Three Things That LLMs Have Made Us Rethink

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There are three things that the existence of LLMs, such as ChatGPT-3.5 and ChatGPT-4 make us have to rethink. At different times and amongst different communities they have all had lots of AI researchers talking about them, often with much passion. Here are three things to note: The Turing Test has evaporated. Searle’s Chinese Room … Continue reading Three Things That LLMs Have Made Us Rethink

What Will Transformers Transform?

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Generative Pre-trained Transformer models (GPTs) are now all the rage and have inspired op-eds being written by everyone from Henry Kissinger (WSJ) to Noam Chomsky (NYTimes) in just the last month. That sure is some hype level. Way back in the early history of GPTs, January 1st this year, I wrote briefly about them and said: Calm down … Continue reading What Will Transformers Transform?

No front seat occupants; adventures in autonomous ride services

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Just over ten years ago, on April 5th, 2012 to be precise, I took my first ride in a self-driving car, from Google X, in a research unit that has now become Waymo. There was someone sitting in the driver seat, but he had his feet and hands off the controls. We left Google and … Continue reading No front seat occupants; adventures in autonomous ride services

The Origin of Robot Arm Programming Languages

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So far my life has been rather extraordinary in that through great underserved luck1 I have been present at, or nearby to, many of the defining technological advances in computer science, Artificial Intelligence, and robotics, that now in 2021 are starting to dominate our world. I knew and rubbed shoulders2 with many of the greats, those … Continue reading The Origin of Robot Arm Programming Languages

[FoR&AI] Steps Toward Super Intelligence IV, Things to Work on Now

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[This is the fourth part of a four part essay–here is Part I.] We have been talking about building an Artificial General Intelligence agent, or even a Super Intelligence agent. How are we going to get there?  How are we going get to ECW and SLP? What do researchers need to work on now? In … Continue reading [FoR&AI] Steps Toward Super Intelligence IV, Things to Work on Now

[FoR&AI] Steps Toward Super Intelligence III, Hard Things Today

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[This is the third part of a four part essay–here is Part I.] If we are going to develop an Artificial Intelligence system as good as a human, an ECW or SLP say, from Part II of this essay, and if we want to get beyond that, we need to understand what current AI can … Continue reading [FoR&AI] Steps Toward Super Intelligence III, Hard Things Today

[FoR&AI] Steps Toward Super Intelligence II, Beyond the Turing Test

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[This is the second part of a four part essay–here is Part I.] As we (eventually…) start to plot out how to build Artificial General Intelligence there is going to be a bifurcation in the path ahead.  Some will say that we must choose which direction to take. I argue that the question is complex … Continue reading [FoR&AI] Steps Toward Super Intelligence II, Beyond the Turing Test

[FoR&AI] Steps Toward Super Intelligence I, How We Got Here

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God created man in his own image. Man created AI in his own image. Once again, with footnotes. God created man in his1 own image.2 Man3 created AI in his3 own image. At least that is how it started out. But figuring out what our selves are, as machines, is a really difficult task. We … Continue reading [FoR&AI] Steps Toward Super Intelligence I, How We Got Here

[FoR&AI] The Origins of “Artificial Intelligence”

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Past is prologue1. I mean that both the ways people interpret Shakespeare’s meaning when he has Antonio utter the phrase in The Tempest. In one interpretation it is that the past has predetermined the sequence which is about to unfold–and so I believe that how we have gotten to where we are in Artificial Intelligence … Continue reading [FoR&AI] The Origins of “Artificial Intelligence”

[FoR&AI] The Seven Deadly Sins of Predicting the Future of AI

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[An essay in my series on the Future of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence.] We are surrounded by hysteria about the future of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. There is hysteria about how powerful they will become how quickly, and there is hysteria about what they will do to jobs. As I write these words on September … Continue reading [FoR&AI] The Seven Deadly Sins of Predicting the Future of AI