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Originally Posted by Annoying Twit
Oh dear. Again I have chosen my moniker appropriately.
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I'm not convinced of that yet!
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Originally Posted by Annoying Twit
While I have a long history in AI, I'm, shall we say, less than impressed by Neural Networks. As a learning technique they are, I believe rather weak. The problems they solve are limited to simple problems that can be expressed in a zero-order logic (*). And they are not able to make use of background knowledge, meta-knowledge instructing them how to learn. They try to learn everything from a near true "scratch", which I do not believe humans do. Modifications to neural networks to make them learn in these ways, I believe, changes them so much that they are no longer neural networks. I think that neural networks are actually a dead end in learning research, and that they will eventually die out.
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I'll disagree with your definition of neural nets then! I agree that people have gotten way too wrapped up in *exactly* modeling the human brain, but it is obvious that "consciousness" can arise from nothing but a really hairy NN, so I would not dismiss them so definitively! Your description is accurate as to the current state of this technology, but right now we're just "frobbing the frobnitz's": we have no idea what we're doing, or how to implement these things. The "from scratch" issue is the biggest one at the moment: we have to "learn how they learn" in order to get the evolutionary steps to start working better. Once that happens, its my opinion that the "using world knowledge" will happen rather straightforwardly as simply a "place to get your random genetic changes" for your goal-seeking.
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Originally Posted by Annoying Twit
But, while the current huge amount of effort goes into NNs, less work is being done on the research to invent and develop techniques that will solve the more difficult, more "intelligent" problems.
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True, but I don't think we even know where to start, so all this random work right now is hardly a waste. You gotta walk before you can run.
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Originally Posted by Annoying Twit
You mention NNs "evolving" themselves to find better solutions to problems. I'm not sure if you are referring to neuro-genetic systems here, but these are systems that use evolutionary computing techniques to optimise their weights to solve problems. Or, in simple language, they sort of search around for a good solution to a problem.
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Weights is only the start, you gotta do algorithm changes too if you're gonna get anywhere. I disdain the use of some of these terms as people making distinctions just to make what they've found important, when no one knows what's important yet. Neural nets, evolutionary/genetic computing, I don't care: we're going to be better off if we just explore for a while and realize that our definitions and taxonomies are going to change radically as things become clearer.
Seeking global maximums,
Buffy
