From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Sep 02 1999 - 18:56:55 MDT
hal@finney.org wrote:
>
> It sounds like you're saying that the "box" of conventional AI is simply
> that they are working on tractable problems where progress is possible,
> while you would rather build up complex theoretical designs. But designs
> without grounding in practical testing are very risky. The farther you
> go, the more likely you are to have made some fundamental mistake which
> shakes the whole beautiful edifice to the ground.
I have no problem with either toy domains or practical testing, but to
make any progress at all, sooner or later you have to attack that toy
domain with a toy - but complete - cognitive architecture, not a search
tree or a propositional-logic manipulator or whatever. Modern AI is
sort of like six different chess-playing programs, one of which
simulates pawns, one rooks, one bishops... Actually, bad analogy;
that'd be a more workable approach than what they're doing now. Maybe
the analogy is to a chess-playing program that only moves pieces around,
without playing against an opponent?
Actually, the best analogy is the truth; modern AI is like a modern
chess-playing program. No complexity. No self-awareness. No
consideration of the different facets of the problem. No symbols. No
memory. No reasoning. Just a search tree.
Again, I don't object to toy problems, but at some point you have to
attack them with a complete toy human.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
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