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From: feldman@rex.cs.tulane.edu (Damon Feldman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: AI - the real problem
Message-ID: <6394@rex.cs.tulane.edu>
Date: 1 Mar 91 01:16:05 GMT
References: <1434@ucl-cs.uucp> <5219@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <23176@well.sf.ca.us> <6341@rex.cs.tulane.edu> <23399@well.sf.ca.us>
Organization: C.S. Dept, Tulane Univ., New Orleans, LA
Lines: 61

In <23399@well.sf.ca.us> nagle@well.sf.ca.us (John Nagle) writes:

>feldman@rex.cs.tulane.edu (Damon Feldman) writes:

>>	Nonsense.  The brain is structured fundamentally differently
>>from a computer and has capabilities that use this structure to its
>>maximal advantage (I beleive for a variety of reasons).  Modeling the

>>	The problems I refer to are things like having 10^10 (or
>>something like that) connections among neurons.  A computer cannot
>>keep track of 10^10 little peices of information in the first place,
>>and if it could, it could not model the interactions that occur among
>>all of them many times per second.

>      If all we needed was to store 10^10 "little peices [sic] of
>information, it would be easy enough.  RAM prices are down to around
>$100/MB, so for a million dollars, one can store 10^10 bytes.  And maybe
>some could be paged out to disk.  Disk drives are down below $5/MB.

>      Hardware is not the real problem any more.  If you believe Moravec's
>figures on brain complexity, a Connection Machine has more than enough power to
>emulate a mouse.  Yet we still have trouble doing ants.

	In terms of computing power alone, I agree, we've got enough.
If not with a connection machine then with a whole bunch of 'em.
	I don't think that is the point, personally.  As I said
before, there are things computers can do that we cannot, although we
have more computational power than a Mackintosh.  This is because we
operate differently, not because we don't perform enough operations per
second. 
	Tasks that people do tend to be those that we can do!  In
other words, the set of all tasks acheiveable with a totally paralell,
10^9 processor, superconnected computer with program-as-structure
(i.e. brain) are achieveable by people.  To simulate human (or even
animal) behavior, a computer would have to be able to do all the
things that a totally-paralell, 10^9 processor etc. machine can do.
Since a computer has relatively few processors and program-as-data
etc. it cannot.  Not because it doesn't perform enough operations per
second, but because its mode of operation is better for some things
and worse for others.
	Given a computer and a person with the same computational
power (using any definition you like) the person will still take a lot
longer to calculate 20,000 digits of pi.  The inefficeincy of the
person is due to the way he works, since computational power has been
equalized.  The person would take a year to do what the computer can
do in an hour.  How bad does it get before we accept that there is a
fundamental difference in operational capabilities, beyond speed and
memory? 
	To make a more concrete analogy, it is similar to trying to
achieve the programming capabilities of C running on a connection machine
using a distributed system of PS-2's running lisp.  Lisp has strong
points, but it cannot do some of the things C can do without gross
inneficeincy with respect to both time and storage needs.

hope this was coherent,
Damon

-- 

Damon Feldman                  feldman@rex.cs.tulane.edu
Computer Science Dept.         Tulane University, New Orleans LA, USA