You cannot even drive to the supermarket without planning—it will take you a long, long time to arrive if you make random turns at each intersection.
Eliezer, what do you mean by “planning”? The word needs a technical definition. (So does “optimisation”, for that matter, by people on both sides of the claim that stars are, or are not, optimisers.)
Reaching goals does not necessarily involve planning. Water reaches the foot of a hill without planning. The room thermostat maintains the temperature without planning. It is said that no plan of battle survives contact with the enemy. I have a simulation of a robot that walks over uneven terrain and hunts food particles. That robot does no planning. I know: I created it. (Neither does it optimise, learn, adapt, remember, or predict. It merely works.) I know my way around the town I live in, and do not need to make any plan to reach the supermarket. I only need to know what to do at each point of the journey. In a strange town I would use a map and make a plan, but the plan would have to be continually updated according to conditions encountered.
To leap from observing the accomplishment of goals to “planning” is an anthropomorphisation of the sort that you have condemned in people working on AI, except when planning, technically defined, is demonstrated to actually be present in the mechanism. If “planning” does not mean some particular sort of mechanism, then you might as well call it “emergence”, or “pixies”.
you try to steer reality into a particular region of possible futures.
By “steering” I understand continually correcting your course to maintain the approach to your goal. Steering is not planning. The thermostat steers the temperature and the robot steers to its prey without planning. Steering without planning is possible; planning without steering is useless. Relying on a plan makes it unreliable.
Anyone can test this. Give someone directions in the form of a plan of which way to go at each intersection. Don’t tell them the destination you’re aiming them at. Have them execute the plan and tell you where they got to.
Eliezer, what do you mean by “planning”? The word needs a technical definition. (So does “optimisation”, for that matter, by people on both sides of the claim that stars are, or are not, optimisers.)
Reaching goals does not necessarily involve planning. Water reaches the foot of a hill without planning. The room thermostat maintains the temperature without planning. It is said that no plan of battle survives contact with the enemy. I have a simulation of a robot that walks over uneven terrain and hunts food particles. That robot does no planning. I know: I created it. (Neither does it optimise, learn, adapt, remember, or predict. It merely works.) I know my way around the town I live in, and do not need to make any plan to reach the supermarket. I only need to know what to do at each point of the journey. In a strange town I would use a map and make a plan, but the plan would have to be continually updated according to conditions encountered.
To leap from observing the accomplishment of goals to “planning” is an anthropomorphisation of the sort that you have condemned in people working on AI, except when planning, technically defined, is demonstrated to actually be present in the mechanism. If “planning” does not mean some particular sort of mechanism, then you might as well call it “emergence”, or “pixies”.
By “steering” I understand continually correcting your course to maintain the approach to your goal. Steering is not planning. The thermostat steers the temperature and the robot steers to its prey without planning. Steering without planning is possible; planning without steering is useless. Relying on a plan makes it unreliable.
Anyone can test this. Give someone directions in the form of a plan of which way to go at each intersection. Don’t tell them the destination you’re aiming them at. Have them execute the plan and tell you where they got to.