Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!pacbell.com!att!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: L33QC@cunyvm.bitnet Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: Down and out in nanoland? Message-ID: Date: 12 Jan 91 05:36:40 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: City University of New York/ University Computer Center Lines: 37 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu > I don't consider my toaster a person and I'm sure everyone agrees that > such an appellation is silly. However, personhood has very fuzzy > boundaries. It's beginning to be possible to write programs which > have undeniably higher mentalities than babies or some mental patients. > By the year 2000, I'm virtually certain that there will be systems that > will be able to convince the average man on the street that there's > "someone inside" (this is not to say that the system will necessarily > be so indistinguishable from a human as to be able to pass a full- > fledged Turing Test). What do you mean "undeniably higher mentalities than babies or some mental patients"??? Important things that both mental patients and babies can do easily, and computers now cannot: Vision, Natural Language Processing... Babies AND mental patients can learn most things just by telling them things... I don't know of ANY machine or program existing that can do any of those things... Unless you are referring to programs like Eliza or Racter, which don't have any kind of mentality, since they are not capable of any real kind of learning. I would think any kind of mentality would have to be able to learn things along the same kind of broad spectrum that babies and mental patients can. (Unless of course you're talking about catatonic patients, who just don't do anything) "Learning" in machines at least to the best of my knowledge is always along limited lines, like a machine that may learn strategies for chess or math theorems... But, you cannot expect these machines to learn altogether new things, like expect your math theorem prover to learn about biology or something like this. I am not one of those people who accept Searle's idea that it's IMPOSSIBLE to achieve AI, I just don't think we're half as close as you seem to suggest. If not, I'd like to see the programs that could act in a manner more intelligent than a baby... [I was thinking of newborn infants and catatonics, who exhibit virtually no mentality at all, and are yet categorized as "human". Considering that current computers have a million-to-one disadvantage vis-a-vis the brain in raw computing power, the rest of what you say is basically true but not particularly surprizing. See the latest message from R. Hanson for more on the AI question... --JoSH]