?
expecting a 10 month yr old to play w an android tablet instead of playing w a real human is ridiculous..
you can do better as a parent
2cents
j
comon - all of the U.K. is still on imperial and no plan to switch to metric - come to think of it - they still have a monarchy smack dab in the middle of their democracy - the british dont like change - and i dont think that'll change anytime soon..
2cents from toronto island
jp
sweet lord — core memory and bringin the 70's.. TRS80 and CP/M.. ssh from phone triggering serial interfaces.. nice. :-D
also — old MIDI synthesizers can be hooked into modern interfaces — i use a 1988 ensoniq EPS to drive sounds generated in garageband on a macBook pro — the ensoniq still boots from a 3.5" floppy disk — that's a two decade usability window, and the audio from the macBook gets fed out to 1970's B&O amp.. three decades of electronics working together at any given moment on a daily basis. :-}
art & technology together.
new digital audio to vintage audio gear is a marriage made in heaven. a simple wire from the back of any PC audio 1/8" > RCA line-in on an old 1970's solid-state block amp will sound better than (worse sounding) computer speakers you have to spend more on.
i use an old 1970's beomaster 2400 — a beautiful piece of audio technology as the primary system amp, and it still solidly drives a pair of pro speakers. kind of spoils you for when people use the current fashion of small IC chip-based generic amps which dont tend to carry the low-end the way the 1970's amps did with the 1/4" power-transistors bolted on to the heat-sinks — made to handle more bottom-end.
other good projects include hooking an iPod to an home-built FM transmitter, and tuning in the iPod with an old radio reciever (my parents had a 'Kuba Stereo Console' with the magic-eye tuning tube) — very cool when you can use that to tune in a newly programmed iPod-jukebox, and get the sound of all the compression and radio processing artifacts, playing out of a tube-driven speaker. once you've programmed with the modern methods, adapting them with line-level out makes it an easy project, and breathes new life into some good sounding amps.
2cents from toronto island
jp
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Radiometer_9965_Nevit.gif
the person asserting that a 40+ yr old programmer isnt relevant is probably talking about sweatshop conditions where pointy-haired bosses measure productivity by lines of code.
my mentor as a programmer was over 60 years old — and he had more experience and knowledge about not only how to code, but deeper insight at how to set things up so that they worked in the greater context, and showed me 'how to fish' — by building functions to test other functions. without his help and insight, it would have taken an order of magnitude to finish the project.
his vastly superior knowledge came with almost 40+ years of coding experience. it was often that a short quick reply from 'the master' would save what would have taken me weeks or even monsh as a younger programmer to figure out.
older coders have a huge amount of domain knowledge and experience that cheaper newer workers cant match.
the software company would be better off if they sacked msr V R Ferose, and retained some real talent.
2cents
jp
its cheap, and the smell brings in people that the rational mind would not.. :-p
of coure —you've got to get them out from behind their computer at home first.. :-p
j
we are quick to attribute a causal relationship: a certain anatomy causes genius; but this is, strictly speaking, an interpretation. we can not dismiss out of hand that a sense of genius works into a given environment, and moulds and forms the brain from habits that result from genius, rather than genius resulting from habits — the brain the enscribed result of the history of your thinking — the history of your perception of thoughts and mental effort (or lack thereof).
2cents from sunny and cold toronto island
jp
some think time isnthe fourth dimension..
for others, the Fourth Dimension is Heat!!
2cents
jp
and colour arises from the interaction of light and dark..
goethe's theory of colours: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours_(book)
two books:
left brain — rudolf steiner — philosophy of freedom:
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/GPP1916/GA004_index.html
right brain — george macDonald — phantastes:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/325/325-h/325-h.htm
desert island keepers
to quote nikola Tesla — "If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack,
he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine
straw after straw until he found the object of his search.
I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory
and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labour.
(Nikola Tesla, New York Times, October 19, 1931)
likewise msr torvalds — you advocate stable processors — elegance be damned.
true enough, stability is paramount for reliability — but it is also important to
not preserve a perverse or arcane standard.
knowing what features to consolidate and prune can save a great deal of useless
backwards compatibility work, and save labour down the road.
two examples: i) we could do well to learn from the feat of the late s.jobs — where he
was able to poll the developers about what APIs they were actually using — and
prune out a bunch of dead CRUFT, and leave a core set of stable APIs (the now
defunct CARBON) that would bridge developers — by tweaking a little code,
they could gain the benefit of the new OSX architecture, while maintaining
backwards compatibility. ii) the move from parallel printer, and PS2 style
keyboard and mouse vs the move to USB — it was wise to eliminate multiple
incompatible standards which were being used in wrong ways (parallel printer
ports being used for ZIP drives!?!?) — total USB and elimination of legacy ports
was a good call.
instead of MONOLITHIC & CRUFTY — lean and well-defined.
please.
2cents from toronto island
jp
mechanical typewriters might actually cost more to build.. :-p
a lil context for the landlubbers out there — having gone sailing just yesterday (qc races, toronto harbour) on an alberg30 — and gone below decks (where the radio and power are kept) — everything that was on a shelf anywhere had been dumped back and forth.. bags, computers, boots and frying pans all being heaved to and fro as we had to tack the boat repeatedly.. the wind was moderate, we managed about 7knots and burried the rails. there was water flying everywhere.. if you had a cell phone or a GPS in your pocket, it would have been drenched — this was on a clearly beautiful day under typical conditions, not even any serious waves to consider.
bottom line — if your tech cant survive being tossed about like a salad with bags, shoes and frying pans while getting periodically doused with a bucket of water.. unless it is secured and installed right, it probably is pretty useless. the main radio is mounted on a bracket underside the main cabin.. and the control surfaces and antenea connectors have been routed through waterproof connectors.. which is a minimum to think it will work.
one must remember to consider these sorts of standard operating conditions when recommending sailing tech.
jp
The key observation is that, in most things in life, the dynamic range between average quality and the best quality is, at most, two-to-one. For example, if you were in New York and compared the best taxi to an average taxi, you might get there 20 percent faster. In terms of computers, the best PC is perhaps 30 percent better than the average PC. There is not that much difference in magnitude. Rarely you find a difference of two-to-one. Pick anything.
But, in the field that I was interested in -- originally, hardware design -- I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1.
Given that, you're well advised to go after the cream of the cream. That's what we've done. You can then build a team that pursues the A+ players. A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. That's what I've tried to do.
(Steve Jobs, In the Company of Giants)
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/news/coladvice/book/bk981106.htm
it sounds like you're etching a field of micro-lenses (why do you call them anteneas??) - like grooves on a record, the angles of these grooves are tuned to have a slope which graduates across the array - directing the light in a way that finely matches a convex or concave pattern.
if this is the case, it sounds like much more would be possible - perhaps you could go on to simulate custom glass geometries by modulating the algorithm by which you apply the angles and spacing using some sort of stipplegen??
very cool work.. probably necessary to develop light-gates for optical computers.. :-)
the future is wide open on this one.
john penner, toronto island.