Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!frankland-river!dnk
From: dnk@frankland-river.aaii.oz.au (David Kinny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: What AI is exactly.
Message-ID: <2495@frankland-river.aaii.oz.au>
Date: 15 Sep 90 01:57:56 GMT
References: <4123@servax0.essex.ac.uk> <3640@gara.une.oz.au> <3853@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Organization: Australian AI Institute
Lines: 58

In article <3853@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> jim@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Jim Ruehlin, Cognitologist domesticus) writes:
>
>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.
>
>	[Quotation omitted]
>
>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.
>

Enough of this homocentric stupidity.  Intelligence is not something you
can "detect" by observing neuronal activity, it is an emergent property
of extremely complex systems, it derives from their structure, it is
manifested in their behaviour, and it comes on a sliding scale.  Some cats
are more intelligent than others.  Cats are more intelligent than slugs,
and less intelligent than most humans.  (Slug lovers, no flames please!)

Do not make the mistake of defining intelligence to be "What humans do".
Firstly, it begs the question.  Secondly, it degenerates rapidly into
"What X believes humans do", where X is you, me, or some other know-all
who probably has an extremely shallow understanding of *what* it is that
humans do, let alone *how*.  People who, for whatever reason, insist on
equating intelligence with "What (and how) humans do" should at least have
the decency to speak about "human intelligence", leaving the unqualified
word free to describe a wider range of phenomena.

Have you considered the possibility that it may not be possible for a
system to be intelligent enough to understand its own workings?
Certainly, if you insist on knowing *how* a system works before you ascribe
intelligence to it, then you cannot claim yourself to be intelligent.
How does your memory work?  How do you recognise objects in the real world
so easily?  How does your ability to make abstractions arise?  You do not
know the answers to these questions.  Understanding how complex systems
work is *very* difficult.  If you know *how* a system works, then you can
conclude that you're probably much more intelligent than it is, and hence
that it's not very intelligent.

We must content ourselves with behavioural definitions of intelligence, such
as the Turing Test, at least until such time as we have a far more profound
understanding of how intelligence arises.  Claims about a given system
passing the Turing Test, while clearly not being intelligent, are specious
unless it is clear that such a system is (in principle) constructible, and
would in fact pass the test.  Remember that we currently do not know how
to construct *any* system that passes such a test, except by unskilled
labour.  If and when such a system is achieved or encountered, the chances
are that those not blinded by prejudice will admit its intelligence, but
few if any of us will begin to understand how it works.

-- 
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David Kinny                       Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute
dnk@aaii.oz.AU                                  1 Grattan Street
Phone: +61 3 663 7922                  CARLTON, VICTORIA 3053, AUSTRALIA