AI Solved. Again.

Posted 4 May 2005 at 17:33 UTC by steve

According to an article in TheStar Online, the problem of artificial intelligence has been solved. Within 5 to 10 years, Terminators, Mr. Data, and other intelligent robots will be a common part of daily life. Where have we heard this before? This time the problem was solved by Sethuraman Muthuraman, a Malaysian PhD student at Robert Gordon University who has made a "major breakthrough" of "world significance" that involves the application of evolutionary algorithms to artificial neural networks. Like most folks who've solved the problem of AI, the only thing missing is, well, the AI. The fine print says what they've got is an ANN microchip that might "evolve in a modular fashion until real intelligence emerged". General information on the school's AI research program can be found on their website. A more detailed explanation of Muthuraman's technique can be found in his research paper titled, "The Development of Modular Evolutionary Networks for Quadrupedal Locomotion" (PDF format).

Once, just once..., posted 4 May 2005 at 18:03 UTC by jeffkoenig » (Master)

I'd like to hear how these new "AI" solutions can be shown to be successful in a real application.

I'm aware of the Turing test, but are there any "baby step" tests for AI validation?

If not, I'm confident that we can look forward to many more announcements like, "I solved AI! The proof (and application) shall be left to the eager student!"

Slow day for AI4U, posted 4 May 2005 at 18:50 UTC by dogsbody_d » (Master)

Gosh. Still no sign eh?

Still. At least this "solution" of AI isn't a totally mental one. Modular evolution of ANNs seems perfectly reasonable. I even think I may have read some papers by these folks.

As always, the question is why did this make it to the papers?

Papers?, posted 4 May 2005 at 19:35 UTC by roschler » (Master)

dogsbody_d,

Where did you come across those papers? I'd like to see them.

Thanks.

Papers, posted 4 May 2005 at 19:53 UTC by steve » (Master)

Yes, their approach actually sounds pretty interesting. I suspect the media is partly responsible for the "AI Solved" thing. A headline like "Amazing AI breakthough" just sounds cooler than "Interesting approach to AI investigated".

Here's a link to an introductory article on their approach:

Evolution and Devolved Action: towards the evolution of systems (PDF format)

Let one hundred solutions blossom, posted 5 May 2005 at 02:47 UTC by AI4U » (Observer)

Ahem... AI solved, huh? I've heard that claim before. In fact, I've made that claim before. BTDT (been there, done that).

But did I, like Fermat, mention the solution in the margin of a manuscript? No, I programmed it in Win32Forth. Now I have a simple request for robotics club members, high school teachers, and neuroscientists: Download and run Mind.Forth available on-line as http://mind.sourceforge. net/mind4th.html and demo it to an individual, a class, or yourself. Ask your audience whether they think that they are witnessing a real AI Mind. Let them use the new feature of pressing the Tab key to switch to Tutorial mode so that they can watch the Robot AI Mind do its internal thinking. If they are programmers, let them Tab even further into Diagnostic mode and see if they accept the challenge of improving Mind.Forth or of porting the AI to a more modern language than Forth.

Here is a chance to make your name -- either by debunking AI4U/Mentifex -- or by hosting and perpetuating...