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AI Semantics & ToE Implications

Artificial Intelligence | July 24, 2008

The Equation of the Theory of Everything still plays on my thoughts and I feel I've done little to describe it's implications. I've hinted at the implications for AI and semantic understanding but I'll try and explain it all in better terms.

As I suspected, most people with a mathematical background who've come across it have rejected it because it breaks the basis of mathematics. I always thought rules were meant to be broken. Who made up these rules, anyway?

One of main implications for the Theory of Everything is that everything is relative. All things can appear differently depending on the context a thing is viewed. The other main implication is that nothing is exact or as it seems. This is due to the fact it is impossible to examine an entity in isolation. An entity will always exist within an environment (even a vacuum of space is an environment).

The main implications don't necessarily seem profound and are not necessarily new. They do however aid the understanding of Universe itself. I have mentioned AI should be concerned about these implications because current methods are focusing on teaching machines in such a rigid way. For instance; I've come across attempts to create intelligence using semantics which ignore the reality of our existence. Semantics are fragments of understanding such as "cat has four legs", "dogs bark", etc. The point that needs to be made is - where does a cat end and its environment begin? Which is just a fancy way of saying - what the hell is a cat? Once you think hard about the question it becomes obvious that the concept of a cat (and everything else we know) is just an abstract concept developed through our experiences. There is no cat except for what we perceive the cat to be.

To base intelligence on semantics maybe useful in certain circumstances but it could cause some major problems down the track. It feels like a major engineerial cock up and carries through all the stupidity of narrow minded thinking that exists in the engineers who are developing these machines.