Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!usc!ucsd!nosc!crash!ncr-sd!se-sd!jim
From: jim@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Jim Ruehlin, Cognitologist domesticus)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: What AI is exactly.
Message-ID: <3853@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Date: 13 Sep 90 22:49:21 GMT
References: <25392@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <4123@servax0.essex.ac.uk> <3640@gara.une.oz.au>
Organization: NCR Corporation, Systems Engineering - San Diego
Lines: 72

In article <3640@gara.une.oz.au> pnettlet@gara.une.oz.au (Philip Nettleton) writes:
>In article <4123@servax0.essex.ac.uk>, dewhn@Sol24.essex.ac.uk (Dewhurst N E J) writes:
>> Reading all this raises a question: I'd be very grateful if one of the
>> AI types reading this could answer it. When you talk about "intelligence"
>> in the context of AI, what are you looking for? When dolphins are said to be
>> "extremely intelligent", I'd take it to mean that their brains work
>> similarly to (if less well than) our own. But what's written above
>> suggests the poster had something different in mind. What? 

If you're referring to my posting, my point about dolphins is that while
they have a large brain to body mass ratio, we haven't seen them exhibit
any intelligence.  It may be an intelligence we don't recognize, but like
all sciences there's probably some basic axioms that describe intelligent
systems.  Hopefully, we can someday figure these out and see if dolphins
are indeed intelligent creatures

>The problem in all the debates so far is that people have been personalising
>intelligence, saying that it a characteristic of human beings. The test for
>an "Intelligent System" that we are working on attempts to impersonalise
>our appraisal of intelligence by reducing it into components, ie, learning,
>autonomy, reasoning and self-awareness. 

All of which are phenomena of being human.

>When the test is applied to humans
>we can clearly say: "Yes, we are intelligent". When applied to other animals
>we can start to say things like: "Yes, a cat is intelligent", unless you've
>never had a kitten, in which case you may say some of the stupid things some
>people choose to post as news.

There's must be a very large intersection between the groups of cat lovers
and AI hobbyists.  Look folks, I like cats and I've raised kittens.  As
far as the opinion that my comment was "stupid", I've addessed the cat
issues in previous postings so I won't re-iterate here.  After reading
my clarifications on the issue you still think it's stupid, well...
thats life.

>> Similarly: when you talk about an "intelligent machine", you're
>> presumably talking about a system that behaves in a certain way. 
>> But how can you detect its "intelligence", other than by 
>> observing that behaviour, and squaring it with what you know about 
>> the workings of your own head? And given that, how does the
>> idea of a "non-humanlike intelligence" make sense?

Wow, great question!  Here's someone who'se actually been thinking about
the issues!  
Detecting intelligence might be able to be done by observing neuronal
activity, performing research on how neural nets work, and basicly by
trying to get inside our heads and see HOW things work, not just WHAT.

>If we now have a machine, a man-made artifact, which is claimed to be
>intelligent, you can start making observations and doing tests to
>determine whether it learns, is autonomous, reasons and is self-aware. You
>may not understand anything of "how it works" but, after a while, you
>should be able to say, "yes" or "no" to whether it is intelligent.

If you don't know how it works, how can you say it's intelligent?  Applying
the Turing test, which is just observation of behaviour, results in the
conclusion that you must treat the system as intelligent because you
don't KNOW whether or not it's intelligent.  That's why we need to get
inside the system and understand how it works as well.

>The ONLY way to detect intelligence is through observation and testing with
>a specific criteria in mind. You may say, "But I'm intelligent", but in
>all honesty, from my point of view, it's all hearsay :-).

As I pointed out above, this will only get you as far as knowing how to
relate to the "intelligent" system, not whether it's actually intelligent
or not.


-Jim Ruehlin