Cover of Universal Artificial Intelligence

Universal Artificial Intelligence

by Marcus Hutter · first published 2004

13mentions
3recommended by
8HN commenters
2007–2026first – last mentioned

38% recommend63% neutral

Decision Theory = Probability + Utility Theory + + Universal Induction = Ockham + Bayes + Turing = = A Unified View of Artificial Intelligence This book presents sequential decision theory from a novel algorithmic information theory perspective. While the former is suited for active agents in known environments, the latter is suited for passive prediction in unknown environments. The book introduces these two well-known but very different ideas and removes the limitations by unifying them to one parameter-free theory of an optimal reinforcement learning agent embedded in an arbitrary unknown e

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What Hacker News says

  • ccozan · Nov 28, 2013 · Recommends

    I highly recommend Markus Hutter's book: "Universal Artificial Intelligence: Sequential Decisions Based On Algorithmic Probability" (http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Artificial-Intelligence-Algo... ) Beware, you need some serious maths and a board to follow him. In the end the…

    on “To create a super-intelligent machine, start with an equation” ↗
  • eli_gottlieb · Sep 23, 2014 · Recommends

    …Cognition if you want to see doable exercises addressing real cognitive-science problems. If you want to see something crazy-awesome enough to deserve the term "artificial intelligence", try Hutter's Universal Artificial Intelligence.

    on “Artificial Intelligence: Foundations of Computational Agents (2010)” ↗
  • jandrewrogers · Oct 25, 2025 · Recommends

    This discussion is not complete without a mention of Marcus Hutter’s seminal book[0] “Universal Artificial Intelligence: Sequential Decisions Based On Algorithmic Probability”. It provides many of the formalisms upon which metrics of intelligence are based. The gaps in current AI tech are pretty explainable in this context.…

    on “What is intelligence? (2024)” ↗
  • mindcrime · Mar 22, 2020 · Mentions

    …Patternist Philosophy of Mind - Ben Goertzel 83. Engineering General Intelligence - Volume 2 - Ben Goertzel, Cassio Pennachin, & Nil Geisweiller 84. Computation and Cognition - Zenon W. Pylyshyn 85. Universal Artificial Intelligence - Marcus Hutter 86. The Cambridge Handbook of Computational Psychology - Ron Sun 87. Handbook of Neuroevolution Through Erlang - Gene I. Sher 88. Readings in Cognitive Science: A Perspective from Psychology…

    on “Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?” ↗
  • eli_gottlieb · Oct 2, 2013 · Mentions

    …the guys who are actually doing Real Research into this sort of thing are, IMHO, Juergen Schmidhuber and Marcus Hutter. They are getting formal results in what they call the "new formal science" of "Universal Artificial Intelligence", and their insights into UAI are then leading them back to insights into Narrow AI and Machine Learning. Notice how they keep producing publications in reputable journals, keep getting awards for their…

    on “Why I am working on Artificial General Intelligence” ↗
  • mindcrime · Aug 5, 2019 · Mentions

    …https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-General-Intelligence-Part... https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-General-Intelligence-Part... https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-General-Intelligence-Cogni... https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Artificial-Intelligence-Alg... https://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-Revealed/dp/0... https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Understanding-Creation-I... https://www.amazon.com/Society-Mind-Marvin-Minsky/dp/0671657...…

    on “Ask HN: How close are we, really, to general AI?” ↗
  • jey · Jun 4, 2007 · Mentions

    Shane Legg and Marcus Hutter of IDSIA did some recent work on a metric for machine intelligence. ( http://www.vetta.org/documents/ui_benelearn.pdf ) Marcus Hutter's PhD thesis produced a theory of "Universal Artificial Intelligence" called "AIXI" based on Solomonoff induction. Sadly, AIXI is incomputable, and the time and space bounded version "AIXItl" is still impractical. http://www.hutter1.net/ai/aixigentle.htm But you're right:…

    on “Artificial General Intelligence: Now Is the Time ” ↗
  • eli_gottlieb · Oct 2, 2013 · Mentions

    My disclaimer is: I am NOT an AI researcher. I don't have the mathematical background yet. As to Schmidhuber and Hutter, Google them. This is their book: http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Artificial-Intelligence-Algo... If you can't understand the math in that book, then you are basically not going to do better at the Formal UAI field than the crackpots have done for decades. I mean no disrespect, but nobody…

    on “Why I am working on Artificial General Intelligence” ↗
  • DataDaoDe · Apr 11, 2022 · Mentions

    …This is not a paper on mathematical artificial intelligence, at last as I understand it, not in the way Goertzel or Hutter write about it. I was actually thinking this would be something like Hutter's universal artificial intelligence.

    on “The Mathematics of Artificial Intelligence (2022)” ↗
  • mindcrime · Jan 22, 2023 · Mentions

    I don't know, but if they do, perhaps they converge to Marcus Hutter's "Universal Artificial Intelligence"[1]. [1]: http://hutter1.net/ai/uaibook.htm

    on “Pattern Theory: The Mathematics of Perception (D. Mumford) (2002)” ↗
  • mindcrime · Dec 22, 2025 · Mentions

    …far as I can recall - always been even more loosely specified, and translates roughly to "an intelligence beyond any human intelligence". Another term you might hear, although not as frequently, is "Universal Artificial Intelligence". This comes mostly from the work of Marcus Hutter[1] and means something approximately like "an intelligence that can solve any problem that can, in principle, be solved". [1]: https://www.hutter1.net/ai/uaibook.htm

    on “I doubt that anything resembling genuine AGI is within reach of current AI tools” ↗
  • hodgehog11 · Feb 13, 2026 · Mentions

    …always below human error rates, but this is still empirical because it works with the ill-defined definition of superintelligence that is "better than humans in all contexts". [1] Hutter, M. (2005). Universal artificial intelligence: Sequential decisions based on algorithmic probability. Springer Science & Business Media. [2] https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.10077 [3] https://openreview.net/pdf?id=Vib3KtwoWs [4] https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.14548…

    on “The Problem with LLMs” ↗
  • Scarblac · Aug 11, 2019 · Mentions

    He has a book on "Universal Artificial Intelligence" , that defines what he considers AI and then solves it. The only catch is that it relies on Kolmogorov complexity, which is incomputable. The Kolmogorov complexity of a string is (loosely) the size…

    on “Hutter Prize: Compress a 100MB file to less than the current record of 16 MB” ↗

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