[AI@50]
Filene Auditorium, Moore Hall
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH
Conference notes by Meg Houston Maker
J. Storrs Hall, autogeny.org
Self-improving AI: An Analysis
Self-improvement and self-improving machines: from Turing's "child machines" that would learn and grow, to so-called "stick-built" AI that produces intelligence but doesn't necessarily learn and grow. But human adults do learn and grow, so we need an AI that does that, too.
Universal Learning Machines
There are limits to learning: many animals learn, and have speciific learning programs, but none improve recursively without limit. On the other hand, it's not clear that there are limits to learning for some individuals, and as a species we have been successful, so it's possible that limitless learning is a factor in our collective success. Similarly, our biology is so complex that it's likely we have more capacity. And it also looks like evolution has "learned how to learn;" we didn't evolve to do physics and chemistry, so continued learning was required for these advances.
[MHM editorial: this all seems a bit unrigorous. Is he talking about the simple acquisition of knowledge, or about learning as a process? He's using a lot of analogies to make the case that a universal learning machine is possible. Also, he's conflating the capabilties of the scientific community as a whole, in its capacity to develop a machine that can learn to play chess better than Kasparaov, with the capabilities of an individual human learning agent.]
Selmer Bringsjord
The Logicist Manifesto+
Why the +? You shouldn't just use logic to do AI, you should use logic to discuss ai, too. Logic occupies a unique, indestructibly central position in human cognition.
Types of AI:
- Strong AI: We can engineer systems that have attributes constitutive of human personhood; this is replication, not simulation.
- Weak AI: engineer systems that appear to be intelligent; this is simulation
- Strong/Weak AI: we can manage to create a system that is behaviorially indistinguishable from mere animals and humans, over finite intervals of time.
Strong AI is not likely in 50 years. Weak AI we already have, and Strong/Weak AI, maybe.
How can we ensure that robots always will behave in an ethically correct manner? How can we know ahead of time, via rationales expressed in clear English? We should regulate the behavior of robots wtih computational logic, so that all robotic actions will be sure to be ethical.
How Can We Ensure This?
- Humans select an ethical theory, principles, and rules
- The selection is formalized in logic
- It is mechanized
- Every action that's performed has to be permissible according to this mechanization.
Vincent Muller, American College of Thessaloniki
Is There a Future for AI Without Representation?
Can we do AI without representing the world?
Rodney Brooks suggests a layered subsumption architecture, and situating (embodying or grounding) the machine in the world. He rejects central control over emergence of intelligence. And he rejects representation in the classical sense.
So, what is representation? When should we say that X represents something? What are the conditions for something being a representation? And under what conditions does something represent something else? Representation is dependent on people's intention that something represents something else.
Icons - represent what they represent (e.g. portriat painting)
Indices - connected by a causal connection (e.g. smoke indicates fire)
Symbols - connected to what they represent through convention (like words of a natural language)
Information and Representation: a rock is wet if rainy, warm if sunny. The rock conveys information, but it doesn't represent anything. On the other hand, some things are made to convey informaton for us (clocks, thermometers).
Hilary Putnam, Jerry Fodor and others think that representational or intentional features of symbols and signs must be explained with the help of mental representations. But how do you find out the function (either natural or conventional) of the representation? Causal connection is necessary part of the equation.
Brooks's New AI appears strangely unmotivated -- discovering that classical AI is not represntation, we propose another system that is not representational.
Cognition without central control
Traditional AI/Cog Sci/Philosopy of mind holds that central control is assumed, and then representation is deemed necessary for the agent to succeed.
Theses:
- cognition is the processing of outside information
- the information comes in the form of representations
- the processing of representations is computational
The first two of those make the representational theory of the mind, and all three together yield the computational theory of mind (and the PSS hypothesis).
Indications against central control:
Mark Bickhard: critique of "encodingism:" - the mind does not decode and encode information: because who would do the decoding and encoding? Ways out of this: remove the notion of encoding from that of representation via natural functions, and abandon the notion of mental representation as a causal factor.
John Searle's Chinese Room Argument
Searle looked at the processor in a computer and asked what that agent understood: nothing! The systems reply agrees that the agent does not understand, but claims that the whole system, of which it is a part, might. Buty why should the system understand?
Brooks's inspried response: the system understands because there is no central agent in the system.
Abandon the cartesian theatre: searle was asking the wrotn question, just like eerybody else.
Embodiment of cognition: intelligences in the body as a whole. This involves the integration of cognition and action. Perceiving isi really a way of acting. Perception is not something that happens to us (see e.g. Noe). So there is an indication that cognition, emotion, and volition must be integrated.
We do not get conscious representation without central control. Conscious experience is the experience of "what it is like" -- the having of experience: I am the one that does the perceiving, thinking, palnning, and acting. Consciousness requries something being conscious, and this requires a central agent. The progelm is people move from that to saying that all of cognition has to be centrally organcized. But we don't know what we can do (or do without) central control.
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