Xref: utzoo talk.philosophy.misc:3889 comp.ai:6546 Path: utzoo!attcan!lsuc!maccs!cs4g6at From: cs4g6at@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Shelley CP) Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai Subject: Re: Why the Chinese Room doesn't convince Summary: chinese room - my two cents worth. Keywords: functional definitions, understanding, Message-ID: <262143B8.27451@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca> Date: 10 Apr 90 02:23:51 GMT References: <23100@mimsy.umd.edu> <1990Mar19.153959.6113@sjuphil.uucp> <0541@sheol.UUCP> <1990Mar26.155415.21756@sjuphil.uucp> <0556@sheol.UUCP> <1990Apr3.162019.27598@maths.tcd.ie> <1990Apr5.202224.27534@caen.en <1990Apr6.14494 Distribution: na Organization: McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario Lines: 62 Having just read a lengthy article (too long to include) on the chinese room / chessmaster + novice problem, I feel compelled to raise a couple of questions. Firstly, it was stated that "we'd like to distinguish between the brute-force and human-imitative algorithms because the first is 'obviously' not intelligent and the second could be" (paraphrase). This arguement makes the (to my mind) unwarrented assumption that intelligent means 'designed to work like us'. Why should the brute-force algorithm be considered unintelligent? The suggestion was made that they should be distinguished by their ability to give "intelligent" explanations. I assume the explanations would look like: "I generated the entire game tree and found that this move lead to a win for me" for the brute-force approach, and "I have often found that this move under these circumstances leads to a major improvement in my position" for the heuristic player. If I had the ability to go through the entire game tree (without pissing off my opponent) and see a sure win, why would that be unintelligent? The chess-novice with Kasparov's list would say, "Well, er, I don't know much about chess, but I have this list here which tells me how to win, so I used it!" A statement was made that "we wish to find the heuristic approach intelligent over the brute-force one" (paraphrase). We 'wish' this because our preconceptions about intelligence include a foggy notion of 'elegance', but there is *no* a priori guarantee that elegance has anything to do with smarts! I recall a novel called "Code of the Lifemaker" by James P. Hogan in which a race of intelligent robots evolved out of the robot crew of a crashed ship. The details are unnecessary here. However, when these robots were discovered by man (on Titan?) they were living in a society much like that of medieval Italy. One of the human engineers remarked something like "Wow, think of the robotic techniques they could teach us!" As was pointed out to the engineer, the robots could be quite ignorant of mechanics (and were), in the same way we humans aren't born bio-scientists just because we're organic! The point I'm trying to make is that even assuming humans are intelligent, that does not imply we *know* anything about it, ie. what are its component parts, how could we improve it, etc...? As I have tried to point out before, since confirming intelligence itself requires intelligence there will never be a set of axioms or principles which can decide the 'intelligence' problem for all cases. I have no doubt that guidelines on the subject will be emerging in the course of AI research, or that the quest for such guidelines is worthwhile. I apologize if my tone is too polemic, but I am interested in this topic and have a tendency to play devil's advocate. I would *greatly* appreciate anyone taking the time to respond and/or disagree as I find there are often things to learn in such discussions - and group scrutiny of opinions prevents them from becoming fossilized superstitions! -- ****************************************************************************** * Cameron Shelley * Return Path: cs4g6at@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca * ****************************************************************************** * /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ *