Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima
From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: What AI is exactly.
Message-ID: <149@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 19 Sep 90 20:04:47 GMT
References: <2992@vela.acs.oakland.edu> <3873@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <1990Sep18.144452.9530@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 23

In article <1990Sep18.144452.9530@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu> geb@dsl.pitt.edu (Gordon E. Banks) writes:
>In article <3873@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> jim@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Jim Ruehlin, Cognitologist domesticus) writes:
 
>>  My arguments here are ment to convey
>>that I think we need to be more rigorous in our definitions about such 
>>things.  An insect or slug may look like it learns something, but it's
>>lack of much of a nervous system makes it unlikely.  
 
>Despite what you think unlikely, it can be rigorously proved that such
>animals learn.  THis is done by comparing their behavior over many
>trials with random.  So even simple nervous systems learn.

Absolutely, using the standard biological definition of learning even slugs
can *learn*.  (They are almost entirely devoid of *intelligence*, that is
they only possess the first of the 4 characteristics poroposed as defining
intelligence - learning).

In fact I would even go further than you did.  Even a *single* *neuron* is
capable of learning, at least in a very simple-minded way.  In fact this
is probably a large part of the biological purpose of neurons.  Except 
where the stimulus and response are in different parts of an organism,
using a neuron is far less efficient than simply having the effector respond
directly to the stimulus.