Essay: Language, learning, and social interaction - Insights and pitfalls on the road to AGI

This is the first in a series of essays that I'm going to make available through this site. I'm going to put them in the resources page as I write them.I'm doing this for a couple of reasons. The first is that I like writing. The second is that a blog is not the best format to present ideas that you need to frequently refer to, and often when you get asked the same question by multiple people it is better to point them to a permanent resource rather than repeating yourself each time. The third is that I would like to add some ideas to the general thought-provoking mash-up of AGI memes around the internet. The fourth is that I think people enjoy reading short articles and opinion pieces somewhat more than entire books. The fifth is that (somewhat in contradiction to my previous reason) I'm hoping to eventually write a neat book about related topics, and whilst I have already started doing this, I feel that I need a lot more practice writing several-page documents before I feel I can make something that is 100+ pages long which I am happy with. Note, the PhD thesis does not count!! ;)So here we go. Click on the title to download the PDF.You can also find a copy of the essay in the resources tab..

ESSAY TITLE:
Language, learning, and social interaction
Insights and pitfalls on the road to AGI

Abstract:Why is language important? What purpose does it serve on a fundamental level? How is it related to the ways in which we learn? Why did it evolve? In this short essay I'm going to take a Darwinian look at language and why we must be careful when considering the role played by language in the building of intelligent machines which are not human-like.