From: O'Regan, Emlyn (Emlyn.ORegan@actew.com.au)
Date: Wed Jun 30 1999 - 23:16:49 MDT
Eliezer,
The seed AI concept has been rattling around in my head for a while. What's
buggin me is the concept of environment. I asked you what environment you
expected would be necessary for the AI a while back, and you said that the
environment would be the AI's code itself (I think - I could have missed
your point, please have patience with a mere mortal).
Absolutely, this must be the core of the environment. But there must be more
than this, mustn't there? For an AI to optimise itself, there must be some
definition of optimal, which implies a frame of reference. I think that
frame must be external to the code, because the idea of optimising you code
to make you better at optimising your code has an unfortunately circular and
empty feel to it.
You talk about domdules to perform various functions in "Coding a Transhuman
AI" - do you envision trying to deal with the whole real world from the get
go? Or is there some initial minimal closed environment in which to start
the AI, which the AI can begin in, and upon which you can expand when the AI
gets comfortable?
I would be in favour of trying the approach of designing a minimal simulated
environment (including the code for the AI itself), with option to expand
(aiming to eventually include a connection 'out', into the net).
Does this sound something like what you are envisaging?
Emlyn, Computer Knackerer
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