Re: Abram's quit

[YKY (Yan King Yin, 甄景贤)]

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 1:24 AM, Abram Demski <abram...@gmail.com> wrote:

I assume the AGI project is dead? There has been no discussion for months.

My involvement with this project has ended, mainly because I didn't like the way YKY was trying to handle politics with opencog.

The truth of the matter is this:

Abram asked me to write a recommendation letter for him (for applying to a grad school), and I promised him to write a positive one, but at the last minute I told him he has to agree with my view that OpenCog's current mode of operation is "unethical".

My reason:  OpenCog claims to be "open" but it does not reward contributors fairly (it does pay some contributors while not paying others).

Abram said he does not think that is unethical.  So we disagree, and I said I'll send the same letter with an additional section explaining my disagreement with Abram over the ethical issue.  Then Abram said, forget it, he'll cancel the reference letter (or maybe he gave up on that school entirely, I don't know).  And he'll quit business collaborations with me.

And, just a few days ago, I e-mailed Ben.  I asked him, do you have a fair way to reward me for contributing to OpenCog?  His reply:  I don't want to spend time talking about it.

KY

[YKY (Yan King Yin, 甄景贤)]

PS:  Indeed, I am starting work on OpenCog's inductive learner, but I and Ben are still in disagreement re how to collaborate.

KY

[Joel Pitt]

YKY,

2011/2/3 YKY (Yan King Yin, 甄景贤) <generic.in...@gmail.com>:

> The truth of the matter is this:
> Abram asked me to write a recommendation letter for him (for applying to a
> grad school), and I promised him to write a positive one, but at the last
> minute I told him he has to agree with my view that OpenCog's current mode
> of operation is "unethical".

That is tantamount to blackmail and I'd argue you are entering
unethical territory in your quest to paint OpenCog and Ben as
"unethical".

> My reason:  OpenCog claims to be "open" but it does not reward contributors
> fairly (it does pay some contributors while not paying others).

Actually, the major contributors have jobs and/or contracts for
specific projects. You haven't contributed a single line of code yet
you continue to demand that you be paid for the privilege of having
you on the team.

I received no money for my OpenCog work for over a year, but I kept
managing and maintaining the project at financial loss (I'm in
substantial debt due to my student loan and foregoing other contracts
to work on OpenCog).

Wake up dude, no one will want to work with you if you keep this attitude up!

> And, just a few days ago, I e-mailed Ben.  I asked him, do you have a fair
> way to reward me for contributing to OpenCog?  His reply:  I don't want to
> spend time talking about it.

He doesn't want to spend time talking about it because you seem unable
to grasp that OpenCog is an open-source project. You keep rehashing
the same ideas and don't seem to listen. Most people stop wanting to
talk to people who fail to listen because it's a waste of time.

Ben and I discussed your involvement and apparently you think it's
completely unjustified that I or Jared get employed on projects over
you, despite the fact we've been active contributors since the start
of the OpenCog project. This is somewhat of a slap in the face since
I've worked with Ben as a volunteer on various machine learning
projects since 2001! How long have you worked as a volunteer on any
related project?

I've tried to be forgive your attacks on OpenCog and Ben so that we
can leave the past be and collaborate towards beneficial AGI, but
you're making it almost impossible.

-Joel

[YKY (Yan King Yin, 甄景贤)]

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 11:48 PM, Joel Pitt <joel...@gmail.com> wrote:

That is tantamount to blackmail and I'd argue you are entering
unethical territory in your quest to paint OpenCog and Ben as

"unethical".

That was also Abram's point.  But you should remember, a recommendation letter is about a person's technical competence as well as his/her moral character, and so it is appropriate for me to mention the ethical issue.

Actually, the major contributors have jobs and/or contracts for

specific projects. You haven't contributed a single line of code yet
you continue to demand that you be paid for the privilege of having
you on the team.

I received no money for my OpenCog work for over a year, but I kept
managing and maintaining the project at financial loss (I'm in
substantial debt due to my student loan and foregoing other contracts
to work on OpenCog).

Wake up dude, no one will want to work with you if you keep this attitude up!

Sorry, it has to be fair.

I sympathize with your situation.  But "your life is tough" is not a justification to force an unfair deal on me.  My life is tough too =(

By the way, I am donating 50% of all my (future) income derived from AGI to charity.  I'll publicize it soon.

Also, I'm willing to forgo next year's salary on condition that Ben uses the money to hire another Chinese / Hong Kong guy.  But he also refused that =(

He doesn't want to spend time talking about it because you seem unable

to grasp that OpenCog is an open-source project. You keep rehashing
the same ideas and don't seem to listen. Most people stop wanting to
talk to people who fail to listen because it's a waste of time.

Ben and I discussed your involvement and apparently you think it's
completely unjustified that I or Jared get employed on projects over
you, despite the fact we've been active contributors since the start
of the OpenCog project. This is somewhat of a slap in the face since
I've worked with Ben as a volunteer on various machine learning
projects since 2001! How long have you worked as a volunteer on any
related project?

I've tried to be forgive your attacks on OpenCog and Ben so that we
can leave the past be and collaborate towards beneficial AGI, but
you're making it almost impossible.

-Joel

It's an opensource project.  OK.

Profits are derived from the project.  That money is used to reward some contributors, but not others.  This is a fact re OpenCog.  Deny it if you can?

And, if rewards are dealt out, fairness is an issue.

This is NOT a waste of time.  You feel that this is a waste of time because you don't like talking about it.  Because this issue threatens to take some money away from you, a privilege that you think you're entitled to.

Why don't just say that OpenCog is unfair, period?  Now THAT will save time.

KY

[YKY (Yan King Yin, 甄景贤)]

PS:  I'm talking about my future, potentially long-term involvement with OpenCog, even though I've not made any substantial contributions so far.

And, sorry for being blunt.  The Singularity is near and I need to hurry.

KY

[Joel Pitt]

2011/2/4 YKY (Yan King Yin, 甄景贤) <generic.in...@gmail.com>:

> On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 11:48 PM, Joel Pitt <joel...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> That is tantamount to blackmail and I'd argue you are entering
>> unethical territory in your quest to paint OpenCog and Ben as
>> "unethical".
>
> That was also Abram's point.  But you should remember, a recommendation
> letter is about a person's technical competence as well as his/her moral
> character, and so it is appropriate for me to mention the ethical issue.

You agreed to do something (give a letter of recommendation) and then
you revoked your agreement unless Abram agreed to your point of view.

That's a major ethical issue and reflects extremely poorly on your
character. Coercing people to believe what you believe isn't a good
form of argument and will likely make people abandon having anything
to do with you professionally.

>> I received no money for my OpenCog work for over a year, but I kept
>> managing and maintaining the project at financial loss (I'm in
>> substantial debt due to my student loan and foregoing other contracts
>> to work on OpenCog).
>

> Sorry, it has to be fair.

It is fair. The people who do the work and know OpenCog well get hired
for projects. You do no work, you don't get offered jobs.

> I sympathize with your situation.  But "your life is tough" is not a
> justification to force an unfair deal on me.  My life is tough too =(

What unfair deal?

> By the way, I am donating 50% of all my (future) income derived from AGI to
> charity.  I'll publicize it soon.

I'm glad you live in conditions where half of your income is disposable.

> Also, I'm willing to forgo next year's salary on condition that Ben uses the
> money to hire another Chinese / Hong Kong guy.  But he also refused that =(

Really? Considering the number of HK and Chinese contributors already
working on OpenCog full-time and being paid, that seems like a weird
and almost racist thing to request.

> It's an opensource project.  OK.
> Profits are derived from the project.  That money is used to reward some
> contributors, but not others.  This is a fact re OpenCog.  Deny it if you
> can?

Really? We're making profits? How about that... all this time I
thought we were working with money from investors and funding grants!
How do you deny something that doesn't exist... hmm.

> And, if rewards are dealt out, fairness is an issue.

Sure - it's been fair so far. What makes you think it isn't?

> This is NOT a waste of time.  You feel that this is a waste of time because
> you don't like talking about it.  Because this issue threatens to take some
> money away from you, a privilege that you think you're entitled to.
> Why don't just say that OpenCog is unfair, period?  Now THAT will save time.

Au contraire, this email conversation is kind of amusing at the moment.

How is this issue going to take money away from me? Are you going to
rob me? I have an employment contract with the University and anything
discussed isn't going to change that. ;p

J

[Joel Pitt]

2011/2/4 YKY (Yan King Yin, 甄景贤) <generic.in...@gmail.com>:

> PS:  I'm talking about my future, potentially long-term involvement with
> OpenCog, even though I've not made any substantial contributions so far.

If I've learnt anything, it's that talk and ideas are cheap. People
who actually do things are worth their weight in gold.

... especially in the AGI community.

J

[Matt Mahoney]

 "YKY (Yan King Yin, 甄景贤)" <generic.in...@gmail.com> wrote:

> PS:  I'm talking about my future, potentially long-term involvement with OpenCog, even though I've not made any substantial contributions so far.

A history of my experience with the open source PAQ data compression project.

1999. Wrote dissertation proposal to study the cost of AI. Why is it so hard? I had the idea that text compression was AI-complete. My approach would be to look at the computational costs of language modeling and use compression to measure results and project trends.

2000. I publish a paper and the first practical software (GPL) on text compression using neural networks.

2001. Prospects for funding are dim. NSF rejects my proposal for a text compression contest. My dissertation advisor pressures me to change my topic to intrusion detection, which I do so I can get paid.

2002. In what little spare time I have, I publish PAQ1, the first context mixing data compressor, using ideas from my previous neural network compressor. Performance is better than zip but not great. It sits mostly unnoticed.

2003. I get my Ph.D and part time work teaching as an adjunct. The pay is low but enough to live on, and I have time to work on my data compression hobby.

2003-2006. There is a (relatively) rapid period of development (with hundreds of experimental versions) when dozens of people notice that PAQ is rapidly moving to the top of the benchmarks. It started when one other person who knew something about compression made some improvements. By 2006 a version of PAQ6 wins the Calgary compression challenge, replacing PPM as the dominant high end compression format from that point forward. Nobody is getting paid, BTW.

2006. I take a couple of short term consulting jobs when my work on data compression is noticed. My primary income is still teaching part time, however.

2006. I start a text compression contest similar to my NSF proposal but with no funding or prize money. Marcus Hutter starts the Hutter Prize, a nearly identical contest offering his own prize money after we can't agree on details of the contest rules.

2006-2008. Continued development of the PAQ project with about 20 (unpaid) developers working mostly independently racing for the top of various benchmarks including mine. Versions of PAQ win the Hutter prize.

2008. A small company notices my work and offers me contracting work from home on my own hours writing custom data compression algorithms at about 5 times what I got paid teaching.

2009. They hire me and 2 other PAQ developers full time, doubling my pay while continuing to work at home on my own hours.

2010. The company is acquired and I get another big pay raise while still working at home. I am no longer involved in developing PAQ. Instead I have a new open source project ZPAQ which is the first configurable, high-end format to preserve compatibility between versions. It was my idea but my company is paying me to work on it and promote it as an open standard, which I think will happen in several years.

> And, sorry for being blunt.  The Singularity is near and I need to hurry.

Have you looked at Alcor?

Failing that, your best bet is probably to put as much information as you can about yourself on the internet. A future society with advanced technology might be able to build a robot or a program that simulates you well enough that nobody could tell the difference. Whether that's "you" is kind of a philosophical question. If your goal is to build AI, I'm sure you've thought about it.

 

-- Matt Mahoney, matma...@yahoo.com