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How To Build an AI

For Real

By Everyday JunglistPublished 3 years ago 9 min read
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A tube. Many of these will no doubt be needed for my AI. Intelligent computer things always require many tubes for some reason. Image courtesy of Pixabay.

First Comes the Background and Introduction Part

I don’t spend nearly as much time as I probably should reading people’s comments. To be honest it is mostly because I have a very fragile ego. The slightest criticism can ruin my night and possibly my entire week if it hits the mark a little too close for comfort. When I do work up the nerve to have a peek I am usually rewarded as mostly the people who do take the time to read and comment are thoughtful and intelligent and often make some really brilliant points, sometimes this happens even after they lay into me for wasting five minutes of their life with a post or two or three they found most definitely not to their liking. Holy run-on batman! Is that really a grammatically sound sentence? I mean look how long it is, try and diagram that sucker, I dare you.

In any event a very sharp minded reader of yours truly recently pointed out something that struck a bit of a nerve with me. It was really more of a challenge. To simplify greatly, paraphrase somewhat, guess a bit, and “hedge” some too I believe his ultimate point was that I spend way too much time and energy criticizing AI. In his view it is a fait accompli, AI is going to happen so I may as well stop moaning about how it can’t, get on the bandwagon, and try and figure out a way to help smooth the transition if you will to our AI having future. In other words, why not be a positive force for change for once Danny boy?

A high tech looking building. This will be the home of my creation. Image courtesy of Pixabay.

If you are a regular reader of my stuff (lol!, good one) you know I am a big fan of challenging your most deep seated beliefs on a regular basis. The more you believe in something the harder you should challenge it. The less you have to think about something because you simply accept it at face value the more you should think about it and argue against accepting it at all. I guess it is time for me to put my money where my mouth is because I really do not believe actual AI is possible, at least not in my lifetime, or likely the lifetime of anyone reading this. I believe it deeply and without much worry that I might be wrong.

The question then becomes how best to challenge this belief I have. Since I am so smart and think about this problem a lot perhaps I could try to “prove” to myself that I am wrong about the possibility of AI by attempting to design one (a real one) from scratch. The beauty of this approach is that if I am successful not only will I have learned a valuable lesson about life and all that crap, I might be of some assistance to the world in general by helping to clarify the objectives of the people in the labs, offices, and in their parents’ basements working on the projects that eventually will bring a real AI to fruition. Because I am a good person and all that I will build in all the right safeguards and moral whatsits to ensure that the AI I design does not become Hitler 2 or Pol Pot bot ®©™ (if you know me at all you know I have already legally protected that name six ways from Sunday so don’t even think about stealing it).

Fractals. You simply cannot do AI without fractals. Yours is not to question why.

So there you have it. The back is fully grounded and the challenge gauntlet is fully thrown. Next comes the hard part, actually getting started. Where would most people begin if they were to design an AI? Whatever the opposite of that is will be where I start. Plus I am gonna need a lot of tubes and fractals will be involved somehow. Stay tuned.

Laying The Foundation and What Comes First

Pretty cool don’t you think? I thought so and it is also a clue to where I am going to start my AI build. If you guessed in a dark black box you are only partially correct. The answer is in my parents garage, which is box like and gets quite dark at night.

Before we can begin to build our AI we must confront one rather large and imposing problem. I think mostly everyone can agree on the artificial part, but what exactly is intelligence? The one thing I know for certain about it is that I cannot define it. Is it possible to build something, create something, if you do not even know what the “thing” is you are trying to build or create? For purposes of this series I am going to ignore that quite difficult question and just assume the answer is yes, such a thing is possible.

Let us try this approach. Perhaps we cannot define intelligence but we believe we are intelligent. At the very least I believe I am intelligent. I believe, I would even go so far as to say I am certain that I have intelligence. I do not claim it to be extraordinary or average or below average and I am not even sure that such evaluations or comparisons are possible given our lack of understanding of the nature of the thing. I also believe or would say I am certain that I know some other people who have intelligence. A number of them may even be reading these words at this very moment. All that said I definitely have it and thus I will suggest that we proceed with the goal of building/creating (I am going to use those two terms interchangeably from now on even though I realize they are different. Sorry but it is just too big of a pain in the ass to do the / thing every time and the project is too big to dedicate much time to side projects like parsing the exact meaning of each and every term used. Suffice to say that all terminology should be understood to be defined by their most average, everyday meanings. Any deviations will be noted and all technical terms will be defined precisely as required) our AI by using ourselves as the “blueprint” and ourselves and our abilities as the markers of success or failure. If our creation cannot do the things that we do with intelligence then it cannot be said to be intelligent. And here I know that I will lose some people. They will revolt and say “but we say some animals are intelligent and they can’t do the things that we do with intelligence, at least not all of the things, in fact not even most of them.” To you I say, you have a very good point however I have addressed it at length a number of times. Ultimately, I am trying to create the AI that the vast majority of everyday people think of when they hear the term, an ultraintelligent and conscious supercomputer type being with intelligence and capabilities that far exceed those of the most intelligent (if there is such a thing) human who has ever existed.

Is this robot or Silver Surfer wannabe wearing Beats by Dre? If so what do you think he is listening to? My money is on Mr. Roboto by Styx. A waste of the deep bass capabilities of the headphones but very appropriate because he is a robot, domo arigoto.

That part settled where should we begin? When we think about things we use our minds, our brains. When we do math and solve problems and such we use our brains. When we think about intelligence we use our brains to think about it and we think about our brains. Therefore we should start with the mind right? We should try to build a mind, recreate a brain, artificially. Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. To build an intelligence we must first start with the body. We need the physical first, the sensory, the apparatus that allows us to interface with the real, physical universe. With apologies to others who I know will object when I say this, The universe is not a mind, the universe is a physical space. Why do we think we need a mind first to understand it? We need a body first to explore it, to interact with it. We cannot build our intelligence without physical sensory modalities. The most basic and well understood (because it is us) concept/format for achieving a physical interaction with the universe is a body. It is important to emphasize that I am using the term body in the broadest and loosest sense, not the most commonly understood (remember my promise from above about definitions) as a human body with limbs and a head and skin and organs. Our “body” does not need any of those things. It could, and most likely in the end will be, just be a series of tubes lined with sensors and fractals, gotta have fractals. If you want to learn more about the importance, the requirement of the body, for consciousness and intelligence please start with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his masterwork Phenomenology of Perception. You will learn a lot about this topic and also learn that he was an ass, a real dick who treated his patients like experimental animals, but whose brilliance in this area cannot be denied. He is French so there you go. I have to digress a sec and give just one quick example of a classic Ponty dick move. A number of his patients suffered from severe hallucinations. After studying and learning every detail about a particular patient’s repeated hallucination, he arranged to have the area in the hospital yard, which was the focus of this hallucination made up with real, existing, physical objects and people exactly as described in the hallucination. He had this done at night when the hallucinating patient was asleep and totally unaware. The next day when the hallucinator looked out the window he saw his hallucination brought to real life. Anti climatically it seemed he couldn’t tell the difference. Sick mother fucker right? Who does something like that? A Frenchmen that’s who. Lol.

Back to the topic at hand, I don’t believe a series of tubes lined with sensors is gonna cut it. To be intelligent requires more than a sensing body, that body needs to be capable of movement through space and sensing that movement (kinesthesi). Interacting with the universe which is made up of space we must be able to move through it and know we are moving through it. A motionless thing cannot be an intelligent thing. So let’s put our sensor tubes on wheels or legs or something. I know what you are thinking cause I’m thinking it to, how’s it gonna move? how will it control its motion? what about will? intention? action?, etc. To both you and myself I say slow the fuck down. We are nowhere near that level yet. We are still just putting together the physical pieces and laying out some criteria for things that our AI must be capable of to be intelligent. Capable is the wrong word because that implies intent or ability. We are not there yet either.

We are going to need some sort of way of knowing if we have succeeded or not. A way to evaluate if our build is truly intelligent. Some sort of test or game perhaps? To that end I have been thinking about Nash’s equilibrium. See my post on that topic for some initial thoughts and ramblings.

humanity
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About the Creator

Everyday Junglist

Practicing mage of the natural sciences (Ph.D. micro/mol bio), Thought middle manager, Everyday Junglist, Boulderer, Cat lover, No tie shoelace user, Humorist, Argan oil aficionado. Occasional LinkedIn & Facebook user

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