Did anybody else read this as they're switching from polygon-based models back to good old traditional sprites?
But to keep this on topic, I fully support the move for in-game advertising, especially if the article is true:
The discussion of in-game ads last time dealt with the obvious "immersion breaking" factor of/pizza in a fantasy atmosphere, and Anarchy Online (AO) certainly could be in danger of doing this as well... but the difference is that AO's new ad scheme is allowing them to give the basic game FREE, with no subscription fees!!
FREE! Free I said!!
No this isn't just a downloadable trial, and there really isn't any catch... and, yes there's no subscription fees. You don't even require a credit card to join.
(Emphasis mine.) To this, I say: bring it on!
Something else to consider: will this perhaps eventually fund game development? A company has a concept for a game, whether MMO or not, and they get companies to sponsor the development in exchange for prominent placement? So maybe in the next MMO game we'll see the "eBay Auction House" or the "General Motors Inter-zone Transportation" place? It's a bit tasteless to just throw a company name up when it has nothing to do with the theme of the game, but if it's something like The Matrix Online, where the urban sprawl lends itself perfectly for company-sponsored locations -- just like real life -- then why the heck not?
Companies already spend boatloads of money and take a shotgun approach to marketing, spending millions on advertising for a single SuperBowl spot. Why not spend a fraction of that, fund some game development, and get thousands more impressions targeted at the exact kind of audience you want. ATI, nVidia, and Intel to name a few already use this concept when sponsoring game competitions. What better way to reach their exact target market?
And on a broader front, are you really prepared to trust a company like Kelkea, Inc. (owners of MAPS) to decide what emails gets to you without really knowing how they operate and deal with resolution processes?
I don't trust MAPS in any way whatsoever. However, what does your or my trust have to do with it? Nothing! I don't have any dealings with Kelkea, so this seems like some kind of smear campaign against the company.
Honestly, what is really the issue here? If you are paying for their service and you don't like it anymore, then why do you keep using it? The maintainers include whatever IP addresses they want and, if you find it meets your needs, you keep using it. If your customers aren't getting your email, then they should reconsider whether or not they should use MAPS.
"Over the next decade... develop nanotechnology..."
I thought Nanotech was still in its infancy.
Right, which is why they're developing it. In ten years, a human infant is no longer an infant. Of course, it remains to be seen whether nanotech can sustain a similar level of growth.
Thanks for the info. I was going to reply with some questions and all that but I figured this isn't the most appropriate place for a discussion -- plus I'm sure every AI noob has asked them all before. So I'll probably do a bit more googling in an attempt to decrease my ignorance on the topic.:)
My thoughts exactly. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Someone who's paid by Microsoft says that the list of developers is going to make your jaw drop. Of course, that list might contain only one entry, but never mind that. So all the big name studios who aren't on the list think that everybody else *is* on the list. And they don't want to be the ones left out so, thinking that all their competitors are already on the bandwagon, they start developing a game or two. Rinse and repeat.
Now, I haven't the faintest idea of how to explain the idea of color to somebody who has been blind since birth.
You can't directly explain it because they've never had the inputs to formulate in their brains. However, your post got me thinking. How *would* you do this? I think one good way might be to analogize it to touch. Pressure and texture. When you touch something, you can feel its texture. Also, when something touches you it does so using differing amounts of pressure. So, eyes are mostly like that. They passively collect the visual equivalent of different textures and pressures. It's as if you took a painting and made each color a different texture -- the painting is a representation of a real 3D world on a (mostly) 2D surface.
I think you're overestimating the importance of processing speed and underestimating the importance of the above [the wiring].
I'd disagree. I do understand the significant hurdle that the "how" represents. As for speed, see below.
Throwing more nodes into a network doesn't get anywhere with these problems, whether the network "grows itself" or whether the programmer does the work. The big problem is structuring inputs and outputs to be complete, sensible, and not wrongly redundant, and perhaps arranging networks in sequences or graphs to separate information and model psychological findings of dissociations between tasks.
Right, and there's the challenging part. Intuitively, I think the solution must be elegantly simple. Yet the implementation appears to be exceedingly difficult. I do understand that the challenges lie in what you've outlined.
Also, there's a great deal of parallel processing in play. Your 100 THz processor can perform a zillion operations per second in order, which gives it far more flexibility than the brain has.
What I perhaps didn't make clear was that in simulating the brain that 100THz would be divided up into 100 billion parts and if each of those parts uses up 100 cycles to do a single operation, in effect it gives the average neuron the equivalent processing power of a 10Hz (not a typo -- ten hertz) computer. So this mega-processor would be simulating massively parallel operations of incredibly slow neurons. In this hand-waving argument, I'm ignoring time spent context-switching, etc. to arrive at a totally ballpark estimate. And I might be totally out to lunch, but it seems a reasonable hypothesis based on what I understand.
Between neuron firing rate and communication time, I think (can't currently find the reference) the brain is limited to about 100 sequential operations per second.
That may be true, but what constitutes an operation? Think of it this way: how many pressure sensors (sorry, I don't know the technical term) are on your feet? A thousand? Probably much, much more I'd think. That means that your feet are generating a thousand or more nerve impulses every time you step. And that's just your feet. Your eyes have a resolution equivalent of about a 100 megapixel camera. And how many times a second does that information get processed? What about the things you're listening to? Or the breeze you feel? And the scents? I think 100 is a tad low unless you're talking very high-level abstractions. Or is that 100 *conscious* operations per second? That would seem reasonable.
I'd be very interested in seeing information confirming anything close to your generous 1% firing at a time...
Well, I don't have any reference I can cite. However, I'm working under the assumption that if you have all neurons firing all the time, the result is insanity. So I made a vaguely educated guess and picked a number. Perhaps I'm off by a factor of 10 or 20, but I think the reasoning still stands. It takes a hell of a lot of storage and processing power to simulate the brain and we're nearing or have already reached the time when technology won't be the barrier to real AI -- the implementation of that technology is.
I don't know what you mean "grow", since all implentations use a static number of neurons that are connected to each other via a series of preexisting links.
That's just what I mean though. Why do all implementations have a static number, where the links are all predetermined? Why not somehow (large hand-waving here) allow the neural net to add its own neurons and determine the linking? The human brain's connections strengthen or degrade over time without someone having to tweak any parameters. And new connections form all the time. That's what I mean by grow.
Where's the missing step from a static neural net to a dynamic one? Or has this been solved?
You're right, the problems are very hard and today's neural nets just don't cut it. However, I think of it this way... if aliens came down and handed us the exact hardware and software solution to an awesome "baby bootstrap" system, I think we would not have had the technology in the 80's and 90's to implement it. I could be wrong. But I don't think the 1980's ridiculously expensive 32MB of memory is sufficient to implement AI with.
If each neuron in the human brain takes up a single byte of storage, that's still 100 gigabytes. Of course you're correct in that just having the technology won't guarantee a solution, but we won't be able to implement the solution without the technology.
and of course don't forget the I/O, from eyes to hands. learning requires a lot more than just a brain.
I'm operating under the assumption that those 100 billion neurons are connected to something -- input from the optic nerves, from the ears, from touch/pressure/heat sensors, etc. as well as interconnecting white matter.
The problem, however, is that no matter how efficient your filters are, they will lack the motivation of a learning, growing human being to learn. They will not notice things as a human would; they won't notice things at all. They'll simply take input and use a pre-determined algorythm to produce output.
Then you need to ask, what is motivation? Unless you believe that people have a soul which AI can never possess, then why can't a sufficiently intelligent AI achieve everything a human can? Put another way, if we were able to take DNA and perfectly simulate its growth just as a fetus would, so that we have a machine duplicate of a human brain, is there any reason to believe (again, given a perfect simulation) that our software AI would operate any differently than our own wetware?
Note that nowhere in this process do they explicitly tell the system that certain spelling combinations lead to specific pronunciations. They only "trained" the system by telling it if it's right or wrong.
Right, it's kind of like an implementation of bayesian spam filtering, but for other problem domains. Instead of spam/ham, it's pronounced-correctly/incorrectly. Rinse and repeat.
I dabble in AI now and again so I haven't read up on everything that's out there, but in my limited travels what I haven't yet seen is a neural network implementation which can learn and grow itself. The recently posted/. article about Numenta seems to be heading in the right direction. Most neural networks are incredibly rudimentary, offering a few levels of propogation. In a real brain, there's a hell of a lot more going on.
I did some calculations a while back, and based upon 100 billion neurons in the brain, each capable of firing let's say an average of 1000 times per second, and we'll assume that at any given time a generous 1% of all neurons are actively firing, and that the information firing takes 100 clock cycles to process, then you'd need the equivalent of about a 100 TeraHz processor with oodles of memory to have the same processing power as the human brain. Of course, you'd also need to correctly simulate *how* the brain is wired up to get any kind of beneficial processing.
So as far as the whole 1980's AI winter, it was inevitable. The computing power and storage requirements for any sufficiently advanced AI just wasn't possible. It's only until very recently that it's possible to achieve fairly complex AI.
Slashdot Mirror
You do realize that the inventor of the wiki works for Microsoft, right?
Douglas Adams works for Microsoft?
But to keep this on topic, I fully support the move for in-game advertising, especially if the article is true:
(Emphasis mine.) To this, I say: bring it on!
Something else to consider: will this perhaps eventually fund game development? A company has a concept for a game, whether MMO or not, and they get companies to sponsor the development in exchange for prominent placement? So maybe in the next MMO game we'll see the "eBay Auction House" or the "General Motors Inter-zone Transportation" place? It's a bit tasteless to just throw a company name up when it has nothing to do with the theme of the game, but if it's something like The Matrix Online, where the urban sprawl lends itself perfectly for company-sponsored locations -- just like real life -- then why the heck not?
Companies already spend boatloads of money and take a shotgun approach to marketing, spending millions on advertising for a single SuperBowl spot. Why not spend a fraction of that, fund some game development, and get thousands more impressions targeted at the exact kind of audience you want. ATI, nVidia, and Intel to name a few already use this concept when sponsoring game competitions. What better way to reach their exact target market?
superiour ... inferiour
Are you a closet Canadian, or just a lousy speller?
That's Brent, not Bent. Of course, that would have required some editing...
No, no... the name you're looking for is LinZilla.
I want some blue roses for a red lady.
If it were the other way around, I'd think you were buying flowers for Terri Schiavo.
But the real question is, does he always get the replay?
Should I buy the book or not? Anyone care to enlighten us?
Well, with a name like Hibernate, I figure the book would put me to sleep.
And on a broader front, are you really prepared to trust a company like Kelkea, Inc. (owners of MAPS) to decide what emails gets to you without really knowing how they operate and deal with resolution processes?
I don't trust MAPS in any way whatsoever. However, what does your or my trust have to do with it? Nothing! I don't have any dealings with Kelkea, so this seems like some kind of smear campaign against the company.
Honestly, what is really the issue here? If you are paying for their service and you don't like it anymore, then why do you keep using it? The maintainers include whatever IP addresses they want and, if you find it meets your needs, you keep using it. If your customers aren't getting your email, then they should reconsider whether or not they should use MAPS.
"Over the next decade... develop nanotechnology..."
I thought Nanotech was still in its infancy.
Right, which is why they're developing it. In ten years, a human infant is no longer an infant. Of course, it remains to be seen whether nanotech can sustain a similar level of growth.
I have Windows XP SP2 running Windows XP SP2 in Virtual PC right now. I don't see the problem.
The "problem" you missed is listed right there in TFA:
"When you run a Windows XP SP2-based virtual machine, it will perform slowly compared to a Windows XP SP1-based virtual machine."
Thanks for the info. I was going to reply with some questions and all that but I figured this isn't the most appropriate place for a discussion -- plus I'm sure every AI noob has asked them all before. So I'll probably do a bit more googling in an attempt to decrease my ignorance on the topic. :)
My thoughts exactly. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Someone who's paid by Microsoft says that the list of developers is going to make your jaw drop. Of course, that list might contain only one entry, but never mind that. So all the big name studios who aren't on the list think that everybody else *is* on the list. And they don't want to be the ones left out so, thinking that all their competitors are already on the bandwagon, they start developing a game or two. Rinse and repeat.
Oh... my... god, y'all!!! That is like, *SO* totally Canadian shizzle my come back now, yuh heahr?
The danger is that this thing will learn the wrong things by reading the Internet.
But isn't that the exact same concern of any parent?
Now, I haven't the faintest idea of how to explain the idea of color to somebody who has been blind since birth.
You can't directly explain it because they've never had the inputs to formulate in their brains. However, your post got me thinking. How *would* you do this? I think one good way might be to analogize it to touch. Pressure and texture. When you touch something, you can feel its texture. Also, when something touches you it does so using differing amounts of pressure. So, eyes are mostly like that. They passively collect the visual equivalent of different textures and pressures. It's as if you took a painting and made each color a different texture -- the painting is a representation of a real 3D world on a (mostly) 2D surface.
I think you're overestimating the importance of processing speed and underestimating the importance of the above [the wiring].
I'd disagree. I do understand the significant hurdle that the "how" represents. As for speed, see below.
Throwing more nodes into a network doesn't get anywhere with these problems, whether the network "grows itself" or whether the programmer does the work. The big problem is structuring inputs and outputs to be complete, sensible, and not wrongly redundant, and perhaps arranging networks in sequences or graphs to separate information and model psychological findings of dissociations between tasks.
Right, and there's the challenging part. Intuitively, I think the solution must be elegantly simple. Yet the implementation appears to be exceedingly difficult. I do understand that the challenges lie in what you've outlined.
Also, there's a great deal of parallel processing in play. Your 100 THz processor can perform a zillion operations per second in order, which gives it far more flexibility than the brain has.
What I perhaps didn't make clear was that in simulating the brain that 100THz would be divided up into 100 billion parts and if each of those parts uses up 100 cycles to do a single operation, in effect it gives the average neuron the equivalent processing power of a 10Hz (not a typo -- ten hertz) computer. So this mega-processor would be simulating massively parallel operations of incredibly slow neurons. In this hand-waving argument, I'm ignoring time spent context-switching, etc. to arrive at a totally ballpark estimate. And I might be totally out to lunch, but it seems a reasonable hypothesis based on what I understand.
Between neuron firing rate and communication time, I think (can't currently find the reference) the brain is limited to about 100 sequential operations per second.
That may be true, but what constitutes an operation? Think of it this way: how many pressure sensors (sorry, I don't know the technical term) are on your feet? A thousand? Probably much, much more I'd think. That means that your feet are generating a thousand or more nerve impulses every time you step. And that's just your feet. Your eyes have a resolution equivalent of about a 100 megapixel camera. And how many times a second does that information get processed? What about the things you're listening to? Or the breeze you feel? And the scents? I think 100 is a tad low unless you're talking very high-level abstractions. Or is that 100 *conscious* operations per second? That would seem reasonable.
I'd be very interested in seeing information confirming anything close to your generous 1% firing at a time...
Well, I don't have any reference I can cite. However, I'm working under the assumption that if you have all neurons firing all the time, the result is insanity. So I made a vaguely educated guess and picked a number. Perhaps I'm off by a factor of 10 or 20, but I think the reasoning still stands. It takes a hell of a lot of storage and processing power to simulate the brain and we're nearing or have already reached the time when technology won't be the barrier to real AI -- the implementation of that technology is.
I don't know what you mean "grow", since all implentations use a static number of neurons that are connected to each other via a series of preexisting links.
That's just what I mean though. Why do all implementations have a static number, where the links are all predetermined? Why not somehow (large hand-waving here) allow the neural net to add its own neurons and determine the linking? The human brain's connections strengthen or degrade over time without someone having to tweak any parameters. And new connections form all the time. That's what I mean by grow.
Where's the missing step from a static neural net to a dynamic one? Or has this been solved?
You're right, the problems are very hard and today's neural nets just don't cut it. However, I think of it this way... if aliens came down and handed us the exact hardware and software solution to an awesome "baby bootstrap" system, I think we would not have had the technology in the 80's and 90's to implement it. I could be wrong. But I don't think the 1980's ridiculously expensive 32MB of memory is sufficient to implement AI with.
If each neuron in the human brain takes up a single byte of storage, that's still 100 gigabytes. Of course you're correct in that just having the technology won't guarantee a solution, but we won't be able to implement the solution without the technology.
and of course don't forget the I/O, from eyes to hands. learning requires a lot more than just a brain.
I'm operating under the assumption that those 100 billion neurons are connected to something -- input from the optic nerves, from the ears, from touch/pressure/heat sensors, etc. as well as interconnecting white matter.
The problem, however, is that no matter how efficient your filters are, they will lack the motivation of a learning, growing human being to learn. They will not notice things as a human would; they won't notice things at all. They'll simply take input and use a pre-determined algorythm to produce output.
Then you need to ask, what is motivation? Unless you believe that people have a soul which AI can never possess, then why can't a sufficiently intelligent AI achieve everything a human can? Put another way, if we were able to take DNA and perfectly simulate its growth just as a fetus would, so that we have a machine duplicate of a human brain, is there any reason to believe (again, given a perfect simulation) that our software AI would operate any differently than our own wetware?
Note that nowhere in this process do they explicitly tell the system that certain spelling combinations lead to specific pronunciations. They only "trained" the system by telling it if it's right or wrong.
/. article about Numenta seems to be heading in the right direction. Most neural networks are incredibly rudimentary, offering a few levels of propogation. In a real brain, there's a hell of a lot more going on.
Right, it's kind of like an implementation of bayesian spam filtering, but for other problem domains. Instead of spam/ham, it's pronounced-correctly/incorrectly. Rinse and repeat.
I dabble in AI now and again so I haven't read up on everything that's out there, but in my limited travels what I haven't yet seen is a neural network implementation which can learn and grow itself. The recently posted
I did some calculations a while back, and based upon 100 billion neurons in the brain, each capable of firing let's say an average of 1000 times per second, and we'll assume that at any given time a generous 1% of all neurons are actively firing, and that the information firing takes 100 clock cycles to process, then you'd need the equivalent of about a 100 TeraHz processor with oodles of memory to have the same processing power as the human brain. Of course, you'd also need to correctly simulate *how* the brain is wired up to get any kind of beneficial processing.
So as far as the whole 1980's AI winter, it was inevitable. The computing power and storage requirements for any sufficiently advanced AI just wasn't possible. It's only until very recently that it's possible to achieve fairly complex AI.
It was too hard for the average user. Perhaps if Apple built it into the iPod and integrated it with the scroll wheel it would reach critical mass.
Sounds good to me. I hereby dub it bodCasting.
Maybe toothing led to teething.