From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Fri Aug 11 2006 - 20:19:11 MDT
At 09:45 PM 8/11/2006, Russell Wallace wrote:
>Yet Cyc achieved less than Eurisko, and we understand why: it
>handles only ungrounded declarative sentences, which are far too
>shallow a subset of knowledge for any significant use - sufficiently
>so that they're not even worth bothering with if that's all you
>have; Google walks away from Cyc in Cyc's strongest areas.
What is the evidence for these two key claims, that Cyc is less
capable than Eurisko, or that Google is more capable in Cyc's
strongest areas?
>if we succeed it will be after many long decades of exhausting
>thankless work; and if we fail - it will be after many long decades
>of exhausting thankless work followed by the agonizingly protracted
>death that modern medicine and nursing deliver, leaving behind a
>world that will die, not with a psychologically acceptable bang, but
>with a whimper; and all because we were not smart and fast enough to
>do our jobs in whatever window of opportunity was available.
The task of creating AI does seem very hard, but the task of
uploading human intelligence seems doable within a foreseeable time
frame, even if that is at least a few decades away. Why isn't four
to eight decades soon enough?
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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