take a number of observations, as he suggests, and let the machine learn the code by determining the coefficients A₀ etc. by simple curvilinear regression. The duration of previous and subsequent signals and the interpretation given to prev…take a number of observations, as he suggests, and let the machine learn the code by determining the coefficients A₀ etc. by simple curvilinear regression. The duration of previous and subsequent signals and the interpretation given to prev…I maintain that there is some merit in studying self-improvement systems and if I am going to do that I am going to study systems where I know what I want, rather than more difficult problems, however attractive they may be to mathematician…
John McCarthy
scientist · 6 mentions across 2 readings
In this course
McCarthy appears as a foundational figure in machine learning methodology, specifically advocating for systems that learn coefficients through regression rather than manual specification. His work on self-improvement systems and the epistemological stance that one should study problems where desired outcomes are known rather than chase mathematically elegant but ill-defined ones shapes the course's engagement with AI's practical constraints and intentionality. Though cited only fragmentarily here, McCarthy's insistence on clarity of purpose in AI design threads through contemporary debates about AGI's definition and feasibility.
Mentioned in 2 readings
1. Introduction
Recent years have seen a resurgence of the goal to build artificial general intelligence (AGI), a system defined differently by the various people and organizations that seek to build it. For instance, OpenAI defines AGI as …59. Eliezer Yudkowsky Twitter post, archived on 13 February 2023, at https://web.archive.org/web/20230213224423/https://twitter.com/esyudkowsky/status/1131208777032560640, accessed 1 February 2024.
60. Bio in Marc Andreessen’s Twitter biog…Dylan Matthews, 2022. “How effective altruism went from a niche movement to a billion-dollar force,” Vox (8 August), at https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/8/8/23150496/effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-dustin-moskovitz-billionaire-p…
Appears alongside
People mentioned in the same passages — sorted by co-occurrence weight.
Claude Shannon 2Donald MacKay 2Dustin Moskovitz 2Ben Goertzel 2Cassio Pennachin 2Peter Norvig 2Stuart Russell 2Christopher Strachey 1Oliver Selfridge 1Barry Mehler 1Dan McQuillan 1Dylan Matthews 1Marvin Lee Minsky 1Nathaniel Rochester 1Raymond Bernard Cattell 1Sam Bankman-Fried 1Peter Voss 1Cari Tuna 1Eliezer Yudkowsky 1Garry Tan 1John Markoff 1Keira Haven 1Linda Gottfredson 1Marc Andreessen 1Voss 1Adam 1