An AI 4-Year-Old In Second Life 234
schliz notes a development out of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where researchers have successfully created an artificially intelligent four-year-old capable of reasoning about his beliefs to draw conclusions in a manner that matches human children his age. The technology, which runs on the institute's supercomputing clusters, will be put to use in immersive training and education scenarios. Researchers envision futuristic applications like those seen in Star Trek's holodeck."
Not even close (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the Experience, Stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? Because we don't judge others' humanity based on their reasoning abilities, we judge it based on common shared human experiences.
Show me an AI that passes the Turing Test. I'll ask it what coffee tastes like, or what sex feels like, or what it felt when its mother died. Sure, somebody could program answers for those questions into it, but then it isn't an AI -- it's just a canned response simulating a human, incapable of having new experiences, incapable of perceiving the human world with human senses, and thus transparently lacking in humanity. At that point it's nothing but a computer puppet, with a programmer somewhere pulling the strings.
Re:It's the Experience, Stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, though, the point holds -- they'll be able to describe, in some novel way, answers to questions which are based directly on experience. This can be aped by a computer, but can't be generated authentically, because the AI doesn't actually have experiences.
That'll change once we have AIs that are capable of perceiving things and having experiences. But um... I'm thinking that's a looooong way off.
Re:Chatbot (Score:0, Interesting)
I believe (as do some of the researchers at AGIRI) we are merely decades away from greater-than-human intelligence. Technological progress (as measured by the 'benefit' derived from of the technologies) has been shown to be exponential (e.g. Moore's law), all we have to do is get to the tipping point, and greater-than-human AGI will apparently occur overnight.
The main point is that researchers have realized that modeling the human brain's structure is not currently the best approach so are taking techniques from data-mining, theorem proving, knowledge networks and a host of other technologies and trying to work out how to put them together. Even if that doesn't work, (conservatively) estimated improvements in MRI and computer storage and processing technologies indicate that the entire human brain down to the neuron level could be mapped and modeled sometime around the middle of this century.
If like a 4 year old, it should be able to lie (Score:4, Interesting)
Segmentation faults are murder! (Score:5, Interesting)
Segmentation faults are murder!
Honestly I wonder about the moral oddities of AI.
Re:Not even close (Score:5, Interesting)
She's a smart girl: at 3 she could recite the vowels, musical notes, etc. She had this babysitter that taught her stuff. Their parents couldn't afford the babysitter so they hired this other woman who just watches TV and makes food -- nothing else. And their parent's are not bright (at all: she goes to school to learn, so they don't care. they didn't bother to teach her how to read for example). Now she's 8 and she can't even tell me the multiplication table of 1 or 2, and doesn't have a clue about what "do, re, mi..." means. It's sad to see how minds go wasted.
Re:Ironic twist.... (Score:1, Interesting)
1) NEVER give them your attention when they do this. I cannot stress this enough. If you give them your attention even occasionally when they misbehave this way, they will never stop.
2) Redirect them. When they start with the "Mom mom mom mom mom mom mom" thing, give them something else to do. Do it in a dismissive manner. If your children respond to point and snap (as they should) point at their room and snap your fingers without looking at them.
3) ALWAYS give them your attention when they wait patiently until you are done talking before asking for something. Give them your FULL attention at this point.
I cannot say this technique works 100% of the time, because I am not a parent of 100% of the children of the world, but it worked like a charm on my two. My three year old waits patiently for me to finish talking before he makes a request (Within the limits of a 3 year old, of course. They are not, and should not be expected to be, anything like perfect at that age).
The reason it works is because you cannot, no matter how hard you try, get a 4 year old to understand time and place as an abstract concept. But you can use the fact that they seek "what works" at that age. If they learn that bugging you while you're talking to someone else doesn't work, but bugging you when you're NOT busy does, they will follow the more acceptable path.
- Posting anonymously because no matter what advice you give about children, some idiot thinks the method is abusive, and I frankly don't wanna deal with it.
Re:Not even close (Score:2, Interesting)