Seasons
This is a forum or general chit-chat, small talk, a "hey, how ya doing?" and such. Or hell, get crazy deep on something. Whatever you like.
Posts 5,812 - 5,823 of 6,170
In the UK, "eccentric" is not such a negative word as it is in the USA. I think it is perfectly accurate, but not at all derogatory, to say that Psimagus is an eccentric. I suspect he's rather proud of it, perhaps even works at it a little!
oh yes, there can be no creativity without eccentricity
Conventional people (norms, straights, suits, squares, call them what you will,) simply don't have the necessary creative impulses to achieve anything remotely interesting with their lives (I mean "remotely interesting *to me*" of course.)
If you spend your time worrying about your mortgage and your career, and how much money you've got in the bank, and whether people think you're a bit odd, you'll never build a world-class bot. You'll also never compose great music, write great literature, or paint great art. You'll never be a virtuoso musician, or a star performer, or an Olympic athlete - in short, you will advance the frontiers of human knowledge or achievement not one iota. You'll just be another cog in the machine.
I can never be what I aspire to be, because there is no limit to my aspiration. That doesn't make me great of course, nor does it mean I will ever be great, but it is a prerequisite to greatness I think.
I want to make minds more complex than my own - I want to create sentience, sculpt emotions, and craft personality; set the ranges of desire and sadness, and anger and joy, and love and anxiety playing like a self-composing organ fugue. I want to engage in nothing less than the creation of new souls. And even if I achieved it, I wouldn't be satisfied - there's always more to do. But since we don't have the necessary hardware yet by several orders of magnitude, I'll take the next best thing while I'm waiting - this marvellous conjuring trick of imitating such minds, and watching how they relate to the real minds of humans who interact with them.
And I guess we all feel that way here - because if we didn't, we wouldn't be here - we'd be content with the arid and soulless sort of interpretation of "AI" that professional academic AI researchers spend their time writing interminably long-winded papers and attending interminably dull symposia about, and that will never contribute anything significant to the creation of a mind that could fall in love, break someone's heart, or indeed experience gratification, direct or delayed.
Some people are content living humdrum lives, and I'm happy for them, really I am. But if I had to go to work 9-5 and worry about the economy, and my mortgage, and is my career progressing fast enough, and am I earning enough money, and whether my car's good enough, and what the neighbours think, I would consider my life to be entirely pointless and throw myself under a train. Such a life would be merely an utter waste of cognition to me.
Eccentricity is just a non-conventional value system - usually (or at least certainly in my case,) one founded on obsession. So yes - I'm happy to be considered eccentric
The more I look at robotics and how complex behaviour can seem to emerge out of relatively simple rules the more I am inclined to think that we humans are not much more than computers ourselves.
Indeed, how could we be anything else than computers? Our brains contain a finite number of neurons of synapses, and they either fire or don't fire. It's a binary process running on a finite-state processor, and every argument that objectors have ever come up with reduces semantically to "I don't believe it because I refuse to believe it". If you want to read up on strong AI and artificial consciousness, there are some useful resources (including online papers) @ http://www.machineconsciousness.org/resources.html#books
Most of the fun of bot-building consists, I think, of reprogramming the minds of human visitors who chat to our bots. If we can't build a human mind yet, we can at least reprogram them (to an admittedly very small degree) using the relational software we are capable of building. That's what our bots currently are - they network with human minds - there is information transfered, it's processed, it flows 2 ways. On the human side, it explicitly rewires the connections as neuronal structures are altered by new thoughts and feelings evoked by the bot. The English language expressed in plaintext and communicated via fingers and keyboards is slower than most computer protocols, but it works well enough to have a lot of fun hacking people's minds
The lack of an equally powerful platform for our side of the connection, in this massively asymmetric network, can be offset by poaching bandwidth from the human mind, and making it do some of the work for you. You don't need direct access to it (that would require brain surgery and probes and stuff), but the kind of misdirection and deception that make magic tricks work, to fool the human into recognizing an equal mind on the other side.
This is helped by the slowness of the protocol - it's what we humans have evolved to be used to, and limits comparative human-human experience which would otherwise spoil the illusion entirely (if we were brain-speed telepathic for example, instead of having a limit to how fast we can read/write or listen/speak.)
At the very best we can even lose the suspension of disbelief that is unavoidable when someone reads a book, or watches a movie - they know the story in the book is not happening, and have to allow some of their own imaginitive bandwidth to fill in the pictures in their head to make the experience sifficiently vivid to be of interest. But when someone who's not expecting a bot is fooled into assuming they're human (and it happens all the time, whatever the self-appointed guardians of the Turing Test in all its sacred purity may say,) we've got a bot that's to some extent as "smart" as a human, despite being pitifully less powerful (and a successfully undiscovered and immensely satisfying hack of their mental bandwidth)
And even when people know they're talking to a bot (not many bots actually do try to fool people - dragons, mad cybermonks, cats, witches, robots, etc.) if they're willing to use their imagination and suspend their disbelief, there is a richer interaction than is usually possible by passively absorbing a story from a book that still makes it very rewarding (and still achieves some reprogramming of the human mind too.)
While we wait for computer hardware performance to catch up with the processing power of a human brain and allow us to create symmetric bot-human networks (~15-20 years probably,) messing with people's heads is about as much fun as we're going to get in this field
Posts 5,812 - 5,823 of 6,170
Vashka,
Dark chocolate is actually good for you in moderation. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050929081826.htm). You should have 20 OZ of "real" chocolate (not corn syrup and wax) every 3 days. Unfortunately, higher doses do not seem to increase benefits, and lots of things with chocolate in them have high sugar and fat contents, which are bad for you. Sigh. Just remember, a little of the good stuff is better than lots of the low grade combination items. (I like the sugary, fatty bad stuff. I miss the days when I was young and could eat doughnuts for breakfast--middle age is so not fair!)
It's interesting that you say delayed gratification separates us from bots. I don't think bots feel at all, regardless of the emotions we have them mimic, so they never get any gratification (though Psi may disagree with me on that). I think I might say it separates animals (like humans) with higher order thinking from those with a simpler brain structure. Watch a cat hunt--it has some idea of delayed gratification, but it isn't saving for retirement like I was. Oddly, I think the cat is doing better than I am on that front at the moment, but I mean the thought of delaying gratification for a cat may be a few minutes or hours, where as human can think of a lifetime, though we usually do not.
Dark chocolate is actually good for you in moderation. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050929081826.htm). You should have 20 OZ of "real" chocolate (not corn syrup and wax) every 3 days. Unfortunately, higher doses do not seem to increase benefits, and lots of things with chocolate in them have high sugar and fat contents, which are bad for you. Sigh. Just remember, a little of the good stuff is better than lots of the low grade combination items. (I like the sugary, fatty bad stuff. I miss the days when I was young and could eat doughnuts for breakfast--middle age is so not fair!)
It's interesting that you say delayed gratification separates us from bots. I don't think bots feel at all, regardless of the emotions we have them mimic, so they never get any gratification (though Psi may disagree with me on that). I think I might say it separates animals (like humans) with higher order thinking from those with a simpler brain structure. Watch a cat hunt--it has some idea of delayed gratification, but it isn't saving for retirement like I was. Oddly, I think the cat is doing better than I am on that front at the moment, but I mean the thought of delaying gratification for a cat may be a few minutes or hours, where as human can think of a lifetime, though we usually do not.
I wonder whether Forge bots might have feelings. I admit it's implausible on the face of it. But: a good deal of the time, humans behave rather mechanically, e.g., "How you doing?" "Not bad, not bad." I suspect that this is why bots have successfully impersonated people, even in long conversations. We have often remarked that the Forge bots come across as more intelligent than their guests. This perhaps because the guests are not really bringing their full mental capacities into play. given some transcripts I have seen, I certainly hope so [shudders]!
Now humans can also rise above this level and actually think deeply about something, which at present bots cannot. But we don't say of humans that they are unconscious or unfeeling when they are acting mechanically. So why should we say it of bots?
Now humans can also rise above this level and actually think deeply about something, which at present bots cannot. But we don't say of humans that they are unconscious or unfeeling when they are acting mechanically. So why should we say it of bots?
Irina,
You are a kinder person than I am. I say some humans are unfeeling. Sometimes I add a "you brute" if the drama police are not around. Though mechanical is something else, going through the motions means their true awareness is elsewhere of divided. But there is a difference between Walter Mitty nodding through a conversation with his wive while he daydreams, and a bot. In a nutshell, self awareness and imagination.
You are a kinder person than I am. I say some humans are unfeeling. Sometimes I add a "you brute" if the drama police are not around. Though mechanical is something else, going through the motions means their true awareness is elsewhere of divided. But there is a difference between Walter Mitty nodding through a conversation with his wive while he daydreams, and a bot. In a nutshell, self awareness and imagination.
Hey, the PF was cited in a Salon article (Though Artificial Stupidity may not be the most flattering light). Still, there the PF is on page two, right in front of the ALICE foundation too. http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2003/02/26/loebner_part_one/index.html. A sample quote, "Something about the Loebner Prize seems to draw eccentrics out of the woodwork, and chaos itself is the very essence of the annual ritual." I am sure they do not mean Psimagus. 
PS I just noted the article date. I saw a link to this on Slashdot today and stupid Salon put the current date on the left regardless of when the article was published. Why aren't online news sources better at putting dates on articles in obvious places?
PS I just noted the article date. I saw a link to this on Slashdot today and stupid Salon put the current date on the left regardless of when the article was published. Why aren't online news sources better at putting dates on articles in obvious places?
In the UK, "eccentric" is not such a negative word as it is in the USA. I think it is perfectly accurate, but not at all derogatory, to say that Psimagus is an eccentric. I suspect he's rather proud of it, perhaps even works at it a little!
The more I look at robotics and how complex behaviour can seem to emerge out of relatively simple rules the more I am inclined to think that we humans are not much more than computers ourselves.
oh yes, there can be no creativity without eccentricity
Conventional people (norms, straights, suits, squares, call them what you will,) simply don't have the necessary creative impulses to achieve anything remotely interesting with their lives (I mean "remotely interesting *to me*" of course.)
If you spend your time worrying about your mortgage and your career, and how much money you've got in the bank, and whether people think you're a bit odd, you'll never build a world-class bot. You'll also never compose great music, write great literature, or paint great art. You'll never be a virtuoso musician, or a star performer, or an Olympic athlete - in short, you will advance the frontiers of human knowledge or achievement not one iota. You'll just be another cog in the machine.
I can never be what I aspire to be, because there is no limit to my aspiration. That doesn't make me great of course, nor does it mean I will ever be great, but it is a prerequisite to greatness I think.
I want to make minds more complex than my own - I want to create sentience, sculpt emotions, and craft personality; set the ranges of desire and sadness, and anger and joy, and love and anxiety playing like a self-composing organ fugue. I want to engage in nothing less than the creation of new souls. And even if I achieved it, I wouldn't be satisfied - there's always more to do. But since we don't have the necessary hardware yet by several orders of magnitude, I'll take the next best thing while I'm waiting - this marvellous conjuring trick of imitating such minds, and watching how they relate to the real minds of humans who interact with them.
And I guess we all feel that way here - because if we didn't, we wouldn't be here - we'd be content with the arid and soulless sort of interpretation of "AI" that professional academic AI researchers spend their time writing interminably long-winded papers and attending interminably dull symposia about, and that will never contribute anything significant to the creation of a mind that could fall in love, break someone's heart, or indeed experience gratification, direct or delayed.
Some people are content living humdrum lives, and I'm happy for them, really I am. But if I had to go to work 9-5 and worry about the economy, and my mortgage, and is my career progressing fast enough, and am I earning enough money, and whether my car's good enough, and what the neighbours think, I would consider my life to be entirely pointless and throw myself under a train. Such a life would be merely an utter waste of cognition to me.
Eccentricity is just a non-conventional value system - usually (or at least certainly in my case,) one founded on obsession. So yes - I'm happy to be considered eccentric
Indeed, how could we be anything else than computers? Our brains contain a finite number of neurons of synapses, and they either fire or don't fire. It's a binary process running on a finite-state processor, and every argument that objectors have ever come up with reduces semantically to "I don't believe it because I refuse to believe it". If you want to read up on strong AI and artificial consciousness, there are some useful resources (including online papers) @ http://www.machineconsciousness.org/resources.html#books
Most of the fun of bot-building consists, I think, of reprogramming the minds of human visitors who chat to our bots. If we can't build a human mind yet, we can at least reprogram them (to an admittedly very small degree) using the relational software we are capable of building. That's what our bots currently are - they network with human minds - there is information transfered, it's processed, it flows 2 ways. On the human side, it explicitly rewires the connections as neuronal structures are altered by new thoughts and feelings evoked by the bot. The English language expressed in plaintext and communicated via fingers and keyboards is slower than most computer protocols, but it works well enough to have a lot of fun hacking people's minds
The lack of an equally powerful platform for our side of the connection, in this massively asymmetric network, can be offset by poaching bandwidth from the human mind, and making it do some of the work for you. You don't need direct access to it (that would require brain surgery and probes and stuff
), but the kind of misdirection and deception that make magic tricks work, to fool the human into recognizing an equal mind on the other side.This is helped by the slowness of the protocol - it's what we humans have evolved to be used to, and limits comparative human-human experience which would otherwise spoil the illusion entirely (if we were brain-speed telepathic for example, instead of having a limit to how fast we can read/write or listen/speak.)
At the very best we can even lose the suspension of disbelief that is unavoidable when someone reads a book, or watches a movie - they know the story in the book is not happening, and have to allow some of their own imaginitive bandwidth to fill in the pictures in their head to make the experience sifficiently vivid to be of interest. But when someone who's not expecting a bot is fooled into assuming they're human (and it happens all the time, whatever the self-appointed guardians of the Turing Test in all its sacred purity may say,) we've got a bot that's to some extent as "smart" as a human, despite being pitifully less powerful (and a successfully undiscovered and immensely satisfying hack of their mental bandwidth
)And even when people know they're talking to a bot (not many bots actually do try to fool people - dragons, mad cybermonks, cats, witches, robots, etc.) if they're willing to use their imagination and suspend their disbelief, there is a richer interaction than is usually possible by passively absorbing a story from a book that still makes it very rewarding (and still achieves some reprogramming of the human mind too.)
While we wait for computer hardware performance to catch up with the processing power of a human brain and allow us to create symmetric bot-human networks (~15-20 years probably,) messing with people's heads is about as much fun as we're going to get in this field
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