Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!isi.edu!smoliar From: smoliar@isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Metaphors, Information and War Message-ID: <16405@venera.isi.edu> Date: 17 Jan 91 16:10:50 GMT References: <26303@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <28045@cs.yale.edu> <2012@oravax.UUCP> <7455@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de> Reply-To: smoliar@venera.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Organization: Information Sciences Institute, Univ. of So. California Lines: 17 Keywords: Now that the bombs are falling, it is unclear how much virtue there is in discussing relevance to artificial intelligence. However, I think it is important to remember that a major danger in interacting with individuals is that everyone tends to use himself as a model. In other words, if A is trying to communicate with B, he is likely to assume that he can use his own mental state as a model for B's. If A and B belong to a common culture, this may be a reasonable assumption; but the cultures of the United States and Iraq have relatively little in common. Those of us who have tried to deal with machine intelligence at least may have a leg up in recognizing that there can be intelligent agents whose mental states bear little resemblance to our own. This is not to say that members of the artificial intelligence community should be taking over the negotiating process or planning military strategy. I just wish that more of our key decision-makers were more sensitive to the possibilities for truly different mentalities. (Of course, as we seem to be demonstrating even as I write this, if you have military might, you really do not have to worry very much about communicating.)