Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!well!nagle
From: nagle@well.sf.ca.us (John Nagle)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: AI - the real problem
Message-ID: <23176@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 15 Feb 91 19:21:32 GMT
References: <1434@ucl-cs.uucp> <5219@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Lines: 22


      Worrying about the differences between humans and the other mammals
remains premature, given our grossly inadequate knowledge about how anything
more complex than a slug really works.  We just don't have the knowledge to
address the design of a human-level intelligence, given that efforts to
build even synthetic ant-level intelligences have only been marginally
successful to date.

      This is harsh, yes.  But there is too much wishful thinking in AI.
The feeling that real AI is just around the corner keeps researchers
looking for a "magic bullet" that will crack the problem.  This is 
analogous to the belief of medieval alchemists that they were near to
transmuting lead into gold, when the principles of chemistry had not
yet been discovered.  Two centuries of slow, painstaking work, by men
such as Lavosier, was needed to put chemistry on a sound footing.  
Top-down AI may be the same way.  

     I might be wrong.  Someone might pull off a miracle.  But from
the bottom up, we don't need a miracle.  Ordinary cleverness will
suffice.

					John Nagle