Wednesday, November 30, 2016

True Artificial Intelligence Will Arrive Suddenly and Will Stun the World


In this article, I argue that true artificial intelligence, aka artificial general intelligence or AGI, may arrive on the world scene within the next ten/fifteen years or even sooner. It will not be a gradual process. It will arrive suddenly and take the world completely by surprise.

True AI Will Not Come from the Mainstream AI Community

When I say that the arrival of true AI will take the world by surprise, what I mean is that it will come from an unexpected place. Don't wait for the mainstream AI community to figure out intelligence. That will not happen. Knowing what I know about the brain and intelligence, there is no doubt in my mind that mainstream AI scientists are completely clueless as to how to even approach the problem. They are clueless because over 99 % of AI research money currently goes into funding deep learning, which is, as I have explained elsewhere, a hindrance to progress toward true AI. The most important ingredient in intelligence is time. And yet, amazingly, time is a mere afterthought in AI research, especially deep learning.

There are a handful of AI researchers who do understand the crucial importance of time to intelligence but, as I explained in my previous article, they are handicapped by their continued adherence to a representational approach to intelligence. In other words, in spite of all the hype, they are still doing symbolic AI or GOFAI. Please read, The World Is its Own Model or Why Hubert Dreyfus Is Still Right About AI for more on this topic.

Another obvious reason that the mainstream AI community is clueless is that they believe that the brain is performing some kind of massive parallel computation on sensory inputs. They assume that the brain continually generates an internal model of the world using statistical calculations on its input signals. The problem with this view is that neurons are way too slow for this kind of signal processing. The surprising truth is that the brain does not compute anything when it perceives the world. The brain assumes that the world is deterministic and does its own computations. It learns how the world behaves and expects that this behavior is perfect and will not deviate. The mechanism is akin to an automatic coin sorting machine whereby the machine assumes that the different sizes of the coins automatically determine which slots they belong to.

True AI Will Arrive Suddenly

A truly intelligent system, such as the human brain, consists of multiple, highly integrated modules. What I mean is that every module that comprises an intelligent system has a specific function, organization and operation that complement the other modules. No single module can function in isolation. It is not possible to solve one aspect of intelligence without also solving all the other aspects. In other words, one cannot understand sensory perception without also understanding motor behavior, and vice versa. There will be no evolution during which advances are made a little at a time while machines become gradually more intelligent over the years until a time is reached when they achieve human-like intelligence. True AI will appear suddenly.

The Secret of True AI Will Come from a Completely Unexpected Source

The most surprising thing about the arrival of true AI on the world scene will not be that it is finally here (although that will certainly make the front pages) but where it came from. I am not going to say too much about this other than the following. True AI is so counterintuitive that it would take us (humanity) hundreds, if not thousands of years to figure it out on our own. Fortunately for us, there is an ancient source of scientific knowledge about the brain and intelligence that the world has chosen to ignore. I have worked for more than a decade to decipher and understand this knowledge and I have made great progress. But whether or not I publish my work is not up to me. The only caveat here is that I am a known internet nut. Stay tuned.

Why Deep Learning Is a Hindrance to Progress Toward True AI
In Spite of the Successes, Mainstream AI is Still Stuck in a Rut