M
mpfounder
Let's not defeat the idea, before it is started. Many movements start
from nothing.
Let's not defeat the idea, before it is started. Many movements start
from nothing.
M
mpfounder
The money would go to ongoing operations, paying certain necessary
staff, and generally funding an operational budget, just like any real
company needs. Whether vast arrays of computers are needed, well that
is yet to be determined. I'm sure that the project can make good use
of small arrays to start with, utilize donated computer time from
members and elsewhere, and purchase from commercial On Demand
providers if needed.
It is not a "trap" to believe your ideas have merit. Indeed, I am very
confident that some of my ideas are dead on. However, if the Million
Programmers think differently they can easily disjoin. There is no
big catch here...it is simply: do you want to do something that hasn't
been done before and strive for it?
There could be a million interested if it is championed by everyone
joining.
The premise here is that it is a big project, and an opportunity to do
something that matters. Something that has great potential to help
humanity progress. The opportunity requires a willingness to take
direction. Ideas will be put up or down based on their merit.
Small software teams are great, unfortunately small teams cannot do
huge projects. Building out a platform is a huge project. Software
of any significant size is almost always compromised by there being
not enough people to do all the necessary tasks. Tools that could
automate things are not built because of there being limited
programmers and a long list of priorities. Same is true of making
things simple, self configuring, well documented, etc..
Now you said yourself there might be alternate approaches. With
enough programmers, many alternate approaches, hopefully complimentary
can be entertained.
I believe that perhaps there is a chance that a small group of
programmers might make a breakthrough, but why not have that small
group supported by appropriate resources, and also why not have
several eggs in several baskets.
No one has yet...let's make it happen, and not wait. This project will
be an incubator of "new conceptualizations".
Not true. Everything starts with a dream. Big things can happen.
I will insert my comments into your long post.
M
mpfounder
I suggest you peruse Jeff Hawkin's book "On Intelligence" the next
time you are at the bookstore.
L
Lew
mpfounder said:
Why?
M
mpfounder
You all are missing the point, there is not even money involved right
now...it doesn't cost anything to say "I'm interested in this" and see
where things lead. If those who don't wish to join the company that
is formed, they can form their own separate groups. Where is the con
in that?
M
mpfounder
I noticed the thread of conversation going on...I think the book is
important, and of general interest, so I mention it a lot.
http://www.onintelligence.org/excerpt.php
M
mpfounder
Gordon, there is no pyramid scam. No intelligent persons are going to
pay $10/mo for nonsense. The Credit Card companies would be all over
it. Perhaps, the Company to be formed, will phase in the subscription
for the vast majority of the programmers who participate, so that
their confidence and trust is attained first. Anyone who joins the
Company will be under NDA likely from the outset (as well as other
general agreement to not use other outside IP etc.), but the
subscription could start sometime after the first month.
R
rossum
Thanks for making that clear.
rossum
R
Roger Lindsjö
mpfounder said:
I have yet to see any large group agreeing to NDA where there was no
information leakage. With 1 million (potentially) programmers under NDA
I think you could just make the information public from the beginning.
//Roger Lindsjö
D
Daniel Dyer
Such as programmers?
Does this include your own salary?
"My salary, as founder, is promised to never be more than 1/2 million
dollars per year."
<http://groups.google.com/group/million-programmers/web/a-call-for-1-million-programmers>
Dan.
D
Daniel Dyer
Exactly.
What calibre of programmer are you hoping to attract? And do the monkeys
have to provide their own typewriters?
Dan.
D
Daniel Dyer
All the while you remain anonymous, you have no credibility. Why would
anybody sign an NDA, contribute their free time (and $10 a month), and
agree to be told what to do by a stranger on the Internet? Actually, a
stranger on the Internet who is not prepared to commit their own time to
the project without compensation (but promises not to take any more than
their $500k annual living expenses)?
It's a tough one... I'll get back to you...
Dan.
L
Lew
Daniel said:
Bonuses, stock options, perqs, golden handcuffs, benefits - no promises there.
Many CEOs who are the targets of criticism for their compensation packages
being too large actually don't have exorbitant salaries. It's the 200
megabucks in stocks and the Maserati that irritate the critics.
C
Curt Welch
mpfounder said:
If you think that was long, check out my posts to comp.ai.pholisophy. That
was one io my short posts on AI.
I don't think the solution to AI is a big coding project. I think it's
more like 1000 lines of code tops. I think human behavior is a simple
reinforcement learning algorithm which no one has yet figured out.
I think almost everything Jeff Hawkins writes in his On Intelligence book
is dead on - except for the fact that he doesn't seem to understand the
need for all that temporal hierarchical learning to be there for the
purpose of creating a reinforcement learning system. He seems to have
overlooked the biggest and most important piece of the puzzle in my view.
AI research is not a coding project. It's a research project waiting for
someone to create new insight - to invent something new. I see no purpose
trying to get 10 coders together let alone a million. You need only a few
smart researchers. At best, one smart researcher might have 10 grad
students working for him implementing his ideas. There's just nothing to
be done by a large set of open-source developers on this. It's just the
wrong approach.
If you haven't tried it, come join the crazy people in comp.ai.philosophy
and try to talk so much as as one guy into believing your approach is the
right one. I'm willing to bet you that you won't find a single guy that
that will agree with your view of what has to be done to solve AI - not
because your view is wrong, but simply because no two people looking at AI
can ever agree on an approach. It's just the way AI works. Everyone
thinks they understand it but no one can agree.
I've been looking at AI for about 25 years now and I've posted thousands of
messages in c.a.p. for the past 5+ years debating just about everything
there is to debate about AI and how to make machines act more like humans.
No one agrees on the solutions or the direction to the solution. Everyone
has a different view about what AI is, what intelligence is, what it means
to be intelligent, what it takes to make a computer act like a human,
whether it's even possible to make computers act like humans, what
consciousness is, whether computers or other machines can be conscious,
whether a machine that acts like a human is conscious or not, whether it's
important whether it's conscious or not, on how long it will take, or how
much it will cost, on whether machines are already intelligent, and on and
on. It's a never ending debate that some of us enjoy even though we spend
half our time calling people idiots and the other half being called an
idiot.
Come to c.a.p. and convince me you have a direction worth working on and
maybe I'll help you. But so far, your approach makes me think your
direction isn't going to go anywhere.
Do you know how the researcher manages to get the 10 grad student working
for him? He pays them, or he first makes a name for himself by publishing
popular papers or books. To get a staff of 10 students trying to implement
your ideas, you have to nearly walk on water. And you think you can get
1000, or a million implementing your ideas? You seem to have no clue what
you are up against. Unless you can first prove you have something new, and
something big, you aren't going to get anyone to help you unless you pay
them to work for you.
C
Curt Welch
mpfounder said:
I would second the idea that the book is an interesting read if you have
any interest in understanding how to approach the problem of making a
computer act like a human. If you don't have any interest in that problem,
then don't bother.
Jeff Hawkins is the guy who invented the Palm Pilot in case you don't
recognize the name. He's taken has own personal fortune and funded a start
up called Numenta Inc to develop his ideas on AI as outlined in his book.
If you want people to help turn your ideas about AI into a reality, that's
the way to do it. Get rich first, and then hand pick and pay a few smart
guys to work for you.
L
Lew
Curt said:
Overlarge programming teams tend not to be very effective, nor to produce very
good quality results, even if the individual practitioners are top-drawer.
Someone upthread estimated that there are roughly five million programmers
world wide. If true, that means the OP wants 20% of the world's supply of
programmers to fund, er, participate in their project. Not even the best 20%
(in fact, arguably the stupidest). Phew!
I'll bet on Mr. Hawkins's success first.
My thanks to the OP for the book recommendation, and to Curt for the
information that made me thankful about it.
L
Lew
Curt said:
"There are three great mysteries in life: air to the bird, water to the fish,
and human nature to the human."
- Zen saying.
G
Gordon Beaton
"My" worried?
Certainly not a lot of money for those who pay, but $10 times 1M each
month *is* a lot of money in your pockets. Any scheme that requires
the "employees" to pay to join is a scam, in fact it's the key
defining factor.
/gordon
--
G
Gordon Beaton
Finally something we can agree on!
/gordon
--
M
mpfounder
If you think that was long, check out my posts to comp.ai.pholisophy. That
was one io my short posts on AI.
I don't think the solution to AI is a big coding project. I think it's
more like 1000 lines of code tops. I think human behavior is a simple
reinforcement learning algorithm which no one has yet figured out.
I think almost everything Jeff Hawkins writes in his On Intelligence book
is dead on - except for the fact that he doesn't seem to understand the
need for all that temporal hierarchical learning to be there for the
purpose of creating a reinforcement learning system. He seems to have
overlooked the biggest and most important piece of the puzzle in my view.
AI research is not a coding project. It's a research project waiting for
someone to create new insight - to invent something new. I see no purpose
trying to get 10 coders together let alone amillion. You need only a few
smart researchers. At best, one smart researcher might have 10 grad
students working for him implementing his ideas. There's just nothing to
be done by a large set of open-source developers on this. It's just the
wrong approach.
If you haven't tried it, come join the crazy people in comp.ai.philosophy
and try to talk so much as as one guy into believing your approach is the
right one. I'm willing to bet you that you won't find a single guy that
that will agree with your view of what has to be done to solve AI - not
because your view is wrong, but simply because no two people looking at AI
can ever agree on an approach. It's just the way AI works. Everyone
thinks they understand it but no one can agree.
I've been looking at AI for about 25 years now and I've posted thousands of
messages in c.a.p. for the past 5+ years debating just about everything
there is to debate about AI and how to make machines act more like humans.
No one agrees on the solutions or the direction to the solution. Everyone
has a different view about what AI is, what intelligence is, what it means
to be intelligent, what it takes to make a computer act like a human,
whether it's even possible to make computers act like humans, what
consciousness is, whether computers or other machines can be conscious,
whether a machine that acts like a human is conscious or not, whether it's
important whether it's conscious or not, on how long it will take, or how
much it will cost, on whether machines are already intelligent, and on and
on. It's a never ending debate that some of us enjoy even though we spend
half our time calling people idiots and the other half being called an
idiot.
Come to c.a.p. and convince me you have a direction worth working on and
maybe I'll help you. But so far, your approach makes me think your
direction isn't going to go anywhere.
Do you know how the researcher manages to get the 10 grad student working
for him? He pays them, or he first makes a name for himself by publishing
popular papers or books. To get a staff of 10 students trying to implement
your ideas, you have to nearly walk on water. And you think you can get
1000, or amillionimplementing your ideas? You seem to have no clue what
you are up against. Unless you can first prove you have something new, and
something big, you aren't going to get anyone to help you unless you pay
them to work for you.
Curt, I've spent the past couple of years overseeing "practical"
software development for my startup. One thing I can tell you is that
it took me about 2 hours to define conceptually in my mind what then
took about 6 man years of programming to implement. I'm a programmer
myself for quite some time, and I know this to be a truth: Software is
tediously slow to produce, even with great programmers. Short cuts
are almost always made, because software details and complexity are
ALWAYS underestimated.
You can't build a good platform for anything with a few programmers,
maybe with 20-30 you can begin to do something. 20 years ago maybe
you could begin to do something with a small core group, but not now.
Case in point: Is an OS conceptually so difficult? No, but to do it
right, with all the bells and whistles, is an enormous undertaking.
With an AI type project that has a chance of making progress there
needs to be enough people working in the same direction, to build a
platform that CAN be agreed on. Everyone having a different view
indeed goes nowhere, and perhaps that is why the AI groups, if you say
correctly, are just a place of disagreement.
Jeff Hawkins is finally starting to gain some small momentum with
Numenta it appears. Perhaps if you feel they are missing on a key
point, then maybe you can add it to their platform. They say that
they have made it quite extensible, and that a good part of it is open
sourced. I myself think they are way to small of a group still,
because there are so many different things to try, tools to build,
ways of integrating what the people using their platform develop...
The point of the Million Programmers is that there are too few big
projects anymore, and no one dreams. Apparently most of the
developers that have responded to this post, are very concerned that
I'm going to make some money on this. I find it amusing, sad and
absurd, all at the same time, but it shows how little they are aware
of how much the VCs, Execs, the rich 2%, extract. A startup typically
gives the hired CEO 8-10% equity, and he is hired to manage the
company. I guess everyone that has responded expects that I'm going
to contribute my ideas, my software for nothing, and work for a
engineering salary or less. I don't give my time away, I do expect
compensation for my ideas, and I protect them.
If everyone could just ignore the fact that they might have to pay
something in eventually, they might see that there is no risk to
this. They can always form their own groups or decline to
participate.