Supermodelling

Along with the change in focus, I’m making a couple of changes to this blog itself, including a new visual theme.  I will be adding more content outside the main posts… along the bottom of the browser you’ll find links to some other pages, most of which are barely more than placeholders so far.

The “About” page will give an overview of the stuff I’m writing about.

The “Links” page will include links to other blogs and internet sites related to modelling that I find interesting

Rather than just write about stuff, I really want to get to work on some hobby projects, so over the last couple of weeks I have jotted down some project ideas that I can pick from when I want to start a new project.  These projects will get their own pages as I start working on them.

I’m sure I’ll think of some other pages as well as time goes on.

And finally, I have a new domain name:  supermodelling.net.

Hi!  I became intereseted in Artificial Intelligence in the late 1980’s when, after several years on academic staff at a large midwestern university, I entered the graduate program there.

I wanted to help build a thinking machine.  A real artificial intelligence, the stuff of scientific fantasy.  The years I spent thinking about this were very interesting, but they did not result in a doctorate.  Unwilling to work on “small” problems, I sketched out what I thought was a reasonable research program for eventually producing “real AI”, but I wasn’t talented and smart enough to produce any impressive results.  Although my thinking has drifted a great deal in the 15 years that have passed since I left academia, the basic outline in my head is still more or less intact.  I’ll describe it in pieces over time in this blog.

Since then, I’ve had a career in “industry”, building things with economic value in exchange for money and appreciation.  It’s a pretty good gig.  Although I occasionally have taken out the old notebooks, done some reading on current AI research, and in other ways kept the dream alive, mostly I have been watching computing power grow.  I believe we are still maybe 10 years away from truly interesting “baby” general AI systems (and further still from systems powerful enough to have a large impact on society).  Still, barring catastrophe, I should live to see it, and I think it’s time to pay attention again, and participate in my own modest way.

A field named “Artificial General Intelligence” has appeared, with some amazingly bright and insightful thinkers working hard (along with the expected crackpots).  Even though I am only an amateur, I would like to participate in this field.  So far my participation has been limited to some posts on mailing lists.

With the rise of the Web, access to intellectual activity at all levels of rigor (from papers in prestigous journals all the way to mailing list rants) is easier than ever before.  One thing I get particular pleasure from is blog essays, in which individuals lay out their world view for others to take whatever they find useful in building their own castles of thought.

So, although I have not “solved AI”, it will be good for me to write down my thoughts — for my own benefit, and in hopes that somebody out there in cyberspace will find something of interest.

Some of what I write will involve slowly explaining and refining my own still admittedly rather vague point of view, and some will be in reaction to the work of others.  And some will be off-topic (it’s my blog and I’ll write what I want!)

I hope it ends up being useful in some way.