AI Tragedy
Source: Wired 02.08 “Like Minds”
David Kushner follows a series of strange coincidences in the lives of Push Singh and Chris McKinstry. Though these men had different backgrounds, they shared a passion for the advancement of artificial intelligence. Both relied on extensive databases to “teach” their machines. Also, “Both Canadian. Both coders. Both obsessed with tapping the Web to create a true artificial intelligence. And both found dead in the same strange way.”
McKinstry hoped ”to train a neural network into something resembling human using a database of binary propositions.” In other words, he wanted to use questions with “yes/no” responses to “teach” his machine. Famed AI researcher, Marvin Minsky, allegedly acknowledged McKinstry’s dream could be possible with a large enough training corpus. This lead to Mindpixel- McKinstry’s collaborative AI database. He asked people to help by submitting questions and answers on-line. Participants were awards shares in Mindpixel’s stock in exchange for their submissions. McKinstry believed that enough (about a billion) valid submissions could “be combined to create a society of mind,” and ultimately “create a functioning digital brain.”
Singh “teamed with Stanford researcher David Stork to create a database of commonsense knowledge through open submissions.” This project was called Open Mind Common Sense, and it also depended on on-line users to build its database. Instead of “yes/no” questions like Mindpixel, Open Mind Common Sense “compiled factual statements like ‘every person is younger than their mother.’” Singh believed this project would help understand the structure of a human mind. He even suggested that giving a computer common sense could solve all the world’s problems
Singh believed Mindpixel’s interface paled in comparison to his own, and McKinstry conceded. However, McKinstry pointed out a much more serious flaw in Open Mind Common Sense – data validation. Mindpixelrelied on participants to verify one another’s entries; this is part of their agreement in order to receive shares. Open Mind Common Sense, on the other hand, had no validation mechanism.
Singh and McKinstry were both making progress in the field of artificial intelligence research, unfortunately, neither got to see their project’s to the end. First, McKinstry committed suicide. He had a history of mental health issues, and had attempted suicide in the past. He even posted something like a play-by-play suicide note on his website. The weirdest part was that he tried to overdose on pills, but was found with his stove’s gas line connected to a bag around his head. This part wasn’t so weird until four weeks later, when Singh was found dead with a hose connecting a helium tank to a bag around his head. He did not share McKinstry’s troubled past, and the article did not make mention of a suicide letter, but it is being treated as one. These two men were not friends – they shared a handful of emails over the years, but nothing ever developed out of them. The coincidences are eerie – especially considering their somewhat unusual area of study.
