[sl4] How much do languages matter for AGI programming?

From: Edward Miller (progressive_1987@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Nov 28 2008 - 01:35:18 MST


I was just reading about programming methods that I had never heard of before such as Aspect-oriented programming and Subject-oriented programming. I was thinking what consequences the programming language has for AGI.

I know there are lots of flame wars regarding the superiority of programming languages, and the Artificial Intelligence community has been arguing over it for years. Some prefer Logic Programming, while others like Marvin Minsky prefer good ol procedural programming. Finally, I believe Eliezer has recommended Java, correct me if I am wrong.

I was looking over a lot of the criticisms of all these languages, and it seems to become much more serious when you think about what it could mean for AGI. Yet, even within a particular programming paradigm there is much variation. I am reminded of the people who prize C# because it is impossible to have buffer overflows and so forth. Ironically, Microsoft is coding a new OS in C# named Singularity. Perhaps these sorts of problems are relevant though.

Is there any way to know which would be the best for specifically a
recursively-improving AGI? Or does it not matter what the base language
is because the AGI will just evolve new languages? That would sort of assume that there is really only one perfect type of intelligence that all roads lead to, which I am not so sure about... (I am imagining Eliezer's minds-in-general diagram). This makes the programming paradigm all the more relevant.

I would recommend an open source language, since you definitely want all the code. How can the AGI recursively improve if it doesn't have full access to it's own code down to the compiler? I can't say I'm an expert on any of these new languages. I would recommend not overlooking obscure ones though, like the D programming language. Granted, if solving this problem requires learning or inventing some new obscure programming method, this would be a burden, but maybe a necessary one.

      



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