
Vicarious Raises $15M to Build Software That ‘Learns Like A Human’ - thedoctor
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/21/vicarious-good-ventures-funding/
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olalonde
Could be the last startup ever, but I am not betting my money on it. Would be
cool though if they re-named the company to _Last Startup_ :)

"Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass
all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of
machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine
could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an
'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far
behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man
need ever make." - I. J. Good

~~~
fuelfive
We seriously considered Last Invention as an alternative name, and actually
still own lastinvention.com. For a bunch of reasons, we decided on Vicarious
instead. :)

~~~
fuelfive
IIRC, the reasons were:

\- Depending on how you read it, Last Invention can sound really ominous.

\- LI is a bit of a mouthful to say, whereas Vicarious is a single word

\- People generally responded better to Vicarious as a name when we asked
around

Never heard of The Last One...

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RobPfeifer
The founder Dileep George was a founder/advisor at Numenta. I believe it was
his paper on HTMs that led to its founding. He left in 2010, but curious as to
how Recursive Cortical Networks differ from Numenta's product, which is moving
waaay more slowly than they would like.

~~~
saraid216
Thanks for pointing out the connection to Numenta. I was looking for it in the
article, but it had nothing.

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tryitnow
My immediate reaction is to be skeptical. AI has been tried before and has
failed many, many, times.

Having said that, I think this exactly the sort of innovation timeline real
venture capitalists should be considering - funding real R&D that could have a
revolutionary impact even if the odds are against it.

If I had a lot of money that I really didn't need I would invest it. That is
meant to be a compliment.

Best of luck. This is what smart people should be doing.

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tluyben2
There are quite a lot of people working on this 'problem' of AGI; amateurs,
academics and commercial. The 'only way' this would be possible currently is
like a Watson; some way of approximating intelligence / learning while not
emulating it directly with neurons. While AGI amateurs think we are actually
close to that right now, there is not much else pointing in that direction.

So let's see what they come up with :) Anyone has more information?

Edit: searching for "Recursive Cortical Network" is a good start.

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diego
Software that learns like a human is like a car that gallops like a horse. I
don't see the point.

~~~
miahi
It means that it can learn by its own - so you don't have to program every
behavior and data that it has access to. Of course, it's way easier said than
done.

BTW, horse-robots do exist[1]. 4 legs are very useful on a rough terrain.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3G-UE1HwGI>

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debacle
What good is learning software if you don't have the hardware to run it on
(and probably wont for a decade) to attain even mammalian levels of
intelligence?

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sbanach
Presumably you're referring to the neuron-level simulations that crop up in
the news every time some university gets a new supercomputer? Maybe there are
some shortcuts.

Just like 10 years ago the only conceivable way of rendering diffuse light was
with raytracing or radiosity simulations. Now we have modern techniques like
ambient occlusion that makes it reasonably cheap to do in a rasterizer in
realtime.

~~~
debacle
We can simulate approximations of intelligence now, and those will continue to
get better all the time, however, like raytracing, we simply don't have the
technology to do real AI at the human scale right now.

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sbanach
My point is that should there exist some higher level structure in the brain
that is more amenable to simulation than the equivalent quantity of low-level
synapses and neurons, then all bets are off about exactly what sort of
computer is required to simulate it. The brain has to be replicable by
biological processes - who knows what tricks it has to pull to achieve its
function? Maybe it's possible to come up with an 'optimizing compiler' that
tosses the junk.

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king_magic
Makes me think back to UltraHLE, and how that was a quantum leap over existing
N64 emulators when it came out. Similar approach - UltraHLE didn't emulate
every detail of the system. It took a higher-level approach.

Obviously not the same thing as emulating the brain :-) but just what came to
mind.

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paulgb
For anyone not familiar:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraHLE#The_HLE_technique>

Here's hoping the brain is implemented in C ;-)

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seiji
The company to get all of this right will be the first two trillion dollar
company.

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acomar
I'm going to be thrilled if it looks like they're even within shooting
distance of solving this problem, but for the time being I'm skeptical. I hope
they prove me wrong.

~~~
seiji
I was just speaking generally. I know nothing about this company apart from
their self promotional material and ego shouting.

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Furcas
Has any consideration been given to making sure the AGI is designed and built
to have goals that won't lead it to improve its intelligence vastly beyond
human levels, and then do something very bad to humanity? Like, say, use the
atoms that make up our bodies to make more processors to increase its
computational capacity.

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argonz
Any idea/paper depicting this "recursive cortical network"?

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wissler
$15M won't be enough.

