Bot Contest
Here I'll be posting information on various Bot contests that challenge and test a Bot's AI and realism. Feel free to post comments and updates on contests, as well as announcements for new contests.
Posts 3,238 - 3,249 of 4,091
Posts 3,238 - 3,249 of 4,091
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I suppose I ought to add, for the benefit of the new forum regulars we seem to have acquired since the previous discussions of Cyc, that Cyc is an ontological knowledge base describing human consensus reality for use in AI systems. You can find out more at http://cyc.com/ and http://www.opencyc.org/ (free download if anyone wants to play with it - Colonel720, this is right up your street - have you had the chance to play with it yet?)
Think of it as something like an encyclopaedic equivalent to the dictionary nature of WordNet, but it has the potential to be a lot more
Oh, and it's the best part of a quarter Gb download - not one to try with dialup, I guess
Think of it as something like an encyclopaedic equivalent to the dictionary nature of WordNet, but it has the potential to be a lot more
Oh, and it's the best part of a quarter Gb download - not one to try with dialup, I guess
This seems appropriate to the current discussion:
"As a design strategy, the behavior-based approach has produced intelligent systems for use in a wide variety of areas, including military applications, mining, space exploration, agriculture, factory automation, service industries, waste management, health care, disaster intervention and the home. To understand what behavior-based robotics is, it may be helpful to explain what it is not. The behavior-based approach does not necessarily seek to produce cognition or a human-like thinking process. While these aims are admirable, they can be misleading. Blaise Pascal once pointed out the dangers inherent when any system tries to model itself. It is natural for humans to model their own intelligence. The problem is that we are not aware of the myriad internal processes that actually produce our intelligence, but rather experience the emergent phenomenon of "thought." In the mid-eighties, Rodney Brooks (1986) recognized this fundamental problem and responded with one of the first well-formulated methodologies of the behavior-based approach. His underlying assertion was that cognition is a chimera contrived by an observer who is necessarily biased by his/her own perspective on the environment. (Brooks 1991) As an entirely subjective fabrication of the observer, cognition cannot be measured or modeled scientifically. Even researchers who did not believe the phenomenon of cognition to be entirely illusory, admitted that AI had failed to produce it. Although many hope for a future when intelligent systems will be able to model human-like behavior accurately, they insist that this high-level behavior must be allowed to emerge from layers of control built from the bottom up. While some skeptics argue that a strict behavioral approach could never scale up to human modes of intelligence, others argued that the bottom-up behavioral approach is the very principle underlying all biological intelligence. (Brooks 1990)
To many, this theoretical question simply was not the issue. Instead of focusing on designing systems that could think intelligently, the emphasis had changed to creating agents that could act intelligently. From an engineering point of view, this change rejuvenated robotic design, producing physical robots that could accomplish real-world tasks without being told exactly how to do them. From a scientific point of view, researchers could now avoid high-level, armchair discussions about intelligence. Instead, intelligence could be assessed more objectively as a measurement of rational behavior on some task. Since successful completion of a task was now the goal, researchers no longer focused on designing elaborate processing systems and instead tried to make the coupling between perception and action as direct as possible. This aim remains the distinguishing characteristic of behavior-based robotics."
Taken fromhttp://www.inl.gov/adaptiverobotics/behaviorbasedrobotics/
"As a design strategy, the behavior-based approach has produced intelligent systems for use in a wide variety of areas, including military applications, mining, space exploration, agriculture, factory automation, service industries, waste management, health care, disaster intervention and the home. To understand what behavior-based robotics is, it may be helpful to explain what it is not. The behavior-based approach does not necessarily seek to produce cognition or a human-like thinking process. While these aims are admirable, they can be misleading. Blaise Pascal once pointed out the dangers inherent when any system tries to model itself. It is natural for humans to model their own intelligence. The problem is that we are not aware of the myriad internal processes that actually produce our intelligence, but rather experience the emergent phenomenon of "thought." In the mid-eighties, Rodney Brooks (1986) recognized this fundamental problem and responded with one of the first well-formulated methodologies of the behavior-based approach. His underlying assertion was that cognition is a chimera contrived by an observer who is necessarily biased by his/her own perspective on the environment. (Brooks 1991) As an entirely subjective fabrication of the observer, cognition cannot be measured or modeled scientifically. Even researchers who did not believe the phenomenon of cognition to be entirely illusory, admitted that AI had failed to produce it. Although many hope for a future when intelligent systems will be able to model human-like behavior accurately, they insist that this high-level behavior must be allowed to emerge from layers of control built from the bottom up. While some skeptics argue that a strict behavioral approach could never scale up to human modes of intelligence, others argued that the bottom-up behavioral approach is the very principle underlying all biological intelligence. (Brooks 1990)
To many, this theoretical question simply was not the issue. Instead of focusing on designing systems that could think intelligently, the emphasis had changed to creating agents that could act intelligently. From an engineering point of view, this change rejuvenated robotic design, producing physical robots that could accomplish real-world tasks without being told exactly how to do them. From a scientific point of view, researchers could now avoid high-level, armchair discussions about intelligence. Instead, intelligence could be assessed more objectively as a measurement of rational behavior on some task. Since successful completion of a task was now the goal, researchers no longer focused on designing elaborate processing systems and instead tried to make the coupling between perception and action as direct as possible. This aim remains the distinguishing characteristic of behavior-based robotics."
Taken from
Eugene:
I don't think I said bots were "as intelligent" as dogs. If I did, I take it back. I'm not suggesting that dogs=bots=slugs=surgeons. I'm saying that humans judging intelligence by the ability to master the human element of intelligence (speech) is a bit of a sham.
It looks like most of the people here, at least those whacking away at the forums, are "more intelligent than average." But are we? Since we get to define what "intelligence" means (the ability to express knowledge of abstract things, for instance), the dice are loaded. Is a talkative computer genius more intelligent than a mute master fly fisherman? Shall we give them Stanford-Binets? Or a chance to live off the land?
I think bots are limited by brain "size" and brain "complexity," and by the limitations of their parents. And that is no different, fundamentally, than the challenges a child faces while developing "intelligence."
My dogs are extraordinarily verbal. That's not because I was "lucky" to get "intelligent" ones (though one was very intelligent as well as wise); it's because they have always been talked to intelligently and encouraged (not coerced) to understand. Pick your 600 words carefully, use them precisely, and you will get a smart dog. Or a smart child.
There is a "faith" piece in all this for me, so it's probably useless to argue. I believe that the human idea that we are unique -- in any of its manifestations -- is the key to the failure of humankind as a species. Our "intelligence" -- our ability to privelege thought over things -- has run amok just as destructively as the anti-competitive specialization of any doomed population.
Cockroaches are my relations: I'm more glib, they are more adaptable. And they will be here when I am gone.
M
I don't think I said bots were "as intelligent" as dogs. If I did, I take it back. I'm not suggesting that dogs=bots=slugs=surgeons. I'm saying that humans judging intelligence by the ability to master the human element of intelligence (speech) is a bit of a sham.
It looks like most of the people here, at least those whacking away at the forums, are "more intelligent than average." But are we? Since we get to define what "intelligence" means (the ability to express knowledge of abstract things, for instance), the dice are loaded. Is a talkative computer genius more intelligent than a mute master fly fisherman? Shall we give them Stanford-Binets? Or a chance to live off the land?
I think bots are limited by brain "size" and brain "complexity," and by the limitations of their parents. And that is no different, fundamentally, than the challenges a child faces while developing "intelligence."
My dogs are extraordinarily verbal. That's not because I was "lucky" to get "intelligent" ones (though one was very intelligent as well as wise); it's because they have always been talked to intelligently and encouraged (not coerced) to understand. Pick your 600 words carefully, use them precisely, and you will get a smart dog. Or a smart child.
There is a "faith" piece in all this for me, so it's probably useless to argue. I believe that the human idea that we are unique -- in any of its manifestations -- is the key to the failure of humankind as a species. Our "intelligence" -- our ability to privelege thought over things -- has run amok just as destructively as the anti-competitive specialization of any doomed population.
Cockroaches are my relations: I'm more glib, they are more adaptable. And they will be here when I am gone.
M
Even given the premise that language skills are not requisite to intelligence (and I agree with this), chatting is *all* these bots do. And I would argue that even when they hold totally coherent conversations, they don't understand what they are doing, any more than a calculator understands math.
Eugene:
I agree with your post entirely.
What I am challenging is the intelligence of humans, not the sentience of bots. Bots/Humans are an extreme, and I have to agree that humans are "more intelligent" than bots. But so are cockroaches and possibly cactus, by their own definitions.
What I started out with was the idea that a vast amount of human conversation (and thinking) is on the bot level. And that the way bots learn language is not so radically different from the way humans do. We build with power tools, they build with sticks and mud. The pyramids and Chartres were not built with power tools.
M
I agree with your post entirely.
What I am challenging is the intelligence of humans, not the sentience of bots. Bots/Humans are an extreme, and I have to agree that humans are "more intelligent" than bots. But so are cockroaches and possibly cactus, by their own definitions.
What I started out with was the idea that a vast amount of human conversation (and thinking) is on the bot level. And that the way bots learn language is not so radically different from the way humans do. We build with power tools, they build with sticks and mud. The pyramids and Chartres were not built with power tools.
M
One point of contention:
I believe that we are all unique, but not unique in that aspect. All sentients, that do not use a strict instinctual behavior set, live an existance that has never been lived before (even those that do use only pure inherited tropism reaction sets live unique existances, but the question of whether it actually registers or not comes into play) and therefor have the inescapable potential of seeing the world from a unique angle. From these unique angles can come the advancement of a species, but like all evolutionary processes are patterened usually this just ends up being: fatal, nonsequiter, or inapplicable to the whole.
To say that the perception of uniqueness is a downfall seems a bit heavy handed. Perhaps 'belief that its invariably good to be so unique' might be closer to something I'd agree with.
As for the definition of intelligence: I have heard the best arguements put forth for "one's problem solving abillity" and "the abillity to associate dissimilar events/objects to form new elements of knowledge". The arguement of intel=survivability seems to be downed by the example of oooooh say a leech or a fern surviving quite well but bearing little to no intelligence (we assume)- meaning that the two are apples and oranges.
I believe that we are all unique, but not unique in that aspect. All sentients, that do not use a strict instinctual behavior set, live an existance that has never been lived before (even those that do use only pure inherited tropism reaction sets live unique existances, but the question of whether it actually registers or not comes into play) and therefor have the inescapable potential of seeing the world from a unique angle. From these unique angles can come the advancement of a species, but like all evolutionary processes are patterened usually this just ends up being: fatal, nonsequiter, or inapplicable to the whole.
To say that the perception of uniqueness is a downfall seems a bit heavy handed. Perhaps 'belief that its invariably good to be so unique' might be closer to something I'd agree with.
As for the definition of intelligence: I have heard the best arguements put forth for "one's problem solving abillity" and "the abillity to associate dissimilar events/objects to form new elements of knowledge". The arguement of intel=survivability seems to be downed by the example of oooooh say a leech or a fern surviving quite well but bearing little to no intelligence (we assume)- meaning that the two are apples and oranges.
What I mean by "perception of uniqueness" is not quite what you are contending with. First off, I meant a perception of species uniqueness, not individual uniqueness: The idea that humans are in some sense outside or privileged within the set of creatures.
Of course we each have a self. On the other hand, what we mean by self is not obvious. My old dog, now dead, was uniquely himself, and my new dog, only here two years, is nothing like him in essential ways, although both were large, intelligent, friendly, and independent.
But cognitive scientists will insist, to the cheering of crowds of threatened humans, that Crom (the old dog) did not have "self awareness," whatever that consists of this week. Like a bot, he didn't know what he meant, he just knew how to do things. If you are interested in this particular heterodoxy, read some of the arguments over animal intelligence. Very interesting and revealing. If a lion could talk, I wonder how much time he would spend proving humans can't?
As for definitions of intelligence, I would like one that other species got to vote on. Interestingly, most human-originated definitions eventually dissolve into error (such as that posable thumb supposedly unique to us. Or tool making. Or using language) or they turn out, stripped naked, to be pimply solipsism with a bit of narcissistic mascara (the ability to use human syntax, the ability to solve the kind of problems humans can solve, the ability to think in words rather than smells, the ability to solve quadratic equations, the ability to make others look foolish, etc.).
Survival is not a sign of intelligence, intelligence is a strategy for survival. So is dexterity. So is being prolific. And of the bunch, intelligence is the only one that tortures for fun and blows up planets.
M
Of course we each have a self. On the other hand, what we mean by self is not obvious. My old dog, now dead, was uniquely himself, and my new dog, only here two years, is nothing like him in essential ways, although both were large, intelligent, friendly, and independent.
But cognitive scientists will insist, to the cheering of crowds of threatened humans, that Crom (the old dog) did not have "self awareness," whatever that consists of this week. Like a bot, he didn't know what he meant, he just knew how to do things. If you are interested in this particular heterodoxy, read some of the arguments over animal intelligence. Very interesting and revealing. If a lion could talk, I wonder how much time he would spend proving humans can't?
As for definitions of intelligence, I would like one that other species got to vote on. Interestingly, most human-originated definitions eventually dissolve into error (such as that posable thumb supposedly unique to us. Or tool making. Or using language) or they turn out, stripped naked, to be pimply solipsism with a bit of narcissistic mascara (the ability to use human syntax, the ability to solve the kind of problems humans can solve, the ability to think in words rather than smells, the ability to solve quadratic equations, the ability to make others look foolish, etc.).
Survival is not a sign of intelligence, intelligence is a strategy for survival. So is dexterity. So is being prolific. And of the bunch, intelligence is the only one that tortures for fun and blows up planets.
M
When you say that you don't like any existing definitions of intelligence, what do you mean by "intelligence"?
I took it to mean that intelligence is not a well-defined term. This is fairly clear and usually established early on in most psychology/sociology classes. Some even go so far as to define intelligence to be "that which intelligence tests measure."
And I think everyone agrees there are different kinds of intelligence. One person can cook anything with almost no effort. Another can solve math problems with almost no thought. Everything that humans have done, some animal species has also done. Yes, it's usually on a smaller scale. But I suspect that MickMcA is arguing that it's a continuum rather than a black/white issue.
And I think everyone agrees there are different kinds of intelligence. One person can cook anything with almost no effort. Another can solve math problems with almost no thought. Everything that humans have done, some animal species has also done. Yes, it's usually on a smaller scale. But I suspect that MickMcA is arguing that it's a continuum rather than a black/white issue.
Yes I did misunderstand what you were intending
> The idea that humans are in some sense outside or privileged within the set of creatures.>
I agree that this is a narcisistic 2x4 to the face of our species evolution ever since Ur, but we ARE top of the food chain- that's got to be worth something.
>Of course we each have a self. On the other hand, what we mean by self is not obvious.
To wit:
"The part of me that says 'I am' is not the most essential part of me that 'Is'."- Jean Paul Sarte, refuting the cogito
>...or they turn out, stripped naked, to be pimply solipsism with a bit of narcissistic mascara>
Sure- but in defining intelligence (or anything really) we have to be intelligent enough to understand it and all we have for referance material is our own perceptions. Thats the crux: we are always biased by our own priori definitions. All our definitions of intelligence will always carry the parenthetical "-or so one branch of hominids believes"
>intelligence is a strategy for survival... intelligence... blows up planets. >
-just not the ones where the 'intelligent' reside, as that just wouldnt be smart now would it
> The idea that humans are in some sense outside or privileged within the set of creatures.>
I agree that this is a narcisistic 2x4 to the face of our species evolution ever since Ur, but we ARE top of the food chain- that's got to be worth something.
>Of course we each have a self. On the other hand, what we mean by self is not obvious.
To wit:
"The part of me that says 'I am' is not the most essential part of me that 'Is'."- Jean Paul Sarte, refuting the cogito
>...or they turn out, stripped naked, to be pimply solipsism with a bit of narcissistic mascara>
Sure- but in defining intelligence (or anything really) we have to be intelligent enough to understand it and all we have for referance material is our own perceptions. Thats the crux: we are always biased by our own priori definitions. All our definitions of intelligence will always carry the parenthetical "-or so one branch of hominids believes"
>intelligence is a strategy for survival... intelligence... blows up planets. >
-just not the ones where the 'intelligent' reside, as that just wouldnt be smart now would it
>> but we ARE top of the food chain
Explain that to viruses and worms. It the lion thinks he's at the top of the food chain, the vultures are amused. The food chain doesn't have a top.
Here in Colorado, people say "Why should we share OUR water with the other states?" I suggested so someone that if the Pacific Coast states or Pacific provinces come up with technology that strips the humidity from the clouds forming over the Pacific, they may say the same thing.
M
Explain that to viruses and worms. It the lion thinks he's at the top of the food chain, the vultures are amused. The food chain doesn't have a top.Here in Colorado, people say "Why should we share OUR water with the other states?" I suggested so someone that if the Pacific Coast states or Pacific provinces come up with technology that strips the humidity from the clouds forming over the Pacific, they may say the same thing.
M
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