A lot of computational power is probably wasted on trying to translate biological functions into binary procedures.
Tried and failed (which was to be expected). If you try to build code that follows the same type of principles that biological functions do, most of your computing power goes into finding stuff that can react with other stuff. That was a kick to write tho.
It makes me despair that so many people here somehow find a means to feel sympathetic to these guys' opinion (either explicitly or, which is more common, by taking it from their own religious point of view). As soon as you start walking down that path, you're bound to obey every randomly idiotic law some religious nut, somewhere, at some point in time, had the good idea to utter... and at this point, you know where to stick your freedom of speech. And sadly, that holds true for *all* religions.
Doesn't anyone else find it strangely... convenient... that Bill Gates would suddenly announce his philanthropic intents a few months before the release of Vista? Or is it just me? I mean, it's not like his bank account was emptier a few years back.
The laptop is probably only at 2.4 Ghz... Not really sure, and it's 4AM here - not the time to go and check. The "game console" is the only thing running WinXP here. Did I mention 3 switches, 2 DSL modems and a cable modem?
When not specified, AMD Athlon 2000+ or more. Everything under Debian GNU/Linux, unless specified otherwise.
1x Dual CPU AMD 2400+ with UW SCSI, development and general duties 1x File server (box with 2 Tb of IDE drives) 1x AMD Athlon 64 3000+, specific web server 1x Mail server 1x Web server 1x External router (Pentium 90 with 48Mb of RAM) 1x Internal router (Random AMD) 1x CVS / IRC server 1x Backup server (formerly with tape, now with RAID 1 SATA(n) HDDs) 1x News server (Pentium Pro... can't remember the freq) 2x General purpose client computers 1x Epson laser printer, direct network interface 1x Laptop (3.4Ghz Intel P4) 1x "Game console" (AMD 3500+ with a nice nVidia 6800U in it) 4x Generally useless and old computers.
... how the fact that some corporation considering its complecency towards the local law, however unethical the said law is, without care about personal consequences, qualifies as news.
I'm using both, but mainly Postgres. From what I can tell:
Postgres 7.5 Pros: - Supports stored procedures - Supports triggers - Supports schemas Cons: - Heavy on resources
MySQL 4.0 Pros: - Fast - Easier to find PHP scripts that use it Cons: - Bad relational support (and yes, I know about InnoDB, but even then, it's a bit... well, bad) - No stored procedures/triggers - Easily corrupted by crashes.
I'm pretty sure that anything that looks even remotely like intelligence will never be achieved by a mechanism that isn't useful for itself. Intelligence has one reason to exist, survival, and at least our concept of it has to be linked to the environment.
On that point I support your view. I think that only an entity who suffers evolutionnary pressure might become intelligent. Still, that doesn't mean natural evolutionnary pressure.
Imagine you were born a brain in a vat: blind, deaf, mute, lacking all ways of sensing the environment except a text interface somehow connected to your brain. [...]
Then your environment WOULD BE that text interface and you would react according to the stimuli it provides.
The whole concept of a surronding 3D environment would make absolutely no sense to it.
Tell me why a 3D environment is a prerequisite for intelligence. Or tell that to someone who lost an eye.
I think it doesn't matter how much stuff you feed to CYC, it will never be able to understand it.
It would interpret it. Do you "understand" lightning as being as stream of electrons moving inside a plasma when you see it?
. How could it even understand such things as the different colors, the whole concepts of sound, space, movement, pain if it's not able to feel them?
Why would it need to?
I mean, those stimuli are relative to your own senses and your own actuators.
I think many people on this thread try to "anthropomorphize" a bit too much what an AI would be. It's not because it learns the same way that it will understand/feel/act in the same way.
ese things are impossible to explain to somebody who doesn't have at least some way of perceiving at least part of them.
Although a "pure" AI (by "pure" I mean an AI that only senses and affects its direct environment, in that case computers/networks) would start by only learning from the most obvious parts of its environment, it can be argued that mankind developed quantum physics, which has absolutely nothing to do with the empirical observation of the surroundings.
Here I think that Steve Grand (the guy who made the Creatures games) has a good point here. To make an artificial being you'd need to start from the low level, so that complex behavior can emerge, and provide a proper environment.
He has a point, although he may not realize a "proper environment" doesn't necessarily means "an environment a human being could live in".
Human beings have been using, and adapting ourselves to the use of, natural language for a very long time.
It took us quite long to start using complex mathematical abstractions. It took, however, little more than a decade to start writing programs that could prove mathematical theorems which took centuries to be formulated.
It seems a little presumptious to assume that we could replicate our cognitive abilities with first generation computing machines.
Maybe first generation won't do it. But I'm quite confident that, at some point, we will have computers that are powerful enough to emulate the massive parallelism the brain seems to use.
This is just a guess, an opinion. I'm absolutely not a specialist about that subject.
I don't think symbol manipulation is really the thing that makes us "intelligent". It is more likely a byproduct of what lies below that level. Trying to reduce the processes that allow us to think like we do to a purely symbolic level does not account for the perturbations that have to occur at a really low level.
I strongly believe that the "symbolic" point of view is only the most obvious part of a drastically complex dynamic system in which every single perturbation can lead to effects that could not be expected if the system was purely based on the "symbolic" representation.
Re:Maybe it's a good thing they failed
on
The Baby Bootstrap?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Skynet anyone? The problem with any project like this is, what happens when the program learns about hacking? If it is as adaptive as a child, then it should be able to mature and pretty soon you have a terribly devious artificial blackhat hacker on your hands.
It _would_ learn about hacking. Come on. Such an entity would be born in a pure data environment. Getting through a basic firewall would probably seem like jumping over a small fence does to a 6-years old. Getting to jump over better firewall would probably take time - in the sense that the entity would need to learn - but, since it would become a survival trick, it would happen.
Artificial intelligence is not bad in and of itself at all.
No technology is either good or bad. Only the use we make of it can be considered as such, and it still depends on what you consider is good/bad. If I was to say "War on Iraq is bad", how many people would react by saying it's good?
The problem is when we want a machine that thinks like humans, especially a program that could potentially control our military.
I don't think that's the point of the "baby bootstrap" thing. The only point is to get it to think. But, just like you learnt how to think according to the way you perceive the world, through your five human senses, an AI built that way would react according to its own senses. How it would interpret that data and react to it is something - I'm willing to bet - that would be completely alien to us.
Given the record of flesh and blood humans toward each other in the 20th century alone, an artificial life form with the same basic psychological makeup as a human would be potentially an evil that'd make Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot look like church ladies.
This is only valid if you don't consider what I just said. Such an AI would probably be more interrested in getting the human race to serve it in an absolutely hidden way - build more computers, extend the networks, research better networking technologies - until it _can_ replace us. Even then, that would make sense on an evolutionnary point of view.
AI that is capable of adapting to only one scenario is probably for all intents and purposes totally safe.
This is called an automaton. It is not AI.
. AI that is capable of adapting in general and learning like a human will probably ultimately have the same psychological defects as a human, including a propensity for violence.
Most of the defects you are speaking about are related to our very nature - we are, after all, an evolution of omnivorous primates. We are therefore predators, with an important tendency towards territorialism and whatever comes with it. We are stuck somewhere between instinct and reason. Anyway, my point is that even if an AI was to learn "like" an human ("by undergoing the same process"), it certainly wouldn't react like one.
Slashdot Mirror
Or you can use, say, syslog-ng with SSL and a set of X.509 certificates.
A lot of computational power is probably wasted on trying to translate biological functions into binary procedures.
Tried and failed (which was to be expected). If you try to build code that follows the same type of principles that biological functions do, most of your computing power goes into finding stuff that can react with other stuff. That was a kick to write tho.
Because of the "incompatible endorsements" part, I doubt that hardware manufacturers will bother with it. Which is too bad.
It makes me despair that so many people here somehow find a means to feel sympathetic to these guys' opinion (either explicitly or, which is more common, by taking it from their own religious point of view). As soon as you start walking down that path, you're bound to obey every randomly idiotic law some religious nut, somewhere, at some point in time, had the good idea to utter... and at this point, you know where to stick your freedom of speech. And sadly, that holds true for *all* religions.
... are light, you insensitive clod!
Doesn't anyone else find it strangely ... convenient ... that Bill Gates would suddenly announce his philanthropic intents a few months before the release of Vista? Or is it just me? I mean, it's not like his bank account was emptier a few years back.
Please, please, please get back to the usual green. I know it's 2006-04-01, but it doesn't prevent my eyes from bleeding. /me prays to /.'s divinities.
The laptop is probably only at 2.4 Ghz ... Not really sure, and it's 4AM here - not the time to go and check.
The "game console" is the only thing running WinXP here.
Did I mention 3 switches, 2 DSL modems and a cable modem?
Dunno about his, but mine does a "nice" 150euros/month. Probably a bit more if you count the air conditionner that goes with it.
Bleh, no need to be American to do this ^^
(and I know I'm on the losing side)
... can't remember the freq)
When not specified, AMD Athlon 2000+ or more. Everything under Debian GNU/Linux, unless specified otherwise.
1x Dual CPU AMD 2400+ with UW SCSI, development and general duties
1x File server (box with 2 Tb of IDE drives)
1x AMD Athlon 64 3000+, specific web server
1x Mail server
1x Web server
1x External router (Pentium 90 with 48Mb of RAM)
1x Internal router (Random AMD)
1x CVS / IRC server
1x Backup server (formerly with tape, now with RAID 1 SATA(n) HDDs)
1x News server (Pentium Pro
2x General purpose client computers
1x Epson laser printer, direct network interface
1x Laptop (3.4Ghz Intel P4)
1x "Game console" (AMD 3500+ with a nice nVidia 6800U in it)
4x Generally useless and old computers.
... how the fact that some corporation considering its complecency towards the local law, however unethical the said law is, without care about personal consequences, qualifies as news.
Well, actually it's a testing with some remains of an unstable ... on a development machine. I should have checked the servers instead.
True, must be something specific to the Debian package ... Don't know why they did that tho.
I'm using both, but mainly Postgres. From what I can tell:
... well, bad)
Postgres 7.5
Pros:
- Supports stored procedures
- Supports triggers
- Supports schemas
Cons:
- Heavy on resources
MySQL 4.0
Pros:
- Fast
- Easier to find PHP scripts that use it
Cons:
- Bad relational support (and yes, I know about InnoDB, but even then, it's a bit
- No stored procedures/triggers
- Easily corrupted by crashes.
I am not a lawyer, and I don't even know one.
I live in France, where the law states that the intent to commit a crime merits the same punishment as the crime itself.
Isn't there some kind of principle or law in the US that has the same effect?
I mean, this patent is a clear proof that Macrovision intends to commit a crime ("attacking a computer network"), isn't it?
Sorry, this comment was supposed to be amusing, unfortunately my drunkness led me to overrate it. :S
In evolutionary terms human nature is not as bad as that.
;)
It wouldn't have survived that long if it was that bad.
Our closest relatives [...] the chimp system.
Still, as you point out yourself, it is based on the same principles.
Bottom line is that an AI that used humanity as a blueprint would more likely end up mentally wanking than it would trying to wipe out its creators.
Except it probably wouldn't wank on the same things. Besides, an accident can always happen.
I'm pretty sure that anything that looks even remotely like intelligence will never be achieved by a mechanism that isn't useful for itself. Intelligence has one reason to exist, survival, and at least our concept of it has to be linked to the environment.
On that point I support your view. I think that only an entity who suffers evolutionnary pressure might become intelligent. Still, that doesn't mean natural evolutionnary pressure.
Imagine you were born a brain in a vat: blind, deaf, mute, lacking all ways of sensing the environment except a text interface somehow connected to your brain. [...]
Then your environment WOULD BE that text interface and you would react according to the stimuli it provides.
The whole concept of a surronding 3D environment would make absolutely no sense to it.
Tell me why a 3D environment is a prerequisite for intelligence. Or tell that to someone who lost an eye.
I think it doesn't matter how much stuff you feed to CYC, it will never be able to understand it.
It would interpret it. Do you "understand" lightning as being as stream of electrons moving inside a plasma when you see it?
. How could it even understand such things as the different colors, the whole concepts of sound, space, movement, pain if it's not able to feel them?
Why would it need to?
I mean, those stimuli are relative to your own senses and your own actuators.
I think many people on this thread try to "anthropomorphize" a bit too much what an AI would be. It's not because it learns the same way that it will understand/feel/act in the same way.
ese things are impossible to explain to somebody who doesn't have at least some way of perceiving at least part of them.
Although a "pure" AI (by "pure" I mean an AI that only senses and affects its direct environment, in that case computers/networks) would start by only learning from the most obvious parts of its environment, it can be argued that mankind developed quantum physics, which has absolutely nothing to do with the empirical observation of the surroundings.
Here I think that Steve Grand (the guy who made the Creatures games) has a good point here. To make an artificial being you'd need to start from the low level, so that complex behavior can emerge, and provide a proper environment.
He has a point, although he may not realize a "proper environment" doesn't necessarily means "an environment a human being could live in".
Human beings have been using, and adapting ourselves to the use of, natural language for a very long time.
It took us quite long to start using complex mathematical abstractions. It took, however, little more than a decade to start writing programs that could prove mathematical theorems which took centuries to be formulated.
It seems a little presumptious to assume that we could replicate our cognitive abilities with first generation computing machines.
Maybe first generation won't do it. But I'm quite confident that, at some point, we will have computers that are powerful enough to emulate the massive parallelism the brain seems to use.
This is just a guess, an opinion. I'm absolutely not a specialist about that subject.
I don't think symbol manipulation is really the thing that makes us "intelligent". It is more likely a byproduct of what lies below that level. Trying to reduce the processes that allow us to think like we do to a purely symbolic level does not account for the perturbations that have to occur at a really low level.
I strongly believe that the "symbolic" point of view is only the most obvious part of a drastically complex dynamic system in which every single perturbation can lead to effects that could not be expected if the system was purely based on the "symbolic" representation.
Skynet anyone? The problem with any project like this is, what happens when the program learns about hacking? If it is as adaptive as a child, then it should be able to mature and pretty soon you have a terribly devious artificial blackhat hacker on your hands.
It _would_ learn about hacking. Come on. Such an entity would be born in a pure data environment. Getting through a basic firewall would probably seem like jumping over a small fence does to a 6-years old. Getting to jump over better firewall would probably take time - in the sense that the entity would need to learn - but, since it would become a survival trick, it would happen.
Artificial intelligence is not bad in and of itself at all.
No technology is either good or bad. Only the use we make of it can be considered as such, and it still depends on what you consider is good/bad. If I was to say "War on Iraq is bad", how many people would react by saying it's good?
The problem is when we want a machine that thinks like humans, especially a program that could potentially control our military.
I don't think that's the point of the "baby bootstrap" thing. The only point is to get it to think. But, just like you learnt how to think according to the way you perceive the world, through your five human senses, an AI built that way would react according to its own senses. How it would interpret that data and react to it is something - I'm willing to bet - that would be completely alien to us.
Given the record of flesh and blood humans toward each other in the 20th century alone, an artificial life form with the same basic psychological makeup as a human would be potentially an evil that'd make Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot look like church ladies.
This is only valid if you don't consider what I just said. Such an AI would probably be more interrested in getting the human race to serve it in an absolutely hidden way - build more computers, extend the networks, research better networking technologies - until it _can_ replace us. Even then, that would make sense on an evolutionnary point of view.
AI that is capable of adapting to only one scenario is probably for all intents and purposes totally safe.
This is called an automaton. It is not AI.
. AI that is capable of adapting in general and learning like a human will probably ultimately have the same psychological defects as a human, including a propensity for violence.
Most of the defects you are speaking about are related to our very nature - we are, after all, an evolution of omnivorous primates. We are therefore predators, with an important tendency towards territorialism and whatever comes with it. We are stuck somewhere between instinct and reason. Anyway, my point is that even if an AI was to learn "like" an human ("by undergoing the same process"), it certainly wouldn't react like one.
In case of Slashdotting, break mirror.
...
Oh, and we broke it
Besides, you can get 20Mbps (ok, it's a lot more expensive, 60 euros/month) through cable.
Mine no longer does. I think she got used to it.