...of course the wired it is generally accepted as having been mostly made up. However it *is interesting* as one of the first serious character assinations in computer science (the politics behind which are also intriguing).
You may be right. These are all ideas. Your right about chess not relying solely on brute force, I just stressed that because it does have a colossal advantage in that aspect - our neurons just can't fire quick enough physically to process that many board states. I think that (maybe precariously) the mathematical systems examples you give are a bit off in terms of search spaces as swathes can be ruled out in many - but they still probably offer more to AI than the current chess machines (which is my point really).
There is an old AI puzzle called the Chinese Room. I won't go through retelling it but what it boils down to is that if something appears to be exhibiting Intelligent behaviour then, whatever it is doing, we should deem it intelligent.
I don't agree with this outlook - processes are important. If something appears to be doing something intelligent but underneath its macro-processes inherently aren't, this is what I term SIMULATED intelligence (as in the case of this chess program exhaustively searching a database of possible move outcomes)
Nevertheless this of course brings up the question of how do you define an intelligent process occurring underneath. To reiterate, to me this is:
"The ability to Solve a Task with an infinite Problem space"
Chess to an incredible digitised number cruncher is not infinite. It has a colossal but ultimately finite number of board states and moves. But to a human it *is* infinite, or might as well be. We simply cannot get anywhere near coping with consideration of every possible move, and we're certainly light years behind the computers processing power.
Yet somehow we can deal with this search space - this is ACTUAL intelligence in my book. Noone knows how we do it but its certainly ingrained in our ability to Learn and feel out a situation without a firm grip of meta knowledge.
Now a computer that could also overcome this problem without brute force would represent ARTIFICIAL intelligence, the holy grail of computer science. Reduce the search tree of the code to approach a humans abilities (limit how far the computer can look ahead in moves) and force researchers to deal with *that* situation, and just watch the snowball of advancement in all areas of Artificial Intelligence that would ensue.
I hate these sort of stories because people read so much crap into them. If you view it as it actually is then fair enough, but if you think this has anything to do with Artificial Intelligence or Machine-Thought you couldn't be further off.
This is the extended life of a festering academic dead end that started 30 or so years ago and is wasting time and resources, that could be spent on real research into AI. This is SIMULATED INTELLIGENCE, a machine that does nothing but churn through a DB's and apply brute force search with a coupla crappy heuristics, in an attempt to simulate the appearance of what a human does truly intelligently.
The definition of AI should be the research of systems that deal with INFINITE Problem spaces. This is the *miracle of real intelligence* - that we can be addressed with problems with infinite search spaces such as simply walking or crossing a road, and somehow, despite the infinite possibilities come out with a perfect solution. You ever seen a computer try and cope with exponential chaos of juggling? A human can learn in an hour.
Chess is a big space but of course a number cruncher will eventually be able to solve it. The real intelligence is how the hell a human is capable of it at all given our limited resources. Build a synthetic machine that can play chess *as a human does*, THEN your on the money, and on the way to creating true AI.
Before being ensnared by AI, I got me a degree in economics and studied patent theory relatively deeply, its origins, it supposed motivations to protect innovation, etc, etc. At its roots the ethics behind patents are honorable, but in the modern world of software development seem far more to protect the big guns from competition, as opposed to encouraging independent innovation.
5 YEARS ON I'm now developing on a bleeding edge software project, utterly original, which has by necessity at its centre a patent. This is essential to allow the project time to grow unnopposed without remaining hidden from the coding community. Pure open source development of this work could well end in brain stunted corporate imitation or BeOS style tragedy.
Its finding the right balance... patents can help us non-corporate guys to seriously change the world. They *can* be good imho. (remember even linux had some basis for its design already researched and developed in the shape of unix api) Patents should exist to allow us R&D and time to setup, hopefully for the good of everyone...but not to monopolise and stunt creativity for decades, and thats the point. Balance and Tao.
All the problems everyone has mentioned - it solves. All of them. And the email organisation issue just highlights whats wrong with your *entire* file system. So if you don't know what zigzag is time to find out because its going to be with us very, very soon.
Without question zigzag will be the solution to all of these problems. The first applications are now being produced using zigzag at its engine. Everything is going to change;)
Slashdot Mirror
...of course the wired it is generally accepted as having been mostly made up. However it *is interesting* as one of the first serious character assinations in computer science (the politics behind which are also intriguing).
"Let's see. How about the Internet? Email? Web server and web browser.... "
yup, you've managed to pick three project all inspired, created or mapped out by privately funded researchers (anyone even heard of doug englebart...)
You may be right. These are all ideas. Your right about chess not relying solely on brute force, I just stressed that because it does have a colossal advantage in that aspect - our neurons just can't fire quick enough physically to process that many board states. I think that (maybe precariously) the mathematical systems examples you give are a bit off in terms of search spaces as swathes can be ruled out in many - but they still probably offer more to AI than the current chess machines (which is my point really).
There is an old AI puzzle called the Chinese Room. I won't go through retelling it but what it boils down to is that if something appears to be exhibiting Intelligent behaviour then, whatever it is doing, we should deem it intelligent.
I don't agree with this outlook - processes are important. If something appears to be doing something intelligent but underneath its macro-processes inherently aren't, this is what I term SIMULATED intelligence (as in the case of this chess program exhaustively searching a database of possible move outcomes)
Nevertheless this of course brings up the question of how do you define an intelligent process occurring underneath. To reiterate, to me this is:
"The ability to Solve a Task with an infinite Problem space"
Chess to an incredible digitised number cruncher is not infinite. It has a colossal but ultimately finite number of board states and moves. But to a human it *is* infinite, or might as well be. We simply cannot get anywhere near coping with consideration of every possible move, and we're certainly light years behind the computers processing power.
Yet somehow we can deal with this search space - this is ACTUAL intelligence in my book. Noone knows how we do it but its certainly ingrained in our ability to Learn and feel out a situation without a firm grip of meta knowledge.
Now a computer that could also overcome this problem without brute force would represent ARTIFICIAL intelligence, the holy grail of computer science. Reduce the search tree of the code to approach a humans abilities (limit how far the computer can look ahead in moves) and force researchers to deal with *that* situation, and just watch the snowball of advancement in all areas of Artificial Intelligence that would ensue.
I hate these sort of stories because people read so much crap into them. If you view it as it actually is then fair enough, but if you think this has anything to do with Artificial Intelligence or Machine-Thought you couldn't be further off. This is the extended life of a festering academic dead end that started 30 or so years ago and is wasting time and resources, that could be spent on real research into AI. This is SIMULATED INTELLIGENCE, a machine that does nothing but churn through a DB's and apply brute force search with a coupla crappy heuristics, in an attempt to simulate the appearance of what a human does truly intelligently. The definition of AI should be the research of systems that deal with INFINITE Problem spaces. This is the *miracle of real intelligence* - that we can be addressed with problems with infinite search spaces such as simply walking or crossing a road, and somehow, despite the infinite possibilities come out with a perfect solution. You ever seen a computer try and cope with exponential chaos of juggling? A human can learn in an hour. Chess is a big space but of course a number cruncher will eventually be able to solve it. The real intelligence is how the hell a human is capable of it at all given our limited resources. Build a synthetic machine that can play chess *as a human does*, THEN your on the money, and on the way to creating true AI.
Before being ensnared by AI, I got me a degree in economics and studied patent theory relatively deeply, its origins, it supposed motivations to protect innovation, etc, etc. At its roots the ethics behind patents are honorable, but in the modern world of software development seem far more to protect the big guns from competition, as opposed to encouraging independent innovation. 5 YEARS ON I'm now developing on a bleeding edge software project, utterly original, which has by necessity at its centre a patent. This is essential to allow the project time to grow unnopposed without remaining hidden from the coding community. Pure open source development of this work could well end in brain stunted corporate imitation or BeOS style tragedy. Its finding the right balance... patents can help us non-corporate guys to seriously change the world. They *can* be good imho. (remember even linux had some basis for its design already researched and developed in the shape of unix api) Patents should exist to allow us R&D and time to setup, hopefully for the good of everyone...but not to monopolise and stunt creativity for decades, and thats the point. Balance and Tao.
All the problems everyone has mentioned - it solves. All of them. And the email organisation issue just highlights whats wrong with your *entire* file system. So if you don't know what zigzag is time to find out because its going to be with us very, very soon.
Without question zigzag will be the solution to all of these problems. The first applications are now being produced using zigzag at its engine. Everything is going to change ;)