If all particles were suddenly frozen in space you could calculate their exact position but because time is not passing it is impossible for any of the particles to move and momentum is impossible to calculate satisfying the uncertainty principle. At least thats my view of it.

KingMolson - You got a point.

But then what IS time?

Take 2 singular points. Start moving them away from eachother. This can also be achieved by just scaling the entire universe or perhaps ''zooming'' into the 2 points. There is no way of determining if it is a zoom/scaling or a movement going on here.

Now take 3 singular points and do the same thing. Now it is very clear what is happening, the points are moving and there is no scale. But there is some uncertainty about it because there is a special state where it actually could be a scale that simulates a movement.

The more points you add to the equation, the more likely it is that the points are actually moving and arent just scaled by its universe, but there is ALWAYS atleast ONE solution where the entire process could be explained by a simple scale operation.

Therefore, we can not occlude the possibility that movement and time (as we percieve it) actually isnt anything else than a scale of the universe around us.

This scaleing could perhaps even explain why gravity exists in the first place.

My póint is: We can never be sure that our mathematical theories actually explains anything correct.

... and now we''re getting onto epistemology and away from AI...

while I am always up for a good philosophical discussion I don''t think this is the place for it...

...perhaps we might either return to the original point of this thread or continue this discussion in The Lounge forum???

Thanks,

Timkin

although i do not think that randomness is a relevant ai topic,

there are many random factors in the brain.
as said earlier by many people:

quote: Original post by AdmiralBinary
Chance is simply our representation of factors which we have not taken into account.

randomness stems from the idea of systems. a system can be defined as a select area of interaction. in theory, you could have stand alone systems, and aggregate or meta systems (systems interacting with one another). that is fine and dandy. however, in the real world, we state our systems using much prejuduce, in reality, systems are actually peeks at the larger, complete picture, the universe. there is no evidence supporting the idea of seperate, or isolated systems. therefore randomness may be the subtile interaction between our system and another system. however, real randomness is the effect of out of scope factors.

the brain, however it works, is system of chemical reactions -even if it is possible to deduce various algorithms, it will not always be possible to predict their output. the fact of the matter is that the brain is not a computer -its functioning is based on incredibly complex structures and chemical levels. if these are absent, then the brain cannot function. if a certain chemical exists or is absent, then the function changes -the intelligence changes.
even in ideal conditions, if exactly x amount of chemical c is used in reaction R one time, and x + 1 the next time, then output may be somewhat accurate. however, when you add up the inaccuracies and consequences millions of times, across thousands of systems, you get a random range.

to beleive that the brain is seperate from the universe and its laws is retarded -chaos applies to and through everything real.

ai is a study of context-based decision making. if you dont understand that, then you have no business with it. "true ai" is unapplicable and just meaningless.
you mean to say "true human or biological ai" -that is worth discussing.

its not impossible to write human-like ai with current technology. John Holland made some arguments i liked, in his book, "Hidden Order: how adaption builds complexity".

"step outside the box"

[edited by - evilcrap on April 7, 2002 1:23:12 AM]

The original post defined "True AI" as the ability to "feel [touch] and see things" and "to make decisions" in the context of an artificially intelligent robot.

Both of these things are routinely done using entirely deterministic algorithms. In addition "human emulation" is not necessarily "intelligence."

First, I''ll adress the issue of senses. The way I see it, a robot does not need to have humanlike sensory devices to have what was called "True AI." The key is simply autonomous humanlike behavior. The details of how this is achieved are irrelevant. Thus, a robot could have a GPS system for navigation - a decidedly nonhuman "sensory organ" - and still have "True AI." The information gathered from these senses may be considered "knowledge."

Next, I''ll move on to the ability to make decisions. Decision-making is based on the predicted utility of an action. Increasing the amount of knowledge incorporated into the system generally increases the accuracy of those decisions. This knowledge can be incorporated in the form of rules in an expert system, weights and network architecture in an ANN, or a semantic net. Algorithms themselves may constitute knowledge. When you are taught how to add in school, isn''t that "learning?" Therefore, "knowing how to get from point A to point B" - the A* algorithm - could be considered "knowledge."

We start getting into more controversial stuff when we deal with issues like creativity. Even with these, however, knowledge plays a key component. So our first steps in developing "True AI" must be, I think, the development of a system for the integration of many and varied forms of knowledge - whether they be cubist artwork, statements like "PI=3.141592...", video streams depicting what is going on in front of the robot, or algorithms written in C.

I believe that there are always more details then you can understand.
The moment you will discover new details about the universe, you will discover also that there are more things about the universe that you don''t know.
It conflicts logic that humans will be able to know everything there is to know about the universe.
Because logic cannot exists on its own, it must have some arbitrary facts to be base on.
These facts cannot be arbitrary if we will know everything.

Maybe the more we discover, the more details are added into the universe? maybe our perception of the universe is what created in the first place?

Therefore I believe there will always be unknown factors, which means that there will always be randomality in a certain level of detail.

Some useless philosphical talking.

Ok, I have just thought up a pirfect example as to how the program should be, and how it is random. This forum is the pirfect example. I just gave a small start, some additions here and there, but everyone else has filled in the rest. Granted the topic of "what is random" and what is not was going to come into this forum, but the topic lasting this long, is a ramdom event.

If you dont understand what I have just posted, my email address it ruai@comcast.net

My email is ruai@comcast.net

[edited by - zzzomed on April 21, 2002 8:03:45 PM]

I''ve been reading this and I think I know why programmers use random numbers to enhance (not improve, just enhance) AI and that''s because the following statement is true:

random == unpredictable

I think that the lack of a good foundation of logic is why they see the converse being true. In other words, while dog == animal, animal does not always == dog. In fact most times it does not.

Humans have such a complex method for decision making that it is for all intents and purposes unpredictable (though trends do exist making for a small amount of predictability). Unable to make AI that is so complex as to be unpredictable, they have simply taken a shortcut and used the implication that unpredictable == random.

While obviously flawed logic, for the purposes of computer AI programming, it will have to do for now, as it is probably the best solution available to the programmers at this moment.

I''m curious solinear as to what you mean by unpredictable, as opposed to random. I''d like to know how you define the two so that I can correctly interpret your post.

Thanks,

Timkin

With all the randomness talk going on, i''ll bring up a theory. All particles are moving completely randomly. So therefore in a 1/(some really big number beyond comprehension) you could walk into a wall and pop right through it to the other side. Though this is only a theory, it may explain why certain things happen (ghosts and other paranormal stuff).

These things are only true in theory, but in theory communism works so whatever.

PaladinGLT