Airplanes exploit one single simple principle (from a vast set of principles) that birds use—aerodynamic lift.
If you want a comparison like that—then we already have it. Computers exploit one single simple principle from the brain—abstract computation (as humans were the original computers and are turing complete) - and magnify it greatly.
But there is much more to intelligence than just that one simple principle.
So building an AGI is much close to building an entire robotic bird.
And that really is the right level of analogy. Look at the complexity of building a complete android—really analyze just the robotic side of things, and there is no one simple magic principle you can exploit to make some simple dumb system which amplifies it to the Nth degree. And building a human or animal level robotic body is immensely complex.
There is not one simple principle—but millions.
And the brain is the most complex part of building a robot.
I’ll take your point and I should have said “there is much more to practical intelligence” than just one simple principle—because yes at the limits I agree that universal intelligence does have a compact description.
AIXI is related to finding a universal TOE—a simple theory of physics, but that doesn’t mean it is actually computationally tractable. Creating a practical, efficient simulation involves a large series of principles.
Airplanes exploit one single simple principle (from a vast set of principles) that birds use—aerodynamic lift.
If you want a comparison like that—then we already have it. Computers exploit one single simple principle from the brain—abstract computation (as humans were the original computers and are turing complete) - and magnify it greatly.
But there is much more to intelligence than just that one simple principle.
So building an AGI is much close to building an entire robotic bird.
And that really is the right level of analogy. Look at the complexity of building a complete android—really analyze just the robotic side of things, and there is no one simple magic principle you can exploit to make some simple dumb system which amplifies it to the Nth degree. And building a human or animal level robotic body is immensely complex.
There is not one simple principle—but millions.
And the brain is the most complex part of building a robot.
Reference? For counter-reference, see:
http://www.hutter1.net/ai/uaibook.htm#oneline
That looks a lot like the intellectual equivalent of “lift” to me.
An implementation may not be that simple—but then aeroplanes are not simple either.
The point was not that engineered artefacts are simple, but that they are only rarely the result of reverse engineering biological entities.
I’ll take your point and I should have said “there is much more to practical intelligence” than just one simple principle—because yes at the limits I agree that universal intelligence does have a compact description.
AIXI is related to finding a universal TOE—a simple theory of physics, but that doesn’t mean it is actually computationally tractable. Creating a practical, efficient simulation involves a large series of principles.