
Artificial General Intelligence – EQ, Consciousness, and Reproduction - sharkhacks
https://medium.com/@sharkhacks/emotional-intelligence-consciousness-and-sex-on-the-way-to-artificial-general-intelligence-agi-c42d6c6f0807#.653q1sdv5
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sharkhacks
Hi folks, This is something that I put together yesterday. Appreciate your
thoughts and feedback

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tariqali34
I think most people would probably not like your approach, and think of it as
way too sci-fi and idealistic given the limitations of current tools. They
would suggest studying AI a lot more before you attempt to really think of
anything. Things that seem easy can be hard, things that seem hard can be
easy. And it's not clear that we will ever really recognize
superintelligences...if we program something, then we know how it works, and
if we know how it works, we'll just say "Oh, it's an algorithm" and not ever
appreciate the extent of machine capabilities.

I do like how you handled "consciousness" though by redefining it to mean
'examine your memory and then learn from it'; artificial intelligence is
really just one big word game and if you can change your definitions properly
to something achievable, then you might actually achieve them. Then again, you
actually have to _do_ it and that seems more difficult than talking about it.
Most people will likely disagree with your "consciousness" definition and will
prefer a more vaguer version that would be impossible to be built...

My suggestion is two-fold:

1) Learn AI first and find out its tools and limitations. Struggle through
those boring AI lectures, or see if you can find any GitHub Machine Learning
libraries so that you can start working. Also, try some side projects where
you use AI to solve real-world practical problems, before you attempt to
figure out how to induce the existence of an AGI. I'd even suggest dropping
the existence of an AGI (there's no guarantee it can even exist anyway) and
focus on a specific part of AGI: inducing emotion or consciousness by itself
might be "pretty cool", and if you can do that without needing an AGI, and be
able to apply them to real-world problems, then people might even accept those
algorithms as being valid (though they may avoid the pseudo-scientific terms
we're applying to them right now).

2) Look at the "Mario Lives" videos[1], where programmers were able to
successfully represent emotional states and conversations in an AI that plays
Mario. May not match your ideas about emotion and learning, but it is a sign
that you can do anything you want so long as you change the definitions of
words to be what's practical.

[1]Video 1: Mario Having Emotional States -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AplG6KnOr2Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AplG6KnOr2Q)

Video 2: Mario Becoming Social As Well -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltPj3RlN4Nw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltPj3RlN4Nw)

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sharkhacks
Thanks for your feedback Tariq. To give you some context:

-I have taken AI as a course in the past (college 10 years ago), and I'm a computer engineer so I have the basics of ML,AI,etc. and I'm familiar with the libraries that are out there and the body of knowledge.

\- I find that when you go deep into a particular topic or field and read lots
of research you tend to become immersed and start to think like everyone else
in the field. There is some wisdom to Zen's mind beginner's mind and I wanted
to let that Beginner's mind explore freely and express its thoughts before my
reimmersion in the research.

\- I will definitely look at Mario Lives video thanks for pointing it out.

\- I guess I was looking for someone to challenge the ideas as ideas more than
challenge my credentials / approach but it's all fair.

\- I'm not interested in solving a particular problem at this point in time in
AI. I think everyone is taking this angle and everyone is trying to do this.
I'm already in Tech, in a fairly good position, and solving real customer
problems. I'm simply following my curiosity and a more grandeur goal and doing
it just for the sake of following my curiosity.

