This is a significant improvement - good work.
Only having skimmed, my first objection is that you set the initial
bar for a self improving program too high. IMHO, the appropriate
initial program _is_ a burbling infant. You don't, for instance, write
from scratch a data structure for objects: You hook a sufficiently
powerful learning system up to raw pixel data and let it develop it's
own representations. You don't, initially, provide any connection
between a control line for an actuator and the sensors housed in a
limb: you allow the system to discover a causal correspondence
itself. You allow it to discover cause and effect, object permanence,
the distinction between internal and external stimuli, planning,
etc. If you can construct a machine that does that then the problem of
general intelligence is solved, and self improvement at the source
code level will be a historical footnote.
The hypothesis: It is possible, at least in principle, to construct a
machine which acquires all the skills and knowledge it requires to
function in the world via learning. Human provided domain-specific
knowledge, even of highly abstract or primitive domains, is
unnecessary. The question then is what is the minimal such machine,
and how do we go about building it.
-matt
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