Phil Wallach

The idea of an AI prize was quite intriguing and I came to this site hoping to find something interesting.  However this is one of those cases where either these guys are crazy or I am missing something.

This is the competition:

The contest is about compressing the human world knowledge as well as possible.

If your compressor compresses the 100MB file enwik8 x% better than the current record, you’ll receive x% of the prize.

This strikes me as a good thing.  But where they lose me is when they start to talk about AI. 

If you can compress the first 100MB of Wikipedia better than your predecessors, you(r compressor) likely has to be smart(er).

… being able to compress well is closely related to acting intelligently …

Say again?  Let’s think about this, for a moment (that’s all it takes):

• I do not get how compression relates to intelligence.  They go on about matching patterns, and prediction, but I do think the “pattern detection” in LZW (for example) is really pattern detection in the AI sense at all.  Nothing is done with these patterns but transcription and mappings. 
• They have also confused where the intelligence is.  A compression algorithm is the result of intelligence, it is not an (artificial) intelligence operating in its own domain.  The intelligence they are measuring (if any) is that of the creator, not of the compressor.
• Their metrics are plain wrong.  The prize is awarded for the compression of a known piece of text.  This seems to me to be a flawed approach.  Even if people were to attack the problem with integrity, the winning solution would almost certainly be “fitted” to the data.

Human Knowledge Compression Contest: Frequently Asked Questions & Answers