JGWeissman comments on Strategic research on AI risk - Less Wrong

7 Post author: lukeprog 06 June 2012 05:02PM

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Comment author: JGWeissman 06 June 2012 07:56:50PM 6 points [-]

What I took away from the mention of MATLAB is that the model is expressed as a computer program, as opposed to just talked about, and that this requires a certain level of rigor. But yeah, I don't care so much that it is MATLAB rather than Java.

Comment author: komponisto 06 June 2012 08:38:11PM 0 points [-]

I didn't realize that MATLAB and Java were members of the same category. I thought that MATLAB was a software program (like Microsoft Word), while Java was a programming language (like C++).

Comment author: asr 06 June 2012 09:01:58PM *  2 points [-]

Matlab is a program, but it's more like the Java virtual machine than like MS Word. Both the JVM and Matlab are able to execute arbitrary programs supplied as input. So it's meaningful to talk about Matlab-the-language. The one difference is that Java is a standardized language, whereas Matlab-the-language is "whatever Matlab-the-program accepts these days".

Comment author: JGWeissman 06 June 2012 08:58:18PM 2 points [-]

MATLAB is a programming language, and I have written programs in it (though it has been a while). I would definately prefer Java (or C#) for writing most general applications, but MATLAB is good for some math heavy stuff.