Adam Curtis Updated +Created
Ciro Santilli really loved his documentary called Can't get you out of my head by Adam Curtis (2021), and then proceeded to basically watch all of this films.
Ciro's 2D reinforcement learning games Updated +Created
Video 1.
Top Down 2D Continuous Game with Urho3D C++ SDL and Box2D for Reinforcement learning by Ciro Santilli (2018)
Source. Source code at: github.com/cirosantilli/Urho3D-cheat.
Figure 1.
Screenshot of the basketball stage of Ciro's 2D continuous game
. Source code at: github.com/cirosantilli/rl-game-2d-grid. Big kudos to game-icons.net for the sprites.
Video 2.
Top Down 2D Discrete Tile Based Game with C++ SDL and Boost R-Tree for Reinforcement Learning by Ciro Santilli (2017)
Source.
The goal of this project is to reach artificial general intelligence.
A few initiatives have created reasonable sets of robotics-like games for the purposes of AI development, most notably: OpenAI and DeepMind.
However, all projects so far have only created sets of unrelated games, or worse: focused on closed games designed for humans!
What is really needed is to create a single cohesive game world, designed specifically for this purpose, and with a very large number of game mechanics.
Notably, by "game mechanic" is meant "a magic aspect of the game world, which cannot be explained by object's location and inertia alone" in order to test the the missing link between continuous and discrete AI.
Much in the spirit of gvgai, we have to do the following loop:
  • create an initial game that a human can solve
  • find an AI that beats it well
  • study the AI, and add a new mechanic that breaks the AI, but does not break a human!
The question then becomes: do we have enough computational power to simulation a game worlds that is analogous enough to the real world, so that our AI algorithms will also apply to the real world?
To reduce computation requirements, it is better to focus on a 2D world at first. Such world with the right mechanics can break any AI, while still being faster to simulate than a 3D world.
The initial prototype uses the Urho3D open source game engine, and that is a reasonable project, but a raw Simple DirectMedia Layer + Box2D + OpenGL solution from scratch would be faster to develop for this use case, since Urho3D has a lot of human-gaming features that are not needed, and because 2019 Urho3D lead developers disagree with the China censored keyword attack.
Simulations such as these can be viewed as a form of synthetic data generation procedure, where the goal is to use computer worlds to reduce the costs of experiments and to improve reproducibility.
Ciro has always had a feeling that AI research in the 2020's is too unambitious. How many teams are actually aiming for AGI? When he then read Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom (2014) it said the same. AGI research has become a taboo in the early 21st century.
Related projects:
Bibliograpy:
Video 3.
DeepMind Has A Superhuman Level Quake 3 AI Team by Two Minute Papers (2018)
Source. Commentary of DeepMind's 2019 Capture the Flag paper. DeepMind does some similar simulations to what Ciro wants, but TODO do they publish source code for all of them? If not Ciro calls bullshit on non-reproducible research. Does this repo contain everything?
Video 4.
OpenAI Plays Hide and Seek... and Breaks The Game! by Two Minute Papers (2019)
Source. Commentary of OpenAi's 2019 hide and seek paper. OpenAI does some similar simulations to what Ciro wants, but TODO do they publish source code for all of them? If not Ciro calls bullshit on non-reproducible research, and even worse due to the fake "Open" in the name. Does this repo contain everything?
Video 5.
Much bigger simulation, AIs learn Phalanx by Pezzza's Work (2022)
Source. 2d agents with vision. Simple prey/predator scenario.
Donald Trump Updated +Created
Trump's election was an act of protest by the people, because they felt, and rightly so, that the promises by the democrats to decrease social inequality were just full of shit.
So instead, the old voice of nationalism spoke louder.
Ciro agrees with analysis of Can't get you out of my head by Adam Curtis (2021) that this is largely because government is losing all power to do anything meaningful. So the only thing left to do is to speak empty words to calm, or exacerbate, people's fears and hopes.
Ciro believes it is important not hate Trump and his believers, no matter how disgusting Trump might seem, a large part of which is likely theater. We have to try and understand them instead.
Trump's election shows clearly how the democrats let down the poor. This understanding is a good thing. It shows that we all have to make greater efforts to help the poor. Just voting for some random democrat candidate who doesn't really care every four years is not enough.
Another positive point of Trump's election is that it further highlighted the power of social media even further: it now feels more likely than ever before that anyone can run for office, since a president without any previous political office was elected (of course, being filthy reach helps a lot still, which is a problem). And this further highlights the need for regulate social media, to prevent events such as the deplatforming of Donald Trump
We should calmly analyze and understand how someone that tries their best to appear disgusting managed to win. Some interesting analyses of Trump's character:
  • www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/the-mind-of-donald-trump/480771/ The Mind of Donald Trump by Dan P. McAdams (2016):
    It was as if the golden-haired guest sitting across the table were an actor playing a part on the London stage.
    "It was Donald Trump playing Donald Trump," Griffin observed. There was something unreal about it.
    and the author comments:
    My aim is to develop a dispassionate and analytical perspective on Trump, drawing upon some of the most important ideas and research findings in psychological science today.
    which is exactly the right way to approach things.
Most damning moments:
  • about women:
  • corruption
    • This was a beautiful comment, since it highlights not only that Trump is corrupt, but also that highlights that the others are corrupt, which is why the people elected him. TODO find video www.vox.com/2015/8/6/9114565/donald-trump-debate-money:
      Q: You've also supported a host of other liberal policies, you've also donated to several Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton included, Nancy Pelosi. You explained away those donations saying you did that to get business related favors. And you said recently, quote, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.
    TRUMP: You better believe it... I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that's a broken system.
Video 1.
Fifth Republican Primary Debate - Main Stage - December 15 2015 on CNN
. Source. This perfectly summarizes the spectrum of republican politics. The only candidate who said anything decent were the two least popular ones, notably:
  • Rand Paul, saying that interventionism in the Middle East was a failure (Jeb notably still wants to repeat his brother's mistakes!), and supporting freedom of speech rather than censorship and violation of privacy
  • Carly Fiorina, saying that the people must take the country back
The others are mostly fear-mongering and saying "we will destroy ISIS", to avoid actually dealing with the more important questions: the people have no power anymore.
Video 2.
SMALL LOAN OF A MILLION DOLLARS - Remix Compilation by TwinkieMan (2015)
Source. Nothing synthesizes is how bad the democrats have failed to help the poor. This is who got elected.
Globalization reduces the power of governments Updated +Created
While Ciro Santilli is a big fan of having "one global country" (and language), which is somewhat approximated by globalization, he has come to believe that there is one serious downside to globalization as it stands in 2020: it allows companies to pressure governments to reduce taxes, and thus reduces the power of government, which in turn increases social inequality. This idea is very well highlighted in Can't get you out of my head by Adam Curtis (2021).
The only solution seems to be for governments to get together, and make deals to have fair taxation across each other. Which might never happen.
Money laundering in London Updated +Created
Video 1.
How London became the dirty money capital of the world by Financial Times
. Source.