Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!iuvax!uceng!dmocsny
From: dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Re^2: Building a brain
Summary: Why build a brain?
Message-ID: <2556@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: 23 Oct 89 18:25:20 GMT
References: <14079@well.UUCP> <10175@venera.isi.edu> <246@carmine9.UUCP> <3554@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Univ. of Cincinnati, College of Engg.
Lines: 70

In article <3554@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>, jwm@stda.jhuapl.edu (Jim Meritt) writes:
> 
> Why on earth would we want a human intelligence living in circuitry?  We
> can already mass produce human intelligence with unskilled labor almost
> anyplace fairly cheaper.
> 
> I would hope a machine intelligence would be different!

While certain aspects of human intelligence appear to develop more or
less spontaneously, many commercially valuable human skills do require
skilled labor to impart. (Consider the problem of manufacturing a
medical doctor, or even a high-school graduate, with only unskilled
labor.) One advantage of implementing human(like) intelligence in
circuitry and/or software is that (presumably) we could copy it as
easily as we can other computer systems. 

Thus, even if some artificial learning system required as much time
and resources as a human to learn some valuable skill, once we had one
machine with that skill, we could make it universally available to
everyone able to afford a copy of the machine. The present system
requires us to start over almost completely from scratch with every
new baby that comes into the world.  While this system has its
strengths, it is also monstrously inefficient.

One major difference today between a rich person and a poor person is
that the rich person has easy access to a vast resource of human
expertise. With enough Information Power we can reduce the cost of
this expertise to essentially nothing, thereby extending to the
masses a benefit now available to only a privileged few. Note that
despite our higher manufacturing productivity and material
wealth today compared to 100 years ago, the average person still 
cannot afford to hire any more real people now than then, since
the real cost of labor has not declined in the least.

Even if building a human(like) intelligence in hardware/software
proves to be impossible for some reason, we still have much to gain
by implementing parts of human intelligence. As you well know,
human beings have many skills that conventional computers sorely
lack, and vice versa. One of the major drawbacks of conventional
computer systems today is that they can only interface with
highly engineered and standardized aspects of the outside world,
whereas humans are much more flexible in dealing with noisy,
nonstandard information. This greatly restricts the range of problems
we can profitably apply computers to solve, as much human effort must
first organize all the data structures, algorithms, hardware, etc.,
before the computer can do anything.

The only way to get around this problem today is to re-engineer
significant parts of society and our lives to permit computers to
function in them. Since all aspects of our culture have evolved around
the strengths and weaknesses of human intelligence, the scale of this
task is astronomical. The computer today is in a position similar to
that of the automobile in 1900 AD. The automobile offered theoretical
advantages over horses and trains, but it was not effective in the
world that had grown up around them. Re-engineering the world to
accommodate automobiles was an expensive task, and the consequences of
doing so have been far from unambiguously positive. Had someone been
able to perfect some transportation technology that delivered the
functionality of the automobile while adapting transparently to the
existing world, it would have immediately dominated.

Finally, even if AI doesn't produce a saleable product, the research
should eventually bear fruit in understanding how our own minds work
(and knowing that a certain hardware/software approach cannot give
rise to intelligence is a valuable, although disappointing, part of
this). By understanding how human minds develop and operate, we may
learn how to help them develop and operate better.

Dan Mocsny
dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu