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Comment by anaphoric | Hacker News Reader

I have taught AI many times now and I must agree.

You don't know how many times I have heard a student claim that they have made some type of major advance. But on inspection it usually comes down to something that requires exhaustive search.

I think that there is definitely a place for new ideas in the field, but I don't think they will come from complete novices. I think they will come from those who have CRITICALLY read the basic literature. And probably from those who have read more than just the basics too.

My own pet peeve on the field now is the over emphasis on asymptotic complexity. Sure its important, but its not exactly an AI result. The scruffies need to make a come back and start coding! See my own meager efforts (http://www.anaphoric.com)

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Amazing how people with all this knowledge still haven't gotten anywhere close to AI.

It might even be something simple, overlooked, done a little differently.

Let us know when you find it.

I can't think of any phenomenon less likely area to have a simple algorithm than intelligence.

Intelligence is about finding algorithms for successful survival within a given environment. It's some sort of a meta-algorithm, although I have no idea if it's simple or not, but we can be sure it does exist.

> Let us know when you find it.

I can't think of any phenomenon less likely area to have a simple algorithm than intelligence.

Cf. Evolution.

Evolutions Are Stupid (But Work Anyway): http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/11/evolutions-are-.html

I do not want to wait five billion years.

> I do not want to wait five billion years.

You're darn well gonna wait -- and LIKE it!

Fortunately, it takes significantly less time than that -- no more than three and a half billion years. Haha, and you were worried!

Intelligent Design does it in 6 days!

AKA exhaustive search...

Sorry for repeating myself (comment lost in this huge thread), but I think it's the definition of intelligence we should look for first. Once we have a clear and unambiguous definition of intelligence, only and only after that we may be able to think about implementation. And I'm sure implementation would be straightforward once we know what we are trying to achieve.

It's actually amazing if not ridiculous that researchers always start from the other end of a cigar: they raise ideas, one after another, but they don't even try to explain what problem exactly they are solving.

If we all took that attitude, we'd never get anything done.

The process of discovery is hands-on, learning by doing. You don't know all the rules at the outset, or all the definitions, or even know what you don't know. You find out as you go along. Thus it has been for every great invention from sex to agriculture to post-it notes to landing a man on the Moon and back to on-demand porn.

The real requirement is that we have some way to test it; that we can do, e.g. by conversation. To cop an example from quantum mechanics (which I know nothing about), we don't have to understand why it is like that in order to make predictions with it.

We don't need a clear and unambiguous definition of intelligence in order to tell that other human beings are intelligent. Likewise, we don't need one in order to start trying to create an artifice that impresses us into thinking it also is intelligent.

This was quite impressive, and on the right track, seemingly: http://hci.stanford.edu/~winograd/shrdlu/

We don't need a clear and unambiguous definition of intelligence in order to tell that other human beings are intelligent.

The problem here is that not every human being is intelligent and yes, we are actually trying to define intelligence through IQ tests, for example.

Likewise, we don't need one in order to start trying to create an artifice that impresses us into thinking it also is intelligent.

So when you need accounting software you say: "write me something that will be as clever as my accountant". Is that the way you formulate tasks for software engineers?

> we are actually trying to define intelligence through IQ tests, for example

Fail. IQ tests only measure how well you do on IQ tests.

> The problem here is that not every human being is intelligent

Unless they're in a vegetative state, they are more intelligent than any artificial system, so far.

> Is that the way you formulate tasks for software engineers?

The only way to make a specification so precise that it does exactly what you want is to implement it, and then the code itself becomes the specification.

So, what you mean by saying something is more intelligent than something else? What criteria are you using to evaluate that?

And yes, it's the way programming works - when you know what you are trying to achieve. Software is about input and output and unless they are deterministic, you can't write code.

> So, what you mean by saying something is more intelligent than something else?

Obviously people say that all the time despite our lack of a definition for exactly what it is, so we apparently don't need an exact definition.

> and unless they are deterministic, you can't write code.

You might be interested to know that the behavior of your OS isn't deterministic once you add a second CPU.

SHRDLU was a toy program that was not on the right track.

Let's see anything better.

I agree.

What program isn't a toy? Stop being opprobrious and come up with a better example.

It simply does not exist yet. There were no good airplanes before Orville and Wilbur showed up on the scene. I hope there will be some breakthroughs soon, but scientific discoveries can't be planned/scheduled, so who knows how long it'll be...

SHRDLU is nothing more than a really well-done ELIZA for a really small domain.

Why do you say it is just an Eliza?

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