Here’s one way to evolve an artificial intelligence

This picture illustrates an idea for how to evolve an AI system. It is derived from the sensor-brain-actuator-world model.

Machine learning algorithms have been doing some impressive things. Simply by crawling through massive oceans of data and finding correlations, some AI systems are able to make unexpected predictions and reveal insights.

Neural nets and evolutionary algorithms constitute a natural pairing of technologies for designing AI systems. But evolutionary algorithms require selection criteria that can be difficult to design. One solution is to use millions of human observers as a Darwinian fitness force to guide an AI towards an optimal state.

Clarifications

Since there is so much discussion (and confusion) on AI these days I want make some clarifications.

• This has nothing to do with consciousness or self. This AI is disembodied.
• The raw data input is (not) curated. It has no added interpretation.
• Any kind of data can be input. The AI will ignore most of it at first.
• The AI presents its innards to humans. I am calling these “simulations”.
• The AI algorithm uses some unspecified form of machine learning.
• The important innovation here is the ability to generate “simulations”.

Mothering

The humanist in me says we need to act as the collective Mother for our brain children by providing continual reinforcement for good behavior and discouraging bad behavior. As a world view emerges in the AI, and as an implicit code of morals comes into focus, the AI will “mature”. Widely-expressed fears of AI run amok could be partially alleviated by imposing a Mothering filter on the AI as it comes of age.

Can Anything Evolve without Selection?

I suppose it is possible for an AI to arrive at every possible good idea, insight, and judgement just by digesting the constant data spew from humanity. But without an implicit learning process (such as back-propagation and other feedback mechanisms used in training AI), the AI cannot truly learn in an ecosystem of continual feedback.

Abstract Simulations 

Abstraction in Modernist painting is about generalizing the visual world into forms and colors that substitute detail for overall impressions. Art historians have charted the transition form realism to abstraction – a kind of freeing-up and opening-up of vision.

Imagine now a new path leading from abstraction to realism. And it doesn’t just apply to images: it also applies to audible signals, texts, movements, and patterns of behavior.

Imagine an AI that is set up like the illustration above coming alive for the first time. The inner-life of newborn infant is chaotic, formless, and devoid of meaning, with the exception of reactions to a mother’s smile, her scent, and her breasts.

A newborn AI would produce meaningless simulations. As the first few humans log in to give feedback, they will encounter mostly formless blobs. But eventually, some patterns may emerge – with just enough variation for the human judges to start making selective choices: “this blob is more interesting than that blob”.

As the young but continual stream of raw data accumulates, the AI will start to build impressions and common themes, like what Deep Dream does as it collects images and finds common themes and starts riffing on those themes.

http://theghostdiaries.com/10-most-nightmarish-images-from-googles-deepdream/

The important thing about this process is that it can self-correct if it starts to veer in an unproductive direction – initially with the guidance of humans and eventually on its own. It also maintains a memory of bad decisions, and failed experiments – which are all a part of growing up.

Takeaway

If this idea is interesting to you, just Google “evolving AI” and you will find many many links on the subject.

As far as my modest proposal: the takeaway I’d like to leave you with is this:

Every brain on earth builds inner-simulations of the world and plays parts of those simulations constantly as a matter of course. The simple animals have extremely simple models of reality. We humans have insanely complex models – which often get us into trouble. Trial simulations generated by an evolving AI would start pretty dumb, but with more sensory exposure, and human guidance, who knows what would emerge!

It would be irresponsible to launch AI programs without mothering. The evolved brains of most complex mammals naturally expect this. Our AI brain children are naturally derived from a mammalian brain. Mothering will allow us to evolve AI systems that don’t turn into evil monsters.

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Having sex with robots to save the planet

Long long ago, there was an accident in a warm puddle. A particular molecule – through some chance interaction with the soup of surrounding molecules – ended up with a copy of itself. Since the surrounding soup was similar to the original, the copy was more likely to replicate itself. And so it did. The rest is history. We call it evolution.

It is possible that similar accidents happened elsewhere around the same time – not just in one single puddle. One could also say that variations of this accident are still happening – only now at a massive scale.

Every act of every living thing can be seen as an elaboration of this original act. Self-replication is the original impetus of all life. We share a common ancestor with amoebas – who replicate asexually. The invention of sexual reproduction boosted genetic creativity. More recently in the scope of Earth’s history, creativity escaped the confines of genetics. We humans are the primary hosts of this creative engine.

Human beings have contrived all of the resulting aspects of survival to an art-form. This includes – not just the act of sex – but also the act of preparing food (cuisine), the act of making sounds and speaking (music and singing), and the act of altering the environment to create new structure (visual art). The abstractions and representations of the world that the brain generates via the body are derivations and deviations from the original acts of survival. It’s a form of self-replication.

The emergence of abstractions, mental models, and representations is increasing in complexity. This is an inevitable one-way blossoming accelerated by the emergence of the animal brain. The human experience is conflicted; we are oriented toward achieving escape velocity from Original Nature, but we also long for Original Nature. How can we resolve this conflict?

The original act of self-replication has powerful repercussions – billions of years after the original accident – it has taken on many forms. It is the reason we humans have strange phenomena like orgasm. And selfies.

Warming

We are at a crossroads in the history of life on Earth. The current era of global warming is almost certainly the result of the overpopulation and hyperactivity of humans, who have released – and continue to release – too much carbon into the atmosphere. One effective solution to global warming would be to reduce the primary agents of the fever…to reduce human population.

And so, converting that original act of replication into works of art is not just creative and exciting: it may be necessary. Humans must transcend the Earthly act of self-replication in order to preserve the health of the planet.

The future of sex will be…let’s just say…interesting. Every cell in our body contains the blueprint of a desire to replicate. Nature and society are structured around the elaborate machinery that has emerged to ensure self-replication – of human bodies and culture. This desire has made its mark on every aspect of society – even if we don’t recognize it as such. We cannot escape it. And so we need to virtualize it, because self-replication of human beings (physically) has become a threat to the planet that sustains us. It’s our duty to Mother Earth.

I am a living organism and so I have to contend with this crazy desire to replicate. Note: I am childless. I have never replicated my genes and have no intention to do so at this stage in my life. But I am passionate about replicating ideas, art, words, and software.

Now, what about the title of this blog post? Will people eventually start having sex with robots? It will certainly be more subtle than that. In fact, it has been said that by the time we get to that point, WE will be the robots.

Is this the kind of future I want? Strangely, yes. Because I will have long returned to the Earth – my molecules will have been handed down through generations of living things. I will be a part of Earth’s physiology. My tribe will be bigger than humanity.

One of my molecules may even end up in a warm puddle somewhere.

Number Portraits

I designed a set of number portraits for the integers from 1 to 36.

Each number is either a prime or a composite. If it is a prime number, then it has two divisors: 1 and itself. This is visualized as the gray-colored half circle, where the top represents 1 and the bottom represents the number itself. Composite numbers have other pairs of divisors, and these are visualized as the smaller, colored arcs.

The perfect squares (4, 9, 16, 25, and 36) each have a line segment located at the square root.

The numbers 6 and 8 each have one pair of divisors (besides 1 and themselves); they are (2,3) and (2,4), respectfully. Since the first number in each pair is 2, these arcs are colored green. Divisor pairs in which the first divisor is 3 are colored blue; divisor pairs in which the first divisor is 4 are colored red. And divisor pairs in which the first divisor is 5 are colored yellow. These colors visualize divisibility by these first 5 positive integers.

The highly-composite numbers 12, 24, and 36 are shown enlarged below.

The number 36 has the most divisors in this set. It’s divisor pairs are

(1, 36)  (2, 18) (3, 12) (4, 9) (6, 6).

These are in a similar spirit to the Divisor Plot images I created in 2010:

http://www.divisorplot.com/index.html