Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!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: <3875@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Date: 18 Sep 90 01:56:28 GMT
References: <3640@gara.une.oz.au> <3853@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <2495@frankland-river.aaii.oz.au>
Organization: NCR Corporation, Systems Engineering - San Diego
Lines: 71

In article <2495@frankland-river.aaii.oz.au> dnk@frankland-river.aaii.oz.au (David Kinny) writes:
>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!)

Oh, come on David.  Don't get so emotional.  This is supposed to be FUN,
remember?
I'm not being homocentric, I'm trying to be rigorous in what we're saying.
No one has "proved" intelligence in any other species or software.  We
presume we're intelligent, which is fair enough because we're the ones
trying to define it and we don't have anyone else coming along saying
"Hey you humans, you don't know nothing about intelligence!"
We also presume some species have some level of intelligence, and some
software has some kind of intelligence.  These may be convenient
presumptions, but we can't "know" until we've got a solid benchmark
for what intelligence is.
Which brings us to emergence.  I honestly don't mean this as a flame
David, but whenever I hear someone bring this up I want to puke.
Emergence doesn't explain anything, it only explains away what cognitive
science is trying to uncover.  In order to accept emergence, you have to
be willing to ignore the scientific method and reductive discovery.  I might
do that if a paradigm shift seems in order, but so far reduction has served
us quite well, and it doesn't seem like it's time to dump it quite yet.
As far as the other three aspects of intelligence are concerned, can you
back it up with some empirical data?  Can you show intelligence is derived
from structure?  That it's ALWAYS manifested in behaviour (I might be
having an intelligent thought without telling anyone about it) (Maybe
that's what lots of people think I've been doing all along... :-))?
I'll concede the third point - I too think it's a sliding scale.

>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.

OK.  I think definitionally it's redundant, but I'll try to remember to
specify "human" intelligence when arguing about the evidence of "x"
intelligence.

>Have you considered the possibility that it may not be possible for a
>system to be intelligent enough to understand its own workings?

Oh my yes!  Interesting question.  I think it's highly likely that, 
because you need a very complex platform upon which to implement intel-
ligence, the intelligence can't comprehend that complexity.  I haven't
seen any of the "experts" talk about this (in books, etc.), but I think
it deserves some thought.

>Certainly, if you insist on knowing *how* a system works before you ascribe
>intelligence to it, then you cannot claim yourself to be intelligent.

Since I'm framing the question, I'll take the liberty.  I know it seems
a bit contradictory, but hey, I'm only human... :-)

>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.  

I think we know barely enough to begin to try to define intelligence in
terms of implementation or processing, rather than behaviour. Only looking
at behaviour doesn't move us towards the root of the problem.


- Jim Ruehlin