I don't buy it at all. Either we've got a major semantic problem in what we mean by "intelligence", or these guys are all wet. Why is keeping a stick upright in a cart more "intelligent" than having it fall over in a specific way? Doesn't intelligence in that case depend on what outcome you're trying to achieve? ie. Imagination? Isn't "intelligence" the ability to achieve a desired outcome?
If these computer models were given no special goals, then why is using a tool to extract an object from another any more intelligent than just leaving the object as it is?
It seems to me that the better part of human intelligence is dedicated to minimizing future entropy, not maximizing it. One of the most basic signs of life is entropy-reduction, the imposition of order on chaos.

A desired outcome is a short term view. Useful, but not always intelligent in the long term.

Why are you assuming these "desired outcomes" are somehow not collectivist ones that occur naturally through inevitable interactions and thus as a whole work towards maximizing the entropy for the entire system.

But efforts at reducing entropy at the individual level only increase the entropy at the environmental level. Intelligent entities perhaps take that into account.

I disagree with the entropy-reduction. We think we want entropy reduction. But entropy in any aspect of life brings about better things. If you put animals in cages in a very orderly fashion and do not allow them to move naturally they become sick. But you let the same animals and allow them to freely roam, they become stronger and healthier. Same goes with humans and freedom (which is seemingly chaotic). You allow them to do what they want and they learn to fly and explore outer space and increasingly try to explore the unknown. I don't necessarily agree with the whole "future histories" thing, but i think they are on the right track by looking at the basics opposed to some nonsensical complex equations.

So, we maximize entropy, because intelligence needs to maintain the many possible histories to exist. What are the histories for? In my opinion they are what it keeps God alive: Knowledge.
The Universe is a knowledge “factory” for God.
Intelligence grows with entropy following the maximum power principle of energetics and Howard Odum theories, and can you imagine the wisdom of God knowing everything that is happening in the Universe. In His interest, evolution (intelligence) grows exponential as more experiences (histories) happen in the universe, more God learns.
In my opinion the Universe is a ball, full with fundamental “transporting information” particles, that God set in movement, to be amassed in matter with
one fundamental force (kinetic) that generate experiences (evolution), with information being collected in the borders of the Universe by God.
The velocity of such particles is the length radius of the Universe per God´s second, time enough for Him to live, process and store the experience.
Probably the motors to keep the contents of the Universe in motion are the black holes, and inflation of Universe is nothing more than the increase of total entropy in an isobaric universe.

Expert mathematicians running probability and statistics for self assembling amino acids into all the proteins needed for life in a SINGLE CELLED ORGANISM have stated that there hasn't been enough time if the universe is 14 billion years old or so for that to occur randomly.

They claim life is IMPOSSIBLE by random chance mutations in that time frame.

Evolution is great science fiction but it lacks any evidence whatsoever. I don't know how all this happened but so-called "evolution" certainly is not the explanation.

<quote>... information theorist Hubert Yockey (UC Berkeley) realized this problem:

"The origin of life by chance in a primeval soup is impossible in probability in the same way that a perpetual machine is in probability. The extremely small probabilities calculated in this chapter are not discouraging to true believers … [however] A practical person must conclude that life didn’t happen by chance."43

Note that in his calculations, Yockey generously granted that the raw materials were available in a primeval soup. But in the previous chapter of his book, Yockey showed that a primeval soup could never have existed, so belief in it is an act of ‘faith’. He later concluded, "the primeval soup paradigm is self-deception based on the ideology of its champions."44

[b]More admissions[/b]

Note that Yockey is not the only high-profile academic to speak plainly on this issue:

"Anyone who tells you that he or she knows how life started on earth some 3.4 billion years ago is a fool or a knave. Nobody knows."—Professor Stuart Kauffman, origin of life researcher, University of Calgary, Canada.45

"…we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations." —Franklin M. Harold, Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Colorado State University.46

"Nobody knows how a mixture of lifeless chemicals spontaneously organized themselves into the first living cell."—Professor Paul Davies, then at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.47

"The novelty and complexity of the cell is so far beyond anything inanimate in the world today that we are left baffled by how it was achieved."— Kirschner, M.W. (professor and chair, department of systems biology, Harvard Medical School, USA.), and Gerhart, J.C. (professor in the Graduate School, University of California, USA).48

"Conclusion: The scientific problem of the origin of life can be characterized as the problem of finding the chemical mechanism that led all the way from the inception of the first autocatalytic reproduction cycle to the last common ancestor. All present theories fall far short of this task. While we still do not understand this mechanism, we now have a grasp of the magnitude of the problem."49

"The biggest gap in evolutionary theory remains the origin of life itself… the gap between such a collection of molecules [amino acids and RNA] and even the most primitive cell remains enormous."—Chris Wills, professor of biology at the University of California, USA.50

Even the doctrinaire materialist Richard Dawkins admitted to Ben Stein (Expelled, the movie documentary) that no one knows how life began:

Richard Dawkins: "We know the sort of event that must have happened for the origin of life—it was the origin of the first self-replicating molecule."

Ben Stein: "How did that happen?"

Richard Dawkins: "I’ve told you, we don’t know."

Ben Stein: "So you have no idea how it started?"

Richard Dawkins: "No, nor has anybody."51

"We will never know how life first appeared. However, the study of the appearance of life is a mature, well-established field of scientific inquiry. As in other areas of evolutionary biology, answers to questions on the origin and nature of the first life forms can only be regarded as inquiring and explanatory rather than definitive and conclusive."52 [emphasis added]</quote>

What these guys ignore is that evolution never happened de novo, out of nothing. It wasn't like shaking up a bunch of purine bases and amino acids and phosphates and voila! DNA! No. His calculations on the improbability of this are correct but irrelevant. Because that's not at all the way it happened.
DNA came about by modifications of simpler structures (possibly RNA), which in turn came about by modifications of even simpler structures (phosphatide bases?), and so on, and so on... till finally you get to simple molecules joining up, possibly on clays, which are known to catalyze these reactions and favor certain structures. (Spooky in light of what Genesis says about how God created man, huh?)

"DNA came about by modifications of simpler structures (possibly RNA),"

Conjecture does not equal certitude.

" which in turn"

How did you get past your first premise without conclusive proof?

" came about by modifications of even simpler structures (phosphatide bases?)"

More conjecture...

" and so on, and so on.."

Right! It's all so obvious and logical that it must be true; never mind the absence of evidence, it makes a great story! :>)

" till finally you get to simple molecules joining up, possibly on clays, which are known to catalyze these reactions and favor certain structures"

Nope. Your "finally" would actually be a crude beginning and scientists today have worked with simple molecules to no avail to create life so your "finally" isn't even a real start.

" (Spooky in light of what Genesis says about how God created man, huh?)"

Nope. Irrational, hypothetical and unscientific magical thinking, yes; "spooky", no.

To show you the monumental task you face even if you get to simple molecules with known reactive affinities but still unknown proof of automatic protein synthesis, I present to you the Chaperones and the marvelous Chaperonin precise protein folding machine. Assuming you could, which no one has ever been able to do yet, manufacture your complex proteins automatically like they are done in the cell but by pure chance, you STILL have to chaperone the (enter the chaperones) UNFOLDED structure PREVENTING folding until it is chaperoned to the Chaperonin folding machine in the cell.

Here's a video. Argue with me at the video link how you can "get there" from here. Believe me, they ARE TRYING! But they have nothing, zip, nada. Believing in Evolution is spooky considering the absence of proof for it. As to the book of Genesis, what does that have to do with anything. Are you a scientist or not? You won't find proof of much of anything in the Bible so bringing it up is silly. I'm not asking you to believe in ANY religious book or doctrine; I'm asking you to NOT believe in evolution unless you have proof.

The Chaperones anti-folding and the Chaperonin Protein folding Machine could not occur randomly in 12 billion years. MULTIPLES of that time period are needed.

I don't have a problem with being skeptical of evolution, I have a problem with people who claim the only alternative is the bible/quran/whatever.

What you really mean is that you have a "problem" with the idea of a Supreme Being that you may owe your existence to. IOW, if Homo SAP isn't number one, it ain't real, right?

There is no need to approach with such an aggressive stance. Perhaps my mistake was saying 'whatever'. What I meant, and should have said, was: "the ancient organized religions (ancient as of today)". If perhaps ideas were to emerge that have a better view of how this supreme being functions (as in, not one that worries about whether men are circumcised and how many wives they can take, for example), I would be willing to consider accepting them.

I apologize for sounding aggressive. I have just been down that road that "it's all okay and we can solve out problems if we just get rid of religion" route too often.

I have written several posts on the issue of Evolution and why it is scientifically untenable.

I invite you to read and comment on them. I promise to show respect for your opinion even if, after reading them, I disagree with your conclusions.

If Darwin was alive today, he would be arguing AGAINST the validity of the Theory of Evolution
The New Age movement of the last century tried a world where God and His rules for respecting fellow humans and all life were thrown away. They thought when religion went away, mankind would enter Utopia with mutual respect and admiration. But instead, we entered the current Dystopia where greedy, cruelty and conscience free behavior has increased. God does not need us. We need Him.
If God exists, He knows who you are, where you are and what you need. Ask Him to prove He is real if He is really out there and not a figment of weak people's imagination.

The fact that worship of God and religion has been perverted often to excuse cruelty only shows that evil rulers can pervert ANYTHING, not that religion or Faith in God is faulty in itself.

Despite my reservationson the Big Bang theory, I like two quotations of the great Einstein: …I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research… I am convinced that God does not play dice"
Must be an Entity that is taking advantage of all the information generated in the Universe… God, we call it… for fun or for knowledge the information must be used, and probably stored for future use.
The Free Will allowed in the Universe, suggests that whoever runs the show is interested in innovation, development and consequently Evolution.
One formula to make the seed or multiple seeds in the Universe, we will find it, and in my opinion it will be simultaneous with the encountered with God.
“Science goes wrong by thinking, we have 'the' answer, proper scientific method is to say, we have 'an' answer,” Roger Y Gouin.
The probability of unknown agent’s existence is almost certainly 1, as well “simple hidden variable theories” a reality within our perception. Around us, we see evolution and grow up from fragile to perfection. Mature, reforming and newborns must be the ultimate goal of the Universe.

Listen: Science and religion do not deal with the same subject, nor do they have the same idea of "truth" nor do they address the same questions. Science deals with HOW things work. It cannot ultimately tell you WHY. Religion deals in the WHY of things. It has no business dealing with the HOW.
The big conflict between science and religion is over the literal truth of Genesis. Well, Genesis is wrong, plain and simple. It was written as an allegory, not a text book. And any religion that stands or falls on the literal truth of Genesis is not much of a religion. God, Christianity, salvation, grace, and all the rest of it works just as well if Genesis is understood as allegory rather than literal truth, and suddenly all the conflict disappears

I agree with much of what you say. You are obviously a deep and serious thinker.

But I must take issue with your logical train of thought in the following thought:

"The Free Will allowed in the Universe, suggests that whoever runs the show is interested in innovation, development and consequently Evolution."

If there is one process in the perpetuation of life by DNA that has been conclusively proven, it is the fact that DNA is, not only self replicating, but scrupulously edits itself to ensure there is no change.
All attempts to buy into the myth of natural selection by searching for transitional life form have failed.

Free will certainly leads to innovation within a framework of the package a species has but it certainly does not lead to random positive mutations causing "evolution".

E. Coli bacteria were intelligently designed by us to make insulin, an activity that could certainly be considered and "evolutionary advantage". YET, in their multimillion or billion year history, they never "evolved" the ability to make insulin on their own. That is because they are STILL E. Coli, not something transitioning to an insect or whatever.

Adaptation within a species DNA package framework is not evolution, it is a predesigned part of the original design to deal with environmental pressures. Our so-called "nonsense" DNA is adaptation potential, not "evolution", simply because it has been there from the start.

When the angiosperms and insects were suddenly found in the fossil record, all sorts a irrational fiction was written by evolutionist true believers to justify this "problem". This was around the Triassic Period. The insects and angiosperms that existed THEN, still exist today in almost exactly the same form except that some of them (i.e. dragonflies) are much smaller. But the mosquitos are STILL mosquitos like the ones that sucked blood from dinosaurs. Why?

It appears that the rapid simultaneous appearance of new species depending for their existence on multiple symbiotic mechanisms cannot be explained by natural selection, indicating a (still unexplained) process occurred in the Triassic period that resulted in insects filling all available environmental niches of the present biosphere.

The symbiotic angiosperm/insect relationship is not rapidly adapting to the present level of planetary industrial toxins. Therefore, whatever the unexplained rapid adaptation mechanism that occurred in the Triassic Period was, there is no evidence that it is present today because we are experiencing a high level of species extinctions affecting, but not limited to, insects and angiosperms.
We are in trouble and belief in "evolution" isn't going to get us out of this biosphere polluting mess we are in.

http://www.academia.edu/385...

well that resembles a lot of philosophy already touched by, say, Stanislaw Lem in his works, partially also Asimov. See "The Master's Voice" for reference. Man's and life's greatest challenge is to challenge entropy. Life is defined by its will to slow down or halt entropy. Really inspiring authors.

Only this work aims to maximize entropy, not minimize it.

Any process that occurs in this universe is, by definition, a thermodynamic process. Just be sure that you do not confuse a description of its thermodynamics with an automatic deeper understanding of root causes of its emergent properties -lifebiomedguru

Intelligent Behavior....is that the history of mankind?

Well said. The view that our history is one of linear progress for the betterment of our species and a greater understanding and consequent harmony with the biosphere that would result in the perpetuation of our species is, to put mildly, flawed.

There are certainly many bright spots....but , really, far and few between....take away a handful of geniuses and what does Humanity really have?...
.
Plus my personal thing....replacement of Nature and animals with piles of cement and zoos....

I have managed to apply those concepts to an AI that succesfully drives a kart on a track, even with several karts on track so they avoid each other while try to pass them.

https://www.youtube.com/pla...

Look at the latest ones to see several karts racing together. For any question, please just comment it on the videos.

Interesting work Sergio. So are you saying your work predates the work of this article, i.e. you did it first, or is this just coincidence?

I need to look at the math more, but the motivation and explanation of "causal entropic forces" is almost identical to Klyubin, Polani, and Nehaniv's "empowerment", using information theory to select next agent states so as to maximize future possible actions, which they have been developing and publishing since at least 2004.

http://www.prokopenko.net/e...

(There's no confusion about Shannon entropy and thermodynamic entropy here. Edwin T. Jaynes identified the link between them in 1957, and James Avery showed how to quantify thermodynamics in terms of bits in 2003.)

Very interesting link! Thanks! :)

If I understand this correctly, instead of selecting dead end lines which limit future options, weight ought to be given for lines that enhance future options. Instead of pruning the tree, you enhance it. I could be wrong, because I haven't grokked it yet.

Well, sort of. The goal is the use of the environment for species perpetuation by anticipating future events. At first there is no assurance that pruning or any other action on a food source will produce an improved condition.

So this dynamic basically raises curiosity to possibly BE the new definition of intelligence.

I disagree but I think that is where they are going with this gross simplification.

Renewable Revolution

So, this means that a waiter is pretty clever, right? :)

the clever ones make good tips....

And they don't put greed and selfishness above cooperation and altruism as species perpetuating traits.

The conscience free Randians (i.e. Atlas Shrugged true believers) have never based their views on the multiple successful symbiotic relationships in nature but on a childish fantasy of unrestrained and irresponsible predation without any regard whatsoever for the consequences to the environment.

People like this can be considered clever and rapacious (i.e. psychopathic) but certainly not intelligent.

sorry - couldn't resist :P http://xkcd.com/793/

Interesting concept, though!

Not sure how they can state that there was no objective given. It seems clear that the objective was to maximize entropy. Maybe a small point, but still...

They're saying that there was no specific task for the exercise given. The algorithm, or the program is made to maximize entropy, and they (i guess) simply observed what it did in a given situation

theory of gravity as an entropic force let to correct "prediction" of cosmological constant ; will be interesting to see what kind of novel insight may be forthcoming from this entropic theory of human behavior: is the apparent chaos of the stock market simply a reflection of the drive multiplied many times over to keep ones options open?

This is still nowhere near general intelligence, because it has no purpose. Human intelligence for example is something rich which first must be DEFINED. So this isn't general intelligence, it's slapping an algorithm onto the use-case. Although intelligence in general including our very specific brand of human intelligence is invariably built on such thermodynamic and so on systems. But this isn't more fundamental than the stuff I think about. Just saiyan

AI is still a very stagnated field because of MODERN ECONOMICS AND ITS PROPREITARISM causing software in general to be horrifically inaccessible to the gamers/users that could be adding to general functionality (i.e. building a central AI definition of human meaning!) every day; not because of some magic god algorithm that will save our lazy asses from the real work-- again; this needs stressing. AI won't just compute itself, if it does it'll be here in far longer than 50 years so good luck with ever seeing it.

Other than that, very interesting indeed. Great job.

Visual, audio, and pattern recognition (including logic and verbology) in general is very advanced already in programming. Programming motivation is far less difficult. Fifty years is a very pessimistic prediction - according to Moore's Law we ought to have processors performing at human capacity within ten. Remember, AI is better at memory and copying/transfer, so write once, run universally (rather than humans who must be taught individually every time). Frankly, I think "consciousness" is overrated, and "conscious-like" is the same, so all an AI needs to do is flow smoothly interacting with the environment to demonstrate "self-awareness(-like)." If it gives you kicks to program additional motivations like self-preservation or aggression, then go for it. Frankly, selfishness (putting one's own interests above others) isn't a prerequisite to AGI.

The Singularity movement is banking on Moore's Law but there is plenty of evidence that indicates that expectation is wrong, and there is no way CPU's are reaching intelligence anytime soon. Computers don't have intelligence, they have speed and make few mistakes, giving them the appearance of being smart, but they aren't capable of strategy development.

I think that consciousness is under rated and poorly understood, you either have self awareness or you don't and there are no signs that computers are capable of self awareness, nor will they be anytime soon.

Maintaining as many possible future histories sounds like an attempt to resist death.. What happens when scientists try to shut down such an intelligent machine ? Hope they dont go too far.

Isn't intelligence just the abilitiy to predict possible future histories?

This begs the question of how we are to understand Wissner-Gross's notion of intelligence.

Very cool. Applied to an AI the first directive to maximizing entropy would be self-preservation. Catering to humans would be down the list. Some implications may ensue.

This fits into my research -- GO strategy game may be a useful place to 'prove' its application relatively simply...?

This definitely has very strong application to evolution of living systems, which I have always interpreted as reversing the physics of entropy.

Interesting; could the future histories be considered a sort of moral conscious? Teaching this morality as human generated input versus allowing a machine to learn natively brings up classic questions of perception and insight. Juicy.

Not necessarily. I don't think it would be hard to set up an experiment in which an agent could be stuck in a local maxima, and only by forcing a collapse along a certain path would the emergence of greater heights of complexity, that were not previously predictable, become possible.

What the agent thought it was doing, and what you would like to ascribe a certain moral characteristic, turned out to be a trap that accomplishes the opposite, in a relativistic sense.

I agree with Nate Angell and Hao. The following three sentencses copy & pasted from the artical; I think the third senetnce has a typo, where "lower the entroyp" should read "increase the entropy":

The second law of thermodynamics explains how in any isolated system, the amount of entropy tends to increase.

A mirror can shatter into many pieces, but a collection of broken pieces will not reassemble into a mirror.

Allowing the rod to fall would drastically reduce the number of remaining future histories, or, in other words, lower the entropy of the cart-and-rod system.

Looks similar to empowerment to me. See:
http://homepages.feis.herts...

max I(A_t; S_{t+n})

Maximizing the number of actions that is to your proposal in the future.

I wish that paper had a clear synopsis to distill its information into that formula.

In that paper there is a limitation imposed on the process of empowerment: agent perception. While Prof. Alex Wissner-Gross's formulas (although similar fundamentally) contain more of an objective 'gods eye' modality.

I think both give true insight. But having an 'objective' definition of 'intelligence' has a much more profound impact.

Unrelated, i would like to add that maximizing future freedom could be considered to be the very essence of 'good'. And that by applying that maximization across all highly intelligent beings we can achieve an objective view of morality. Which is earth-shattering. Perhaps the greatest advance of mankind since speech. Also, it provides a firm moral foundation for super-intelligent AI. I cant stress enough how much hope exists for this concept.

Although I normally don't react on non-tech stuff, this is a very interesting definition of morality.