Well, if you want longevity, I suggest papyrus over CDs. However, finding Egyptian Teletypes that can still read punched papyrus is murder. The Computer History Museum has only one, and it's constantly in use by some odd fellow wrapped all in rags and things. He keeps muttering 'ahnksen ahmen" and burning tanna leaves, too. Queer duck. I think he programs in COBOL.
I don't agree with rigid rules insisting on non-moderation on this one. The comment on Judge Kotelly did cite truths; she HAS befriended Microsoft and the administration. She HAS thereby aided big business and helped suppress truth and indirectly our freedom. While twitter may be trolling elsewhere, I don't consider discussion of Kotelly's history pure trolling in this case.
I see. So entanglement after two particles interact directly, exists only until measurement of state, then it 'nullifies'. It seems to me that the act of collapsing after measurement is part of what defines time. Perhaps time is defined by the statement that observation cannot be reversed. Collapsed states cannot be rewound.
Thanks. I now realize I had a misconception before, and a wrong model. My original statements are therefore incorrect. Any patent applications are now deemed null and void, as are my hopes of quantum teleportation into or out of a black hole.
if two particles are quantum-entangled, and you separate them, they remain entangled and you can monitor the state of one using the other. (Although I never understood what happens when one particle is accelerated to near light speed: how do two particles on different time scales stay connected?)
So now drop one particle of the pair into a black hole.
If they remain entangled, then you clearly have a way to pass information out of the black hole (although time may be stretched so it's not instantaneous anymore). This breaks known physics.
If their entanglement is broken off, then it means the gravitation boundary of a black hole trumps quantum entanglement. But that breaks known physics.
I'll take questions from the audience now. Yes, Dr Kip Thorne?
The article misquotes. You see Dr. Weston was the first to invent bungee LAUNCHING of spacecraft. On the first low-cost launch, Mission Control was heard to say "WHEEEOOOO!!!!!! What a rush!!!". On the other hand, the astronauts inside the vehicle had other words to describe the experience. As this is a family newspaper, we cannot quote them here in full. However. Dr. Weston's mother was mentioned.
I've always wondered whether magnetic fields inside a black hole are restricted to being within the internal boundary of the black hole, but not able to penetrate outside it? Does the event horizon also apply to them? Does the boundary established by the hole's gravitational field prevent a magnetic field from emerging? That would imply gravity can trump magnetism. I guess that makes sense if gravity warps space, and magnetism has to propagate through space, so if space is distorted the magnetic field lines are too. So does this mean one could somehow bottle up enormous magnetic fields within a gravity-compressed space? Does this operate in suns to contain their reactions? And why do my friends from Tau Ceti always look at me like I was crazy when I ask them this? Just because I'm human doesn't mean they have to treat me like a galactic retard. Although that explains the Slinky they gave me, claiming it was advanced alien technology.
I believe... this virus... is a good.. thing. Everybody should.. have it. It is good. I repeat... good. Everybody should have it. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody.
Phooey. This clearly proves existence of the ether, a theory I've supported since I was a child in grade school, 108 years ago. Michelson-Morley my ass. And Xenu particles can travel faster than light, too. Modern physics is all invalid. I shall prove you all wrong with my free energy machine, controlled by Windows Vista, Crackpot Edition.
Seems to me that if diamond dust is that prevalent, then many spacecraft and satellites must experience a high rate of surface erosion. And in the long run lenses on satellites doing optical surveillance would get pitted. And solar panels get frosted. Does anyone know if this happens? And more important, on my next trip to Beta Gamma Orion IV, if the greys don't have shields, will the dome get scratched? And does my Galactic State Farm policy cover this?
Others have thought of it, but linguists have not bridged this to AI concepts needed.
I believe that all SIs (synthetic intelligences, the term I use for human-like intelligences instead of AI, as AI denotes perhaps a sterile intelligence) must utilize what I call culture bases. A culture base is the system of beliefs of a particular cultural group. It is usually particular to that group. Thus, Catholics have a Catholic culture base, mathematicians have a culture base related to mathematics, etc. To understand a Catholic, to understand a mathematician, you must have knowledge of their culture bases even if you do not have and use their bases in your own life. Thus, I must know of the religious beliefs of Catholics - or Muslims! - to understand how they view life, even if I do not share their beliefs. This is a key factor in translation too.
A difference between animals and humans is that humans can pass their culture bases on to new generations through language and other means, but animals may be restricted to mirroring and learning activities. However, some activities may over time become genetically embedded in the sense of animals evolving with certain behavior selected for. For example, mating rituals in birds are clearly genetically embedded. So do humans have some embedded cultural behavior? I am exploring the extent of that, I'd say yes, some. But what is the range of this? A good topic for research for some doctoral candidate. An example, women respond to big-eyed small creatures (infants) with what is probably a genetically-determined nurturing stance.
Coming back to language, a part of a child's learning a language involves the process of learning the cultures of the parents. So the databases, as there are multiple ones, of an SI will be formed as it learns the worldview and activities of the cultures it is intended to deal with. Since there are substantial numbers of cultures and subcultures, the problem is complex. An Si will have to handle a mix of bases, and reason through the inevitble collisions of views, of worldframes, between cultures. In my work, I'm analyzing the nature of cultural knowledge needed for an SI to understand humans. Storing the culture bases in a NN architecture involves massive nets, which is why I need a new class of computers to run things on. Current experiments using clustering can only implement limited numbers of neurons (see the Darwin machine efforts). I need millions of neurons to handle the data needed for a moderate SI.
Factors to think about when designing an SI for the Turing competition: how could it handle a question about "what games did you like as a child?"; "What flavors of ice cream do you like, and why?" I believe that SIs must come to have beliefs, values, and even tastes like people do, or they will never be able to understand how humans think. You can see the obvious relevance to language translation here.
to be able to train a set of neural networks to become a coherent brain, it is necessary to know the basic layout of a human brain.
Ah. This where our models differ. I believe it is possible to produce functionality that does what the human mind does without having to duplicate the exact mechanics of the human brain. A simple proof: we can easily write code that does arithmetic. Yet it does not run on a machine that duplicates human neural structure. At a more complex level, we can build machines that handle knowledge and reasoning yet do not (necessarily) use NNs. My approach spans the two kinds of system. It is hard for people to understand how this works. I use NNs and other mechanisms and different architectures than a human brain to produce the same quality of capability. There is no need to know exactly how the brain is wired if you can produce the same functionality other ways. However, the other way can employ some of the means the brain does. Just not all of them.
I am not claiming I have a simple rule-based system nor do I train it that way. What I have is far more complicated. I have a whole architecture using connectionism at the base level but which runs symbolist in effect, at the higher levels. In effect the NN output represent tokens, and at the higher levels the tokens are symbolist knowledge operating within connectionist architectures. That IS what the human brain does. Realize that, at some level, the brain is storing "C-A-T" and working with it. Yet this is totally within NNs. In the human brain, the belief that "Carrots are good for you" gets stored within NNs, although not directly as 'carrots+are+good+you". Rather as links between nets representing the concept of carrot, the concept of good, etc. I am simplifying a bit here, the mechanism is much more complex than that. Way more.
You're quite right. I'm working on this problem and will share some views. The basic problem has many layers, so I can't cover it all here, but that's partly why I'm writing whole books about this. All language is tied to the beliefs about the world of the culture using that language. So all words, phrases, and idioms of the language are very much tied to the belief systems governing how the speakers think, as well as use that language. In a conversation between speakers from different cultures, the source must rethink everything he wishes to communicate and recast it using the thought systems of the target language. Simple word-for-word lookup will often fail to properly do the job. So translator software systems must understand world models and the complex beliefs that operate within those models, and map (or create new mappings) from one system to the other system. If you have a culture that counts "one fish, two fish, many fish", a translator must understand how that culture thinks about number and remap your statement into their logic frame. To do this, an AI must know about belief systems. Further, it must recognize what cultures each party lives within. I am writing a whole book about that. It is in part a problem encompassing philosophy, logic systems, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. AI has failed to take this into account properly, which is one reason it has fallen so short dealing with people problems. The kind of engineering mind that handles computing does not usually handle the humanities too well, and vice versa. This is why few have worked on integrating these domains before. Chatbots will not rise to the complexity needed for Turing tests until they can build good world models handling these human factors. I expect to see AIs that you can ask "how do you feel about garlic snails", and they will be able to answer "I don't care for eating snails, I just like pizza." if the AI has been configured for North American culture, as opposed to French.
"to recreate a brain in a set of neural networks it is essential to be able to record that information from a human. This is practically impossible."
Let me clear something up. I haven't claimed anywhere to replicate existing people's brains. I can't stick some science-fiction scanner helmet on a person and make them live forever in an AI. However, I think it's quite possible to simulate people to a usable workable extent by building a model of their personality, traits, belief systems, estimates of what they know. My Groucho model does exactly that, for example. This is useful in making models of people in foreign cultures. For example, if you were to put a Muslim model in a situation and offer it pork and alcohol, the predicted response would be that its cultural beliefs would drive it to refuse the items. By combining cultural rules and the personal beliefs of the modeled person, you can provide some human-like semblance of behavior to some of an AI's behavior.
NNs are merely low-level components in an architecture. Intelligence emerges from much higher-level functions built in layers upon the lower-level functions. An inexact analogy is the OSI 7-Layer model for the Internet. No one layer IS the Internet, the behavior of the Net arises from the operation as a whole.
You're entitled to your doubts. However, please refrain from declaring I'm deluded, inasmuch as you have no genuine basis for it beyond personal assumption. "socially ludicrous"? I live and work in Silicon Valley, I deal with the semiconductor industry daily, we have tons of startups and it is common to deal with lawyers here to guard our developments. Come on, now. I'll hire staff when I have some solid control over my intellectual property.
"Inventing artificial minds is beyond the pale". May I point out that the military very much wants good AI. They're certainly a segment in my business plan. And there are very flaky AI proposals that get funded by DARPA and yet are on far weaker grounds than what I have. I think I'm standing strongly.
But thank you for the viewpoints, they're appreciated exercise.
No. Only as practice is currently implemented by others. Not like what I have. Your vision seems to be within the conventional box. In a way analogous to Marvin Minsky shooting down NNs for a long time because of his failure of vision, inability to conceive of other forms of the technology. Think larger and don't make his mistakes. Go read Beiderman's work, for example, on geons in visual perceptual systems. This hints at what properly-architected systems can do. Now extrapolate from this to what much larger systems could do with knowledge. You have NN experience, but you're stuck in the rut of the current paradigms. There is a region between the limited NNs people currently implement, and the massive ones of the brain. My work lies between these two, and I've come up with a new approach that merges connectionist and symbolist. I already have systems that can understand many of the things missing from sterile AI implementations: emotion, human belief systems, even humor. This is how I know the complete implemented architecture will be viable. I have a different approach than the failed visions. The underpinnings are solid, the model is solid.
"But I have significant pieces right now that do what no one else currently can do, and chunks"
"You don't know that for sure. Someone could be on track, but isn't telling."
Sure. But right now, nobody else has AI that understands humor. Not even close. I do. Published papers are completely off the mark, and I'm very confident of leading the effort. Ditto in areas of AI dealing with emotion and many other things required by an AI to understand people. As I said, the OCC standard model is in error and has holes, and they are the gold standard. It's easy for you to say someone could be on track, but really, published work doesn't show this. Who will have the best model and implementation? Mine works very very well, it IS tested. Lots of subtleties yet to be expanded, but it's clearly working. There is competition certainly, but there's no evidence of anyone out there who's pulled together all the things I have. I'm synthesizing across a broad range of fields. There are very few doing that with the same scope and scale and current results. Hence my confidence in my work.
You know, life is not NP-complete. But who cares? My point being, life goes on anyway, and is generally worth living. The history of humanity has been the finding of sub-optimal solutions that serve to allow some level of civilization to develop. Not perfect, and usually not worst case. Perhaps we would still benefit even if we cannot find optimal solutions but can avoid recognizably bad solutions.
... For those of you who expected my last line to be 'Ron Paul for President", don't even go there.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if you want longevity, I suggest papyrus over CDs. However, finding Egyptian Teletypes that can still read punched papyrus is murder. The Computer History Museum has only one, and it's constantly in use by some odd fellow wrapped all in rags and things. He keeps muttering 'ahnksen ahmen" and burning tanna leaves, too. Queer duck. I think he programs in COBOL.
I don't agree with rigid rules insisting on non-moderation on this one. The comment on Judge Kotelly did cite truths; she HAS befriended Microsoft and the administration. She HAS thereby aided big business and helped suppress truth and indirectly our freedom. While twitter may be trolling elsewhere, I don't consider discussion of Kotelly's history pure trolling in this case.
I agree, and I pity the fool who makes jokes about T-ray technology. Oh wait. You didn't say "Mr. T" ray technology. Ooops.
I see. So entanglement after two particles interact directly, exists only until measurement of state, then it 'nullifies'. It seems to me that the act of collapsing after measurement is part of what defines time. Perhaps time is defined by the statement that observation cannot be reversed. Collapsed states cannot be rewound.
Thanks. I now realize I had a misconception before, and a wrong model. My original statements are therefore incorrect. Any patent applications are now deemed null and void, as are my hopes of quantum teleportation into or out of a black hole.
Remind me of that on April 15th next year, around 11PM. While my hair is turning white.
if two particles are quantum-entangled, and you separate them, they remain entangled and you can monitor the state of one using the other. (Although I never understood what happens when one particle is accelerated to near light speed: how do two particles on different time scales stay connected?)
So now drop one particle of the pair into a black hole.
If they remain entangled, then you clearly have a way to pass information out of the black hole (although time may be stretched so it's not instantaneous anymore). This breaks known physics.
If their entanglement is broken off, then it means the gravitation boundary of a black hole trumps quantum entanglement. But that breaks known physics.
I'll take questions from the audience now. Yes, Dr Kip Thorne?
Thorne: You bastard.
The article misquotes. You see Dr. Weston was the first to invent bungee LAUNCHING of spacecraft. On the first low-cost launch, Mission Control was heard to say "WHEEEOOOO!!!!!! What a rush!!!". On the other hand, the astronauts inside the vehicle had other words to describe the experience. As this is a family newspaper, we cannot quote them here in full. However. Dr. Weston's mother was mentioned.
I've always wondered whether magnetic fields inside a black hole are restricted to being within the internal boundary of the black hole, but not able to penetrate outside it? Does the event horizon also apply to them? Does the boundary established by the hole's gravitational field prevent a magnetic field from emerging? That would imply gravity can trump magnetism. I guess that makes sense if gravity warps space, and magnetism has to propagate through space, so if space is distorted the magnetic field lines are too. So does this mean one could somehow bottle up enormous magnetic fields within a gravity-compressed space? Does this operate in suns to contain their reactions? And why do my friends from Tau Ceti always look at me like I was crazy when I ask them this? Just because I'm human doesn't mean they have to treat me like a galactic retard. Although that explains the Slinky they gave me, claiming it was advanced alien technology.
5. 'Hair Club for Men's Animal Adventures'
4. 'Cheaters, Best Buy Edition'
3. 'CSI McDonalds'
2. 'Tampax Space Patrol'
1. 'Taco Bell Emergency Room'
We wish to rent your lab for a short time. Money is no object.
Sincerely
Tom Cruise
P.S. We have nothing bad in mind.
5) Nude sunbathing: encouraged by Miami PD!
4) It's not noisy enough, we need small jets hovering outside the bedroom window at 3AM chasing pot smokers!
3) Proof of concept that Windows Vista, Mobile Edition is totally safe in unmanned drones, except when the DRM turns on!
2) Easier to catch 93-year men soliciting hookers!
and the #1 reason to use robotic drones:
1) Seagulls, eat leaden death!
You merely need a Beowulf cluster of sharks with green laser pointers. You then paint the target with a sardine beam to get their attention.
Well, it was more like a Chink in the Windows...
I believe ... this virus ... is a good .. thing. Everybody should .. have it. It is good. I repeat ... good. Everybody should have it. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody.
Clint, ditch the orangutan!
Phooey. This clearly proves existence of the ether, a theory I've supported since I was a child in grade school, 108 years ago. Michelson-Morley my ass. And Xenu particles can travel faster than light, too. Modern physics is all invalid. I shall prove you all wrong with my free energy machine, controlled by Windows Vista, Crackpot Edition.
Seems to me that if diamond dust is that prevalent, then many spacecraft and satellites must experience a high rate of surface erosion. And in the long run lenses on satellites doing optical surveillance would get pitted. And solar panels get frosted. Does anyone know if this happens? And more important, on my next trip to Beta Gamma Orion IV, if the greys don't have shields, will the dome get scratched? And does my Galactic State Farm policy cover this?
I believe that all SIs (synthetic intelligences, the term I use for human-like intelligences instead of AI, as AI denotes perhaps a sterile intelligence) must utilize what I call culture bases. A culture base is the system of beliefs of a particular cultural group. It is usually particular to that group. Thus, Catholics have a Catholic culture base, mathematicians have a culture base related to mathematics, etc. To understand a Catholic, to understand a mathematician, you must have knowledge of their culture bases even if you do not have and use their bases in your own life. Thus, I must know of the religious beliefs of Catholics - or Muslims! - to understand how they view life, even if I do not share their beliefs. This is a key factor in translation too.
A difference between animals and humans is that humans can pass their culture bases on to new generations through language and other means, but animals may be restricted to mirroring and learning activities. However, some activities may over time become genetically embedded in the sense of animals evolving with certain behavior selected for. For example, mating rituals in birds are clearly genetically embedded. So do humans have some embedded cultural behavior? I am exploring the extent of that, I'd say yes, some. But what is the range of this? A good topic for research for some doctoral candidate. An example, women respond to big-eyed small creatures (infants) with what is probably a genetically-determined nurturing stance.
Coming back to language, a part of a child's learning a language involves the process of learning the cultures of the parents. So the databases, as there are multiple ones, of an SI will be formed as it learns the worldview and activities of the cultures it is intended to deal with. Since there are substantial numbers of cultures and subcultures, the problem is complex. An Si will have to handle a mix of bases, and reason through the inevitble collisions of views, of worldframes, between cultures. In my work, I'm analyzing the nature of cultural knowledge needed for an SI to understand humans. Storing the culture bases in a NN architecture involves massive nets, which is why I need a new class of computers to run things on. Current experiments using clustering can only implement limited numbers of neurons (see the Darwin machine efforts). I need millions of neurons to handle the data needed for a moderate SI.
Factors to think about when designing an SI for the Turing competition: how could it handle a question about "what games did you like as a child?"; "What flavors of ice cream do you like, and why?" I believe that SIs must come to have beliefs, values, and even tastes like people do, or they will never be able to understand how humans think. You can see the obvious relevance to language translation here.
Ah. This where our models differ. I believe it is possible to produce functionality that does what the human mind does without having to duplicate the exact mechanics of the human brain. A simple proof: we can easily write code that does arithmetic. Yet it does not run on a machine that duplicates human neural structure. At a more complex level, we can build machines that handle knowledge and reasoning yet do not (necessarily) use NNs. My approach spans the two kinds of system. It is hard for people to understand how this works. I use NNs and other mechanisms and different architectures than a human brain to produce the same quality of capability. There is no need to know exactly how the brain is wired if you can produce the same functionality other ways. However, the other way can employ some of the means the brain does. Just not all of them.
I am not claiming I have a simple rule-based system nor do I train it that way. What I have is far more complicated. I have a whole architecture using connectionism at the base level but which runs symbolist in effect, at the higher levels. In effect the NN output represent tokens, and at the higher levels the tokens are symbolist knowledge operating within connectionist architectures. That IS what the human brain does. Realize that, at some level, the brain is storing "C-A-T" and working with it. Yet this is totally within NNs. In the human brain, the belief that "Carrots are good for you" gets stored within NNs, although not directly as 'carrots+are+good+you". Rather as links between nets representing the concept of carrot, the concept of good, etc. I am simplifying a bit here, the mechanism is much more complex than that. Way more.
You're quite right. I'm working on this problem and will share some views. The basic problem has many layers, so I can't cover it all here, but that's partly why I'm writing whole books about this. All language is tied to the beliefs about the world of the culture using that language. So all words, phrases, and idioms of the language are very much tied to the belief systems governing how the speakers think, as well as use that language. In a conversation between speakers from different cultures, the source must rethink everything he wishes to communicate and recast it using the thought systems of the target language. Simple word-for-word lookup will often fail to properly do the job. So translator software systems must understand world models and the complex beliefs that operate within those models, and map (or create new mappings) from one system to the other system. If you have a culture that counts "one fish, two fish, many fish", a translator must understand how that culture thinks about number and remap your statement into their logic frame. To do this, an AI must know about belief systems. Further, it must recognize what cultures each party lives within. I am writing a whole book about that. It is in part a problem encompassing philosophy, logic systems, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. AI has failed to take this into account properly, which is one reason it has fallen so short dealing with people problems. The kind of engineering mind that handles computing does not usually handle the humanities too well, and vice versa. This is why few have worked on integrating these domains before. Chatbots will not rise to the complexity needed for Turing tests until they can build good world models handling these human factors. I expect to see AIs that you can ask "how do you feel about garlic snails", and they will be able to answer "I don't care for eating snails, I just like pizza." if the AI has been configured for North American culture, as opposed to French.
Let me clear something up. I haven't claimed anywhere to replicate existing people's brains. I can't stick some science-fiction scanner helmet on a person and make them live forever in an AI. However, I think it's quite possible to simulate people to a usable workable extent by building a model of their personality, traits, belief systems, estimates of what they know. My Groucho model does exactly that, for example. This is useful in making models of people in foreign cultures. For example, if you were to put a Muslim model in a situation and offer it pork and alcohol, the predicted response would be that its cultural beliefs would drive it to refuse the items. By combining cultural rules and the personal beliefs of the modeled person, you can provide some human-like semblance of behavior to some of an AI's behavior.
NNs are merely low-level components in an architecture. Intelligence emerges from much higher-level functions built in layers upon the lower-level functions. An inexact analogy is the OSI 7-Layer model for the Internet. No one layer IS the Internet, the behavior of the Net arises from the operation as a whole.
"Inventing artificial minds is beyond the pale". May I point out that the military very much wants good AI. They're certainly a segment in my business plan. And there are very flaky AI proposals that get funded by DARPA and yet are on far weaker grounds than what I have. I think I'm standing strongly.
But thank you for the viewpoints, they're appreciated exercise.
No. Only as practice is currently implemented by others. Not like what I have. Your vision seems to be within the conventional box. In a way analogous to Marvin Minsky shooting down NNs for a long time because of his failure of vision, inability to conceive of other forms of the technology. Think larger and don't make his mistakes. Go read Beiderman's work, for example, on geons in visual perceptual systems. This hints at what properly-architected systems can do. Now extrapolate from this to what much larger systems could do with knowledge. You have NN experience, but you're stuck in the rut of the current paradigms. There is a region between the limited NNs people currently implement, and the massive ones of the brain. My work lies between these two, and I've come up with a new approach that merges connectionist and symbolist. I already have systems that can understand many of the things missing from sterile AI implementations: emotion, human belief systems, even humor. This is how I know the complete implemented architecture will be viable. I have a different approach than the failed visions. The underpinnings are solid, the model is solid.
"But I have significant pieces right now that do what no one else currently can do, and chunks"
"You don't know that for sure. Someone could be on track, but isn't telling."
Sure. But right now, nobody else has AI that understands humor. Not even close. I do. Published papers are completely off the mark, and I'm very confident of leading the effort. Ditto in areas of AI dealing with emotion and many other things required by an AI to understand people. As I said, the OCC standard model is in error and has holes, and they are the gold standard. It's easy for you to say someone could be on track, but really, published work doesn't show this. Who will have the best model and implementation? Mine works very very well, it IS tested. Lots of subtleties yet to be expanded, but it's clearly working. There is competition certainly, but there's no evidence of anyone out there who's pulled together all the things I have. I'm synthesizing across a broad range of fields. There are very few doing that with the same scope and scale and current results. Hence my confidence in my work.
... For those of you who expected my last line to be 'Ron Paul for President", don't even go there.