Re: New AI Prize

An AI can only be a complex as its environment, an artificial world will be
useful for getting an AI up and running but then it would need to be brought
into the real world (robot) to really learn and do anything useful. After
all, you could put a human child on a far off planet by themselves and they
would be lucky to grow up to be any better than a monkey. We'll always be
potentially much brighter than monkeys, but what really makes us smart is
our ability to learn from others and use the tools that others have created.
With the knowledge I have now I could never build a computer myself, I
wouldn't have a bloody clue but this doesn't prevent me from using a
computer to try and create something as ambitious as AI.

The reason why creating AI in artificial worlds is such an attractive idea
for AI programmers is because they just can't afford the time and money or
don't have the knowledge to build robots themselves. Maybe the programmer
that eventually creates AI could pass it onto the engineers at Honda so they
can upload it into their robots. Their robots will be able to really dance
then.


The human race is smart but a human being is stupid. (Sounds like something
a character in a kung fu movie would say)


YABBA DABBA DOOO!



"Martin Gradwell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Fred Flinstone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Why do we need a computer program that can understand a complex
artificial
> > world? Wouldn't it be better to have a machine that understood the real
> > world?
>
> A machine understanding of the real world would be useful,
> but tricky to attain.
>
> > Creating an AI and a complex artificial world is just making the
> > problem even harder and the result would be useless.
>
> Not at all. Complex artificial worlds have a lot of advantages
> for training up of an AI, when compared to the real world.
>
> First, the link between the AI and the world it occupies is just
> software. Once it has been developed you can replicate it endlessly,
> as long as you have enough computer memory and processing
> power. For real world interaction you would need real physical
> robots, and if you wanted e.g. to make them evolve to a high level
> by natural selection you would need thousands or millions of them.
> Not cheap.
>
> Secondly, an artificial world can be sped up by piling on the
> processing power. With enough fast processors you could in
> theory get through thousands of generations every second.
> This is significant because life took billions of years to get to
> the level it has attained naturally, and scientists probably
> wouldn't want to wait billions of years for AI entities to reach
> the same level.
>
> Thirdly there's replicability of situations. You don't know if
> robot A is better than robot B in a certain situation. No problem,
> you face them both with that situation. With software, you can
> guarantee that both robots face exactly the same circumstances,
> so any difference in outcome must be due to differences in the
> way the robots behave. And you can perform extensive "what-if"
> analysis. What if the robot had approached the situation more
> cautiously? What if it had been able to move slightly faster?
>
> Artificial worlds have been used in AI, but these worlds are
> generally very simple, and they map to a very restricted subset
> of the real world domain, such as rectangular blocks which can
> support other blocks. Or topologically  toroidal (i.e. the edges
> wrap around) 2-d "ponds" in which predators and prey interact,
> and there are no features apart from the interacting organisms.
> But I would argue that the simplicity and limited size of these
> environments limits the possibilities for the development of
> intelligence.
>
>
> >
> > I don't think a prize is necessarily a good thing, the smart people who
> have
> > a chance of creating AI will realize that it would be a gamble to spend
> > their lives trying to create AI in the hope of winning the prize at the
> end.
>
> If there was a second prize, one for developing a suitable environment
> in which AI entities could thrive, I think I'd be tempted to have a go.
> But yes, it would be a gamble. And the problem with AI is how do you
> decide when the goal has been reached?  That would be a serious
> problem if there was a big money prize involved, one which various people
> thought they had earned but the controllers of the purse strings
disagreed.
>
> > People have families to support and need a decent income. Money isn't a
> > really a good incentive anyway, the peope who create AI will create it
> > because they're genuinely fascinated by it. With the way things are
going
> I
> > don't think AI is going to just pop up from out of a laboratory one day
> with
> > a fanfare blasting out, it's looking like its going to slowly evolve
into
> > existence.
>
> Money can be a good incentive, after all it is what allows the people
> to support their families. But there needs to be a balance, enough small
> sums floating around to ensure that nobody starves while trying to
> attain their heady goals, plus a few large incentives to spur them on.
>
> I think true AI will evolve out of games, because of smart opponents
> making for an improved gaming experience. Multiplayer games reduce
> the need for emergent game AI's, but they'll still be needed e.g. for
> slack periods when not many real people are logged on to a game, but
> the few that are want to control large armies.
>
> Martin Gradwell.
>
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