[ExI] alpha zero

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Sat, Dec 9, 2017 at 12:43 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>
>
> Conclusion: AlphaZero has accomplished something crazy cool here.
>

### AlphaZero is one of the lesser harbingers foretold by our list-prophet
Eliezer in the waning years of the last millennium. Very neat, especially
if you realize that compared to a human brain AlphaZero is a tiny-teensy
device that consists of hundreds of modules operating on a very simple
input (board game rules). It may be difficult to discern which neural
structures are equivalent to the modules in AlphaZero but I would venture
that the human brain is for the most part a bloated blob of millions of
such modules, fed on complex inputs but running on a very slow substrate.
These differences account for both the advantages and the disadvantages of
AlphaZero vis-a-vis the human: its incredible speed of learning and the for
now very limited scope of learning. Once you let AlphaZero grow big so it
can successfully feed on richer input, only the advantages will remain.

But AlphaZero is just a lesser harbinger: it is AutoML that gives me the
goose flesh. Again, the prophet Eliezer, about 25 years ahead of the time,
wrote once about "codic modality" - the AI's specialized/instinctual
ability to write software. AutoML is where the reinforcement learning
algorithm starts turning its gaze upon itself, and brings to bear the
advantages of speed to the building of a self. The step from mere awareness
to consciousness occurs when a mind turns its eye inward to model and
manage its own subunits, as the prophet Hofstadter said. AutoML is thus the
beginning of machine consciousness, an infinitesimal and limited spark, but
a spark nevertheless.

We will see more harbingers before the Day of Nerd Rapture comes. The end
and the beginning are nigh!

Rafał
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