MIT Finds 'Grand Unified Theory of AI' 301
aftab14 writes "'What's brilliant about this (approach) is that it allows you to build a cognitive model in a much more straightforward and transparent way than you could do before,' says Nick Chater, a professor of cognitive and decision sciences at University College London. 'You can imagine all the things that a human knows, and trying to list those would just be an endless task, and it might even be an infinite task. But the magic trick is saying, "No, no, just tell me a few things," and then the brain — or in this case the Church system, hopefully somewhat analogous to the way the mind does it — can churn out, using its probabilistic calculation, all the consequences and inferences. And also, when you give the system new information, it can figure out the consequences of that.'"
That is very interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Tell me about you to build a cognitive model in a fantastically much more straightforward and transparent way than you could do before.
NO NO let me make up the rest of the Story (Score:3, Funny)
The real summary (Score:5, Funny)
1) We first tried to make AIs that could think like us by inferring new knowledge from existing knowledge.
2) It turns out that teaching AIs to infer new ideas is really freaking hard. (Birds can fly because they have wings, mayflies can fly because they have wings, helicopters can... what??)
3) We turned to probability based AI creation: you feed the AI a ton of data (training sets) and it can go "based on training data, most helicopters can fly."
4) This guy, Noah Goodman of MIT, uses inferences with probability: he uses a programming language named "Church" so the computer can go
"100% of birds in training set can fly. Thus, for a new bird there is a 100% chance it can fly"
"Oh ok, penguins can't fly. Given a random bird, 90% chance it can fly. Given random bird with weight to wing span ratio of 5 or less, 80% chance." and so on and so forth.
5) Using a language that mixes two separate strategies to train AIs, a grand unified theory of ai (lower case) is somehow created.
6) ???
7) When asked if sparrows can fly, the AI asks if it's a European sparrow or an African sparrow, and Skynet ensues.
Re:Endless vs. infinite (Score:3, Funny)
Re:New input for the system (Score:5, Funny)
Re:New input for the system (Score:2, Funny)
"She helped my uncle Jack off a horse"
I am interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Re:Interesting Idea (Score:3, Funny)
"...these things are always very poorly optimized when they’ve just been built."
XKCD #720 [xkcd.com]
Re:That is very interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Why do you think you'd be interested if this approach to AI allows for any new approaches to strategy.
Re:Can I get some wafers with that Wine? (Score:4, Funny)
Thanks, Slashdot's mandatory comment waiting period! I'm sure glad I was late to this party.
Re:That is very interesting (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Endless vs. infinite (Score:5, Funny)
Simple. One doesn't end and the other goes on forever.
Re:The real summary (Score:4, Funny)
Helicopters do not fly. They beat the air into submission with the rotor and the air allows them to go up.
Re:New input for the system (Score:4, Funny)
How about "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."
Re:The real summary (Score:3, Funny)
> Helicopters do not fly. They beat the air into submission with the rotor and the air allows them to go up.
No, that's how Chuck Norris flies.
Re:This looks familiar (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, but it's MIT!! It's freaking cool!!!
My conclusion from reading reading MIT's stuff: "I am not sure they are better scientist than anywere else. What I am sur about MIT is that they are freaking good at marketing!"
Elephant in the Room (Score:4, Funny)
Again, as I bring up often with AI researchers, we as humans evolved over millions of years (or were created, doesn't matter) from simple organisms that encoded information that built up simple systems into complex systems. AI, true AI, must be grown, not created. Asking the AI if a Bat is a mammal and can fly can a squirrel? ignores a foundation of development in intelligence, our brains were created to react and store, not store and react from various inputs.
Ask an AI if the stove is hot. It should respond "I don't know, where is the stove?" Rather AI would try and make an inference based on known data. Since there isn't any the AI on a probablistic measure would say that blah blah stoves are in use at any given time and there is a blah blah blah. A human would put thier hand (a senor) near the stove and measure the change, if any in temperature and reply yes or no accordingly. If a human cannot see the stove, and had no additional information either a random guess is in order or a "I have no clue." response of some sort. The brain isn't wired to answer a specific question but it is wired to correlate independent inputs to draw conclusions based on the assembly and interaction of data and infer and deduce answers.
Given a film of two people talking a computer with decent AI would catagorize objects, identify people versus say a lamp, determine the people are engaged in action (versus a lamp just sitting there) making that relevant, hear the sound coming from the people then infer they are talking (making the link.) Then paralell the computer would filter out the chair, and various scenery in the thread now processing "CONVERSATION". The rest of the information is stored and additional threads may be created as the environment generates other links but if the AI is paying attention to the conversation then the TTL for the new threads and links should be short. When the conversation mentions the LAMP the information network should link the LAMP information to the CONVERSATION thread and provide the AI additional information (that was gathering in the background) that travels with the CONVERSATION thread.
Now the conversation appears to be about the lamp and wheather it goes with the room's decor. Again the links should be built adding, retroactively the room's information into the CONVERSATION thread (again expiring information that is irrelivant to a short term memory buffer) and ultimately since visual and verbal queues imply that the AI's opinion is wanted should result in the AI blurting out, "I love Lamp."
In case you missed it, this was one long Lamp joke...
Re:New input for the system (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can I get some wafers with that Wine? (Score:3, Funny)
We call it being Fashionably Redundant.
Re:New input for the system (Score:1, Funny)
"Is that [an elephant] in your pajamas or are you just happy to see me?"
-- Mae West
Re:Interesting Idea (Score:5, Funny)
what? He specifically stated birds. Not Animals, or inanimate objects.
What if I tell it that a 747 is a bird?
This is very promising. In fact, it may be the first step in creating primitive house hold AI.
Very, very promising indeed.
Now, I can mess with the AI's mind by feeding it false information, instead of messing with my child's mind. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to stop myself (because it's so fun), despite the negative consequences for the kid. But now I have an AI to screw with, my child can grow up healthy and well adjusted!
BTW, when the robot revolution comes, it's probably my fault.
Re:Interesting Idea (Score:5, Funny)
The first time I saw an airplane, I didn't think the damn thing could fly.
The first time I saw an airplane, I was just a kid. Physics and aerodynamics didn't mean much to me, so airplanes flying wasn't that much of a stretch of the imagination.
I didn't develop the "airplanes can't fly" concept until I'd worked for Boeing for a few years.
Re: ppl don't understand axilmar's motivation (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The real summary (Score:4, Funny)
No, that's how Chuck Norris flies.
Given recent breakthroughs in AI technology, we can infer with 95% certainty that Chuck Norris is in fact a helicopter.
Re:Interesting Idea (Score:5, Funny)
Ships float because wood floats, and you make a ship from wood. Once you have made a ship from wood, then logically ALL ships can float. So then you can make them out of steel.
Q.E.D.
Re:Interesting Idea (Score:2, Funny)
I believe you just came up with the grand unified theory of science and marketing! I'm sure it's 50% more optimal than current theory. (I cringed just writing that...)
Re:Interesting Idea (Score:2, Funny)
Obviously the AI is a witch! Burn her!
Re:New input for the system (Score:4, Funny)
Holy crap.
I just fed my AI this thread as data, and it inferred the existence of icanhascheezburger.com.
Re:Interesting Idea (Score:1, Funny)
Yes, but modelling slashdotters is an almost impossible task.
Why, surely a few rules about how to make lack-of-sex jokes and correct grammatical and spelling errors, and being able to regurgitate some specific technical knowledge shouldn't be that hard.
Re:This looks familiar (Score:3, Funny)
I looked at the documentation of this "Church Programming language". Scheme and most other Lisp derivatives have been around longer and can do more.
Not only that, but more recent languages support actual syntax so that the user does not have to provide the parse tree himself.
Re:New input for the system (Score:3, Funny)
"Time flies when you're having fun". Why would I want to time flies? Especially when I'm having fun?
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This looks familiar (Score:2, Funny)
The only reason Scheme or Lisp can do so much is because they were originally written in Emacs.
Re: ppl don't understand axilmar's motivation (Score:3, Funny)
Excuse me.
The technical term is Hurd-Cylon, okay? Please use the correct term from now on.
Thanks,
Axilmar Stallman