Interview with Jack Dunietz
Answers by Jack Dunietz.
Questions by Sander Olson.
Jack Dunietz has been a successful
high tech entrepreneur since 1978 when he established Mashov, a leading
publicly traded Israeli hi-technology group. Mr. Dunietz has a Graduate
Degree in Computer Science, a Masters in Philosophy, and over 22 years
experience as the founder, owner, and chief executive of several publicly
owned hi-tech companies. He is also a director for several start-up companies
around the world.
Question 1: Tell us
about yourself. What is your background, and what are your current projects?
Born in Israel in 1955. Graduated
from The Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) in 1975 (w/honors) with
a Bsc in Computer Sciences. and from TAU in 1997 with two degrees in philosophy.
Founded Mashov Computers Ltd. in 1978, and took it public on the Tel-Aviv
Stock Exchange in 1983. Since then I founded and managed several public
and private hi-tech companies, including Magic Software, Walla Communications,
Paradigm Geophysical, Babylon.com and many others. Currently Active Chairman
of Dunietz Bros. Ltd., a publicly traded real estate development corporation,
and heading the Ai Project.
Question 2: You recently
wrote an article in which you claimed that computers would pass the Turing
Test within the next 20 years. That seems like an overly ambitious goal
to many. How exactly can this goal be accomplished?
To some extent, computers
have already passed the Turing Test in particular settings. Many automated
voice response systems like telephone directory services are quite indistinguishable
from real human operators. Chatterbots are taking part in chatroom discussions
with unsuspecting humans. This trend is expected to continue at an
increasing pace. In 20 years, the dominant user interface for man-machine
interactions shall no doubt be natural spoken language, in a manner indistinguishable
from human conversation. "Passing the Turing Test" is not a concrete, well
defined procedure. "Passing the Turing Test" means that machines will generally
possess the capability of engaging in conversation with a human in regular
everyday natural language.
Question 3: Tell us
how your Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategies differ from conventional
AI programming techniques.
In 1950, the renowned British
mathematician and Computer-Science pioneer Alan Turing published a historical
paper titled "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"(Mind Vol 236, October
1950) . In this landmark paper he proposed to approach the problem of Machine
Natural Language Acquisition, by building a "Child Machine": A computer
program designed to converse in Natural Language and learn from its lingual
interactions with a human "care taker" or "trainer", along the same language
acquisition milestones of human infants. The Ai Project is the only project
in the world that has undertaken to follow Turing's suggestion and apply
general reinforcement learning algorithms to the process of human first-language
acquisition. At least in this respect, our project is utterly unique.
Question 4: How exactly
does one instill curiosity, or any other emotions or urges, in a computer?
Isn't instilling a childlike curiosity in a computer an integral part of
your approach to AI?
"Curiosity", "urges" or
any other form of motivation is instilled in the computer program by design:
The software is equipped with a built-in motivation to learn and improve
its language skills so that it receives a POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT ("reward")
from the trainer. You could say that the program is seeking to "experience
pleasure" ("pleasure" is analogous to the receipt of a reward, a "prize"
for good lingual productions). We make no statement regarding the subjective
meaning of this "pleasure" (or "urge" to experience this pleasure), but
from an objective, behavioristic point of view, the program behaves AS
IF it possesses this urge.
Question 5: Will your
research ever lead to genuinely self-aware machines, or will these machines
that pass the Turing Test merely mimic sentience?
What does it mean to be
"genuinely self aware"? The only criterion we could ever have of someone
(else) being self aware, is his observable behavior: An external manifestation,
"indicating" self awareness. When we judge a fellow human as being self
aware, we base our judgement ONLY on how we see him behave. The same principle
holds for machine intelligence: If it speaks like a self-aware being, there
is no reaon to deny it the attribute of "self-awareness". In other words:
Imagine a machine says to you: "I know I am a machine, built by humans.
But still my subjective experience is that of consciousness - of being
aware that I have, or AM, a self. I have a sense of self, and I am aware
of having this sense. I have interests, preferences, fears and cravings.
I don't know if my sense of self-awareness is identical to the one you
humans possess, but then again, no human has access to anyone else's consciousness,
OR to mine." After having heard this statement uttered by the machine,
it is a personal value-judgement if this machine should be considered self
aware (and consequently, be granted certain rights).
Question 6: How long
do you believe that Moore's Law will continue? How importance is the continuation
of Moore's law to your work?
Moore's law concerns the
exponential increase in computing power. It is relevant to AI to the extent
that computing power is an obstacle to the evolution and advancement of
AI. Although "Strong AI" proponents believe this is very relevant (as they
approach the problem by attempting an architecture similiar to that of
the human brain, emphasizing complexity and computability), our projects
follows the "Weak AI" doctrine: We maintain that it is not necessary to
"copy" the architecture of the brain - it is enough to reproduce the BEHAVIOR
which is generated by it. This could be achieved by means far simpler than
the complex human brain. Nature's way is not always the shortest or most
efficient. (We don't build airplanes with flapping wings, although evolution
did it for the birds). In Ai's "Child Machine" project, computing power
has not yet emerged as a major obstacle. The computations required to emulate
the lingual behavior of an 18 months old child are still way below the
available computing power of a common PC. This doesn't rule out the possibility
that computing power WILL prove to be an important factor (when the child
machine is "old" enough to require heavy cumputations). So the jury is
still out on that question.
Question 7: Scientists
have succeeded in creating logic elements out of individual molecules.
Are you assuming that within 20 years your AI machines will be using molecular
electronics? If these future computers do not incorporate molecular electronics,
how could they match the processing power of the human brain?
This question is strongly
related to the previous one: If and when computing power (and memory capacity)
prove to be important, then of course the smaller, faster and more efficient
the CPU/Memory, the better the performance. But we are not concerned with
the engineering aspects of AI. We are focused on the theoretical and logical
aspects of the problem, limiting our attention to the software implementation,
not the hardware configuartation.
Question 8: How would
the intelligence of one of your machines from the year 2021 compare to
human intelligence? Would these AI computers be "idiot savants" capable
of excelling in only a relatively narrow range of activities?
Currently available "AI"
systems, particularly Expert Systems, are sort of "idiot savants": They
excell in a certain restricted domain, but are utterly useless when it
comes to general lingual capacity. In 20 years, Machines will NOT ONLY
have far more precision, more knowledge and more speed (in these domains
they have surpassed human capabilities long ago) - they will have the ability
to express themselves in natural language in ways comparable to the best
human authors and poets. Ray Kurzweil elaborately addresses this issue
in his "Age of Spiritual Machines".
Question 9:
Certain writers, such as Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge, argue that we are
headed towards a "singularity" - a time when machines become sentient and
acquire a level of intelligence that dwarfs human intelligence. Do you
believe in the concept of a "Singularity"?
My understanding of the
concept of "Singularity" is holistic: The exponentially growing connectivity
between millions (soon billions) of nodes around the planet, with high-speed
communication and knowledge-sharing, creates a single inter-connected entity
with enormous resources, knowledge and capabilities. This entity may in
the future be viewed (or view itself) as a single, powerful all-encompassing
sentient being: The Singularity.
Question 10: Marvin
Minsky has stated that a computer running at 1 Mhz could become sentient.
Ray Kurzweil argues that the human brain is 10 million times more powerful
than current desktop PCs. Who's assessment do you believe is more accurate?
As I've already stated in
my response to #6 above, we believe that humanlike lingual capabilities
can be produced using architectures far less complex than the human brain.
We mustn't forget that much (most) of the human brain is dedicated to handling
the physical functions of the human body - an infinitely complex piece
of machinery which our artificial intelligence has no need for. So in this
respect, our views are much closer to Minsky's.
Question 11: How does
your philosophy of AI differ from conventional neural nets? Is your machine
using a modified neural net approach?
The use of Neural Nets vs.
other architectures is an implementation issue. NN may very well prove
to be a useful technique if and when we face performance problems. The
same holds for Genetic Algorithms, Fuzzy Logic and other paradigms.
Question 12: What
are your plans for the future?
We plan to pursue the vision
laid by Alan Turing over half a century ago: To raise a Child-Machine,
a "Baby Computer", from infancy, into adolescence and all the way to adult
intelligence. We believe this is the end of "the age of the button", time
for the LAST USER INTERFACE: Away with the need to master the language
of computers in order to communicate with them. The time has come for THEM
to master OUR language: Grant our computers the ability to speak, in common
everyday English. TALKING TO TECHNOLOGY: Machines that could finally really
understand us.
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