Aivub Blog

Artificial Intelligence - what is that?

2010-10-24T19:18:00.000-07:00

Well, for starter, it is the holly grain of all computer science professors, going back to the fifties, when everybody thought that something like the A* will solve every problem in the world.
With time, people understood that it is not the case and that artificial intelligence is more than optimal planning, or finding efficiently the best path in the graph - it is more about noise and data, a lot of data, heuristic decisions, which can be dynamically overridden due to some online sensory signals, etc. Machine learning algorithms stood up from all the others and suggested that you can learn whatever you need given a large set of data. Well, the curse of dimensionality struck then... evolutionary algorithms were good, but there was no time to wait for the answer. Neural networks were also a great solution, but who the hell can build them correctly for a generic problem?

So what is artificial intelligence, and will the human race ever be able to say proudly - we have built it!?

Thinking that artificial intelligence is mimicking the human activity is really naive, on my opinion. We do not want to create an automatic human being... First of all, it takes 16-20 years for the natural process of nature to create a grown up man or women, and that is a process which matured for a long time. What are the chances that we will be able to create such a thing and how much time will it take for us? Moreover, why do we need a machine which has the abilities of a human being, we have a lot of that kind of resource on our planet already. Well, of course, robots will be able to drive, to rescue, to take any risk needed to satisfy our human needs. But I think that this is a wrong path to go... If we build machines with human abilities, why should we treat those machines differently? I hear: "Robots rights!". Why wouldn't they have the same rights as we humans do? And here you go - we are in the scenario of "Terminator", or "The Matrix", where machines win the war and we have no future. Not good.

So what is AI if not building a humanoid robot? I personally think that machines need to do whatever they are good at. Are they good at chatting or talking? May be driving a car? I do not think so... Machines are good at processing automatically large amounts of data, doing it fast and reliably, without a need in cup of tea or a nap, and presenting some interesting insights when they finish. That is really practical AI for me. If we build a machine which can process Terra byte of data in a single second and discover interesting clues about it, that would be a real achievement. Humans never will be able to do that, they even can't read one page of a simple text in a second - this kind of stuff also can be put under the hood of AI. If we define "intelligence" as the ability to process Tera byte of data in one second and learn from it something, suddenly humans become not as intelligent as even the most simple machine learning algorithms.

However there is one aspect of humans which I think is interesting to AI and computer science in general - their brains. I guess that you will not be surprised, if I tell you that this part of our body remains a mystery even now days. A lot has been learned and more to come. Each time that the scientists discovery something related to our brains, they practically discover additional puzzles which need to be solved in order to really understand how those powerful machines work. So if we could create an artificial brain, a powerful and fault tolerant, which does not need to sleep or eat, or at least use that wisdom in our machine learning algorithms, that would be nice. Restricted Boltzmann Machines are very simplistic versions of our brain, they are actually very restricted neural networks, which can be learned using a relatively simple algorithm - Contrastive Divergence. So that is an interesting direction.

My favorite quotes

2010-06-02T13:35:00.000-07:00

I do not read much and never have actually. I always thought that I am choosing what to read and reading only the most interesting books, as I do not have time for all the rest. The truth is that I am just lazy, or afraid to waste time on books which might not interest me eventually.

However there are several authors which I really like. Among them you will find Arthur Conan Doyle with his stories about Holmes from Baker Streat, Issac Asimov with his Foundation series and Anton Pavlovich Chekhov with his brilliant short stories. As one of the laziest readers in the world, I like short things, like short stories, or even shorter than that - "quotes".

Quotes have this nice property: either you like it, or you don't - there is nothing in the middle. Not like Tolstoy's books - when you are in the middle of a book, you do not know yet whether you like it or not and you need to start over, as you have forgotten what happened in the beginning.

So, I would like to share some of my favorite quotes of the above mentioned authors:

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing. (Issac Asimov)
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome. (Issac Asimov)
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Issac Asimov)
Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers. (Issac Asimov)
Any truth is better than indefinite doubt. (Conan Doyle)
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? (Conan Doyle)
I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty. (Conan Doyle)
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. (Conan Doyle)
Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person. (Conan Doyle)
Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out. (Chekhov)
If you cry 'forward', you must without fail make plain in what direction to go. (Chekhov)
Man is what he believes. (Chekhov)
When you're thirsty and it seems that you could drink the entire ocean that's faith; when you start to drink and finish only a glass or two that's science. (Chekhov)
You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible. (Chekhov)

Russian roulette - revisited

2009-11-14T07:08:00.000-08:00

It is a potentially lethal game of chance in which participants place a single round in a revolver, spin the cylinder, place the muzzle against their head and pull the trigger. "Russian" refers to the supposed country of origin of the game and "roulette" to the element of risk-taking and the spinning of the revolver's cylinder being reminiscent of spinning a roulette wheel.
Rihanna's new clip made me think about this interesting game of chance - a game for adults only.
I have to admit that there is a lot of excitement going on when you play this game (not from my personal experience, just assuming). You put all that you have on the table and in a single moment you find out the answer - to be or not to be. The only problem is that only one result may ever interest you as a (living) human being. And that sucks... In any other "roulette" based game all the results are meaningful for the player, even when he looses. To loose in this game is to die, so it makes it a bit less interesting, as the player is not punished (well it depends on how you define punishment, however I do not think that a dead man can be punished in any way), or has no obligatory actions due to his loss. I think that it breaks the whole point of game of "chance", making "Russian roulette" a tool in the hands of one who wishes to commit suicide, and not an attractive as other "roulette" games.
So I thought to revisit the game, making it more attractive to people who decided to play with their luck, however with less tragic consequences. I call it a "Virtual Russian roulette". The player does not put the gun to his head, but directs it to a wall and pulls the trigger. You have as much excitement (well may be not for all if us) about the real gun and the firing, however you do not kill your self. If the gun shoots, the player has to change his life completely, to go to another town, to change his profession, to forget his old life. This could be a nice alternative to the old fashion version, as in this case - no one dies, while the excitement stays, and as a result the player also has the opportunity (or even a promise to himself, which is the most honest promise) to change his life, to start all over, as otherwise, if he would play the real game, he would be already dead...

VIEW SPORTS CLUB sucks! ( מועדון וויו - חוויה גרועה )

2009-09-27T07:37:00.000-07:00

את הפוסט הזה בחרתי לכתוב דווקא בעברית כי הנושא קשור לחויה שחויתי במועדון ספורט ישראלי - חויה שאותה אני רוצה למנוע מכם, קוראים יקרים. העניין הוא שלפני כשנה וחצי בחרתי להצטרף למועדון ספורט בשם "גרייט שייפ", לסניף שהיה באותה תקופה ממוקם בהרצליה פיתוח - המועדון היה נחמד, גם אנשים וגם האוירה. הכל התחיל כאשר פתאום נודע לי שהסניף שלי עבר מרשת "גרייט שייפ" לרשת "וויו" וזה קרה מבלי שמישהו יודיע לי, למנוי בסניף, על המתרחש (פשוט פעם אחת התקשרתי אליהם וענו לי: "שלום, מועדון וויו"). אבל זה מילא, לא נורא, נו מה זה תחלס משנה כל עוד השירות נשאר שירות טוב, נכון? אבל לאט לאט התחלתי לשים לב כי כל מיני כשלונות קטנים של ההנהלה החדשה התחילו להראות את פרצופם: הסאונה לעיתים קרובות לא עבדה, התחלתי למצוא כל מיני ג'וקים בתוך המקלחות והאנשים בקבלה השתנו ולא לטובה. אבל כל זה היה נסבל ותמורה לא רעה למחיר כל עוד לא הגיע הזמן לחדש את המנוי.
קיבלתי טלפון ממישהו מהמועדון: "שלום, יאן? רציתי לשאול איך אתה מרגיש במועדון שלנו, הכל טוב? הייתה רוצה להמשיך את המנוי?". עניתי: "בעקרון כן". ואז הקול אמר: "בסדר, אז כשתגיע למועדון יחקו לך מסמכים לחתימה, מנוי באותם תנאים כמו שרכשת לפני שנה וחצי". אני בתומי חשבתי כי "אותם תנאים" כוללים אותו מחיר, אך זה התברר כהנחה שגויה בהחלט. כשהגעתי למועדון קיבלתי חוזה לחתימה בו המחיר היה גבוה מן המצופה בעשרות אחוזים. כשסירבתי לחתום ביקשו ממני להכנס לחדרו של אחד המנהלים, שבסופו של עניין לא ידע להסביר לי איך המועדון הצליח לחייב אותי על סך של כמה אלפי שקלים (הם כבר ביצעו חידוש של מנוי במחיר חדש, גבוה יותר!). אמרו לי כי יצרו איתי קשר בטלפון בהקדם, וכשזה לא קרה אני ניסיתי בעצמי לברר את העיניין. אחרי יום של ניסיונות להשיג בטלפון את המנהלת הנדרשת שפשוט עובדת יותר מדי קשה (מילים שלה), ניסיתי להסביר לה כי לא נתתי הסכמה לחיוב, ובטח לא לסכום גבוה יותר בכמה עשרות אחוזים. זה מצחיק לחשוב שאם אני אומר כן לשאלה אבסטרקטית בטלפון לגבי המשך המנוי, האנשים בצד השני של הקו יכולים לקבל את זה כהסכמה לעסקה חדשה בכרטיס אשראי. לא דובר על הסכום ולא זיהו אותי בטלפון - הם באותה מידה יכלו לדבר עם מישהו אחר שבטעות ענה למספר הטלפון שרשום להם ליד השם שלי. אך המנהלת לא הבינה אותי בכלל וטענה כי אני קיבלתי את הדיל הכי טוב שיש להם ושאני יכול לעזוב את המועדון אם אני רוצה, אך אני צריך בשביל זה לבוא למועדון ולחתום על "עזיבה". מוזר, כדי לחייב כמה אלפי שקלים לא צריך לחתום, אך כדי לעזוב - זה חובה. את הטיעון הזה הגברת הנכבדה גם כן לא רצתה להבין ונימקה: "אנחנו עסק ולא סתם". אך העקרון לא נתן לי ליפול למלכודת החתימות - אני לא נתתי אישור להעברת העסקה החדשה וזאת חוצפה לחייב בצורה שכזאת. אז התקשרתי לישראכרד, קיבלתי מהם טופס בו אני מצהיר כי התשלום בוצע ללא אישורי לעסקה (הכחשת עסקה) ותוך שבוע החיוב בוטל.
אני לא מבין את הנהלת המועדון... לקבל פרסום שלילי או לבטל למישהו מנוי, שחודש ללא הסכמתו? מה יותר גרוע, הרי אנחנו לא חיים בבועה, נכון? מה יותר מזיק לעסק? בקיצור לא הייתי ממליץ על מועדון "וויו" בהרצליה פיתוח ולא רק בגלל הסיפור אותו סיפרתי לכם, קיימים אינספור מועדונים טובים באזור ולא כאלה פלצניים

Colors, how fascinating...

2009-08-12T12:36:00.000-07:00

You all must know that there are many vision anomalies in us, humans, like the daltonism (colorblindness of the red-green type, also known as deuteranopia or deuteranomaly). I never understood this anomaly, and what is more important, never could imagine how the person who has it actually sees. How he differs between red and green lights on the road (actually I do know a person with daltonism and he told me that he just looks at the location of the light), or checks whether the tomato is ready to be eaten, stuff like that. Moreover, there are people with more obscure vision anomalies related to colors.
So I was thinking that theoretically, of course, there is a chance that a person exists in the world who has a very rare vision anomaly, which causes him to see red when the color is green and vise verse. Could be, why not? More interesting is the fact that such anomaly seems impossible to discover. How this poor (or lucky, I don't know) man should know that he has incorrect color definitions? He always has known that this is red (pointing at green of course) and that is green (once more mistakenly pointing at red). It is like two isomorphic graphs that you cannot distinguish using their properties. So is it really true that there is no way of helping our poor man in his agony? (I have an idea of how it can be done, at least something to try to, I will tell you about it in my next post... stay tuned)

...comming soon

2009-07-20T00:45:00.001-07:00