Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bu.edu!orc!inews!iwarp.intel.com!psueea!eecs!erich From: erich@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Erich Boleyn) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Value of AI, was -> (Re: The Turing Test is no good!) Keywords: AI Message-ID: <3231@psueea.UUCP> Date: 14 Aug 90 11:13:07 GMT References: <2860@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU> <3156@gara.une.oz.au> Sender: news@psueea.UUCP Reply-To: erich@eecs.ee.pdx.edu (Erich Boleyn) Distribution: comp Organization: Portland State University, Portland, OR Lines: 143 I know that I am going off of the subject a bit, but I feel that this is relevant to the original question... In <3156@gara.une.oz.au> pnettlet@gara.une.oz.au (Philip Nettleton) writes: >In <2860@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU>, by frank@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU (Frank Breen): >> ... To me the turing test only tests if a computer can imitate human >> intelligence (and presumably human thought). ... > >"I think, therefore I am" - I still haven't found any proof that other >people exist, I merely choose to BELIEVE they do. Imitation is a nice >concept to pose when trying to undermine the Turing Test, but something >clever enough to imitate a human being well enough to fool a human >interrogator, must be of equivalent or higher intelligence itself. >Remember, ANY question is fair game in the Turing Test. Phillip has an excellent point here, that we know other humans are intelligent by convention, not by any innate knowledge. We are effectively running constant and numerous advanced versions of turing tests on everything around us. How do you decide if someone you meet is more or less intelligent? (Let's say you heard that they were a genius or something similar) You would tend to probe how flexibly they deal with different things... everyone does such things to some extent, expecially when it is with someone you don't know. We also tend to act like this to animals that we come into contact with (unless we are trying not to act foolish ;-). Personally, though, I feel that any "AI system" that passes the turing test robustly (i.e. with several trials, etc.) is probably more intelligent than most humans anyway, since it has to deal with an alien environment and convince a NATIVE of this environment that it is one of them, in the native's own language, yet. >> ... I'm not convinced that it is a good idea to have an AI that is so close >> to being human. If computers can do all the thinking that people can (and >> presumably better) then what's the point in any humans thinking. >> We would be reduced to being amused by the AI's (presuming they're >> nice) and all usefull thought would be done by the AI's. ... > >There are a thousand good reasons for pursuing AI... > ...Deep space exploration, deep sea exploration, >replacement of humans in life endangering jobs, etc, etc. I, for one, >will not stop thinking just because of the advent of AI. I wouldn't >advise arming them with nuclear weapons but thats a different issue. Well, Frank, at this point it is good to ask what would AI be good for? Phillips list sounds more reasonable for the near future than yours... in fact your idea would probably not come into being (if at all) for a LONG time, and who knows, by then Linear technological progression may not be the norm any more. Two things that I've learned from studying technology, science, and especially AI are: 1) technology does not advance into what are dreams of it were (Jules Vern, and other famous examples), and I have found, that, if anything, instead of it going up to a peak, it builds up a little bit, then spends a lot of time settling down into areas that we never thought of. For instance, people did dream of things flying through the sky, but where were molecular biology and microchips long ago? It is too easy an answer just to say that they were naive about such things. Perhaps we are naive about the advances to take place 50 or more years from now, or, frighteningly, even 10 or 20? 2) of all that I have learned from studying AI, quite a bit of it are applications that I would think "yeah, AI-type systems would be GREAT for that", but more on that in a bit. > >> ... What AI should do is let us humans keep doing what we're good at >> and let the AI's do what they are better at. ... > >We might well be extremely bad at it - there could be thousands of species >of creatures throughout the Galaxy more intelligent than we are, and we're >so smart we can't even think of a way to prove whether they exist or not. > Back to what I was saying about what AI is good for. There are potential ranifications (or course) in an immense number of fields of study and in useful applications for almost anything that you could think of. Most of them, however, don't require the scale of human intelligence or conciousness (if that eases your worries, Frank). In fact, quite a few of them that I have thought of as being useful to everyday life (or even myself) have been extensions (or variations) on what people call Artificial Life studies, which for the most part would be things like controlling the legs on a walker intelligently (heck, imitating the legs of an insect would do), getting a smarter operating systems configuration system for very advanced computers (say, dynamic configurations that adjust to the need in both software and hardware), plus some more goodies like that, as I just spent a week getting some systems configured correctly and running, and it is just too much of a hastle, etc. But even when considering an AI that has human scale (or greater, for sake of argument) intelligence, you seem to be assuming that people will always be the same as they are as well, but how can you tell? As I mentioned before, technology evolves in a strange and rich way, but then so does culture (we already found out that the linear progression predicted toward eutopia was wrong), and probably the rest of the human race as well. Have you considered that some may use these AIs for forced evolution of the human race (or a subset of it)? There are many possibilities and ramifications involved here, and it looks like "AI's taking over all useful human thought" is related to the problem of the technological and societal projections made many years ago, i.e. they take some features of what is happening or what exists technologically and expand them linearly or mostly linearly, when what usually ends up happening is a small linear expansion and then the filling of the little holes that are then exposed that leads to a wholly different state than what was predicted, leaving out the linear goals entirely. So we start with some AI ideas years ago, and all they could think about were some fairly linear extensions of that idea, many of them involving more "intelligence" than would really be needed, probably. But the real field just doesn't expand that way, so I don't think that we need to worry so much about AI's taking over our useful thinking ability. When you get down to it, linear expansion of technology is just not as efficient, anyway. (we'd miss a lot of interesting stuff, otherwise!) >> ... The point is that the Turing test seems to me to be somewhat contrived >> and meaningless. ... Out of its proper context, maybe, but when seen in the light of being a formalization of natural methods of evaluating intellectual flexibility, it is anything but contrived, and definitely not meaningless. It is a test of the relative usefulness, really, for if it is to all intensive purposes as smart as a human, then it is surely useful regardless if you believe it is "really" intelligent of not, and that is the POINT of such a test in its natural context. >IQ tests are contrived and meaningless - we still do them and so do our >kids. It is meant to be a critical test of success or failure in creating >a machine with capabilities approaching those of a human being (at what human My point exactly. >beings do best). It does not represent the definitive answer to what we >expect AI to give us. After all, who needs a machine that can imitate being >a human being? Good point also. As I mentioned earlier, what would be efficient about this kind of expansion, as compared to some other use of that kind of capability? Erich ___--Erich S. Boleyn--___ CSNET/INTERNET: erich@cs.pdx.edu {Portland State University} ARPANET: erich%cs.pdx.edu@relay.cs.net "A year spent in BITNET: a0eb@psuorvm.bitnet artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God"