>>What seems to have died is the dream of any kind of useful generalized intelligence. Any kind!
This looks strange, could you elaborate?
Right now, we seems to be just a few years away from a new age in robotics. They will have some self learning, but at first not be much smarter than insects.
For instance, there are cheap systems that can (roughly) understand what they see. And yes, the robot vision systems are specially built for that -- but the same functionality in animals has afaik also lots of specially built hardware.
Does it really matter if we have to specially build systems, if we can e.g. make system-building-systems as smart tools?
Edit: Some syntax and word choices, etc. Also, on consideration, I make the same point as the GP (StrawberryFrog), but he does it better.
Edit 2: Hmm... Another argument, then: Even if generalized learning will work in practice, it will probably be inferior to networked systems where problems are automatically found and then solved (and updated) from a central location -- like bugs in operating systems. Since everything will be on the net soon, all future generations of robots will probably work like this.
The comparison to insects is very interesting. Now that you said it, it's easy to make a connection between stupid bugs that fly into the light, into windows, walls and simplistic Quake bots or automated vacuum cleaners.
Not new. I quoted Moravec earlier in this thread. Check him out and his arguments about how closely connected computer speed is to complex AI behavior.
(I don't know how correct it is, but Moravec made the predictions decades ago and they seem to follow the development curves quite well.)
This looks strange, could you elaborate?
Right now, we seems to be just a few years away from a new age in robotics. They will have some self learning, but at first not be much smarter than insects.
For instance, there are cheap systems that can (roughly) understand what they see. And yes, the robot vision systems are specially built for that -- but the same functionality in animals has afaik also lots of specially built hardware.
Does it really matter if we have to specially build systems, if we can e.g. make system-building-systems as smart tools?
Edit: Some syntax and word choices, etc. Also, on consideration, I make the same point as the GP (StrawberryFrog), but he does it better.
Edit 2: Hmm... Another argument, then: Even if generalized learning will work in practice, it will probably be inferior to networked systems where problems are automatically found and then solved (and updated) from a central location -- like bugs in operating systems. Since everything will be on the net soon, all future generations of robots will probably work like this.