capybaralet comments on MIRI's Approach - Less Wrong

34 Post author: So8res 30 July 2015 08:03PM

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Comment author: jacob_cannell 31 July 2015 06:55:46AM 3 points [-]

If the brain is efficient, and it is, then you shouldn't try to cargo-cult copy the brain, any more than we cargo-culted feathery wings to make airplanes.

The wright brothers copied wings for lift and wing warping for 3D control both from birds. Only the forward propulsion was different.

make an engine based on a clear theory of which natural forces govern the phenomenon in question -- here, thought.

We already have that - it's called a computer. AGI is much more specific and anthropocentric because it is relative to our specific society/culture/economy. It requires predicting and modelling human minds - and the structure of efficient software that can predict a human mind is itself a human mind.

Comment author: capybaralet 19 September 2015 07:31:53PM 1 point [-]

"the structure of efficient software that can predict a human mind is itself a human mind." - I doubt that. Why do you think this is the case? I think there are already many examples where simple statistical models (e.g. linear regression) can do a better job of predicting some things about a human than an expert human can.

Also, although I don't think there is "one true definition" of AGI, I think there is a meaningful one which is not particularly anthropocentric, see Chapter 1 of Shane Legg's thesis: http://www.vetta.org/documents/Machine_Super_Intelligence.pdf.

"Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments."

So, arguably that should include environments with humans in them. But to succeed, an AI would not necessarily have to predict or model human minds; it could instead, e.g. kill all humans, and/or create safeguards that would prevent its own destruction by any existing technology.