Artificial Intelligence Anonymous part Deux Ex Machina

This is my attempt at providing a brief introduction to another subject I know nothing about. Much to my dismay, I never took AI. Ignorance hasn't stopped me from blogging on topics before (see my Lojban, income inequality, lottery and capitalist ideology pages) and it surely isn't going to stop me now.

1. Artificial intelligence anonymous, part one.


2. Artificial intelligence anonymous, part two.

How do you make artificial intelligence?

To make intelligence is easy. You look at what Homer Simpson does and do the exact opposite. To make a machine realise that being intelligent means being the opposite of stupid all by itself is a different story, however.


Homer Simpson. Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Well..

There are three main approaches to creating artificial intelligence. These are symbolic, sub-symbolic and statistical.

Symbolic AI is sometimes called Good Old Fashioned AI or GOFAI. This approach is based on the premise that human thinking is largely based on manipulating symbols. All our thoughts require symbols and the relationships between them. The first wave of the rise of the machines was heavily based on lambda calculus. Lambda calculus involves a kind of bootstrapping thinking where a function can call itself. It is meant to simulate the human ability to think about thinking. Symbolic AI is still intimately tied with programming languages that can support this mode of thinking such as LISP.

Sub-symbolic AI is concerned with describing human thinking processes algorithmically in order to simulate these processes on a machine. Algorithmically means that the process is describe in a step-by-step manner like a cooking recipe. Sub-symbolic AI is thus based on simulation of specific thinking processes instead of on the underlying thinking process of symbolic processing. Neural networks fall under this category.

Statistical AI is an extension of sub-symbolic AI in the sense that it is heavily steeped in mathematics and algorithmic thinking. Certain tasks are solved mathematically and then implemented in a machine so the machine may exhibit the same intelligent behaviour. While GOFAI researchers are often contempt with having some fuzzy logic, statistical AI researchers require that their solutions are determinable and optimal. This means they require that the machines try to do something constructive by attempting problems that do have solutions and that they do so in the best way possible.

Computational intelligence is the new blanket term for AI. While it incorporates all the waves of AI so far, it relies heavily on mathematical and statistical techniques without much regard for replicating the fuzziness of human logic.

The three main approaches are still far from creating general intelligence, even though they've made progress in creating very smart artificial thinkers for specific domains.

The lunatic fringe of AI

By lunatic fringe, I don't mean emo hair. Of course you always get those people who aren't satisfied with the norm. I am one of those people so I sympathise with the lunatic fringe of AI. Two fields that I admire are artificial life and technological singularity.

Artificial life researchers are not satisfied with merely simulating one aspect of humanity. Nay, nay, they want machines that smoke, drink and fuck. Provided of course that they evolve to this amazing level of civilisation by themselves.

Singularity researchers reason that we need not be content with creating human-level AI. We can reach further and create superintelligent beings so we can worship them. This is much the same as any other religion except you can actually reach out and touch Far-fetched Artificial Intelligence Theology or F.A.I.T.H. No, not really, I just made up that acronym.

Artificial Intelligence Anonymous

This is my attempt at providing a brief introduction to another subject I know nothing about. Much to my dismay, I never took AI. Ignorance hasn't stopped me from blogging on topics before (see my Lojban, income inequality, lottery and capitalist ideology pages) and it surely isn't going to stop me now.

1. Artificial intelligence anonymous, part one.


2. Artificial intelligence anonymous, part two.

What is artificial intelligence?

Pope John McCarthy coined the term artificial intelligence for the Dartmouth Conference in 1956. The idea behind AI is that every learning process available to thinking, drinking, smoking and fucking humans can be described so accurately that a machine may also exhibit the same learning behaviour. It is thus artificial because it is a machine doing what humans tend to do (minus the drinking and fucking, although I do wonder where computer viruses come from). Or more precisely, it does what humans are supposed to do, namely learn.



John McCarthy. In the land of hobbits, he is a dwarf. The John McCarthy homepage is simple yet efficient and oh so wholesome.

There are as many definitions for artificial intelligence as there are artificial intelligence researchers, which is great because ultimately there can be no true AI until machines exhibit a general intelligence factor. Regardless, I find the quick and dirty definition of John McCarthy as valid, meaningful and descriptive so I'll go with that.

Why artificial intelligence?

Because whenever humans get a mathematical problem with decimal points, we tend to look like cowboys. Not the Brokeback Mountain kind of cowboys, but the gunslinger cowboys who reach for the hip and try to be the quickest on the calculator draw.



Qbo, an open source hardware project with AI listed at Harkopen. Notice the uncanny resemblance to John McCarthy.

Since the abolition of slavery humans have been looking for new slaves. Computers solve this intricate masochist/sado-masochist equation in an ethical manner. The idea behind artificial intelligence is to relieve humans of mundane, repetitive thinking tasks so we can focus on more important aspects of humanity. Like drinking, smoking and fucking.

Human by Death review

Last year, I had a Month of Megadeth during May. May is my birthday month so I like to do something special. Something so special that I won't forget it during the inevitable bouts of drinking and debauchery. This year, I'm having a Death Month.

• Human


• Symbolic


• The Sound of Perseverance

Conclusion

Chuck Schuldiner basically hires Cynic as his backing band and together they craft one of the most skin tearing albums of all time.

Review

The album opens with Sean Reinert's incredible drumming fading in. From there, the riffs exchanged between Chuck and Paul Masvidal are tighter than the fix Government Motors (er, General Motors) finds itself in. Widely regarded as Death's finest moment, I prefer Symbolic but Human is certainly just as flawless.

The lyrics are introspective to the point of becoming existential. They deal with euthanasia, masks people wear to project a desired, distorted image to the world and simply with being human. This prompts some questions about what it means to be human. Are we human because we do human things, or are we human because we are born this way? Alan Turing and John Searle are two bright minds who have answered this question in different ways.

The Turing Test

Alan Turing described his Turing test in his paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence.

The Turing test involved three participants: two humans and one computer. One human and one computer are locked in separate rooms. The remaining human poses questions to the inhabitants of each room by typing them into a terminal. The purpose of these questions is to find out which room hosts the human and which the machine. Turing suggests that when the computer can fool the player to think that its room hosts a human, the computer would have passed the Turing test.



Turing seems to suggest that we are human because we do human things. Thus, if a computer were to do the same human things and can fool us into believing it is human, it would be as good as human. Basically, computers would be human when we say they are human and we can decide when and how they are to become human. Thus, computers would become human because Stone Cold says so.



Stone Cold Steve Austin. According to Turing, computers become human when Stone Cold says so.

This avoids the issue a little - something that Turing no doubt knew, but he probably avoided the issue in this way for the practical purposes of building imitation humans. Philosopher John Searle is not happy with this arrangement.

Searle's Chinese Room

John Searle presents his Chinese Room argument in his paper Minds, Brains, and Programs. Searle proposes a scenario whereby artificial intelligence has evolved to the point where one such system can be taught fluent Chinese. The system is hosted inside a room and comfortably passes the Turing test by conversing with a human Chinese speaker outside the room.

According to Searle, the machine merely did symbol manipulating according to algorithms. Some proponents of strong AI would reason that the computer passed the Turing test as it understands Chinese. However, Searle turns the experiment around by suggesting that he himself is in a room with all the tools he would need to translate Chinese - dictionaries, pencils, paper, etc. He would be able to translate any Chinese characters which came through the door without understanding a world of Chinese. Searle argues that since he clearly does not understand a word of Chinese, yet can translate Chinese into English with the appropriate algorithms and tools, we have to conclude that the Chinese computer does not necessarily understand Chinese either.

Yet failing the Turing test does not make us less human and more machine. Searle seems to suggest that we aren't human merely because we do human things and no amount of nurture can give machines human nature. Not even when Stone Cold says so.

Track listing

1. Flattening of Emotions


2. Suicide Machine


3. Together as One


4. Secret Face


5. Lack of Comprehension


6. See Through Dreams


7. Cosmic Sea (Instrumental)


8. Vacant Planets

Personnel

• Steve DiGiorgio: fretless bass.


• Paul Masvidal: guitar


• Sean Reinert: drums.


• Chuck Schuldiner: guitar, vocals, production.

Rating

The Brain That Wouldn't Die DVD Review

Rating

Conclusion

A horror film among horror films. It features everything a horror film needs to be great: from the paranoid and panicking violins to the sans-serif fonts. It even features buckets of blood, blonde strippers, brunette strippers, animated corpses and a few gratuitous boob shots. Well, as gratuitous as they came in the sixties. It even features suitable metaphors which provide social critique of the "chains we can believe in" society. The film is in black and white - like most of life, if you just do your homework and check your premises properly.

Plot

• Jan Compton (Virginia Leith, who makes a delectable corpse) is decapitated in a car accident. Her husband to be, surgeon Bill Cortner (Jason Evers) was playing his Decapitated albums too loud and didn't pay attention to the road.


• Dr Cortner is a mad scientist ala Lady Frankenstein who manages to keep Jan's head alive. I promise, no more Jan gave head in the car jokes.


• Jan (or Jan in the pan, as she is affectionately known by fans of this film) goes through an existential crisis. I mean the poor girl thought she was going shopping and here she ends up without a body. I'm sure living without breasts she could cope with, but no nails to manicure? No wonder she starts hating Dr Cortner.


• Dr Cortner decides to look for the body of the girl of his dreams for the girl of his dreams in the cat house. I'm sure it must've been a real catharsis for the poor guy, deciding to buy a body when he needed a body for Jan in the pan's sparkling personality. Besides, how is Jan in the pan going to stop him from having a night out with the boys? Well, Jan has her mysterious waves. Make that mysterious ways.

Review

It is alarming how, for its time, this film capitalised on the fears of the general public for the medical profession. Remember that this film was produced before the first heart transplant was even performed, yet it deals with swapping bodies - or swapping heads, depending on which way you look at it. I guess your perspective depends on whose head it is.

Regardless, with the expected technological singularity, there are a few groups who are beginning to ponder the impact of such a radical change on our concepts of what it means to be human. They fall under the blanket term transhumanists. One of the transhumanist movements is the Extropy movement. Jan in the pan would do well to pay mind to some of their ideas.

The principles of Extropy

• Perpetual Progress: seeking more intelligence, more efficiency, more wisdom, more than being content with a shoddy pad, a big screen TV and free basic health care. Growth in healthy directions as opposed to the decline of civilisation from nations paranoid of communism into nations paranoid of capitalism.


• Self-Transformation: improving oneself, through technology if necessary. Being experimental and proactive in your evolution as a person.


• Practical Optimism: sticking to rational approaches means you can be optimistic about the results.


• Intelligent Technology: because ultimately the industrial revolution was about improving life. To transcend our reliance on nature is divine and technology enables us to do so. Intelligent technology more so. Imagine never having a car accident because cars are intelligent enough to drive you home safely.


• Open Society: meaning supporting social orders which facilitate freedom. This means deregulation, decentralisation of power and free information flow. Hackers like Gary McKinnon will no longer be deported to stand trial in foreign countries for taking his constitutional right of access to information seriously.


• Self-Direction: meaning you determine your own happiness and you do what makes you happy without being coerced into any dubious overseas wars.


• Rational Thinking: meaning you approach any ism with the necessary questions, an ability to work with probabilities and that you focus on innovation of new ideas instead of on the implementation of old dogma.

Of course, this all seems like ponies and rainbows, and in fact it is. I do think for Jan's sake, she should have considered these options before buying into the ideology that she is the ultimate horror. Everyone agrees with Bobby from pointlessbanter that Glitter is the ultimate horror. However, I'm also thankful that Jan did not follow the road less travelled to this fountain of knowledge, because that would make a far more boring film.

One of my favourite horror films of all time and fortunately also one you can download free of charge! Yes, it is legal.

Director
Joseph Green

Cast
Bruce Brighton, Jason Evers, Virginia Leith, Bonnie Sharie, Paula Maurice

The Singularity Age

This is part four of "A field guide to Chauvinism". You may find the other parts here:

1. A field guide to chauvinism, part 1


2. The conquering archetype and the nurturing archetype, part 2.


3. Why we still need chauvinism, part 3.


4. The singularity age, part 4.

While many futurists and some AI researches refer to the fourth wave as the knowledge age, I feel this term is used mostly due to the status of knowledge in the field of information science. Information scientists employ the terms data, information and knowledge.

• Data is the raw, unstructured, uninterpreted information. In the digital age, data is bits and bytes.


• Information is data after it is interpreted and structured, much like this blog post you are reading right now. Students of a field work hard to gather information of that field.


• Knowledge is applied information. Experts in a field have far more than information on their subject matter. They have what is termed heuristics – general guidelines or rules of thumb – which come as a result of their years of experience in processing information.

Data from Star Trek: the Next Generation. His icy stare is raw and unstructured.

While expert systems brought the dusk of the knowledge society (see also knowledge economy), they did not bring about enough of a revolution to reason that they signalled the start of one of Toffler's waves of civilisation. Many believe that technological singularity will bring about such a revolution.

Singularity: A definition

Singularity is the creation of superintelligence. This implies creating intelligence that is smarter than human intelligence. Singularity is a mind boggling concept, which is precisely why it is called singularity.

Vernor Vinge originally coined the term "Singularity" in observing that, just as our model of physics breaks down when it tries to model the singularity at the centre of a black hole, our model of the world breaks down when it tries to model a future that contains entities smarter than human.
From What is the singularity?

Clarke's three laws

Arthur C Clarke, one of the most distinguished science fiction writers of all time, proposed three laws of prediction:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.


2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.


3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

When evaluating the knowledge age, with its emphasis on knowledge engineering and knowledge sharing, by these three laws, it is clear that it is a natural extension of the information age and not nearly sufficient to claim dominion in the fourth wave. The knowledge age is also unmistakably nurturing.

Clarke's laws themselves are nothing more than heuristics, and as such, products of the knowledge age. Gone are the days where scientists make rules which are absolute and always applicable. Newton would never have dreamt of writing laws of motion including the words probably, almost certainly, a little way past or sufficiently advanced, yet here is Clarke proposing a rough guide to evaluate predictions about the future.

There are already scientific fields like quantum mechanics which are based entirely on probability. After singularity occurs, all current human knowledge and experience would be effectively cast upon the not good enough pile. For this reason, I propose that the singularity age would require the conquering archetype in our mere organic intelligence if we are to survive the rise of the superintelligent machines.

Why singularity will have a revolutionary impact on our world

The short answer is hyperbolic growth. Most are familiar with the term exponential growth, but hyperbolic growth is even more impressive.

Exponential growth occurs when the growth rate is proportional to the current value. A famous example of exponential growth is the wheat and chessboard problem, whereby grains of rice are doubled on each square of the chessboard. The proportion of the growth rate here is constant.

Hyperbolic growth occurs when the proportion itself is growing exponentially. Ray Kurzweil calls this double exponential growth (“...meaning that the rate of exponential growth itself is growing exponentially...”). That's a lot of rice!

While technology has exhibited exponential growth thus far, we can expect the growth rate to go beyond mere exponential growth. One reason for this is that superintelligence would be employed to improve itself.

The conquering archetype will rule in the singularity age

The nature of the information age lends itself well to the prevalence of the nurturing archetype. Information is everywhere. Everyone is thought to be equal and everyone is thought to deserve their 15 minutes of fame. That is, in our postmodern society ("where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain") which places great emphasis on Nietzsche's radical perspectivism, all views may not be true, but all views are necessarily regarded as valid.

With the arrival of the information age, a new hierarchy in perspectives arrived. Since information was everywhere and readily available, those with information were common. Those with knowledge were a little harder to reach. This implied a hierarchy with those with information at the bottom of the pyramid, and those with knowledge at the top. Expert knowledge becomes more valid than novice information.

With the arrival of the knowledge age, yet another new hierarchy in perspectives arrived. Soon, knowledge would be commonplace. Those with knowledge – the experts – would soon become the bottom of the pyramid, while those with access to superintelligence would rise to the top. Superintelligence will become more valid than expert knowledge.


A viking by fantasy artist Daren Bader. You shall require a loincloth and a broadsword to survive singularity.

It is clear that the survival of our species may become threatened by a superintelligent entity. As we have seen, when the survival of a species is threatened, the law of the jungle comes into play. We will move beyond the placid, nurturing state of genetic drift we currently experience into the realm of natural selection. If we are to survive this next wave, we shall require dominion of the conquering archetype.

Next time someone calls you a chauvinist pig, tip your hat gracefully and say: "Thank you."