Human Like Machines (HLM)

Good thing about puzzles is that all the required information to understand it completely is available. If we treat life as a puzzle, this point becomes invalid. There is information asymmetry. We don't have all the information. Not even the critical information that is required. If we evaluate life in these terms, it become a more interesting situation.

Dearth of information makes life more interesting. How? Let me explain. If we were to have have access to all the information required, then life is solved for us. This means that a finite set of rules would be enough to tackle any thing related to life. This makes the emulation of human brain in the neural networks successful and complete. This in easier terms will mean that creation of a machine that can think like humans is possible.

Because we can take decisions in the world of information scarcity, and this can't be done by a machine, it is impossible to create a human-replica machine.

Another line of thought could be that even when we don't have access to complete information, we are able to decide based on some heuristics and some rules of thumb, which are rules again. So, it is possible to create a rule-based human-like machine (HLM).

This can be countered with the fact that the depths of these rules of thumbs are unfathomable. Even if they are finite, their application is not fixed. Even if it is fixed, it is mutable, very unlike the characteristics of machines, where the rules to large extent are immutable.

Considering these limitations, machines that emulate humans could be created, but the information that needs to be made explicit is largely tacit, the representation of this information increases the complexity.

There is a trend in terms of identifying the meta rules, the rules that are the basis for the actual rules, this will make the rules more abstract and hence decrease the size of the rules. There is an increasing effort in these directions of exploration for creating HLMs.

Though there are some breakthroughs in creating HLMs, they are largely restrictive and in no measure equal to humans. But with in a given field of expertise, are very handy.

Some day, it would be possible to have a world where the Stephen Spielberg's AI would become a reality. But that is only for future generations to witness.

Puzzling my way through

Today was an eye opener for me. I almost ensconced into a comfortable position, had I not come across this peculiar problem. I was complacent with the way things were going and the way I was able to comfortable live my way through.

Suddenly I come across a problem that looked simple. I tried to solve it. I tried for 15 minutes, then for 30 minutes. Fight continued... I spent about 1 hour, did not succeed.

I suppose I will start working on it as soon as finish my posting here. I believe, life get boring without challenges. If there is a challenge at hand, it feels great thinking about it, working towards cracking the secret.

Once I solve it, I would be satisfied. After that what? I am free again. Searching for more. This will continue ...

Hazaaron khvaishen

"Hazaaron khvaishen aisi ki har khvaish pe dam nikle
bahut nikle mere armaan lekin phir bhi kam nikle..." - Mirza Ghalib
A wonderful depiction of the desires of humans.
We dream, dream a lot, we desire, desire a lot.
We want to achieve, achieve a lot.

Each of these desires are worth trading life, we give everything to achieve them. Once we do that, we have new desires, we start off again. So many such!
When do we actually get satisfied? When do we rest?

This leads to another excellent work, this time an english one, by Robert Frost
"...
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
..."

We never rest, we go further and further, deep into the lovely woods, full of energy and life.
We agree to rest, only when satisifed are we that resting is another journey
"...
And miles to go before I wake,
And miles to go before I wake." (modification by me, just to end the posting).

Hipocracy

When I read today's newspaper, I recollected the discussion I had with a friend of mine. The discussion could be summarized as "We take pride in our culture etc. We project a great culture to the outside world. We hide the problems we face. We kill each other. We project moral uprightness, but are we really moral?"

Many of us, talk about respecting women. We don't hesitate promising by our epics. We take pride in proclaiming that we treat women as incarnation of Divinity.

With the same thought, we have daily news of harrasment. We have more than 5 million HIV infected.

When we know all this, why should we push them under the carpet? Why should we hide? Are we doing any great to our selves doing this?

I always believed, and still believe that problem of the society can be solved only when discussed in open. I still can't understand how we would be able to solve them "by castigating" those who come out in the open and try to educate the unaware.

If the mindset of people doesn't change, we would be highly educated but still ignorant. If we thing that there are others to solve this, it won't be solved. Remember "It always starts from the self".