Thank you Aniket. I’ve been listening to you on Airchat and found this explanation excellent. It also tied in very well with some of my thinking that I’d not gotten clear enough on...
You’re one of the precious few people working in AI who got that clear. Thank you ! We’re not exactly closer to being able to program an AGI, but at least the horizon is clearing up.
you are too kind! , thanks for the comment. And yes, role of philosophy in AI progress is essential and no one seems to care about it. One stop at a time we would change that :)
So, in a sense, evolution is a search algorithm that's optimizing that core knowledge which seeds the entire learning process...
Is there a sense in which we can say that evolution is also "learning"? Where every "observation" is an individual sample from the gene pool, and the knowledge gained from that observation is a hint about whether that specific combination of genes is useful?
In a sense, yes, but not really. As algorithm is something written to achieve specific goal, where as evolution (biological kind) is truly random, it's just that the mutations that work "bubble up" and help themselves sustain and propagate. There is also no optimization of anything in evolution, its jut random mutation that happen to work around to sustain itself get further.
Evolution is learning - at an abstract level we can say that yes. but again, the analogy only goes so far, as there is significant difference between learning in human (or for that matter, other species) sense vs. the abstract sense in which one can say evolution is learning.
Thank you Aniket. I’ve been listening to you on Airchat and found this explanation excellent. It also tied in very well with some of my thinking that I’d not gotten clear enough on...
glad it was helpful!
You’re one of the precious few people working in AI who got that clear. Thank you ! We’re not exactly closer to being able to program an AGI, but at least the horizon is clearing up.
you are too kind! , thanks for the comment. And yes, role of philosophy in AI progress is essential and no one seems to care about it. One stop at a time we would change that :)
So, in a sense, evolution is a search algorithm that's optimizing that core knowledge which seeds the entire learning process...
Is there a sense in which we can say that evolution is also "learning"? Where every "observation" is an individual sample from the gene pool, and the knowledge gained from that observation is a hint about whether that specific combination of genes is useful?
In a sense, yes, but not really. As algorithm is something written to achieve specific goal, where as evolution (biological kind) is truly random, it's just that the mutations that work "bubble up" and help themselves sustain and propagate. There is also no optimization of anything in evolution, its jut random mutation that happen to work around to sustain itself get further.
Evolution is learning - at an abstract level we can say that yes. but again, the analogy only goes so far, as there is significant difference between learning in human (or for that matter, other species) sense vs. the abstract sense in which one can say evolution is learning.
How do babies form expectations before being born to check them against reality?
I suppose that knowledge is encoded in their genes, which is improved upon.