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From: rpb0804@venus.tamu.edu (BATES, ROBERT PATRICK)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Return of "My view..."
Keywords: AI and intelligence
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Date: 25 Mar 91 07:20:14 GMT
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OK - I knew I'd open a can of worms when I jumped in like that, but SHEESH!

To clarify a few points, for Richard:
    I personally do believe that we have been granted much more mental capacity 
than we are currently using as a species at large.  How else do you think we 
have basically survived the past few thousand years without any real drastic 
changes known to date?  I also believe that until recently we had hit a point 
at which we required no further evolution, mentally.  We have, to OUR 
knowledge, hit the top of the mental ladder on this planet, and there are no 
real mental challenges left, other than those that we create for ourselves.  I 
think that evolution is still in evidence; however, I believe that homo sapiens 
is currently out of the picture until some environmental stress causes it to be 
otherwise.  If you were referring to the mention of us not catching up with 
ourselves yet, I simply meant that we haven't technologically caught up with 
our desires... yet...

I also admit that I am only a recent changeover to a CompSci degree - I have 
had some experience with computers before (for c. 8 years), but no real 
exposure to NN or AI in specific.  I just wanted to toss some ideas from my 
view in to see how they'd survive (CHOKE, CHOKE!).  Granted, I have no feel for 
what has actually been researched or done, but I think that once the technology 
has caught up with what we want it to do, we could model the multi-billion cell 
brain in a multi-billion "chip" computer that would be able to handle all the 
functions that the brain can.  

On the note of parallel processing, wouldn't true multitasking and dedicated 
"systems" in this supercomputer take care of the massive parallelism that some 
think would be necessary for AI? 

It may not be possible now, but then again, neither was the microcomputer some 
40-50 years ago...

Roberto................RPB0804@TAMVENUS

Naivety - virtue or vice?