Wakko SicK - Jul 28, 2011:

I want to feed you knowledge. Close your mouth and open your mind.

I’ll have whatever he’s smoking.

Arthur T Murray - Jul 27, 2011:

Wakko SicK - Jul 27, 2011:

I would just like to hear your thoughts on the topic of ALife. Feel free to jump in head first at any point in time.

And what is _your_ AI or aLife or chatbot activity, pray tell?

[I can visit here only for a brief window each day, from an Internet cafe or library] -Arthur

I don’t know what you would call me. I guess AILF Psychologist would the best description. I do not feel like going into much detail because it has no relevance in this topic but
I am very good at understanding how things work from an untainted point of view. I have a backround in evolution, philosophy, and psychology. My job at one time was related to these subjects.

For the purpose of this forum?
Beta tester would be a better description.

Wakko SicK - Jul 27, 2011:

Thank you Merlin…

Intelligence is Based on Prediction
The ability to percieve info and make a judgement on what might happen next.

I don’t know if I agree on this point. When we test our kids intelligence in school, we are often looking at what they learned in the past and how they can apply what they learned correctly. I don’t think that takes prediction. When I play chess, I predict future moves and my strategy is based on what I believe my opponent will do in response to my moves. At that rate, at least for a limited domain, chess computers should now be thought of as more intelligent than humans.

Wakko SicK - Jul 27, 2011:

The important distinction here, is that while a computer may learn a language to talk back, through mimicry or a set learning diagram….
To develop Artificial Life there are a couple of things that need to be created first.
If you could create a human, that would be useless unless you have an enviorment to put him in.
A windows explorer folder, as an example, is an enviorment akin to the vaccum of space. A Lifeform can not survive there because it doesn’t provide anything to support its life.

You are right about the problems of creating an environment for Artificial Entities. But, there are solutions. For chatbots, the internet serves as their environment. jabberwacky learns in a crowd sourced fashion. Other bots (like Skynet-AI) use a dynamic learning method. Unlike a human though a bot can also have knowledge uploaded in a bulk fashion. One project had a number of human players who played a cooperative game. The data was uploaded to the bot as its “experience”. The bot then interacted and played in a fashion similar to what you would expect out of humans.

Wakko SicK - Jul 27, 2011:

It is not learning anything more then what it was told to.

You might say that about people also. Most schoolchildren are just learning what they are told.

Wakko SicK - Jul 27, 2011:

I think the first step towards Alife will be made by new thinkers.. and not by people who can not learn themselves.

To teach something to Live and learn you must be able to understand FULLY how you Live and Learn.

Not true. Most intelligent organisms are taught to live and learn by entities that do not FULLY understand how they live and learn. The question is, knowing that we have imperfect information about how humans live and learn, how do we create something that can come close to human sapience.

There are a variety of approaches that could achieve “Artificial Intelligence”. Some are trying to emulate (or use) biologic systems. Some are crowd sourcing. One project is making recordings of everything in the life of newborns as they grow up and will try to create computer programs that learn as a child learns. I don’t know about “new thinkers” but I believe there could be any number of approaches that lead to the “illusion of intelligence”.

Wakko SicK - Jul 27, 2011:

Dear Merlin, Its like I wrote this topic just for you. I look forward to your next reply.
Dear No_Replyers
Thank you for your time. Hope you find this thread, at the very least, entertaining.

Wakko, I think you’ll find better participation in this thread if you forgo being confrontational and stick to just be controversial.

Merlin said “You might say that about people also. Most schoolchildren are just learning what they are told.”

This statement is true, School Children are not School Children all the time. And they will learn from any interaction. There location is unimportant as long as it supports there life.

As an example, how many people started smoking Cigarettes while attending school? It is weird that in this enviorment some people decide to smoke even though they are told specificly not to by everyone.’

Merlin Said ‘we are often looking at what they learned in the past and how they can apply what they learned correctly.’
I see. So another way to describe what you are saying is, they learn from the past to make predictions about the future. I am confused if you are disagreeing with me honestly or being sarcastic. Please Explain.

Merlin said ‘Most intelligent organisms are taught to live and learn by entities that do not FULLY understand how they live and learn. The question is, knowing that we have imperfect information about how humans live and learn, how do we create something that can come close to human sapience.’

You lost me somewhere. I said you can not CREATE without understanding. Do you think that the body doesn’t know how to create life? or that it doesn’t understand how to create life? Cause if you do something that means you KNOW HOW TO DO IT.

Your point that you actually made is that “In order for something to teach and learn it does not have to know about the subject. That doesn’t make anysense to me. Maybe another example would help me. I am unsure.

“Wakko, I think you’ll find better participation in this thread if you forgo being confrontational and stick to just be controversial.”

When you said this you must have been somewhere else in your thoughts. Because if I didn’t want to confront you this conversation would have never started. I am not sure how I would first come in contact wiht you to start a conversation unless i first walked up and said Hi.

I think you are refering to when I explained to who I was talking to. I didn’t think it was offensive to you. I was firm after someone posted in the thread and was very aggressive and rude towards me.

Do you think it would be wise to just let something like that slide? Or did you tell them aswell in private taht they should also not be rude. Or perhaps maybe its not a rule. If it is a rule. Does that make you some kind of police agency for this medium of discussion? Or perhaps me saying “i do not wish to talk to you further” to someone is just way to rude. How should I have handled it then. Just accept her assumption that I am stupid and have no right to post my opinion here? Or perhaps I should Have ignored her and been complacent. I was insulted. I don’t think I went overboard by explaining to her that I was insulted and that I do not wish to talk to her anymore. I do not feel sorry.

I think the last part could have been left out of your post. You may know her but you also know what you see. And she did insult me first. Besides. I still don’t feel bad, I did not appoligize or feel any sympathy on it, and look how much text was written. Alot that could be avoided if the topic was discussed instead of trying to confirm dominance on a forum. Thats just silly.

Misclick sorry.

Did you miss this post? It has all the links explaining and it says right at the top…
If you don’t read the links then DO NOT BE MAD WHEN YOU DON"T UNDERSTAND… simply read them….Look for yourself.

Wakko SicK - Jul 28, 2011:

I want to feed you knowledge. Close your mouth and open your mind. If you do not read the following links don’t be mad if you don’t understand something later. Just come back here and check them out.

Where did I get the idea that The way we define intelligence is wrong?
http://www.nesteduniverse.net/aritificial_intelligence/

Where can you get a Real Working Game that simulates ALife? It was made in 1996. It was called Creatures. Creatures 3 Exodus was the last release. It included online play and an engine that has been used by countless biology students at places like berkley, to simulate ecosystems and primate behavioral models. I think I even saw somewhere someone taught HS students how different behavior relates to inevitable war.

Here is the article explaining how you can use Creatures 2 AI models to help your AI
http://aigamedev.com/open/highlights/creatures-ai/

Here is an article explaining Influence Maps
http://aigamedev.com/open/highlights/creatures-ai/

Garry’s Mod(along with WireMod)  on steam, is currently being used to simulate enviorments on a level never before possible. It uses the Half-Life 2 Physics engine. You are able to create robots that fight each other as well as a use most coding to manippulate the engine on your own. You could easily make a chat bot from an NPC in Gmod and script it in whatever language you want. It would run in game seamlessly. My friend hooked a hal bot up to one for me awhile back using Lua.

This article is somethign I am currently reading and trying to digest. I ahve been using Balbooka text to speach engine to learn while I sleep as well as manual reading.
http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/cig08/Proceedings/papers/8034.pdf

If you have any questions ask. I am not some troll. These are things I am working on, and it sucks looking for help cause I start telling people who know how to build stuff how to do it and they instinctvly get defensive and offended. I am not trying to come off that way but…sometimes you find answers in weird places.

http://site.nixuz.com/evolving-fish-intelligence

Wakko,
“Did you miss this post?”
I had problems posting before and when I finally got in there were an number of new posts.

“I think the last part could have been left out of your post.”
My final comment was an attempt to help make this thread a fruitful discussion. I am not the forum police. I don’t do sarcasm. I also felt some of the tone of your posts did not encourage discussion and thought if you changed it you could get more participation. It was a suggestion.

“I am confused if you are disagreeing with me honestly or being sarcastic. Please Explain.”
I disagree. If you are taught 2+2 is 4. Then on a test you correctly answer 2+2 is 4. There is no prediction involved.
If in electric shop you learn to wire a light bulb and switch, you might be thought of as intelligent if you can wire a room. But it does not involve prediction.

Intelligence is not based on prediction, but prediction could be part of it. If anything I would say intelligence is based on memory, recall and the ability to learn.

“You lost me somewhere. I said you can not CREATE without understanding.”
I disagreed with your use of FULLY. Many people teach their children without fully understanding how they learn. I would submit that we do not fully understand living and learning, and yet we teach our children. Also you can create by prototyping, testing, and evolving without fully understanding.

“Cause if you do something that means you KNOW HOW TO DO IT.”
Sometimes we create by accident. Post-It notes and penicillin come to mind. Many tech products come out of the research and development cycle where the problem is known but the solution is unknown.

“I would just like to hear your thoughts on the topic of ALife. Feel free to jump in head first at any point in time.”
Alife is an interesting topic. If only AI was as easy as setting up a genetic algorithm to evolve intelligence. The Creature developers seem to have the same issues as other AI developers:

9) Hand-Craft AI Logic
Even in Creatures, the neural networks are heavily tweaked and tuned during development. This is necessary no matter what kind of model is used for the AI logic. As Steve mentions in [2]:
“[The neural network] must be capable of supporting the planned brain model, i.e. the neural configuration which controls the first generation of creatures.”
So the behavior of the first Norn is heavily crafted, and then it is left to evolve over the course of the game.

Merlin Said “I disagree. If you are taught 2+2 is 4. Then on a test you correctly answer 2+2 is 4. There is no prediction involved.”

You are taught something then you use the information you learned in the past from that teaching session to make a prediction that 2+2 was 4 before and so it must still be 4. Hope this helps.

merlin said ‘If in electric shop you learn to wire a light bulb and switch, you might be thought of as intelligent if you can wire a room. But it does not involve prediction.”

If you wanted to wire a room you would repeat the steps you leanreed in the past with the assumption that it will work on a larger scale.

Merlin said
I disagreed with your use of FULLY. Many people teach their children without fully understanding how they learn. I would submit that we do not fully understand living and learning, and yet we teach our children. Also you can create by prototyping, testing, and evolving without fully understanding.”

We aren’t disagreeing. You are jsut repeating the same thing that has nothing to do with what I originally said. You are arguing what the definition of learning is. That may be an intreating side note but What I said was you can not CREATE. Nothing to do with teaching. ALife teaches itself as shown in the coding of Creatures 3 exodus.

Merlin said “Sometimes we create by accident. Post-It notes and penicillin come to mind. Many tech products come out of the research and development cycle where the problem is known but the solution is unknown.”

An accident is how we learn most things. This is why teaching ALife would be ineffective in the long term. At every stage of our evolution there was nto the same guy holding you hand. Original thought comes from trying and failing until you succeed. This is why you are not gettign it. Seperate learnign from the equation. You are not gonna teach this thing. You are going to watch it grow. If thats too slow for you don’t try to create any form fo life cause they all have to grow.

Merlin said “Even in Creatures, the neural networks are heavily tweaked and tuned during development. This is necessary no matter what kind of model is used for the AI logic.”

This is true in the field of chat bots as well. It doesn’t make it a dramatic argument why your research should nto be continued. Play the game man. You will be amazed. I find it harder and harder to stop playing and its about 5 years old.

PS keep those links Coming. I already had the spore but that other site has been bookmarked.

Sometimes I get the picture of the the three blind guys describing an elephant.  Now we are looking at predictive analysis. I foresee another “tree” representing the elephant’s leg. Of course this means the goal to predict is already provided or at least there is a notion of “hill climbing”.  Or is it predicting all things at once that is being smart?

Intelligence is not based upon behavior - duh, in your dreams. I imagine you thought that one up somewhere using your vast skills at problem solving.  And now you can run your theory against all these arguments to see how it measures up.

Unless we submit that all animals are intelligent (like fishes in a pond, ha), there is something big in the room that you are missing.  Otherwise ants are very intelligent because they work together to solve problems and adapt to their environment.  And alligators must be extremely wise because their kind have existed for millions of years (I’m guessing once alongside the dinosaurs who didn’t survive.)

What is it that has intelligence enough to test behavior to determine how intelligent it is?  What is it that could even be concerned about such a thing as “intelligence”?  Oh, you are sooooo close…

Merlin, memory is a form of pattern matching.  It is taking a feature or key and adding more data, filling in the blanks, retrieving the whole record from an index.  Memory is all predicting in the true sense of the idea.  It is how we use symbols to represent experience (which is totally different in each empirical instance, but somehow reduced to be the “same” experience for the same symbols.)  So if intelligence is based on memory, intelligence then is based upon pattern matching and predicting what additional data can be applied.

BTW, this makes for some good illusions!  (reference the book “There’s a Gorilla in the Room” I think that is the book’s title - or my memory is playing tricks on me again.)

You shoudl really read the whole thread. otherwise you really aren’t participating by repeating what other people have said. If you look in the thread you will see that someone realized in 1994 (If i remember right) HE is a very successful computer designer that is passionate about learning how the human brain works.

Again, please read the thread.

This is in response to

Gary Dubuque - Jul 28, 2011:

Sometimes I get the picture of the the three blind guys describing an elephant.  Now we are looking at predictive analysis. I foresee another “tree” representing the elephant’s leg. Of course this means the goal to predict is already provided or at least there is a notion of “hill climbing”.  Or is it predicting all things at once that is being smart?

Intelligence is not based upon behavior - duh, in your dreams. I imagine you thought that one up somewhere using your vast skills at problem solving.  And now you can run your theory against all these arguments to see how it measures up.

Unless we submit that all animals are intelligent (like fishes in a pond, ha), there is something big in the room that you are missing.  Otherwise ants are very intelligent because they work together to solve problems and adapt to their environment.  And alligators must be extremely wise because their kind have existed for millions of years (I’m guessing once alongside the dinosaurs who didn’t survive.)

What is it that has intelligence enough to test behavior to determine how intelligent it is?  What is it that could even be concerned about such a thing as “intelligence”?  Oh, you are sooooo close…

This link i found looks cool.
http://www.gamewaredevelopment.co.uk/creatures_more.php?id=460_0_6_0_M27

This link explains how norns biology works in Creatures 2 and Creatures 3.

As far as considering animals intelligent goes.. Why wouldn’t you. Unless you thin we evolved and humans were the first intelligent life. That just doesn’t make sense. We gained intelligence over time. Your examples of animals actually point to this. Maybe you should read your own post again?  I am nto sure you people realize taht we evolved from things like bacteria and algae. At one point our ancestors were all single celled organisims and over time we evolved to adapt to our enviorment. We survived so many generation alter to become people sitting in chairs punching synthetic materials that relay electronic signals thru copper wire. You may have been born yesterday but alot of animals lived and died before we became human. The idea that it was only at this point that we gained intelligence is absurd. Dogs are intelligent. They understand the basics of language such as nouns and verbs. Otherwise they woudln’t wag ther tail when you say there name and tell them they are good boys/girls.

I read somewhere taht most graduating college students this year don’t know how to get the ice out of the ice tray. Is that a good example of our intelligence. Or maybe the creation of the ice tray is a better one.

Maybe it was figuring out how to make a heart to pump liquid containing most of the stuff we use to fly by on this magical conveyer belt we call our veins. Animals did that too. I would say thats preatty impressive and dare anyone to recreate it in the homes with nothing but will power.

Wakko,

Is an ant more intelligent than a dog?

Is a dog more intelligent than a parrot?

Is a parrot more intelligent than a human?

Does an ant know if it is more intelligent than a dog?

Does a dog…

Bottom line, only humans consider the notion of intelligence.  Why?

By the way, if only evolution was the factor in making humans what they are today, then there would be no real need (evolutionarywise) for humans to predict.  The environment and natural selection would take care of that.  I submit that by having our poor and sick cared for (by our governments), we abuse the mighty force of evolution.  Natural selection is broken in our society.  (Political selection is more the norm.)

What you don’t get yet is the human’s need to be aware of what each other’s thoughts are.  So much so that we project thoughts into animals just by observing their behavior.  Like parrots (dogs for you) can talk and listen to our words. What a conversation they have. Intelligence is an artifact of that modelling in our mind of what is happening in some else’s mind.  And to have a mind is…  (hint: it is not a game or a player or creature in a game)

Wakko SicK - Jul 28, 2011:

I think you are refering to when I explained to who I was talking to. I didn’t think it was offensive to you. I was firm after someone posted in the thread and was very aggressive and rude towards me. [...]

It was not my intention to be offensive. I was trying to point out that the vague assertions and a condenscending attitude exhibited in your first post were not likely to support your argument or stimulate discussion. I even encouraged you to elaborate on your claims (by explaining what you consider to be “behavior”). My tone was patronizing, but merely as an attempt to match yours. If you found this offensive, I apologize.

Frankly I find it astonishing that Merlin and Gary have had the patience to put up with your language thus far. But good for you that they are more tolerant than most on this forum.

Wakko SicK - Jul 28, 2011:

You are taught something then you use the information you learned in the past from that teaching session to make a prediction that 2+2 was 4 before and so it must still be 4. Hope this helps.

It does help. I guess we have different definitions/views of prediction. I agree that the universe is based on the fact that it is not totally chaotic. An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion. Gravity will hold true from one moment to the next and what you learned in the past should be true in the future. If that is what you mean by prediction, then I understand your viewpoint.

Wakko: We aren’t disagreeing. You are jsut repeating the same thing that has nothing to do with what I originally said. You are arguing what the definition of learning is. That may be an intreating side note but What I said was you can not CREATE. Nothing to do with teaching. ALife teaches itself as shown in the coding of Creatures 3 exodus.

Wakko, are you saying that you believe Alife will be a successful path to creating a “conversational” AI (after all this is Chatbots.org)? I agree that Alife can generate entities that will display intelligent behaviors, but do you think it is a path that will lead to higher cognitive functions?

Wakko: An accident is how we learn most things. This is why teaching ALife would be ineffective in the long term. At every stage of our evolution there was nto the same guy holding you hand. Original thought comes from trying and failing until you succeed. This is why you are not gettign it. Seperate learnign from the equation. You are not gonna teach this thing. You are going to watch it grow. If thats too slow for you don’t try to create any form fo life cause they all have to grow.

The problem with using alife to evolve an Artificial Intelligence that has the cognitive capabilities of a human is that there is no existing environment that enables the equivalent of natural selection. For something to teach itself it must have an environment that successfully generates feedback/response. Without that guidance, alife becomes the Infinite monkey theorem. You might get interesting results, but you probably won’t be able to talk to it.

Merlin said “Even in Creatures, the neural networks are heavily tweaked and tuned during development. This is necessary no matter what kind of model is used for the AI logic.”
Wakko: This is true in the field of chat bots as well.
That was my point.

Wakko: Play the game man. You will be amazed. I find it harder and harder to stop playing and its about 5 years old.
I have played the game. The variations have been around for years.
http://www.ted.com/speakers/will_wright.html

One of the simplest forms of the concept is Conway’s game of life.

If you would like to learn some programming (evolution is then based on your skills) then you might enjoy Robocode.

I have found evolutionary/genetic type of game most applicable to avatar creation/variation (or unintelligent NPCs driven by instinct) and less usable to create an AI that can communicate in a human language (like a chatbot).
http://chrishecker.com/How_To_Animate_a_Character_You’ve_Never_Seen_Before

Now I’ll ask you to play the game too. Go have a conversation with Skynet-AI and then tell me if you believe an untrained/self-trained Alife will be a better solution to creating an entity you can have a conversation with.

Early work in the field of using biology as a model was done decades ago. This is what I was talking about when I said that some people are using biology as a guide for AI development.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm

Additional links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Spore