Path: utzoo!dciem!client2!mmt From: mmt@client2.DRETOR.UUCP (Martin Taylor) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: AI - the real problem Message-ID: <4037@client2.DRETOR.UUCP> Date: 13 Feb 91 21:36:48 GMT References: <1416@ucl-cs.uucp> Organization: Defence and Civil Institute of Environmental Medicine Lines: 39 ici%cs@ucsd.{edu,bitnet,uucp} (Nicol N. Schraudolph) says: >One hypothesis is that the "extra intelligence" resides not so much >in the individual human brain, but rather in the countless cognitive >artifacts and social structure we have created for ourselves. (*) >Thus although we still essentially have animal brains, over the >generations we collectively managed to create an environment in >which slightly modified animal brains can pull all sorts of amazing >stunts (such as discussing their own epistemology :-). Just think of the difference in behaviour between a feedback loop with a gain of 1-epsilon as compared to one with a gain of 1+epsilon. In the first case, any input eventually decays to zero, whereas is the second it grows to infinity. I think our "intelligence" is 2*epsilon greater than that of chimpanzees, where epsilon is small enough to allow the smartest chimps to be smarter than the dumbest humans, but not enough chimps are smart enough to allow their mutual communication to add up to "cognitive artifacts" or joint invention, whereas most humans can use language cleverly enough to aid one another in developing concepts, and can port pre-built concepts from one human to another. Just as the universe seems "naturally" to have just enough mass to be on the border between closing and not closing, even though we can't find all that mass, so, I think we "naturally" have juuuuust enough intelligence to regenerate and expand our cognitive artifacts over time, and to slowly learn to build "mind-expanders" that increase our ability to do so (writing, calculators, computers ...). We are where we are because this is almost the only place people that would ask such questions could be. A few centuries ago, few people could have conceived the question; a few centuries hence, few will be interested in such trivia. (*) Schraudolph attributes the idea to Ed Hutchins. With all due respect to Ed, I think it is in the Zeitgeist, and has been for quite some time. -- Martin Taylor (mmt@ben.dciem.dnd.ca ...!uunet!dciem!mmt) (416) 635-2048 There is no legal canon prohibiting the application of common sense (Judge James Fontana, July 1990, on staying the prosecution of a case)